TWO
“You look like SHIT, Laney. What gives?”
“Oh, thanks, Dale. No, really. That’s exactly the thing every girl wants to hear when she walks into a room. That she looks like shit. That you haven’t been snatched up by some amazing woman is completely beyond me.”
“Come on, you know what I mean. You just look pissed. Seriously, what’s going on with you? And what’re you doing here so early? I thought you worked Saturday nights. And like, every other night.”
Delaney heaved a massive sigh and lowered herself onto the cracked barstool that she sometimes thought of as her home away from home. That probably wasn’t an awesome sign, to have a barstool as your second home, but it was the way things were for her. Such was the life of a server. You kept seriously weird hours and almost everyone you knew was in the service industry as well. She was thankful for her friends, though, especially at times like this.
“I do work on Saturdays. Or at least I did.”
“Uh oh.” Dale made a wincing face as he dried the glasses that never seemed to get really good and clean. “That doesn’t sound great.”
“Good. It's not supposed to. It’s not good.”
“How come?”
“I quit. I am, as of tonight, unemployed.”
“Shit. I’m sorry, Delaney. What the hell happened?”
“Rodney happened.”
“Oh Christ, of course he did. What’d he fire you for?”
“He didn’t fire me. Well, not exactly.”
“Okay, I give up. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Delaney’s eyes clouded as she thought about being stuck inside of Rodney’s pathetic excuse for an office, him sitting in his swivel chair as if having it somehow made him more important than her. She thought about the way it had felt to have his hands move along her body, the presumptuous way he had touched her as if he had every right in the world. Even thinking about it after the fact, with a cold double vodka on ice in her still trembling hand, made her furious.
Furious was a feeling she didn’t often have, but when she did it was hard to shake. Back in Rodney’s office, she hadn’t been able to shake it at all. Him groping her like she was some kind of merchandise he was considering buying had been the last straw.
Before she even thought about it, she hauled off and slapped him in the face. It wasn’t even something she planned on doing, not something she really thought about doing at all, but before she knew it, her hand was making alarmingly solid contact with her boss’ face.
Maybe it was because she took him by surprise and maybe it was because she just hit him that hard, but Rodney’s head rocked back, a look of almost comical shock on his face. His eyes went wide and watered like he might actually cry. His chair rocked back with him and, for a moment, Delaney was sure he was going to topple backward and spill onto the cold, dirty floor. Part of her was horrified, but part of her hoped it happened. If there was anyone who could use a little humbling, it was Rodney Bell. When his eyes focused enough to really look at her face, she saw that there was a little rivulet of blood trickling out of his nose.
His mouth opened, closed, then opened again. She couldn’t tell if he was going to scream or actually start crying, but she knew that neither one was something she wanted to have to watch.
“You hit me!”
“You’re right, I did.”
“But you hit me. You bitch!”
“I did! Because you touched me. You can’t just do that, Rodney. I don’t belong to you just because you’re my manager.”
“If you want to keep your job, you do.”
“Oh! I see where the misunderstanding is, then. You think I actually want this stupid job.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, really? Are you honestly telling me you think I would want to keep working here? The job was bad enough as it was, before you got all freaky. How could you possibly think I would want to stick around after this?”
“You think you’re going to find something better?” Rodney snarled, pitching forward in his chair like he intended to grab at her or something. “Do you really? It’s not like you’ll be getting a good review from me. You know that, don’t you? You’ll be the one who had to try and explain why you don’t have any work history.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Delaney started to turn, her face burning with injustice as well as the embarrassment of the realization that at least half of the kitchen staff had been listening in on what had just gone down. It was only the sound of Rodney’s angry, slimy voice that made her stop. She shouldn’t have and she knew it. She should have just kept right on walking. Except that she couldn’t make herself do it.
“You know, you’re crazy if you think this is the only time something like this is going to happen to you. This is how the world works, Delaney. You should wise up, you know? Stop acting like such a child. How old are you, twenty-one?”
“Twenty-three,” she answered in a voice that felt like lead as it attempted to snake its way out of her tightly clenched throat.
“See? There you go, twenty-three. Not a child. This is how these things work. You’re lucky to have a boss like me, actually. At least I was nice about it.”
She turned on her heel and stormed back into his office. To her immense satisfaction, Rodney flinched backward like he had been physically shocked or something, which in the end, she supposed he sort of had been. She stood right over him, both of her hands balled into fists by her side,
“Nice? You must have an ego the size of Texas if you really believe that. Listen, make no mistake, I’ll find another job and I’ll be working it when you finally get your ass fired. If I were you, I would worry less about me and more about getting yourself sued. Because you will, you know. And I won’t feel even a little bit bad for you.”
With the high of her adrenaline-fueled rage, Delaney turned again and stormed out of the office, pretending not to notice the chorus of cheers that erupted in the kitchen as she went. Not that it didn’t feel good, because it did. She had a feeling even Mandy would have been willing to give her a clap or two for that last performance. It would be pretty much the only time when they saw eye-to-eye on anything, but there was a first time for everything, right?
“Um, Delaney? Earth to Delaney?”
“Huh?”
“Where the fuck did you just go, Laney? Do you want that second drink or not?”
Delaney felt the color rising in her cheeks when she realized that she had totally spaced out right there at the bar. Dale was just watching her with a slightly concerned look on his face, the glass he was drying pretty much forgotten. Awesome, she thought to herself, just perfect.
Dale was crazy good looking and had been the guy she flirted with off and on for the last two years. He knew she was a little kooky, there wasn’t any way she could hide that for long, but she wasn’t excited about the idea of him thinking she was downright nuts. She didn’t plan on things going anywhere with him, he wasn’t really her type, but that didn’t mean she was ready to give up the idea entirely.
“I’m sorry,” she responded sheepishly, turning her glass in her hands compulsively so that the ice left in the bottom clanked against the sweating sides. “I guess I kind of went off into my head for a minute.”
“I would say so. What was that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what were you thinking about? The look on your face, I would have said you were thinking about killing someone.”
“You got me. I might have been doing just that thing.”
“Oh god,” he shouted, dramatically slapping his hand over his heart and drawing the attention of several of the bar’s admiring female customers. “It isn’t me, is it? Please, tell me it isn’t me!”
“No, jackass, it isn’t you. And you do realize everyone is looking at you, right?”
“Of course, I do. That’s the way I like it. Not that there are many people in here, anyway. Glass. Now.”
Delaney slid her glass into Dale’s outstretched hand, shaking her head in friendly disapproval at his extreme cockiness. He was terribly good looking, and he knew it. He was tall and slim but somehow still muscular with a constant five o’clock shadow spread across his face. He had deep brown eyes that always made him look like he was thinking about doing something he shouldn’t and chestnut waves that were too long and always falling into his eyes.
He was that sort of sometimes musician who drove the girls crazy. For Delaney, the desire to go all the way with him wasn’t really there, but she enjoyed his company. And that went double for the drinks.
“Careful now, sister. Sip that one slowly. There is a lot of liquor in here and you guzzled that first one like it was a glass of water.”
“What can I say? I was thirsty. Besides, I don’t have a job anymore. Maybe this will be my new thing.”
“Drinking?” He laughed, leaning against the bar and watching her like she was a cartoon character or something. “I don’t think that’s a profession.”
“Says who? It’s pretty much what you do. Besides, who said anything about it being a profession? I figured I could just be that crazy girl in the corner who's always talking too loud and slurring, threatening people who sit on my stool and shit.”
“Jesus, Laney, was it really that bad?”
“It was bad.” She sighed, taking a big gulp despite Dale’s warning. “It was like, bad bad.”
“What’d he do?”
“Let’s just say Rodney was looking to get a little bit more friendly than I was interested in.”
“Are you fucking serious? You want me to take care of it?”
“No need. I may or may not have punched him in the face.”
Dale stared at her in disbelief, waiting for the punchline, and she took another sip and kept her eyes level on his. After a few seconds ticked by, Dale burst out laughing and pulled out two shot glasses and a bottle of the top shelf stuff.
“Sounds like you’ve earned this. Cheers. Let’s see what other kinds of trouble we can get up to tonight.”
Delaney downed the shot with a grimace, thinking to herself that more trouble was just about the last thing she needed. Although she would have been hard pressed to say what it was she needed instead.
It had only been nine o’clock when Delaney had walked her dejected self into the dingy little basement bar she had made her home away from home, and pacing herself hadn’t been the thing she had been paying attention to. By the time twelve-thirty rolled around, she was pretty far from sober and had another complimentary shot in her hand.
Dale was either doing his best to fill the role of dutiful friend who got her drunk to help drown her sorrows or he was trying to get her drunk so he could take advantage of her. She wondered briefly if she should worry about which one it might be, and then found she didn’t care.
She was too preoccupied to care. She had recently begun to talk about her favorite subject, the thing she was passionate about and actually wanted to be doing with her life.
“You just don’t get it, Dale. I really think that’s the problem. You don’t get where I’m coming from.”
“I’m sorry, but I call bullshit on that. You think I want to be a bartender like this?”
“Um, yes? If I’m telling the truth.”
“Okay, so maybe I like the bartending. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get laid.”
“Charming.”
“Jealous?”
“Ha ha. No, not even. But seriously! I don’t think anyone gets where I’m coming from. Like, nobody really takes me seriously.”
“Maybe because it’s not the most normal career path. I think that’s it.”
Delaney groaned and rested her chin in her cupped hand in a huffy motion that made her look a little like a child on the verge of throwing a tantrum. This was a conversation she had sat through many times before, practically for as long as she could remember. Her parents had subjected her to it time and time again, right up until her dad decided he didn’t have the patience for it anymore and he pretty much washed his hands of her.
She’d suffered through the same thing with college professors who felt compelled to tell her how smart she was, immediately followed by a warning on how she was going to throw it all away chasing her nonsense. At this point, she would have been happy to go for the rest of her life without ever having another person tell her how stupid her fascination with the “abnormal” really was.
Dale, sensing the extent of her annoyance, made a clucking noise with his tongue the way an overprotective mother might and leaned toward her again. The flirtatious girls were, at the moment, forgotten.
“Laney, come on. I wasn’t trying to get under your skin.”
“I know.”
“It’s just... you know. Paranormal stuff. It’s not exactly mainstream.”
“So what?!” she cried with a little more volume than she intended. “You tell me why in the hell I would want to be ‘mainstream’ in the first place?”
“I’m not saying you should be, but-”
“But nothing! What’s wrong with me wanting to do something different?”
“Nothing. But have you ever considered that maybe there just isn’t anything out there? I know you don’t want to hear it, but maybe the world really is just what it looks like. No crazy, seedy underworld for you to discover. No Pulitzer prize winning exposé for you to write. Maybe things are just the way they seem to be. It’s shitty, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
Delaney would never have told Dale that what he had just said was probably the meanest thing he could have said to her, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. He had basically just told her that her passion, the thing she dedicated most of her free time and essentially all her mental energy to, was a bullshit joke.
Nobody liked being told her dreams were ridiculous, and Delaney was no exception. Except... except that what if he was right? What if she had spent all this time dreaming about making it big in a career that didn’t even exist outside of the National Enquirer? It was a terrible thought, the kind of thought that felt like a physical punch to the gut, but now that it was inside of her head, she didn’t know if she was going to be able to get it back out again.
“Shit, Laney. I’m just talking out of my ass. Who am I to be giving you life advice, right? It’s not like I’m exactly living the dream.”
“But you kind of are, right?” Maybe it was the booze, probably it was the booze, but she could feel herself starting to get emotional despite her best efforts to stop it from happening, “At least for now. I mean, you’re happy, right?”
“Happy enough, I guess. Sure. I’m happy. But that doesn’t have to mean anything about you and what you’re doing.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t, but maybe it should. Maybe it’s time to give all this up. I don’t want to be waiting tables for the rest of my life and it’s not like anything I’ve been doing has been getting me anywhere. Maybe I just need to face reality. Get a normal job, a normal hobby.”
The words felt almost impossible to get out and once she did, she really did feel like she was going to cry. She had been hoping that, once spoken, they would sound completely silly, but to her alcohol-dulled horror, they didn’t at all. What it really sounded like was the thing she should probably be doing.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t still utterly convinced that there was something more to the world than what the typical person was willing to recognize, because she was. Delaney believed with all her heart that there were supernatural things coexisting in the world with the people who did not believe in them, whatsoever. But maybe the things she’d been hearing all her life were true, also. Maybe her belief just wasn’t enough.
“Sound like a quitter to me.”
Delaney was so shocked by the starkness of the words that she wasn’t sure she’d actually heard them. Her eyes shot up to Dale, who shrugged his shoulders and gave a little shake of the head. Of course, it wasn’t him. It wasn’t the kind of thing he would say, for starters, but it also just didn’t sound like him.
This voice, this new intrusion, had the shaky, gravely quality of an older man’s voice. It was the voice of a man who had spent too many nights drinking scotch and chain smoking reds in a bar just like the one they were in now. Dale’s eyes shifted to the stool to the left of her, causing her to follow their path whether she wanted them to or not.
“Excuse me? Were you talking to me?”
“Don’t pretend to be less intelligent than you are. You know I was.”
“I don’t think it’s really any of your-”
“Business? You’re right about that much. It’s not. Doesn’t mean I’m not right. Do you really intend to give up because some pretty bartender tells you to?”
“Hey! That’s not fair!”
“Not much is. Look, if you want to hold off on your regular life for a little while, pay a visit to the address written on the back. If not, that’s your choice. Make the right one.”
The aging man slapped a wad of bills down on the bar and stood just as abruptly as he had interjected with his opinion. He never even looked at her as he headed up the stairs and into the newly chilly air, but she got the feeling he saw her all the same. She got the feeling he saw her better maybe than she even saw herself.