Collateral Damage Part One
Chapter 1
‘It looks like it might rain’, Aulora thought as she idled at a stoplight. She waited for the green arrow to signal so then she could turn into the parking lot where she worked, becoming more frustrated with each passing moment that the road on both sides stayed empty and that the light stayed red. “C’mon,” she mumbled to herself. “I’m gonna be late.”
Finally, mercifully, the green arrow appeared and she turned across the wide street into a sloped parking lot outside Tackleman’s, the grungy sports bar that had helped her pay her bills for the past two years. The gravelly noise in her engine was back, she noticed, as she situated herself in her favorite parking spot. It’s just because it’s cold, Aullie told herself. She couldn’t afford any significant repairs.
The dated, blue Accord was on its last legs and she was firmly in denial about it. It wasn’t like she had the money for a new car.
Twisting the keys out of the ignition, she snatched her black, canvas, serving apron off the floor from under the passenger seat, amidst an array of discarded receipts and crinkled plastic water bottles. The door creaked as she opened it and again as she slammed it behind her and manually locked it.
The air was crisp and cool, making her snuggle into her fleece-lined hemp hoodie as she crossed the mostly empty parking lot. ‘Great…’ she thought as the chill bit the tip of her nose, ‘…another slow night’.
The front door, a heavy, scuffed monstrosity with fading brass handles and a white TACKLEMAN’S decal, peeling off from the dingy windows, groaned as she yanked it open and a blast of heated air warmed her chilly cheeks. Inside, feel-good music played quietly on a constant loop in the dimly-lit bar.
Tackleman’s boasted thirty-six beers on tap. They were usually out of about twelve of them. A full wet bar, all house liquors, loomed behind a colossal wooden bar plastered with tacky sports memorabilia, flickering neon signs and celebrity mug shots. Worn tables, most with an aged and peeling finish, were scattered around the bar in a sort of ‘wherever it fits, it goes’ design. A low stage sagged into the back corner, near a small, pathetic excuse for a dance floor. It was usually lonely, except for the wretched weekend nights when local bands of graying wannabes did their best to rupture Aullie’s ear drums.
“Hey, Aullie!” a baby-faced blonde called out, galloping up to the front of the bar with an enthused smile. Dammit, Aullie thought, she had really been meaning to learn the new host’s name.
“Hey,” she said vaguely, with a half-assed smile, hoping the girl wouldn’t notice that she hadn’t said her name back.
She didn’t. The girl just rested her elbows on the weathered wooden podium used as the hostess stand. The dusty chalkboard on the front advertised the daily specials in colorful chalk, and whoever had done it that day had some very big, very loopy handwriting done in pink.
“Long time, no see! Am I right?” Blondie tried for a lame, over-friendly joke. Aullie wanted to roll her eyes but resisted the urge. “But hey, look. You’ve got, like, a really good section tonight.”
“Yeah, I would hope so. I told Napoleon I would come in early and close tonight,” Aullie said, peering over the host stand to scan the table chart. Five tables, all large, somewhat clean booths near the bar, plus whatever came in after everyone else was cut. She could work with that.
“Hopefully it gets busy, I’m sooo bored,” the other girl whined.
“Yeah,” Aullie replied bluntly, breaking off the conversation and making her way past the bar and around the tables, to the back.
Some Tackleman’s guests weren’t even sure the bar had a kitchen because it was tucked way back in the far-right corner. There was a short, metal expo line where the kitchen served up the food. Around the corner, it opened to a semi-cramped kitchen that had probably once been pristine and white but was now stained, yellowed and dirty.
One by one, the on-duty cooks acknowledged her, their greetings ranging from ‘Yo, Aullie!’ to a sultry ‘Hey, girl!’ and she nodded or waved in return. Most of them had worked there as long as she had, and some were even like family.
The kitchen backed up to another partial wall, behind which were the manager’s office and two rows of coat hooks for the staff. Several jackets and various sizes of backpacks hung from the hooks already and Aullie wriggled out of her sweatshirt and hung it off one of the hooks on the lower rack. She tied her apron around her waist, securing the strings with a double-knotted bow under her belt buckle and tucking it under the flap. She checked her pockets; coasters on the left, order book in the center, and a cluster of pens in the right. She was good to go.
The door to the manager’s office was most often closed but not on that night. Through the opening, she heard a familiar voice call out, “Aullie, is that you?”
The nasally utterance grated on her nerves. She took a deep breath and rolled her eyes, then crept up to the door and peeked around into the office. As per usual, it was tiny, cramped, and the desk was littered with papers. Shelves on the walls were packed with books and binders and there were six huge bottles of pineapple vodka, leftover from another promo flop, crowded in the back corner.
A very short, very thin, very pockmarked man in a stiff, charcoal gray button-up with a pair of wiry glasses sat in the bulky, black office chair, typing furiously on a keyboard attached to a clunky desktop monitor.
“What do you need, Eric?” she asked, the airy, pleasant professionalism in her voice masking her deep, preoccupying loathing for the tiny man and his huge attitude.
“Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for coming in and helping me out tonight. We had two servers call in tonight if you can imagine that, and as always, I just wanted to thank you for all your hard work and being such a team player.” Eric said it all without looking away from the screen. The lack of eye contact only added to the professional yet wildly insincere tone that he always seemed to have.
“Yeah, of course,” she replied. “You know me, I need the money.”
“Yeah, art majors usually tend to need help with that.”
“Yeah,” she replied bluntly. “Can you come clock me in?”
Eric stood and Aullie, at only five-foot-seven, could see straight over his head. His height, or lack thereof, coupled with his hair-trigger temper and inflated self-importance had earned him the nickname Napoleon, among his staff. As they walked together back up to the point-of-sale computers, Aullie nursed her battered ego.
She wished his playful jab at her chosen career path still hadn’t damaged any hope she had harbored for making it as an artist, but after the show that weekend, there wasn’t much left there for him to damage.
Truth was, she was coming up on three years of learning to draw, and to paint, and which colors to do it with, and which artist was responsible for every painting. Three years of late nights spent sketching, erasing, re-sketching, smudging, coloring, color-mixing, painting, and swearing. Three years of smudged fingertips, washing brushes, and praying countless stains come out in the wash or the shower. And in three months, when she had walked across the stage to receive her fine arts diploma, she knew that she was walking into an unforgiving world whose approval she would need if she ever hoped to pay her rent.
Sure, she had known that going in but she hadn’t really known it until she’d put her heart and soul up on the walls in front of gallery owners and private buyers and walked away with only sixty dollars and not a single showing contract. It had been five days since the show but the wound still sucked at her gut like a raw, angry hunger.
‘I’m going to be waiting tables forever’, Aullie thought morosely. She pictured herself as an old woman, liver spots on her pale, slender hands and shots of gray through her inky black hair, serving Irish car bombs to college boys and her heart sank halfway to her knees.
She tapped her login code, 8134, into the POS which popped up a window that read, ‘Clock in time was: 4:30 PM. Are you early?’
Eric swiped his manager card to complete her clock-in and she was good to go. Ready to serve all of the tables that weren’t there. Awesome!
“Where’s your name tag?” Eric barked, short and snappy like a little Yorkie.
With a resigned sigh, Aullie said, “In my pocket.” She began to dig it out.
“Why isn’t it on your shirt?” Eric asked, smugly.
“It’s getting there,” Aullie said, locking eyes with him as she fussed with the magnetic back to attach it under her collarbone. Her tone was playful but her eyes said beware. Eric turned and walked away, an ugly, smarmy smile on his little face.
Nobody else would be there until five and she had forgotten to ask Eric what the new host’s name was. Aullie didn’t really want to talk to her anyway, so she wandered around the restaurant wiping crumbs off chairs with a wet rag, refilling the already full ice bin, brewing new tea they probably didn’t need, anything to keep her mind off her failure as an artist.
Not a failure. She chastised herself for her negative self-talk. A lot of the greats didn’t make it big at first. The thought perked her up a little bit; it was true, a lot of stellar artists weren’t big and famous right off the bat. She was only twenty-two, she had time to get better, right? A sinister voice nagged at the back of her head. A lot of the greats still didn’t make any money either.
The next few hours dragged on. There was supposed be a pot for the football game at seven, but at a quarter-til, there was still only about one table per server and a few bearded men cluttering the bar. Aullie had only made thirteen dollars in almost three hours and once again, she was regretting helping Eric out. She practically lived there, especially on the weekends, and she was beginning to wonder if she should try to find another job.
As if on cue, about four minutes to kickoff, a small herd of men in team colors lumbered into the bar. They yelled, high-fived, back-clapped, and whooped as they all blazed past the host stand and began seating themselves at random around the bar.
Aullie exchanged looks across the drink station with Brittany, a beautiful, full-figured Latina who was probably Aullie’s only real work friend. They rolled their eyes in sync. The two of them straightened out their aprons, allowing the men to settle themselves in as the other three waitresses hovered around as they all readied to strike.
Three of Aullie’s booths filled up and she started at the furthest, number eleven.
“Hey there guys.” She switched into server mode: perky, smiley, and just a little bit flirtatious. “I’m Aullie, I’m going to be taking care of you. What are we drinking?”
The order; three Coors lights and two jack and cokes. The second booth at table twelve were all older, overweight, married men who leered at the low-V neckline on her work shirt. They ordered two pitchers of beer and a round of fireball shots. She shuffled down to table fourteen, ready to gear up her spiel and take some more orders but suddenly her breath was sucked away.
There were four men at the table. The first man had a rough beard and wore a classic plaid flannel, semi-hot in a hipster lumberjack sort of way. The second man was clean cut, blonde and baby-faced wearing a crisp oxford. The third had a mess of unruly bushy hair escaping from an upside-down and backward sport visor. He was wearing a hockey jersey for some reason. But the fourth man.
The fourth man was a dream come true.
Even though he was sitting down, she could tell he was tall. Aullie had always been a sucker for tall guys. He was long and lean, with great posture. He wore a fitted Henley that hugged his thick, athletic arms. The thin fabric strained against his swollen pecs. He had that brownish-blonde hair that women paid good money for, but Aullie was sure it was natural.
His golden hair was barely brushed. Thick, prominent brows framed a stunning pair of practically gold hazel eyes. His full lips were twisted in a predatory grin as those gold eyes bore into her so intensely, Aullie couldn’t breathe. Something about the man struck her to her core. He looked at her the way a leopard would a gazelle, and she was startled to find she felt almost... aroused.
The spell was broken, thankfully, when Visor Boy leapt up. His knees jostled the table, he pumped his fist in the air, yelling, “WOOOO DOGGY! Yeah! Go boys, go boys!” His fist pump narrowly missed Aullie’s head. The sudden commotion distracted her and gave her heart a different reason to race. Golden Eyes still watched her, before he chuckled slightly and she felt heat rise in her cheeks.
“Sorry about that,” he apologized, with a smooth British accent.
‘Of course, he has a British accent’, Aullie thought lustfully. “Oh, it’s no problem,” she stammered. “I’m Aullie, I’ll be taking care of you guys.”
“Well, that’s a weird way to spell it,” Visor Boy cut her off, leering at her name tag. “Isn’t that a boy’s name? Like O-l-l-i-e?”
“Usually, yeah,” Aullie replied, hoping her to make her irritation sound light-hearted. “So, can I get you guys something to drink?”
Lumberjack wanted a Sam Adams, Baby Face got a gin and Tonic, and Visor Boy got a double Jack and Coke. Golden Eyes asked how she got her name.
“Oh, uh,” she stuttered. “My real name is Aulora, like Aurora but with an L in the middle? But I end up getting called ‘Laura’ a lot and I just prefer Aullie.”
“Beautiful,” his sexy accent purred. “And so unique. I like it. Could you get me a short stout and a shot of Jameson?”
“Which stout? We have…”
He cut her off. “Surprise me.”
The way he said it, the wicked gleam in his eye, the sensuous curl to his lips, and that voice. Aullie wasn’t usually one to get so star-struck by men, but she wanted to surprise him with so much more than just a beer. She tapped away at the POS. Thankful she had written everything down before Mister British scrambled her brain.
Brittany walked up behind her, flicking overflowed beer off her manicured hands. She examined her precious fake nails, currently Tiffany-box blue with sparkly silver bows ironically adorning her third fingers.
“Hey, Brit,” Aullie called, wiggling her fingers in front of the screen.
“Yo,” Brittany joked in her fake Chola voice.
In more of a commanding tone than she meant to use, Aullie ordered, “You have to run my drinks to table fourteen.”
An instant glare moved over the other waitress’s, overly made up, face. “Bitch, why? Do your own job.”
“Bitch, because there’s a guy there. He’s built, hot as hell, and British.”
“Oh, honey, consider me there.” She sashayed her voluptuous buttocks over to the bar to snatch the drinks before someone else could. Aullie laughed and shook her head as she finished ringing everything up.
Aullie began filling fifteen waters, hoping to keep everyone at least a little sober. Cutting people off was a hassle that she wasn’t feeling up to. She took them to her other tables first, ensuring that Brittany could get in on the eye candy. Then she took some orders for potato skins, hot wings, and fried cheese. She walked straight past table fourteen when she saw Brittany at the computer. If she’d been paying attention, Aullie would’ve noticed the dreamy British hunk watching her like a hawk.
“So, what do you think?” Aullie asked Brittany with a wicked smile.
“Oh my god, girl, total ten. Get his number and send me pictures when you do him,” Brittany said. She waggled her perfect, penciled-in eyebrows and bumped her hips against Aullie’s suggestively as she worked the computer.
“Oh, whatever,” Aullie laughed. “Guys like that don’t leave me their number. Guys like his weird buddy in the visor leave me their number. And I am not going out with him.” She shuddered at the thought of spending an evening with that buffoon.
Brittany clucked disapprovingly. “Next time you go shopping make sure you find some confidence that fits you, girl. You could totally bag that. Oh shit, some dude’s waving me down. Asshole,” she muttered under her breath as she wandered off toward an acne-ridden blonde who was staring her down as though she were a chunk of meat.
‘Gotta love the bar business’, Aullie thought.