Chapter Four
Levi
The bar was bustling when I walked in that night. The manager on duty was standing just inside the door, looking over the filled tables and three-deep crowd around the bar, and he started when I placed my hand on his shoulder.
"How's everything going?" I asked.
"It's been like this for a few hours," he said.
"You should’ve called me," I told him.
Ellis shook his head.
"It was your day off," he said. "I knew you'd be here eventually. It's been busy, but everything's actually been pretty smooth."
"That didn't sound terribly confident."
"Well, it's just that there's this one table that's refusing to leave. There are people waiting and they're getting pretty pissed that I won't clear the table for them."
"Where is it?"
Ellis pointed toward the front corner of the restaurant portion and I bent my neck to the side to try to see through the crowd. The people were too dense, though, so I looked back at Ellis.
"Don't worry, I'll take care of it." I started down the few steps that separated the entry from the floor that held the tables. "Don't these people know that there are other restaurants that they could go sit in for hours?" I muttered to myself. "This isn't exactly the place for deep, meaningful conversation."
As I parted through the crowd and saw the table, however, I knew that this wasn't a group of friends or a misguided family who had tried to go out for a holiday season get-together. I paused briefly, unsure of what to do next, but then my thoughts took over and I crossed the rest of the way across the room to stand beside the table. Sophie glanced up at me, the straw in her glass still between her lips.
"Hi," she said
"You aren't doing a very good job of staying away from me."
"Shut up."
"There is just so much festive spirit inside of you," I said. "You might as well be wearing jingle bells."
Sophie let out a sigh and turned back to her nearly-empty glass. I grabbed it and pulled it away from her, assuming that she had been drinking for the hours that she had been sitting there, pissing off the customers who wanted to take the table.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Egg nog," she said.
I took a sniff and realized that there was no smell of rum in it.
"It's not spiked," I said.
"Nope."
She grabbed the glass back from me and took the last sip.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"Drinking egg nog."
"Yes, we've already established that. But why are you sitting here in a bar drinking egg nog?"
"Because it's the holiday season and I am being fucking festive. Peace on Earth."
"That's a delightful sentiment and as much as I appreciate that my humble little place here was the destination you thought of when it came to decking your halls and jingling your bells, there are other people here who want to sit down and eat or get their own festiveness going, and you are stopping them from doing that by taking up a whole table all evening."
Sophie turned her face up so that her eyes dug into mine.
"I don't see a sign anywhere that puts a limit on how long a paying customer is allowed to sit at a table as long as they are eating or drinking."
"Have you been eating?"
"I had a candy cane," she said defiantly.
She looked so angry and stern that I struggled to hold back the laugh that threatened my lips.
"Did the bartender give it to you with one of your egg nogs?" I asked.
"Maybe."
"Alright, well, that's wonderful and very in line with your festive mission, but you're really going to have to vacate the table so that someone else can use it. Why don't you come and perch up at the bar? I'm sure I can find you a stool."
"I don't need your help," she snapped. "I'll just go celebrate elsewhere."
Sophie started to get down off of the stool, but quickly lost her balance and stumbled toward me.
"Whoa," I said as I reached out for her and swept her into my arms. "A couple of those egg nogs did have rum in them, didn't they?"
She looked like she was going to protest, but then she nodded, and I felt her body sag slightly.
"Maybe."
"Alright," I said. "Change of plans. I think that you need a little bit of a winter's nap. Let's go."
Sophie reached for her glass and took a last sip, sucking loudly at the last vestiges of the egg nog. I took the glass from her and set it back on the table, tightening my arm around her so that I could guide her away from the table. The rum that had been in her previous drinks seemed to have gathered up its potency and was hitting her hard now, making her movements languid and swimmy. The crowd parted to let us through and I kept my eyes focused ahead, ignoring their laughs and jeers. That type of reaction never ceased to amaze me. It wasn't like this was the first time that any of them had seen someone take down a few too many swigs and need some assistance getting out of the bar, yet they didn't hesitate to laugh and taunt, as if teaming up against someone else made them somehow less egregious in their own behavior.
"Crissy, I'll be right back."
The bartender nodded as she juggled filling three different drink orders, never losing a beat and not seeming flustered even for a moment. This was why she was the only person I wanted behind my bar on nights like this, and also a woman I could see marrying if she wasn't a lesbian, simply because of my admiration for her drink slinging and organization skills. I could only imagine that would translate well to things like Thanksgiving dinner.
The cold air outside the bar seemed to pierce through her drunken haze slightly and Sophie lifted her head from where it dropped onto my shoulder so that she could look around.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Up to my apartment."
"Good," she said. "I've had a really shitty day and I could use a little bit of stocking stuffing if you catch my drift."
She let out a decidedly impaired laugh and turned toward me as if to kiss me. I caught her by her ribcage and turned her again, picking up our speed a touch. I knew that at this level of being wasted, the window to get her in and laying down before she either passed out or got sick was very small, and I wanted to minimize the chances of either happening.
"I think that I'm going to have to take a snow check on that one," I said.
Her smile faded from her face and Sophie looked at me with confusion in her eyes.
"A snow check?" she asked.
"Like a rain check? But it's cold? Snow check. Christmas?" I shook my head at her. "Never mind. OK. Can you get up the steps by yourself?"
We had reached the bottom of the staircase that led up to the fire escape and she glanced up, her balance failing her as she did so that she swayed and stumbled back a few steps.
"Wow," I said. "Alright. I'm going to take that as a 'no' and just go right on ahead and help you."
I swept one arm behind Sophie's knees to cradle her and started up the steps, hoping that she didn't make any sudden movements. She wasn't very big, but neither were the steps and not being able to hold onto the handrail beside me as I ascended meant that if she did flail it could send us both tumbling back down to the bottom. Fortunately, she remained still as I cautiously climbed toward the door to my apartment and then lifted her slightly higher so that I could balance her briefly in one arm and reach for my keys. I was really starting to think that I needed to invest in a keypad entry for my apartment like I had for the bar. It was much better to be able to smash a code into a pad than wrangle keys when my hands were otherwise occupied, for better or for worse.
Finally, I managed to get the keys out of my pocket and jammed them into the lock, managing to turn the doorknob and kick the door open as I caught Sophie again. I wove my way through the apartment without bothering to turn on any lights. I had lived in the apartment since even before I bought the bar, and this was certainly not the first time that I had made my way through it in the dark. I got to the bedroom and lowered Sophie to the bed. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was deep and steady. I carefully pulled her shoes off and unfolded the blanket from the end of the bed over her, walking out of the room as quietly as I could in an effort to avoid waking her up and opening myself to the potential of more holiday-themed innuendo.
I managed to sneak out of the bedroom and close the door behind me without disrupting her and took a few steps down the hall back toward the living room when my phone started ringing in my pocket. I muttered a few curses under my breath and fought with the device to silence it before it could wake Sophie up.
"Hello?" I said in a loud whisper without even looking at the screen to find out who was calling.
"Levi?"
As soon as I heard my father's voice, I grimaced and felt my hand clench as I bit down on my bottom lip to stop the deluge of self-scolding that was about to pour out of my mouth.
"Hi, Dad," I said, trying to sound energetic and as though I hadn't just remembered that I was supposed to be across town for a party, not working at the bar, and certainly not rescuing blitzed women I barely knew and bringing them up to my apartment. "How's it going?"
"Are you asking how I'm doing, or how the party is going?"
Damn, I thought, I just walked the hell right into that one.
"Oh, was that tonight?"
As soon as I said it, I knew that that wasn't the right approach and let out a sigh.
"Yes, that was tonight," he said with a slight edge of tension in his usually gentle, kind voice, "just like it was when I reminded you yesterday, and last week, and when you planned it and sent out the invitations."
I sighed again. He was right. I had been the one who agreed to throw this party for him and had insisted that I would handle all of the details. As soon as I did, though, it fell into the same basic pattern as everything else in my life. It came after I thought about everything else about work and all too soon I had pushed it all the way to the back of my mind. Guilt washed over me, and I tried to come up with an excuse, but quickly abandoned it.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Is everything still going on? Can I still come?"
"Everybody's still here," he said. "If you can get here fast, you won't have missed the whole thing."
"Great. I'll get there as fast as I can."
I hung up and ran toward my bedroom to change into something more party appropriate than what I had thrown on for work. The light burst on overhead and I heard a slight groan from the bed before the realization that Sophie was still lying there hit me. Somewhere between walking out of the bedroom and promising my father that I was going to get to his party, I had lost the understanding that I couldn't just leave her alone in my apartment. Though she was totally passed out and I doubted her consciousness was going to rise above the level of that one groan at any point for the next several hours, I didn't want this to be the time that I misjudged drunkenness and returned to an apartment that had been picked over.
I turned on the light in the closet, turned the bedroom light off, and stepped into the closet to dress, closing the door partway to prevent the light from getting into Sophie's eyes. As I buttoned my black shirt and adjusted my belt, I found myself wondering why I was going to so much effort for her. I could have just called a cab for her like I had done countless times before. I'm sure it wouldn't have taken long for me to figure out where she was staying. There weren't that many hotels in town. Yet, I had literally scooped her up and rescued her. It was a strange realization and one that I wasn't really in the mood to unpack at that moment. I needed to get across town to my father and try to make amends for my royal screwup, but before that, I needed to make sure that Sophie was going to be secure.
I grabbed my phone and dialed Crissy. She had to scream through the phone for me to be able to hear her clearly over the din of the apparently persisting crowds.
"Can you take a short break and come up to my apartment?"
"Honey, I've told you before, you are adorable and all, but you are just not my cup of tea."
"No, Crissy, that's not it. Could you just come up here? Get Ellis to watch the bar for a few minutes."
"Ellis doesn't know how to make drinks."
"He's been tending bar longer than you have."
"Just because he can tend bar doesn't mean that he knows what he's doing."
I didn't have time to argue with her over this.
"Just come up here."
The call ended abruptly, and I passed the few minutes that it took for her to get Ellis into place and lecture him on what not to do, filling a glass with water and a bowl with pretzels. I placed these on the nightstand next to Sophie and was walking back through the apartment when I heard the door open.
"Why is it so dark in here?" Crissy's voice asked from the back door. "This isn't some sort of ambush, is it?"
"If I was going to ambush you, I don't think that it would be the best plan for me to call you at the bar, tell you to come up to my apartment, and make sure that you let someone else in on the plan while you were at it," I said as we met in the middle.
"I don't know," Crissy said. "You do some strange things sometimes. I never really know what to expect." She looked around. "So, what am I doing up here?"
"There's a girl in the bedroom…"
"See? Strange things."
"No, Crissy, it's not like that. Just listen. She was the one sitting at the table for the last couple of hours that I had to get to move. She's pretty drunk and she isn't from around here, so I brought her up here to sleep it off for a while."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"Well, I kind of forgot about something I was supposed to do tonight, and I have to go take care of it."
Crissy looked at me with a disappointed expression on her face.
"Oh, Levi. You forgot the party, didn't you?"
"I'll get there before everyone leaves and it'll be fine. Just keep an eye on her. She's pretty passed out, so you could probably go back to the bar, just make sure that you come back up here every few minutes to make sure that she's still asleep."
"You want me to haul my ass through the cold up all those steps over and over every few minutes because you cave-manned a woman home with you and she's unconscious?"
"No," I said. She nodded, and I patted her on the shoulder. "You can use the inside door. Go ahead and unlock it before you leave."
"You must have lost your damn mind."
It was so nice knowing that I had the respect of those who worked for me.
"Please. Like I said, she isn't from around here. I don't know where she's staying, and I wouldn't feel right just plopping her in the lobby of the hotel even if I did. As long as she's here, I know that she's not going to get groped or anything. I'm just going to go to the party and then I'll be back. I'll make sure that you don't miss out on any tips."
The redheaded bartender scrutinized me for a few seconds and then I saw her shoulders drop as she relented.
"Fine," she said. "But you best believe it is the holiday season and those drunk guys tip really well. Like, all of them."
"I know."
"And they might even offer me a Christmas bonus."
"They might." I slipped into my coat and ran toward the door. "Thank you."
I got out of the apartment before she could say anything else and hopped behind the wheel of my car, speeding across town toward the cigar lounge where my father and his friends were waiting, trying to come up with a speech as I went.
I was relieved to see the parking lot still full when I pulled in and rushed toward the door. My father was waiting for me when I stepped in and despite the look of disappointment and anger on his face, I could see the happiness and relief in his eyes when he saw me.
"I see you finally made it," he said, but he stepped forward and hugged me.
"I'm sorry I'm late."
"At least you're here now. Come on, I want to introduce you to some of the guys."
He said it as though most of the men sitting on the furniture scattered throughout the room weren't people I had known my entire life. I nodded and followed him as he started his tour, watching as the negativity melted off of his face with each passing moment.