by L E Franks
They stood nose to nose—frozen—reading each other and breathing in each other’s exhaust: two men reenacting High Noon with High Balls.
FatBoy played the role of the strong and silent sheriff, from the Gary Cooper school of Hollywood stereotypes. The rocker was naturally the stranger that sent the townsfolk scurrying for cover—or a better view—in hopes of violence to come.
Which made me… what?
The saloon floozy with the heart of gold?
I could live with that. I was always a sucker for action movies. But in truth if they didn’t get a move on soon, I’d be heading for the lobby looking for popcorn.
“Can I help you?” Always the professional, FatBoy moved a hair closer, invading the Viking’s territory.
“I am Lorcan. This is my band.” He spun on a booted heel and yelled to the rest of my patrons scattered throughout the bar, “We are the Leprechauns, and we are here TO ROCK YOU!”
The response was a little more muted than the Viking expected, the cheers came mainly from the bar bunnies and a few of the suits. Most of the team eyed the band warily, like they’d just been given a box with a snake in it and no one really wanted to be the first one to poke it.
I left them all to their stare-down and headed back to the office to inform Blake that his Valhallan rock gods were here.
* * * * *
“Your band is here.” I leaned against the doorframe, snorting at the visual Blake made leaning back in his chair, wingtips scuffing the polish on his mahogany desk, cell phone tucked against his shoulder, while he picked his nails.
He didn’t bother looking up. “Fantastic. Send ’em back.”
I scratched the side of my nose, in no hurry to return to the bar.
“Have you ever met these guys?” There was still no eye contact.
“Nope.”
“Seen a picture?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Listened to a demo tape?”
“Nah.”
“Read a Yelp review, eavesdropped on someone talking about Irish rock music, ever been to an Irish festival, tripped over a drunk musician, anything?”
My persistence paid off. He cracked.
“No. Is there a point to this?” Blake growled at me as he righted his chair with a thump, tossing his phone down.
“Just curious. They’re not your usual fare.” I checked my watch, and it was a quarter to eleven. I could be off in fifteen minutes if I hustled. Instead, I settled into a chair.
“Well….” He flashed the brow trick again, but there was something off. Blake was usually the epitome of suave coolness under pressure. He’d proven it earlier with his short stint behind the bar. But now… I imagined I saw tiny beads of sweat at his hairline, and he was avoiding my eyes, like he had things to hide.
I leaned forward. Peering closely. He was hiding something.
“Lose a bet?” It was a good guess.
“No.”
“Blackmail?”
“No!”
“Bastard love child, come to collect from Daddy?”
“Christ! No! Why would you say that? No!”
Blake looked horrified, like I’d grown three heads.
“Well, this isn’t your usual business modus operandi, is it? You have Thor and the four Lokis outside, looking like anything except what I was expecting from an Irish rock band, and if my ears aren’t failing already, Thor sounds like he’s on leave from his job as muscle for the Chicago mob.”
All I got was a grunt as he shoved himself backward, to stand. He paced a few feet and then sat on the edge of his desk directly in front of me. His mien turned sheepish.
No criminal enterprise then, I was more than a little disappointed.
“Look, between you and me—”
“What? You haven’t told Emerald?”
“God no. She hates Eugene.”
“Well, with a name like that…”
Blake glared me into silence.
“Eugene is a college buddy. My friend. And he has these guys on a contract—it’s got another month to go. The problem is that they’ve developed a cult following of the… wrong kind, in Chicago. Eugene is losing more money than he’s making every night they play. He swears they’re a great band, just the locals have fixated on them for some reason…”
“So you took it over because you’re a good guy?”
“You’re saying I’m not?” This time he glowered, as if I could be serious.
“Not me, no. That would be stupid… just… why here? Too far out for the party bus from Chicago?”
“Something like that.” Blake had eased a little. His shoulders were no longer threatening to box his ears, so that was something. “Do me a favor, send them back, would you?”
“Sure.” I got up, already moving toward the door when I paused. “Did Eugene happen to mention which cult is following them?”
Blake just shook his head and waved me away.
* * * * *
It took me a second to recognize that it was still my bar. Ten minutes earlier, it was packed to the rafters with hurlers, suits, and bunnies. Now all we had were a handful of the diehard tipplers and the band. I hope this wasn’t a portent of things to come with them.
Christine had taken over my end of the bar while I was in interrogating Blake; apparently she was a fan of tall, blond, and godly. She was practically offering her double-Ds along with shots of something distilled. I wondered what a Midwestern-Irish-Viking-God-Wannabe drank. Maybe Kool-Aid.
“’Bout time,” FatBoy commented as I slid next to him. His voice was a desert of warmth as he watched the band power drink.
“Yeah, Blake’s playing it close to the vest with this one.” I jerked my chin toward the group and edged closer to FatBoy, almost touching. “Can you take them back to Blake so I can finish up here? Figure we can leave in ten, maybe twenty if I hustle…”
“Whatever you want, Nicky,” he murmured, trailing a finger down my spine and stepping aside so I could duck behind the bar.
I didn’t care what half-assed insanity Blake had roped us in. I had other things on my mind.
At least for one night, I had FatBoy, a set of freshly laundered sheets, and a roommate-free loft to look forward to, and I planned to make the most of all of them.
There would be no cock-blocking little pricks popping out of the woodwork to ruin our night.
Not again
* * * * *
It was taking me longer than I’d hoped—by a factor of ten—but I was finally finishing up in the cold room when Ian poked his head in. “Hey, Davis—um the bouncer guy? He asked me to ask you if you’d give me a bottle of Johnny Black so I could take it… um… to Blake’s office. They’re um… out?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, and Ian flinched. Whatever Ian had been told, he wasn’t giving me the whole story.
“Repeat that?” FatBoy did not just send an errand boy into my cold room to avoid me.
“Um, Da… vis—” Ian blanched and inched backward toward the open door as I stalked over to the cage nearby.
“Fucking coward.”
Ian flinched.
“Not you, FatBoy! Fuck. Never mind, I’ll take it. I want to be sure he gets what he’s asking for…” I waved a troubled Ian away and crossed the bottle of Black off my inventory sheet.
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit!
I stomped my way to Blake’s office, whiskey in one hand, tower of clean shot glasses in the other, cursing under my breath. I probably owed Natalie somewhere north of a twenty spot by the time I announced my arrival by kicking his door.
Inside, there they were. Every. Single. Damn. One. Of. Them. Lounging, comfortable as cats, and all at least ten miles down the road toward drunk. At least FatBoy had enough grace to stick his ass in the corner and look ashamed when I entered, but the rest of them…
Assholes.
“Nick! You brought more booze! Yay!” Blake must have been matching the band shot for shot. His eyes were glassy, and bright red spots highlighted his ch
eekbones, an empty bottle of Jack, resting on its side, sat at the corner of his desk. He made grabby hands for the full one I carried, and I decided it was time to call Emerald if he kept this up.
“Seriously? What the fuck, Blake?” I was pissed. If he got my erstwhile invisible anonymous boyfriend too drunk to fuck me tonight, we were having words. Many, many words, unintelligible, redacted, and therefore incomprehensible, but nonetheless, words.
Lorcan grabbed the bottle out of my hand and twisted the cap off. Ignoring the glassware I offered, he upended the whiskey and started to gulp it down. Sputtering to a halt, he handed it off to a bandmate, resuming his slouch with a belch.
“’S good.”
Fuck.
“What the hell are you guys doing? Shit, it’s almost time to close!” Nick confiscated the whiskey before Blake got another turn. “Seriously, do I need to make calls here, people? I was supposed to be off over an hour ago—”
“Chill, kid.” This time the accent was soft like a lullaby. I turned as the speaker stretched upright, slapping his bandmates on the shoulders as he grew erect. He was nearly as tall as FatBoy, but slender and reedy.
“Come on, he’s not far wrong. We’ve work to do.”
“I’m bringing Johnny to help.” Lorcan laughed, jerking the bottle of Black out of my grip. I decided it wasn’t worth fighting him for it since my bouncer wasn’t in any shape to back me up. I shot FatBoy another dirty look.
They trailed by me, all the band members, followed by Blake, but before FatBoy could escape, I kicked the door shut in his face.
“What the fuck? Are you drunk?” He must have switched from lemonade to something much, much stronger the second I left the bar.
“Maybe, not much, yes… no?”
My eyebrows crawled right off my face and were hiding somewhere on the top of my head. Fuck. Apart from our little drinking game, or maybe because of it, FatBoy hadn’t had more than a beer or two in front of me in ages.
“How much did you drink?” It wasn’t possible. But I watched carefully as FatBoy leaned precariously behind Blake’s desk, digging around in the trash. He dumped two more empties on next month’s budget spreadsheet.
Well. That answered a lot. I knew the vodka had been three quarters full and the artisan bourbon was one of the bottles I’d left with Blake earlier, to taste.
I was astonished. “Why’d you drink all that?”
FatBoy leaned against the wall. The way he was pressing his lips closed, he looked like a child trying to keep the truth from flying out of his mouth.
It was worth a shot.
“Davis…” I gave him my best stern I-am-the-boss-don’t-lie-to-me voice.
He shook me off, like he was some high-priced major-league pitcher and I was just the practice catcher throwing random signs he could ignore.
As if.
“Davis?” I added a frown to my tone. And maybe a little pout.
“I’m not a pussy.”
I snorted.
God help me, I couldn’t stop the laughter that broke from me like a gush of water from a previously frozen river on the first day of the spring thaw.
“Seriously? You let a faux-Viking intimidate you? You? And you got drunk? What the hell, Davis, Are you thirty or three?”
“Twenty-nine, actually.”
That stopped me cold.
Wow. He really was feeling the alcohol. I’d been trying to get that out of him for ages.
“Fuck. What are we gonna do with you, FatBoy?” It was rhetorical. He’d escaped from the office the second I’d turned away from him.
* * * * *
I was about ready to head back to the locker room and crash out on the couch. It was already after 3 a.m., and the band still hadn’t finished their sound check.
Blake had slipped another bottle of Black out of the cold room—I found his little smiley face confession of a Post-it note, stuck to the case after I’d gone to prepare a last minute order for St. Patrick’s Day—anything to kill time while they fiddled with the sound system.
Hanging out with the band was as exciting as watching mud dry, so after another half hour of observing the six of them mix electricity and whiskey, I left them to it with a fire extinguisher and a first-aid kit sitting on the bar.
I slunk back to the office I shared with Marco to redo next month’s schedule. Christine might be the devil’s third tit, but she was a hell of a bartender, and she’d gut me if she saw I’d already given her an entire month of doubles with no days off.
By the time I’d wandered back in, Blake and three Leprechauns were arrayed like the petals of a flower on the dance floor, and the reedy brunet was playing a haunting lament on the fiddle.
Blake was either crashed or unconscious, not that I cared anymore, about anything. All I wanted was a hot shower, a hard fast fuck, and about twelve hours of sleep. I was horny and cranky and, frankly, any of the current selection could do in a pinch if they didn’t stink of old distillery.
I wandered over to listen to ‘Reedy’, joining him where he sat playing, his feet dangling off the end of the stage. Hopping up next to him, I let the melody wash over me. It was a mournful tune. Lorcan tried to croon along but gave up and started blowing an accompaniment across the mostly empty whiskey bottle, instead.
After the last few strains faded, I leaned over, watching as he settled his fiddle across his lap. The music had been beautiful and maybe more than a little heartbreaking.
I waited for him to notice me.
“Gave me goose bumps.” He gave me a funny look, but it was the truth. I offered him my hand. “I’m Nick.”
“Sean. And—” He nodded to the rest of the band apparently asleep on the floor. “—those layabouts are me brothers, Jack and Patrick.” They’d been doing most of the work while Lorcan and Blake drank, but it was late and they looked awfully comfortable curled up together.
The silence tugged at me to be a good host in my own bar. Sean hadn’t acted like a douche bucket, so there was no need to assume he was one.
“The song you just played? What’s it called?”
Sean gave me a small smile. “The Wild Geese—it’s a traditional Irish folk tune… a lament for the exiled Jacobite army from the seventeenth century.”
“That goes back a ways…”
“You have no idea.” He began to pluck out another tune, and I wandered away to check on my ‘date’.
FatBoy sat in the corner, so loose I thought for a second someone had duct-taped him to a chair to keep him upright. That was a thought for later. I might need it when I got him home. I still had plans for him. They might require an ice cold shower, but I wasn’t willing to let this latest date implode under the weight of another fucked-up night at Frisson.
“Babe.” I think he was trying to purr, but it came out more like a moo. Thank god everyone else was three sheets; he’d hate anyone to see him like this.
“Are we done here?” I waved my arm around at the desolation. “Can we lock up and get the hell out?”
“Sure, Blake said he’d get them sq-sq-squar’d away.” FatBoy smiled at me, and I hated myself. I felt like a pervert for wanting to throw him down on the floor and have a go right then and there.
“Blake couldn’t square a damn thing if he had all the right angles in the world. That man is done. Stick a fork in him and call his wife.” I was tired and letting my bitch-flag fly free.
“Nooooo!” FatBoy moaned. “We promised. No Emmy. Swear.”
“Fine. Then what do you suggest?”
“Sharon.” FatBoy slipped a little, inching closer to the ground. I patted his chest. “Hang on, big guy.” With one hand on FatBoy, I used the other to send a quick text to Sharon, hoping she wasn’t muting me. She wasn’t, but I learned at least three new words that would get her banned from Natalie’s section.
“We just have to send him in a cab.”
“’Kay… you do that.” FatBoy’s shoulders were now level with the back of his chair.
I tried
to be stern, but it was impossible.
“You know, you’re not very sexy like that…”
“But you sure are, Nicky—come sit on my lap…”
“For fucks sake, Newman. Get your shit together.” This I said loud enough to rouse Lorcan, who struggled to sit up, whiskey bottle cuddled in one arm. The fiddler stopped and was putting his instrument in his case. He looked sober except for his eyes.
“Can you help me with this lot?” I gestured to the rest of the band.
“Yeah, we’re staying just down the road. We can walk…” I didn’t waste my breath laughing in his face, I was too busy levering Blake upright. He had just enough locomotion to get himself to the old-lady bench out front.
He blinked one red and blue orb, while the other remained glued shut, and smiled.
At least they were all happy drunks.
“You’re a good man, Nicholas.” I doubted he’d still think so in the morning. I’d be curious how he still felt about belonging to two women after pissing them both off for staying out all night drinking.
I waited until his taxi came and then pulled my truck around front. I figured I could lay the band out like cordwood in the back, dropping them off at their hotel on my way home.
“Come on, everyone out. Show’s over.” I grabbed the whiskey bottle out of Lorcan’s hand, tossing it in the sink to drain. The last thing I needed was to poison my customers with rocker cooties.
It took three trips, but finally we were out. My dashboard read four twenty-four a.m. Long past witching hour.
“Can we get pancakes, Nicky?”
“I don’t think that would be a great idea. Don’t you want to come home with me?”
“Mmmmm….you said ‘cum’.” FatBoy snuggled up to the strap of his seat belt.
“Is that a yes?”
Instead of answering, FatBoy made a funny noise as I pulled into the hotel parking lot. Swiveling in my seat, I turned to look at him. He was a little green.
A lot green, actually.
“Davis—are you okay?”
There are moments of karmic justice, and I suppose this one was mine.
I’d been owing FatBoy ever since I’d pranked him with an out-of-date bottle of Ipecac in February. Back then, I wasn’t on the receiving end of his suffering, those honors belonged to the carpet at Frisson, but now, it was my turn.