I stood in the mirror putting in my earrings, little silver ones from a teal box. Violet unapproved but my favorite. It was getting warm out, so I went to my closet and chose a white silk tank top with a sapphire blue pleated skirt. It had a little twirl in it, which I liked, and stopped just above the knee. I blew out my hair until it shone and combed my hand through the crown, letting it fall voluminously. I didn’t do much makeup, the high points being mascara and soft gloss. I rubbed my lips together and leaned away from the bathroom mirror, releasing them in a full pout. My nose was straight and small, not tiny, but right on my face. My cheeks were neither full round nor runway sculpted. A heart shaped face, which was the fault of a chin too distinct to be oval and a feminine definition in the bone of my cheek. A ran my finger along my dark eyebrow, following the curve my brow threadist shaped for me. I didn’t apply blush. I was flushed already, like I’d had one potent drink. I rubbed scented lotion into my hands, the stain gone after a soak, and rubbed some lotion onto my exposed collarbone with the tips of my fingers. My hand stopped when I heard a knock at the door. I bent down and slipped on neutral heels that were comfortable enough and still brought out my calves. A little taller now, I looked into my eyes in the mirror.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Des held the door of the limo open, and I stepped out. We’d driven about twenty minutes in evening traffic. Daniel exited first, taking my hand gently, guiding me out, and our eyes connected. He let go once I was on the sidewalk. The first physical contact he’d made.
“You never struck me as a bar guy,” I said, smiling shyly. Our destination was an inconspicuous tavern establishment tucked in a row of ubiquitous random establishments. Bagels, pizza, and jewelry stores. It had a glossy kelly green sign above in Gaelic style print that read “Naneet’s.”
His lip curled upward as he pulled open the bar’s door. “This one is an exception.”
We entered the bar, a newer place replicating an old-school Irish pub. Forest green walls and oak paneling and floors, with a sleeker marble bar top that didn’t quite fit. There were banners I recognized as soccer clubs logos on many walls, as well as framed sports photos. Intimate and quiet. We sat on oak swivel stools, and the two bartenders greeted Daniel, both sporting turbans and full beards. The older short man’s beard was white, and the younger man’s beard was espresso.
“Daniel, my friend,” the older man said, enthusiastically. The other man laid back. “Welcome back.”
“You changed it back,” Daniel said, a touch rueful. “Last time I was here it had become a designer lounge.”
“Ahmed, the genius, convinced his old parents to get with the times. They’ll come running, he told us. We were busy, oh yes, but it had no spirit. But now, just look around! We kept some of his choices. New floors. New bar,” he knocked on the cinnamon granite that ran along a bar that consumed most of a wall. “My heart is returned to the hills of Kerry. Besides, who can keep up with these cosmopolitan drinks? Naneet and I are not bartenders,” he said, in a thick un-Irish accent leaning against his bar. He grinned, then looked at the other man and elbowed him. He stood a half-head taller. Nothing in his features was harsh, per se, yet there was something intimidating about him. His fitted burgundy shirt was pushed up at the sleeves. He uncrossed his arms, looking at me.
“Ahmed, where are your manners?” the older man prompted. “Your friend is here, and he’s brought a date.”
“Ahmed. Nice to meet you, Gabrielle,” he said in tenor, revealing almost only a slight accent. “This is my father, Rushni. Everyone calls him Mr. Singh and dance. If you come another time, you’ll see why.”
Daniel looked humored. Mr. Singh threw his arms in the air. “I am going on a date, too. My son has set me up on a date with my own wife and banished me from my bar. The computer genius. You’ll see if he can pull a pint as me and Naneet. You let me know, good Daniel. And you, also, Gabrielle.” I smiled tightly, uncomfortable that he recognized me from no doubt from our situation. Except Mr. Singh looked nothing but open and genuine towards me and I relaxed. He shook hands with Daniel across the bar and left, leaving his son behind. Ahmed seemed to relax some, too.
“Is he in the black here?” Daniel queried.
“He runs red more months than not. He should retire or leave it to my sister. They love this place, though,” Ahmed said, not sounding concerned about the money. “Can I get you two something to drink?” he asked. Clearly not a bartender. I glanced around the dimly lit bar and saw two other sets of patrons. They seemed like regulars—in both sets the men wore turbans as well. He pushed up his sleeves more over stocky arms. Built similar to Ian, smaller though.
“We are fine, Ahmed. Water will do.” Daniel replied. Ahmed looked relieved. He nodded and went down the bar seeking glasses. He quickly returned setting down two glasses.
“I’m closing. My sister opens up tomorrow. Take your time,” he said, coded. Daniel’s lip curved up.
“Oh, I will.” Daniel extended his water glass, and Ahmed’s eyes smiled. He lifted up a petite ruby tinted glass from behind the counter it looked like he’d been drinking from. “Sláinte.”
Daniel replied in kind.
Ahmed turned to me, deep brown eyes set in cider skin engaging me. “I heard your son plays soccer. Daniel and Hunter say he possesses good footwork. We should get the children together to play. My daughter is four and her brother is three.”
I grinned. “He would enjoy that.”
“We will arrange it. Although I have reservations introducing my daughter to Daniel’s son, he’s assured me he is much more like you.” Ahmed smiled slightly. It looked like perhaps beneath the beard were dimples. I returned it. Daniel looked humored again. Ahmed nodded to us both and turned back, taking his ruby glass in hand to the far end of the bar. He picked up a book laid down open on its pages, and flipped it over to read, crossing his legs at the ankles and leaning against the back side of the bar.
Daniel said, peering at me. “I debated bringing you, but, I could not alter my plans. If we are to move forward, I should not conceal.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, adding amiably, “Mr. Singh seems nice.”
He looked at me curiously. “Not Ahmed, though.”
“Him, too. In a different way,” I said gingerly.
“He is a good friend. Perhaps too cautious,” he said, reading me. “He has not gotten to know you.”
I glanced down at him again just in time to see his eyes dart from me and realized that was what it was. He was being protective of Daniel. I looked back to him. “You and your friends are so different,” I said. “You, Hunter, Ahmed.”
“They are capable men who know real field play. And women,” he answered. “Neither to the overly romanticized extent as did others. They aren’t any less driven in their interests, though.” He was being very honest. I could see those things creating a foundation of commonality between them.
His eyes seemed distant. He added, “They were times of excess. We were young men.”
“You’re still a young man.”
“True. Ahmed tells me his mother said I have been given many human lives inside just one.”
“You don’t believe in that.”
He made a shrugging gesture with one shoulder. “Hunter believes I’m only detritus and, if anything, cursed.”
“Somehow I don’t doubt that,” I said, warily humored.
He continued, “From your question about our bonds, Hunter and I share a certain similarity in our backgrounds. That has helped.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Hunter’s family. The McBride Brothers. I’m sure you’ve heard the name. They supply over a quarter of the petrol worldwide, last time I checked the stock. Which was around two thirty.” He took a glance at the clock above the bar, unconsciously.
“Hunter is a McBride. Cheese on toast.” My head shook. His lips curled, wryly.
“He’s also very cheap. He likely has a deep and sincere ideology about it, b
ut I believe if he had a past life, it would have been as a Depression era Hooverville grandmother.”
I laughed. His lip curved.
“Why does he make me feel like I’m in a Hitchcock movie?”
“If he’d made a spaghetti western?” Daniel remarked, amused again. “He’s a nihilist.”
“Is he a nihilist?” I questioned, looking towards Ahmed. I caught him peering again. He looked down at his book. There was something about him that reminded me of Hunt. I could only describe it as their energy.
“Ahmed is a Sikh. But yes. He is as well.” I shook my head, loosening the contradiction. I had a distributor who was Sikh, so I knew a little. Daniel was nonplussed.
“In this world, anyone can be as they choose,” he explained.
“It’s not hypocritical?”
“Who made those rules? Who owns them? Only the one who practices defines them. Ahmed practices, therefore is.”
Partly kidding, part wary, I said, “You sound like you may be in their club.”
He made a slight noise, indicating his objection. Speaking slowly he said, “Religion. By definition, I had one. I only wish she’d arrived with a book.”
His lip curved but it hadn’t been a joke. I felt my cheeks grow warm, and he turned serious.
“You have hidden your heart from me,” he began. “I have punished us both in many ways trying to recover it, what I feel belongs to me. That was made only for me. And mine only for you. I have put a small piece of myself away and adjusted to an incarnation without it. What is left of me has fallen for you, as you are. In spite of you having no piece of you except but your body for me. A new form of punishment?” He was making light, but his eyes sought me.
“That’s not the case,” I said softly, spinning my stool. Until my legs were between his knees. “You are the most important person in the world to me.”
“Besides our son,” he said, covering my knee with his warm hand.
“Yes,” I said, my lips curving. Daniel’s eyes looked brighter in the dark green bar. “That’s the first time you called him our son.”
“For what it is worth,” he said and looked down at his hand on my knee. He raised his eyes back to mine. “I would choose to have him with you in a thousand lifetimes.”
His thumb was gentle as it brushed my skin. I blushed, glancing down. “You’ve come so far since the beginning, since the limo,” I told him.
His lip curved upwards. “I can make a limousine appear now if you’d like. We can be quick. Or slow.”
“Not right now,” I said simply, and his lips straightened as he gazed at me. “I’m enjoying sitting here, if that’s okay.”
“The evening is yours,” he said, gazing still. He moved his hand to rest on his own knee.
“Thank you for helping August. And Jill.”
“No thanks required.”
“They deserved it,” I affirmed. “You didn’t have to do it though.”
His lip tugged upwards. “It was self-serving. Retaking this life, in case it is my final.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, and though we’d touched a hundred ways, when I laid my hand on his, and he flipped it over and laced his fingers in, it gave me tingles. I glanced down at our hands, and up to him under my eyelashes, and continued, “Not totally, anyway. For what it’s worth, what you said earlier…I think I would choose you the same.”
He pulled me towards him, not roughly. It was welcome. A moment passed, with him staring at my lips as I wet them. He took my face in his hands and pulled me closer, and our lips crashed onto each like waves. I angled my head and he pulled me off my stool and onto his lap. His tongue moved in harmony with mine, and my hand snaked around his neck pulling him to me until we were seamless. We heard a wolf whistle in the background. It seemed like miles away. Daniel’s arm wrapped around my waist lifted me onto the bar, his body moved fluidly as he rose and pressed his hips between my legs. I wrapped them around him, and finally he broke the kiss. Breathing was staggered on both our parts. He pressed a few more kisses onto my lips to a smattering of hand clapping. When I pulled his face down to me, for a lingering kiss, him leaning me backwards, a loud bell rang out in heated repetition. My fingers were fanned out on the plane of his cheek, his forehead resting on mine. I smiled from the adrenaline and euphoria.
Daniel opened his eyes and moved back an inch, taking me in. He smiled all the way to his eyes.
“What’s that ringing? Are you running a boxing ring?” Daniel said aloud.
“It escalated as swiftly as one,” Ahmed projected in response, humored, from the end of bar. “If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d say it looked like you weren’t going to make it to round two.”
“You’d lose your money,” Daniel said, low toned looking back at me. I grinned.
“How can you be confused why I want to see you naked all the time?” I asked, innocently.
“In order to get you off this bar, some things need to go back to sleep. That won’t happen while you’re talking this way.” He arched an eyebrow, his lip turned up in the corner.
“I just mean that I find you handsome.”
“You say that sounding like a schoolmarm, and yet the problem has grown.”
“Did many teachers call you handsome?” I asked, teasing.
“Some,” he said simply. “My first encounter was with a teacher was year ten,” he said then moved back before lifting me and setting me down. We both resumed our seats to a final cat-call from Ahmed, but I angled my knees inside and touched the muscles in his thigh.
“You’re being serious.”
“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “It was a boys boarding school. I wasn’t going to turn it down.”
“You know that’s not right, right?” I asked, proceeding with caution.
He smiled and stroked my hair. “You are gentle, still. It was not appropriate, but I remind you it was an all-boys boarding school. I was only new at that stage because there no girls around for me get my hands on. Besides, we discovered the all-girls school nearby not long after. But this is all old history.”
I decided I had to pick my battles, so I let this one go.
“Maybe men and women aren’t so different,” I said.
He took me in. “After all I have disclosed tonight, this is the first to shock you,” he mused, but something caught his attention behind me. “I hope that sentiment holds,” he said, suddenly serious, nodding sharply to Ahmed. He looked down at me. He weighed something a final time, and said, “Our errand has come. Follow me.”
I followed him around the bar, through a low hallway into a back room. I froze when I saw what was in the room. Sweat instantly sprang to my forehead.
“Don’t kill him,” I said. “Jeremy,” I breathed.
Chapter 33 - Levies and Tolls
Daniel looked at me, strangely. Then lead me further into the back room. Jeremy was bound to a chipping wooden chair in the middle. Hunt came into view, standing behind Jeremy, holding him by the hair. I could tell immediately it was him even with the shiny chromed tape on his eyes. Shelving lined with liquor bottles ran along the long wall, and beneath the shelves was a metal tub sink. An exit door with an elbow spring at the top interrupted the row. It was mostly a typical older bar back room. Except for the hostage. Jeremy’s shoulders jerked, trying to release his arms, which appeared tied behind his back. He scooted the chair inadvertently into Hunt.
Hunt sighed, annoyed, and grabbed a handful of hair saying flatly, “Quit gripin’, sunshine.”
“This is him, correct?” Daniel said in business mode. He strode to them.
“Who’s a rookie here?” Hunt lowered his eyes.
“I am speaking to her,” Daniel corrected him, lowering his as well. Hunt shrugged. I wasn’t sure what to say. Daniel looked positively dangerous. The minute we came into the room his energy changed. My heart was racing and felt near a panic. Yet I nodded and stepped in further, just a baby step.
“Don’t take my kidney. I’m a
n alcoholic. It’s a disease. Take pity,” Jeremy appealed passionately.
Daniel raised an eyebrow at Hunt. “Had a little fun with him on the way over. When he realized it wasn’t a drug deal.”
“And he gave you no trouble?” Daniel said deep toned, but his mouth quirked up.
“Who? Sunshine? I think not,” Hunt enunciated. “Sunshine here couldn’t knock the skin off a puddin’.”
Daniel smirked again as his long fingers gripped the edge of the duct tape. He ripped it in three jerks. Pausing placidly between each one as Jeremy cried out. Upon recognizing us, Jeremy’s eyes bulged from red skin on his otherwise drawn face.
“You thought you were here because you are valuable?” Daniel said chillingly.
Jeremy was surprised to spot me—but looked near self-urination seeing Daniel. His eyes were shifting from each of our faces wildly. I searched his face for something redeeming but found only panic. Milliseconds passed, and Jeremy settled on me, a shadow beyond the light of a solo hanging bulb.
He rolled his lips in and out to wet them, and angled his face to look more sincere. “Bree, I meant to call you. I don’t know happened to me that night. I blacked out. Did that happen to you, too?” My stomach flipped, seeing his face.
“You’re a horrible actor,” I told him dispassionately. His audition smile faded. His blond eyebrows that lifted innocently in the center came down. From where he stood, I could feel Daniel’s pride and excitement. He picked up a small box resting in a pile of others on the freestanding shelf behind him.
“Show me his throat,” Daniel instructed. Hunt gripped Jeremy’s hair, yanking his head back, doing so cheerfully. Daniel struck a small cluster of matches from the box and reached down to Jeremy. He held the flared fire under his chin and watched Jeremy’s face peacefully as the small torch began to burn skin. Jeremy shrieked.
Daniel reached for a bottle on the shelf behind. “It burns, doesn’t it?” he said, monotone and soft. Daniel unscrewed the cap and wrapped his hand around Jeremy’s neck, his palm constricting it. He untwisted the bottle with his thumb and doused Jeremy in putrid clear liquor.
In the Land of Milk and Honey Page 43