by Mia Gold
What she saw of the men convinced her never to sleep with a sex addict.
The group collected at Alcoholics Anonymous wasn’t much better. A dozen men and women, mostly Bahamian but a couple of foreigners, sat in a circle of folding metal chairs. Most sat slumped, or with arms folded in a desperate self-hug. And they did not look pretty. One man was grossly fat, while others looked haggard. Nearly all of them were smoking or drinking coffee as if their lives depended on it.
They looked up as she entered. She hesitated at the doorway, hand still on the knob, uncertain.
“Welcome,” a Bahamian man of about thirty-five said. “We’ve already begun. But you’re more than welcome. There’s a seat just over there. Feel free to help yourself to coffee from the machine. We will … oh!”
The look of recognition in the man’s eyes sparked one in Ruby’s own.
He used to be a regular at the Pirate’s Cove.
At first Ruby hadn’t recognized him. He’d been just another drinker—a hunched, tired-looking guy who said little to the others and would sit alone in the crowd, systematically demolishing drink after drink.
He had totally changed. He looked younger, sat erect, and had obviously been working out.
Ruby flushed, suddenly embarrassed as she struggled to remember his name. Before she could speak, he cut her off.
“Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous,” he said, faintly stressing the last word. “It works if you work it. You don’t have to share if you don’t want to, but it would be great if you did. Take a seat and let’s get started.”
“I, um, I’m actually not here for the meeting.”
One of the women gave a sad laugh and said, “None of us ever are, the first time. Sit down, honey. It will do you good.”
“It’s just that—”
“Please,” her former customer said.
Charles, she remembered. Charles something. I probably never knew his last name.
She remembered he always cheered the loudest when she threw out someone rowdy. Charles had been the one who suggested Desaray change her YouTube channel, which up to then had only been showing beach views and local festivals to a tiny audience, to a fight channel featuring Ruby.
Ruby moved over to the empty chair. “Look, I just had one question.”
“Jasmine was sharing when you came in,” Charles said. “We started an hour ago. It’s all right. It’s never too late to get on the road to sobriety. Now please sit so Jasmine can continue.”
“Sorry,” Ruby mumbled, feeling like a schoolkid who was late to class because she’d been smoking behind the bleachers. Ruby had never smoked, not even socially, but she had fooled around with the school’s star athletes behind the bleachers. She’d been late to class because of it plenty of times.
The older white woman she sat next to gave her a warm smile. The younger native man sitting to her other side sat slouched, sullen.
A middle-aged Bahamian woman across the circle cleared her throat. “I just wanted to welcome our newest member. I’m Jasmine and I’m an alcoholic. Before you came in, I was relating how I used to work at one of the resorts cleaning up the rooms. I was already a heavy drinker, and working in a resort that had three bars gave me constant temptation. I was usually all right for the beginning of my shift, but as the hours went by and I got bored and tired, I really wanted a drink to ease the tension. I have a bad back too, and a little nip helped with the pain. I found that every time I had to pass one of the bars on my rounds, my mouth would water.”
Ruby shifted in her seat. Her mouth watered near the end of her shift too.
“I tried to hide bottles in the break room or the employee bathroom. One bottle I hid in the women’s room got found.”
Then you should have hidden it better, Ruby thought. What an amateur.
Amateur at what?
Instead of answering her own awkward question, she focused on what this woman was saying.
“Luckily they couldn’t pin it on me. Instead they gave us all a stern warning and started checking the break room and bathrooms regularly. There was no way to hide a bottle anymore. That made it worse, because I had already been getting away with it for a few days and had come to rely on those few little nips near the end of my shift to make it through.”
What’s the big deal? You’re not hurting anyone.
“I realized I could steal the little bottles from the minibars in the rooms and the guests would get charged for them.”
Oh.
“That was my first real step to addiction. I’d been drinking hard before, drinking most nights to take the edge off a long day cleaning up after tourists. That grew. I started drinking on the weekends too, when I didn’t have any stress to relieve. Then, eventually, I saw all those nice little bottles that looked so easy to steal, and I began to sneak a drink during the day.
“Well, you can imagine what happened. Eventually I got caught and I was fired. And that led to a downward spiral.”
Ruby listened with increasing discomfort as she described that downward spiral—the hangovers, the struggles to find work, waking up to find random men in her bed, an abortion because in her inebriation she had forgotten to use protection … the story went on and on.
When the woman finally stopped, Ruby felt like someone had just pulled a pillow away from her face and she could breathe again after nearly suffocating.
I’d never get like that, Ruby told herself. That woman has a real problem. I just like to drink.
“Thank you for sharing, Jasmine,” Charles said. He looked around. “Would anyone else like to share?”
Uncertainly, Ruby put up her hand. “Um, can I go next?”
Charles smiled at her. Ruby was taken aback. He had never smiled while drinking at the Pirate’s Cove. He had never done much of anything.
Ruby pulled out her phone. “I’m looking for someone named Richard Wainwright. He might have come to your meeting.”
There was an uncomfortable shuffling among the members of the circle. Charles frowned. “We are a private group. We don’t talk about other members.”
“Yeah, I understand that, but I’m investigating his murder.”
That got everyone looking at the photo. Ruby’s phone got handed around the circle.
“Wait a minute,” one of the men said, pulling out his own phone and tapping away at it for a moment. “There’s nothing in the news about this guy getting killed, or any tourist getting killed since that German last spring.”
Everyone frowned at Ruby. One of the women tossed Ruby’s phone contemptuously back to her.
“He your boyfriend or something?” she snapped. “Coming to spy on him? You should be grateful he’s trying to improve himself.”
“So was he here?” Ruby asked.
“Get out,” several of the people in the circle said.
“But …”
“OUT!”
Ruby sighed, stood, and left, realizing she’d been an idiot. Why had she thought she could just walk into an AA meeting and get everyone to tell what they knew? It wasn’t like going around to bars or clubs and asking about someone. These people had things to hide.
That was a rookie move, Ruby.
And that was the problem—she really was a rookie. She’d never investigated a murder before. Hell, she never even watched CSI or any other cop shows. She’d been too busy watching boxing or martial arts championships. Why watch fake drama when there was so much real drama on television?
Well, she had plenty of real drama now. Way too much of it.
As she got to the front door of the community center, she heard someone call her name.
Charles hurried down the stairs to catch her. Ruby turned, feeling guilty. She had come into his private space and messed around with it. She prepared herself for the bawling out she now realized she deserved.
“I’ve never seen him,” he said. “He never came to a meeting.”
Ruby felt her heart lift. She hadn’t expected understanding. “Thank you. And thank you
for believing me.”
“You may be an alcoholic, but you’re no liar,” he said.
Ruby frowned. “Look, I may knock back a few more than I should, but I’m not like that basket case in there.”
Charles stepped closer. “Maybe not. Not yet. But I bet your drinking affects your work. I bet it cuts into your social life. You probably hide your drinking too.”
Ruby thought of the bottle she had hidden in the ladies’ room and cringed.
“Whatever,” she said, turning to go. “Thanks for your help.”
“Hey, wait.” Charles put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not judging you. After all I did, I’m not qualified to judge anyone. I’m trying to help you.”
She shrugged off his hand. “I don’t need any help.”
“You might not think so. Yet. But you do.”
“I need plenty of help solving this murder.”
Charles shook his head. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. Get out of that trashy bar, Ruby. You’re better than that. I don’t know what you’re hiding from, but I do know that a bottle is a terrible hiding place. Your troubles will trap you in there. You don’t fit in at the Pirate’s Cove.”
“There’s some good people there,” Ruby snapped. Who was this guy to judge all her friends?
“Yes, there are. Good, lost, unhappy people. I don’t want you to be one of them. I … I always liked you, Ruby.”
So there it was. She had been expecting that. “Yeah, I know. When you weren’t looking into your glass you were fixing me with those puppy dog eyes.”
The hurt look on Charles’s face immediately made Ruby feel sorry. She managed a weak smile.
“You’ve cleaned up nicely, though,” she said by way of apology. “At the meeting you were actually sitting straight. I never saw you do that before.”
“Alcohol is corrosive to the spine.”
“Been working out too. Your pot belly is gone.”
“That disappeared after I stopped drinking. Plenty of calories in booze. I didn’t even have to go to the gym to get rid of it, just stop drinking, and all the junk food I’d eat when I was drinking. I do go to the gym now, though. Every day. I work out at night to keep myself from being tempted to drink.”
He sounded content, or at least in control. Ruby found herself feeling happy for him. “Well, good luck to you, and thanks for telling me about Richard.”
Charles glanced back the way he came. “I better get back in there. Could I … give you my number? Maybe we could have a coffee or something. Or go to the gym.”
There were those puppy dog eyes again, but clear this time. Not misted with booze. Ruby looked him over. He sure had cleaned up. Was looking pretty nice, as a matter of fact. But that vulnerability, that desperation, made him look like some gawky teenager asking his first crush on a date.
That same vulnerability and desperation made it impossible for her to say no. She took his number, but did not give hers in return. Apparently he didn’t have the courage ask for it.
“Gotta go. Call me!”
And then he was gone.
She wondered if she would call him. Now that he had cleaned himself up, he’d be a good candidate for a one-night or even three-night stand. Unfortunately, he probably would want more than that and she didn’t have the energy.
And yet, in the taxi back to the Pirate’s Cove to finish her shift, she looked at his number more than once, wondering …
***
“She’s reformed!” Reece bawled as Ruby walked through the door. Everyone cheered, clapped, and whistled. Zoomer leapt up and down on the bar screeching, knocking over a bowl of nuts that shotgunned into Kristiano.
Ruby responded by giving everyone the finger, grabbing Desaray’s drink, and taking a slug from it to prove them wrong. That got an even bigger cheer.
That done, she got behind the bar and got to work.
“Good thing Neville didn’t see you do that,” Kristiano said.
“I have bigger things to worry about, and so does he,” she replied, picking a salted almond off his shoulder.
The Ufologist leaned over the counter. “What made you go to an AA meeting? Did you get zapped by a hypnotic ray?”
“I’m investigating that poor guy’s murder.”
The Ufologist got a shocked look on his thin face.
“Oh,” was all he said before settling into his drink again.
“Why are you doing that?” the Professor asked, taking a sip from his mint julep.
“His widow hired me.”
The Professor’s face darkened. He looked into his glass.
“‘Widow,’ from the Latin word viduus, meaning ‘bereft’ or ‘hollow.’ ‘Widower’ is the male form, masculine but equally hollow.”
“Would you like another, Professor?” Ruby asked.
“Yes indeed I would, young lady.”
Ruby prepared him another.
“Is that wise, getting mixed up in all that?” Kristiano asked.
“No, but it’s not like I have a choice.”
“Need any backup?”
Ruby gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re sweet, and no.”
The last thing she wanted to do was put one of her friends in harm’s way.
“You need someone watching over your shoulder.”
That earned him another peck on the cheek. Ever since she’d started working here, Kristiano had acted like some protective big brother. He had never asked her how she ended up in the Bahamas, never asked why she didn’t go home, never asked why her life before working at the Pirate’s Cove was a blank. He simply accepted that and helped with what he could help with—getting her a place to live, finding her a gym, helping with her residency card.
Most of all, he had always been there for her when he could.
When he could.
Kristiano couldn’t help with the past, and she didn’t want him mixed up in her present situation. There wasn’t a violent bone in his body. He couldn’t handle what she would need to handle.
“You sure I can’t do anything?” he asked, his face marked with concern. Here was one of the few people in the world who actually gave a damn about her.
Ruby smiled. “You already are.”
The rest of her shift went as usual, with the same drunken faces and the same drunken conversations. Reece puked on the floor again. Desaray took a photo of it. “I’m making a montage,” she explained. “Might get me some hits. I could even put it on a T-shirt.” The Ufologist gave a lecture about ancient astronauts building the Great Wall of China as a runway for their rocket ships. Some guy whose name Ruby didn’t know pretended to be a mountaineer and climbed the giant pile of aluminum doubloons in the center of the room. He fell off, of course. They always fell off.
Ruby eased into the scene, momentarily forgetting her troubles. Who was Charles to judge these people and say she should leave them? Yeah, they were crazy and they drank too much, but they cared about each other. Cared about her too.
In the early hours of the morning, the party wound down to a close. The last of the drinkers shuffled home, or at least somewhere else. Neville came out of his office, clutching a fistful of bills.
“I’m going home. Can you guys close up? I got a meeting with some city bureaucrats first thing in the morning,” he said.
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Kristiano said.
Even that old game didn’t cheer Neville up. He walked out the front door, muttering to himself.
“Is it that bad?” Ruby asked. She had been so embroiled in her own drama she hadn’t paid much attention to the bar’s troubles.
“If the city keeps this up, we might have to close,” Kristiano said.
Ruby surveyed the empty bar, with its nightly wreckage of stains and discarded napkins and empty glasses and bottles. All the lights had been turned up bright, exposing every chip of paint, every scar on the wood. The giant treasure chest and heap of oversized doubloons looked monstrous, like some cancerous growth coming out of the floor. Every
thing looked cheap, old, past its prime. Everything looked ready for the scrapheap.
An hour before, the bar’s lights had been dimmer, and in the pleasant haze of a few sly drinks in the ladies’ room those doubloons had gleamed like real gold. The stains had been invisible and the scars on every wood surface had made them look like valuable antiques. The bar had been alive with laughter and conversation. Filled with smiling, familiar faces. Everyone liked her here, and everyone made her feel welcome.
If the authorities shut them down, if she didn’t find the murderer, all those faces would scatter to new places. She’d lose her welcome, as would everyone else. The little community they’d built here would disappear, fading away like a half-remembered story from last night’s boozer.
Ruby closed her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t let that happen.
“Let’s get this done,” she said, making sure her voice did not betray her feelings.
Kristiano and Ruby flipped a coin. Ruby lost and had to clean the toilets.
“At least I don’t have to look in that dumpster again,” she joked.
Kristiano gave her a supportive smile. “You don’t have to ever again. Just ask.”
“Such a sweetie. Will you clean the bathrooms for me too?”
“Nope.”
“Bastard.” She gave him a playful punch on his meaty shoulder and headed for the bilges. Once there, she took a couple of slugs from the bottle she had hidden in the ladies’ room and felt better. Whistling some pirate song Neville had gotten stuck in her head, she finished up the cleaning in record time.
As she came out of the bathrooms, she heard something rush through the air and felt a weight hit her shoulders.
A furry pair of arms wrapped around her neck.
“Hey, Zoomer!” she said and laughed.
The capuchin monkey had dropped from the rigging in the ceiling. Settling himself comfortably on Ruby’s shoulders, he stayed with her as she put away the buckets, straightened the bar area, and bought a bottle of Bahamian Gold with her half of the tips. Zoomer let out a happy scream and clapped his hands.