“Great. We open in a half hour. There’s a uniform for you in the ladies room. Marie had a little more junk in her trunk than you,” he said, surveying my backside before roaming up and forward. “Actually, she had a little more junk in the front too, but that’s what toilet paper and a push-up bra are for.”
I stifled my urge to reply with an insult of my own—something having to do with what the wonders a little lemon juice and sugar doused on a cotton-ball could do for his adult jaundice—and headed down the hall, wondering the whole way what I’d gotten myself into.
The woman’s restroom at the Rue St. Jersey was the kind of facility you didn’t want to touch a thing in unless you had a scrap of paper towel protecting your skin. It also smelt like what a bathroom should if it didn’t having working toilets, mixed with the heady scent of sex, accompanied by an undertone of cheap perfume. This was one of those instances where I wished my Immortality hadn’t given me heightened senses.
The uniform, or so it’d been called, looked more the garb of a stripper than a bartender, making me wonder just what kind of a joint I was employed at. Finding a bottle of Windex underneath the sink, I sprayed down the black leather pants—inside and out—having no other means to disinfect them from whatever could be growing within.
They stuck to my body like a plaster of paris mold, my lack of junk in the trunk comment aside. Other than the four-inch high clear mules (that I imagined lit-up when walked on) there was only one other item to complete the “uniform.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend how the swath of black stretchy material in my hands was meant to be a top. Having nothing to fit around the arms, shoulder, or neck, I suppose tube-top is what it could have been classified as, but its fabric—or lack thereof—made it more lingerie than anything else. Thankful for the white cami I had on under my military jacket, I slid the shred of fabric in place over it. Had it not been for the cami, it would have barely covered the area from the top to the bottom of my chest. Classy.
I tossed the stripper shoes in the garbage on my way out, having left on my scuffed-up black leather motorcycle boots. To heck with Rue St. Jersey and its owner; he could fire me as quickly as he’d hired me if he didn’t like it.
The music blasted into every space from its opening note, the bass vibrating my insides. Rounding the hallway off the women’s wash-slash-sex room, I found the bar—which had been empty less than a half hour ago—bursting with bodies, gyrating to the beat of the music that was a mish-mash of metal and rap.
I shook my head, not able to believe I’d travelled halfway around the world to end up in a place I could have found back home a mile away in any direction. I guess I’d hoped European guys would have enough self-control to restrain themselves from having clothed sex on the dance floor with any bleary-eyed girl willing to oblige. Here’s what I forgot; European or not, they were GUYS.
“Hey, California,” I heard a voice call across the room and, despite the ear-splitting music, I heard it with crystal precision. “Anytime your highness is ready,” he motioned to the herd of customers rammed up against the bar, waving their Euros.
I cut through the crowd, using a little more force than warranted, but made good time. I hoisted myself on the bar and slid over it, caught in the middle of thirsty customers and gallons of alcohol I couldn’t recognize by name or sight.
“It’s Bryn,” I said, eyeing him with warning as he was double fisting a couple of pints beneath the rivers of ale flowing from the kegs.
He smiled, shutting off the kegs with his forehead. “Does California Bryn have a last name?”
I didn’t think before answering. “Hayward.”
He dropped a couple of shots into the beers and tossed one back, handing the other to a customer in exchange for a wad of bills. He looked over at me, pointing with his eyes to the customers that were getting wilder in the eyes by the moment. “You’re lovely to look at, darling, but I’m not paying you to stand there and look pretty.” He grabbed a bottle from a shelf above him and tossed it to me. “I’m paying you to pour.”
He nodded to a couple of guys that looked like frat boys, but they had the largest wad of cash in their palms. “Get started.”
“What will it be?” I asked the frat boy closest to me, aware I’d probably just quoted a line from one of the old westerns my grandpa used to watch.
“A tequila, double,” he ordered, eyeing the top shelf.
I reached for the bottle he’d eyed, assuming he knew what he was ordering, and flipped over a glass that was smaller than a pint and larger than a shot glass, assuming it was a double shot glass. I hoped.
I poured the gold liquid into the glass, feeling like a pro by the time I’d finished. If this was all it took—following the orders of customers and pouring liquid into glasses—this whole job thing might work. Sure, the place defined seedy and the uniform was intended to show off every piece of female anatomy meant to be hidden, but the music was loud, the crowd louder, and the rainbow of hedonism muted my senses and made it temporarily difficult to think about a time when my life had been as perfect as it gets.
I handed the glass off to frat boy, the look in his eyes causing mine to look away.
Not knowing how much anything cost, I looked over at my bar-mate, spinning a couple of shot glasses between his fingers. “That one’s on the house,” he yelled over to me, answering my question.