• Part Two-Sweet Nothings



    I opened the cash register and gave the old man, who looked a bit like the love-child of Mister Rodgers and Einstein, his change, and closed the drawer. I took more orders, handing the drinks to the odd-looking people that seem to be the main bread and butter of Skinny’s. Past a certain time all bars get the flocks of strange and unusual customers, but I had a feeling that we had all the authentic weirdoes. There was Spot, the man who claimed to have survived leprosy, and Pit, the woman who had been shot in the head by her husband and lost an eye, leaving only a puckered scar. She purported that the bullet was still in there and that it made her “extra senses tingle”. There were more, many of them regulars, many of them nice as you could ever want.

    Of course, there were the rowdy ones as well. Weed usually hit on the women and sometimes the men. If they showed no sign of interest (and almost none did. He had killed a prostitute once for no reason, and he used this as a sort of twisted pick-up line.), he would lean over them and try to caress them. I asked him almost every night to leave the other customers alone, and sometimes he did. But other times he didn’t. Sometimes he would flick his wrist and a gleam of metal would show, and I would call the cops to tell them that he had yet another violation of his probation, what with the switchblade and the death threats and all.

    What I’m trying to say is that we didn’t get many customers like Tang. Normal people don’t seem to come in during my shift. Then my brain started working and I wondered if she really was normal. She had called me when I hadn’t given her my number. I tried to tell myself that she looked me up in the phone book, but I hadn’t told her my last name. Had I? The night before was misty in my mind. Not foggy, just misty. It was like trying to see a person in detail when they have a veil over their face.

    Then she walked in and everything else fell away. She was dressed, barely, in a leather (and I knew without knowing that it wasn’t fake) shirt that showed more than it hid. It was really just a bra with fishnet sleeves. Her entire midriff was exposed. You could see bare skin all the way down until you could see the place where the leg joins the hip. That slight indentation of the skin hugging the bone. They weren’t hot pants, exactly. They were really more like panties make of some sort of skin-hugging material. “Kid skin?” my mind suggested in confusion. They were black and she was wearing a chain belt that fell too low on her hips to hold much up. There was a bit of bare leg, and then the cream-colored skin became covered again. Boots. Big boots. They had heels at least six inches long, and made of metal. They came up to her thighs. She was also wearing jewelry. There was a silver snake winding up one arm, with the its tail wrapped around her middle finger. It wrapped once around her neck and its mouth came to rest on the side of her throat. And I could swear that it has little fangs sank into her. You could also see more tats, but I was too distracted to notice what they were until later.

    She slinked up to the bar and I wondered how the hell she could walk in those boots. She ordered a margarita, and I handed it to her, yet again shocked when I looked down to see that I had made a drink. My mind was numb and humming pleasantly. She smiled and that time I almost caught it, but she let it disappear before I could figure it out. Then she was walking away and I was wondering what had just happened.

    The clock was laughing at me again, and I wanted to hit it in the face. I looked across the room at her and felt that numbness take over again when she returned my gaze. I spilled the daiquiri I had been mixing. I looked down to see that my hands were shaking. I wasn’t sure if it was from giddiness or fear. Or both. I apologized to the woman and made her a new drink. The customers kept on coming and the clock kept on laughing.

    Luckily, that night ended sooner that the one before had. So why was I breaking out in a cold sweat and feeling like I should maybe run to the door. My conflicting desires were making me jumpy. I felt a hand fall onto my shoulder and I had to bite back a scream. I turned, knowing it was her. I was wrong; it was Skinny. I let out a shuddering sigh, and he looked at me with a strange expression.
    “What’s up with you, kid? You look horrible?”

    “Oh, it’s nothing. You see, I started working for this guy, and it was all going great until he got this idea into his mind that I wasn’t human and therefore didn’t need sleep.”

    “Look, kid, I’m sorry. I know that you’ve been taking on more than you can handle, and I-”

    “I can handle things just fine. Don’t get all fatherly on me. You know I’m allergic to that stuff.”

    “Well, you’re going to really want to kill me after I ask you to ta-”

    “Stop right there. I am not working another double shift. You can forget it; it’s not going to happen. I need to sleep, you slave-driving a*****e. I need-”

    “Money, right?”

    I was struck dumb. My shoulders slumped and I sighed. “How much?”

    “I’ll give you double pay and a five hundred dollar bonus.”

    “Five hundred! What the hell’s gotten into your mental calculator? How can you afford that?” I was shocked, and I didn’t think that it was right of me to take it. He wasn’t rich or anything.

    “You don’t need to know where I get my money. Are you in or out?”

    I sighed melodramatically and muttered that I was in.

    “You’re a good kid, you know that?”

    “Yeah, I know. And you say these sweet nothings so that you may keep me here for ever more. I’m indispensable, since I don’t require sleep, right?”

    “’Night, Err.” And he left.

    I know that I was acting like an a**, but that’s just how Skinny and I talk to one another. It’s all about camaraderie, and it’s sort of an inside joke mixed with a code. Then I remembered that Tang was still in the room.

    This time I felt two hands drop onto my shoulders, one on either side. I felt a breath on my ear, and I noticed something weird then, but I couldn’t place it either. I was going numb all over, but feeling everything like it was in physical HD.

    “Hi, Err.”

    “Hello, Tang. Uh, what are you doing?”

    “I believe it’s called seduction.” That weird smile was in her voice.

    “Tang?”

    ‘Yes?”

    ‘Why are you trying to seduce me?” Why the hell was I asking these questions?

    “Well, why not? Don’t you want me . . . to?”

    And, believe it or not, I actually had to think about it. There was a part of me that was wanting to pull away from her and run screaming into the night like a madman. I wanted her and I feared her. What a situation I was in. I was trapped and being held in place by that drugged feeling. I felt my lips moving and heard words coming out of them, but I didn’t remember choosing them. “Yes, I do.”

    “Good.” That weird smile again.

    I heard the satisfaction in her voice and once again thought that she had probably never been denied anything she wanted. I pulled my mind out of the mist long enough to add something onto my answer. “But I want to get to know you first.” But did I really?

    “Okay then.”

    I felt that breath on my ear again, moving my hair and tickling me, and I wanted to scream. I turned around to face her, taking a step or two back. I registered another one of her tattoos. It was a rose bud, a bright red rose bud on a dark green stem. There were thorns and one of them had a drop of blood hanging from it. It was on her left side, in a spot that would normally be at least partially obscured by pants. She saw me looking at it.

    “You like it?”

    “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to . . . “ I felt myself blushing. She had caught me staring at her. In a rather intense way, I might add.

    “You didn’t answer me. Do you like it?”

    “Yeah, I like it. Why a bud though? Why not a bloom?” I was talking mostly to fill the silence.

    “I think you’ll be able to answer that yourself soon.”

    “O-okay.” I was confused. And scared again. There were more tats. I couldn’t focus on any one place long enough to figure out what any of them were, though. But I figured I would know in time. I wanted to get somewhere where there were other people. “So, where do you feel like going?”

    “I think that maybe you had better get some sleep. You have a few more long nights ahead of you. Rain check me, though.” She wasn’t going to be denied. She was too certain.

    “Rain check. Yeah.” I felt more and more drugged the longer I looked at her, but I was scared to stop looking at her.

    “Later, Err.” And she was gone.

    I cleaned up with shaking hands and a pounding heart. I was finally calm by the time I was locking up. I was trying to figure out why I had ever been so scared in the first place when I heard the thunder. So I was going to walk back in the rain. Okay, at least it was a warm night.

    I was feeling pretty good when I got back to my apartment and let myself in. I smelled my cinnamon smell of my books as I passed by them to the shower. I undressed while the water was warming up. I was replaying the night in my mind, trying to sort a few things out, like why I felt doped-up every time I looked at her ro what scared me about her.

    While I was musing over these great mysteries of life, I was also playing with the conversation we had had. I felt my eyes widen in shock a second or two before I knew why they were being so hyper. Rain. Rain check. It was a coincidence, I knew that. But my skin apparently didn’t; I had gooseflesh everywhere. I stumbled into the hot shower, shivering and wondering why something so small was so scary.

    I went to bed that night and dreamt of rain. And bloody roses.