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"Gimme the remote, Donald," she demanded, but did it with grabby hands that seemed almost out of character for her, leaving me to wonder if it was the tequila, or her simply liking the old man.
"No more of that satan crap," he told her as he pressed the remote into her hand.
Lenny rolled her eyes. "Can I help it if Marilyn Manson often suits my mood? No, I can't."
But she didn't turn on Manson; she found a classic rock station, and cranked it up, almost loud enough to make conversation impossible.
"Glad you could stop by," Meryl told me, moving to cup me on the shoulder before thinking better of it. "We can use some fresh blood in here."
"Yes, I think he gets it, boss," Lenny told him. "He really wants you to come back. And bring a dozen of your friends. Who will spend lots of money. And maybe if they are all as equally you know as you, that it might bring in a female crowd who would never normally come in a place like this."
"As equally as what as me?" I asked, wanting to hear her say it.
Her eyes rolled. "You know."
"Maybe I don't."
"Liar."
"Maybe you're too chickenshit to say it."
There it was.
I had her.
She even knew I had her.
But she couldn't let the challenge go anyway.
"As good-looking, you needy fuck," she told me with an eye roll.
"You're pretty good-looking yourself," I told her, clinking my glass to her bottle, then tipping it back for a drink.
"Don't bother," said some other random man at the bar, younger, with an edge to him, something inside telling me that, in this neighborhood, that meant he was likely involved with Third Street. "She's a dead fish."
It was none of my business, but I could feel my anger rise up.
"Don't," Lenny said over the brim of her bottle. "He's not worth it. Pretty sure your president wouldn't want you starting some underground war because that fuck is mad he couldn't get in my pants."
"Fair enough," I agreed. "Are you feeling better?" I asked without thinking, then immediately worried that she wouldn't want the reminder of this morning.
She surprised me by shrugging. "I was shaky for hours," she admitted. "Even after a shower, some food, and a nap."
"It's just the adrenaline. You'd have been better to take a walk, or clean your apartment. Something active. If it happens tomorrow, don't take a nap after."
It wasn't exactly subtle. I wanted to know if she planned to come to another class without outright asking her. I figured that I would get away with it when she was feeling the tequila.
"Good to know," she said simply. There was a long pause before she spoke again. "Can I try pressure points on you tomorrow? I think it would be more useful for me to learn how to use them than to know how to tolerate them."
"Useful for what?" I pried, wondering if she was drunk enough for that.
"I might be feeling this," she said, showing me the bottle she had already taken a healthy amount of liquid out of and into her bloodstream. "But I am not that girl."
"What girl?"
"The kind that spills her secrets when she is drunk."
"Nah," Meryl agreed, face red again, but this time from the whiskey he was downing like water. "She's not that kind of drunk girl."
"What kind of drunk girl is she then?" I asked.
"The kind that puts on old school rock or R&B and puts a show on for all the guys around."
"Is that right?" I asked Lenny who was mid-chug.
"I would deny it," she said when she swallowed. "But the last time I got drunk, Pony came on and I ground on that jackass," she confided, jerking her chin toward the gang member with the big mouth, allowing his comment to make a lot of sense. Drunk Lenny might have been willing to dance, but she didn't strike me as someone who made that poor a choice, no matter how wasted she was.
"So if I maybe went over there and put No Diggity on..."
She gave me something close - so damn close - to a smile at that, leaving me to wonder what it would take to make her smile, and how brilliant that would look on her gorgeous face. "I'm not that drunk yet," she informed me.
An hour later, though, she was.
That drunk, that is.
She had enough tequila in her system to keep a whole frat of girls silly and slutty all night.
Still, though, not a single smile.
She somehow managed to laugh at something Meryl had said to her without actually smiling.
She hadn't, though, as I had predicted, stripped out of any of her layers. She still had her damn motorcycle jacket on.
But she was currently moving toward the stereo, shaking her hips a little as she stood before it.
