The door shuts and the dead bolt clicks, and I slump my forehead into the cold metal of our apartment numbers. These are the times when it feels like wading through mud just to remember what’s real and what’s not.
What’s real is that the door is locked. I have the keys in my purse, but going back inside will only make things worse. What’s real is that my options are to spend a couple of hours curled pathetically on my own doorstep or find somewhere else to go.
I push the edge of my house key into the pad of my thumb and try calling Uncle Bill. He doesn’t pick up. I feel like a sieve, all my strength escaping out the holes poked through me. I just want to escape too.
Fuck it. I’ll go to Rosy’s.
There aren’t many lesbian bars in Vegas. Actually, there aren’t any, just a couple of bars where lesbians hang out sometimes, and Rosy’s is the shittiest one. But it’s close enough to walking distance, and it feels good to be cocooned by the roar of cars and the mutter of fast-food drive-through speakers and the piss-and-trash smell of the sidewalk.
Wedged between a smoke shop, its windows advertisingPipes! Hookah! Cigars!in gloating gold letters, and an insurance agency with boarded-up windows, Rosy’s is empty inside except for a skinny couple in the corner, with their heads together. They both have the exact same shade of dark-brown, almost-black hair. A soccer game flickers on the TV, showering distorted cheers over the scarred leather of a vacant booth.
The bar smells like Pine-Sol and maraschino cherries. I order a Coke. The bartender leaves that hanging in the air with a look of expectation, so I change it to a rum and Coke. It leaves a sugary film on my tongue. When I’m done, I order another one.
“Waiting for a friend?” The bartender asks. The tattoos on her knuckles spell outHOLD FAST DIE LAST.
“Just waiting.”
A couple of bodies fill in the barstools between me and the door. I play with my phone while the bartender pours beers and asks about weekend plans.
“I took my wife to the new Italian spot on the Strip,” she says, when someone turns the question back on her. A glass appears in her hand, thunks down on the plastic mat.
“Special occasion?”
“Anniversary. Fifteen years.” She stretches out theteenlike a piece of bubblegum.
“Congrats.”
“Not to my wallet.” She chuckles. “Twenty dollars for a martini. I can make a better martini with my eyes closed!” When the patron laughs appreciatively, she adds, “Good thing it’s ‘till death do us part,’ not ‘till bankruptcy,’ am I right?”
Then the door swings open, and I smell lemons.
Her hair’s slicked back, same way it was when she jumped my car, but now instead of the medic jacket, she’s got on baggy jean shorts, a white tank top hacked off above the belly button, and definitely no bra.
“Tequila!” Veer howls and swings herself onto an open stool at the opposite end of the bar. The movement tugs her hip free of her waistband, and the neon hum of the Budweiser sign above the bar catches on the faint line of a healed cut. Something in me lurches.
I don’t want her to see me like this, alone and miserable. Especially since she came with friends, a Southeast Asian girl with sleeve tattoos and a million facial piercings, and a pasty stick of a person with a big sharp nose and hair that’s brown at the roots and green at the ends. I watch out of the corner of my eye as the bartender splashes out three tequila shots. Veer drums her middle finger against the bar, impatient, and I wonder what it would feel like trapped between my teeth.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
I get the bartender’s attention and pay my tab. Veer’s back is to me. Her hand flicks up to fuss with her already-well-smudged eyeliner, at the same time her neighbor on the left—not one of her friends, some guy in faded brown leather—turns his head. Her elbow catches him squarely on the chin.
I shrink back into my seat.
“Excuse me?” The guy sounds pissed. I guess I would be too, getting an abrupt elbow to the face like that.
“Shit.” Veer peers at him, getting in his space a little. “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t mean to. Can I—”
He doesn’t wait for her to finish, just turns back to his drink, and I only know he says something else because Veer bristles. She steps off her stool, her mouth a stubborn line. The air caramelizes like the scorched aftertaste of an electric shock, the dead calm before a hurricane, the tension before the first swing of a fight.
Shit.
I don’t care if Veer gets into it with some guy. I don’t care about her at all. Focus on getting out of here, on going home and nursing my misery. Ignore the smell of spilled beer and soda-sweet breath and walk out the door.
Except when the guy stands, I see the waist holster. Veer’s really in his face now, one of her friends whispering desperately in her ear, trying to pull her away, while the other one hurriedly slides over cash for their shots.
The bartender slams her palm on the bar. “Chill out or take it outside.”
Veer shrugs off her friend’s concern. “I’m chill.”
