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Sunday comes like a breath of fresh air. I never really appreciated such a slow day before, but now that I’m running a bar, Sunday is the only day that I can take off and not have customers trying to break my doors down for a drink.
Sunlight streams in from the window behind me as I scribble new numbers into the book, trying to keep up Angus’s tradition of tracking his cashflow on paper. The carpet hasn’t been replaced yet, but with the A/C up and running again, it doesn’t smell bad in here anymore. I can almost ignore the mold in the corners of the room as I move the book aside and pull out my laptop.
As much as I detest Savva, he’s right about a few things, the first of which is that I need to hire people to help me. I’m not going to be able to run a place this busy by myself. I can barely keep up with things as is, and since I opened and people have discovered that Smoke, Steel, & Whiskey is operating again, traffic has doubled.
I need help.
Most businesses are hiring in the city, paying competitive rates for dancers, bartenders, and bouncers. I’ll have to somehow convince people to drive all the way out here to work at a biker bar. I imagine that won’t come cheap.
Unfortunately, my father never kept track of how much he was paying people, so I have no clue what his operating costs really were. I can calculate the price of alcohol and electricity, but I fall short when I’m trying to figure out wages.
More and more, I realize that I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. Every action feels like a shot in the dark, and eventually, I feel like I’m going to be aiming at myself by accident.
But I suck it up and put out a few different variations of what I feel like are good job offers. I’m sure to get at least a few applicants, and I only need to hire one or two people to start with. It just has to be enough to take some of the load off my back.
And that leads me to my next issue with the bar, and that’s the danger of it all. Sure, Savva is a beast with absolutely no moral compass, but even he seemed to think it was a good idea to arm myself. He was serious when he said that. It wasn’t a playful tease like when he called me a slut.
I shiver just thinking about the way the sides of his mouth curled up when he uttered that word. He took pleasure in degrading me, and I was pathetic enough to fall for it. I actually got wet from what he said to me.
But perhaps the gun will stop him from pushing it any further. It’s a good idea, and I trust what he said about the police. I tried to find the closest police station on the map, and the only one that existed was three hours away.
Three hours of helplessness at the hands of the first crook who wanders into my bar. I can’t let that happen. Savva is already bad enough, and he barely even touched me.
Thankfully, while police stations are in short supply, gun stores aren’t. There’s one just a few miles down the road, and once I’m certain my job listings are officially up and running, I hop into my Mustang and blaze a trail down to buy my first shotgun.
It’s an odd thrill, knowing you’re going out to buy something that can kill even the largest man with the twitch of a finger. I’ve never really thought about it until now, but the invention of the gun may have directly led to the rights women have in America.
My mom would probably kill me for saying that, but I feel empowered by the possibility.
I pull up to the gun store and park, stepping out onto the scalding pavement. I swear my shoes will melt if I stay out longer than a minute. The heat just keeps increasing as the days grow longer. I bet we’re on the verge of a new record in Nevada, or maybe that’s just how hot the summers always are. In Georgia, it’s hot, but notthishot.
As I step into the gun store, I feel eyes on me immediately, and I meander around for a moment, trying to think what I’m going to say before walking up to the glass desk and smiling at the burly man behind it. “Hello, I’m looking to buy a gun.”
The words feel strange coming out of my mouth, so blunt and unforgiving. I feel like I’m committing a crime, but it’s my right to own a gun. I’m not a felon, and I’ve never broken a law in my life.
“What exactly are you looking for?” the man behind the counter asks in a flat tone, and I realize this is probably boring for him. I may be anxious and shaky, but he sells guns to strangers every day. This is totally normal.
I puff out my chest, trying to exude confidence I simply don’t have. “A shotgun.”
“What kind?”
I’m stumped at this point. I just want something that can take down a grown man, but I wouldn’t say that. I feel like I have to say it’s for target practice or hunting, even though it’s obviously not.
“Just something that can shoot. I’m not picky,” I say with a thin smile, hoping he’ll give me whatever is easiest to operate and send me on my way.
“For general purposes, you’re looking at either a pump action or a double barrel. I can show you a couple of models that we just got in last week.”
“Whatever’s cheapest,” I say, glancing at the tag for a rifle that’s nearly $5,000. How can a gun be so expensive? I thought they were supposed to be a hundred bucks or something.
“Wait a second,” the man says, disappearing into the back.
For a moment, I think he’s gone to report me to the cops, but he comes back carrying a gun that looks like something a farmer would sit with on his porch. “This here will probably do you good. It’s simple – you load it, you pump it, you pull the trigger. Nothing else to it.”
“Great,” I say as he lays it down on the glass display case. “And how much is it?”
“Three-ninety-nine.”
I sigh in relief. That’s much better than a few thousand. I have that much and quite a bit extra from yesterday’s shift.
