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As I bend down to wipe the bench-seats off, my necklace charm sticks to my skin, the weight of it — old worn gold that’s tarnished to hell and back — reminding me of the woman who had originally owned it. I think of her every time I touch it, and every time I look in the mirror and see her plain brown eyes staring back at me.
Her presence is even with me as I’m cleaning up around the bar. The shape of her nails and fingers mirrored in mine as I mop and scour and scrub. Mom would hate to see what we’ve become, but wearing this little piece of her gives me comfort even on the worst days.
“Dad’ll be back before dinner, right?” I ask to fill the silence, re-wetting my rag to give the countertop another going over. Nothing’ll get years’ worth of water rings out of the mottled wood at this point, but I like to lie to myself. Pretend I can breathe life back into this place. Somehow.
“Mmmph,” Emi replies, ignoring me as her fingers flick through the bills. She can count all she likes; they’re not going to double themselves in her hands. Which isn’t great news. It goes without saying that a place in as bad shape as this, with no windows to letin the light and attract hipsters and tourists and people with any actual money to spend, is never going to be a great place to earn a living or provide for one’s future.
And it’s not like the city is that far away. But it’s like a completely different country. In the city, they have parks and museums and theaters and schools, and the people are different too. There’s actual night-life, a whole area of the city dedicated to serving up the throngs of people partying every night, especially toward the end of the week and the weekend. We don’t get any kind of spillover here. No one in the city has even heard of this town, and we’re not going to make it if we can’t bring in more people, or get a better clientele.
But no one in their right mind wants to come to this hole in the wall.
But it’s all we’ve got.
And at least if I’m stuck here, I’m stuck here with family, even if I don’t think they like me all that much. I scrub the rag over a particularly stubborn tabasco stain.
“Ugh. You’re doing it wrong.” Emi is scowling down at me, her footsteps covered by the low beat from the jukebox nestled between two booths across from us, not fifteen paces from the bar. “You need to get that up with a butter knife first or it’ll never come off.”
She picks up the dull blade and then glances at me. Her green eyes narrow, and her lips pull together into a pursed cat’s ass. For a moment I wonder if she’s tempted to stab me with it, as revenge for daring to come along and upend her life and ruin our mother’s and inebriate our father’s. The moment shivers, and I wonder how long it’ll be before Dad comes back from hismeeting and finds me bleeding out on the rubber mats behind the bar, the red liquid congealing in my hair and the holes in the grout between the tiles.
“Well? Go get the butter knife,” Emi snaps at me. “Don’t stand there gaping at me.”
“Oh. Oh, uh, yeah.” I stumble, then hurry into the back kitchen, which is really not much more than a sink and a stove and a few shelves, and a cooler we have to keep locked up since the old fridge finally died last year. I’m sure it was expensive to replace, and Emi and my dad haven’t even talked about it.
It’s hard to get my breath, the air not circulating well, and I stand there a moment, leaning against the metal of the cooler, the handle cool against my hand. I wish the heat didn’t bother me so much. Wish that the air back here wasn’t so dead, so stifling, that it feels like someone is sitting on my chest and won’t get off.
“Where the fuck is that knife?!” Emi screeches from the front, muffled through the swinging door and I startle, my whole body jerking into motion. I reach in to the plastic bucket that our knives are kept in, on top of one of the stainless steel counter-tops and pain slashes through my hand.
With a cry, I pull my arm back, staring down at my palm. A nasty slice glistens across it, the skin a white furrow around a deep-red gash. Blood wells up inside of it and I inhale, a wordless shriek burning in the back of my throat.
“What the fuck, Katy--“ The door slams open, Emi standing there, furious. I turn to her, holding out my hand, not able to find the words. Her expression morphs from mad to enraged. “Oh, are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck is wrong with you?” The swear words spill out of her mouth, and instantly myeyes well up with tears as I cradle my arm against my chest. “I’ll clean it up my fucking self,” she snarls, storming past me to grab a butter knife, slamming the sharp blade down on the counter-top, stained with my blood. “Wash this when you’re done with your pity-party.”
She stomps out of the room, the swinging door slamming shut behind her, and I stand there, shocked, pain throbbing in my hand. I’m... on my own.
The emptiness yawns inside me, that panicked feeling of having nobody and no-one to rely on except myself, and my knees tremble, my legs wanting to give out under me.
If our mother was here... she would have hushed me, wrapped me in her arms, the soft scent of her rose-oil cream filling my senses, her hand pushing my hair away from my face as she comforted me.
But I’m not a child anymore. And that kind of love, tenderness? It’s only for people in stories or in dreams.
Sniffing, choking back a panicked sob, I move toward the old first-aid kit, wrapping my hand up after smearing a disinfecting cream over the cut. It hurts, my whole hand aching, but it serves me right for being stupid. I cast a look at the knife, still slick with my blood on the counter-top.
I’ll clean that later. Right now, looking at it just hurts my heart. Pushing the kitchen door open, I slip out to find Emily muttering to herself as if she’s been talking to me this whole time.
“If it weren’t for you, I’d have a good job uptown, and Father wouldn’t need to go off and beg for more money from the bank or whatever,” she says, curling her upper lip. She’s scraping at the tabasco sauce off violently from the bar-top, and I back off,deciding that retreat is the wiser course considering how she’s on the edge of cursing — and then her nail catches on the wood.
“Oh for FUCK’S sake,” she spits, then turns on me. “I swear to God, he’d better get back soon, because if I am stuck here one more effing minute breathing the same goddamn air as YOU—“
Her finger is shaking in my face one second and then in the next, the darkness swells around us, and she disappears from my vision.
The bar disappears too. The thrum of the jukebox goes silent. Blackness surrounds me, the air conditioner over-head whirring slowly to a stop. I swallow hard and feel like my feet have pitched sideways. I reach out and grab blindly, my good hand hitting the countertop and wrapping around the rim of it tightly.
Emily gives out a frustrated cry and I hear the sound of metal hitting the cement floor. She’s thrown the butter knife — thankfully, not at me.
“Did he not pay the damn power bill?! Ugh, fuck!” Her feet shuffle away from me, and I hear her knocking things over. “Where’s the stupid flashlight…?”
I sigh and lean against the bar, dropping my rag on top of it, and settle in to wait. There’s not much to do now except wait. Wait and cradle my hurting hand.
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