The Shore (38 page)

But Claire blamed the shark.

Linley wouldn't take the shift because she wanted to “have some fun.” Fun, as far as Claire could tell, had something to do with reality TV, beer, and Max—mainly, she suspected, Max.

So Jodi called her because they were shorthanded at the club. Called her, Claire, as if Claire were an old buddy she could count on. And Claire—who'd been hanging out with Max and Finn and Linley and enjoying the surprisingly mellow atmosphere and wondering, in a beginning-to-be-sleepy sort of way, if she and Finn would continue the night, or maybe she meant finish it, in her bed or maybe his—had cursed herself for answering her phone. At first she said, “I don't know, Jodi, I'm totally wiped,” and then it was, “Well . . . ,” and then she was drinking double espresso shots and hoping she could stay awake.

“I'll give you a ride over,” Finn said, smiling. “That's cool, helping Jodi, so I'll help, too.”

Max had said, “Let's all go, check it out.”

Linley had looked annoyed. “Let's stay here,” she said.

“We can come back,” said Max.

“Or we could stay,” said Linley.

But Max reached down and grabbed Linley's hand. She resisted for a moment, her eyes darkening. Then she said, “So, a road trip, then.”

The dark seemed darker on the small almost-alley, where the club lived by night and slept by day. Unkempt, anonymous storefronts fronted the street on either side of the club, and a warehouse loomed at one end. Cars filled a pitted parking lot on the side. A bored bouncer with flat eyes, silver hair, and the hulk of a Super Bowl linebacker thumbed them through, on Jodi's name, to the interior murk, stamping all their hands first. “You go out, you don't come back in tonight,” he said.

Jodi seemed to fly out from the gloom, and Claire jumped as Jodi seized her arm. “Thanks Bob,” she said to the bouncer, and to Claire, “Good, you're here.”

The sign outside, faded neon the color of dried blood, said bar. Inside, another sign agreed: bar. The room was long and narrow and dark and smoky. A scarred wooden bar edged by an uneven line of stools lined one wall. Or maybe the stools weren't uneven—maybe it was the people on them. They all seemed enormous. Some drank alone. Some talked, heads and voices lowered, eyes watchful. Claire tried not to stare as she followed Jodi, but she couldn't help noticing unimagined dimensions in tattoo art.

Halfway down the bar was a door on the opposite wall. It looked as if it had been made with a sledgehammer or possibly a truck, and led to a parallel universe featuring a row of pool tables. In a far back corner there was a poker machine and what looked like an ancient pinball machine.

People, mostly more guys with more serious tattoos and hair, although a couple of women fit the description, too, worked the pool tables. A lone guy hung over the pins, working the controls with body language that went beyond manic.

The music was loud but not deafening, and Claire was pretty sure she wasn't imagining the undertone of quiet potential menace. She blinked, her eyes watering from the smoke.

“This is Claire,” Jodi shouted, and Claire turned back toward the bar. The guy behind the counter looked as if he might be six and a half feet tall. A black beard covered most of his face. He was wearing gold loop earrings in each ear and when he smiled, he looked exactly like a pirate. “Claire, this is Eric. It's his bar.”

Eric nodded, running quick, appraising eyes over Claire. He nodded. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

“Oh, anything for a friend,” Claire said. The sarcasm was wasted.

“Come
on
,” said Jodi and dragged Claire through a swinging door. In a narrow room that seemed to consist mostly of kegs and boxes, she fitted Claire with a tiny apron with two pockets, one for an order pad and pencil stub, one for tips.

“Okay,” said Jodi. “This is the deal. Beer, liquor, chips. Water is the only mixer. Keep an eye on things. Don't expect trouble, but be ready for it.”

“What things,” said Claire. The apron was the same length as her skirt. She'd gone with a plain white V-necked T-shirt, but she was thinking that something in Kevlar might have been more appropriate. Jodi's shirt, drawn up and knotted, said, “Wish you were there.”

Whatever that meant.

“You know, trouble.”

“Trouble,” said Claire.

“Three kinds of beer, all one size, all one price. All liquor, with or without water, one price. Chips, one price. I made you a cheat sheet.”

Claire pocketed the price list. “What kind of trouble?” she repeated.

“We take turns, front room, back room.”

“Back room,” said Claire.

“Not that kind of back room, just the room with the pool tables. So I'll take the back room until you get the drill down. It's easy. Just keep the drinks coming and the tables more or less wiped and you've got it.”

“And the trouble part?”

“What's illegal outside isn't necessarily illegal in here. Bodies, dead, bad. Bodies putting things into bodies for fun and with full consent, good.”

“What?” Claire said.

“And if Eric shouts ‘CLEAR' that means get out the back door. There are two, this one”—Jodi pointed to a massive metal fire door at the end of the storage area—“and one at the end of the hall where the bathroom is, back by the machines in the other room. Both have alarms on them, emergency use only.”

“I hope the tips are worth it,” Claire managed to say.

Jodi's lips curled. “You bet they are,” she said as she pushed back out into the bar.

Somehow, it seemed even murkier and smokier and more crowded and noisy.

Max, Finn, and Linley were at the bar. They did not exactly blend. But no one seemed to mind.

Glass shattered in the back room. Not a single person looked around except Claire and Jodi. The pin jockey was staring down at the busted beer bottle on the floor. “Damn! Damn! Damn!” he said, his voice getting thinner and higher each time he said it.

Trouble,
thought Claire, looking wildly around.

A hand clamped her arm for the second time that night. Claire leaped what felt like several feet in the air. The hand belonged to a beer barrel of a man with a walrus mustache, a shaved head, and dark glasses. He didn't seem to notice Claire's reaction. Flipping her hand over, he pressed something into it. “Buy the boy a beer before he loses his shit completely,” he growled. “Keep the change for your trouble.”

Claire looked down. She was holding a twenty.

Mustache headed for a pool table.

“No trouble,” Claire said, and went to work.

By two a.m., Claire had a pocket full of money, a headache from the smoke, and a desperate need for coffee. Finn found her in the narrow back storage room, slamming open cabinet doors. She'd just discovered some coffee that was roasted the color of blacktop and was pouring it into the filter of the surprisingly clean coffeemaker. Hearing the door swing, Claire said automatically without looking, “Off limits. I'll be out in just a minute.”

“Hey, hey, it's me,” Finn said, and Claire looked up, feeling her face grow a ridiculously pleased smile.

He came over and put his arm around her and gave her a quick kiss. She leaned into him, and her headache went away a little. “You're really handling it, you know?”

“You think?” She smiled into his shoulder. Beneath the cigarette smoke, she could smell the ocean. She looked up. “I'd rather be surfing. With you.”

“That's my girl,” he said easily. “We'll do it tomorrow, after work. But I've gotta bail. Early lesson. And Barrel will be worrying about me.”

They'd left Barrel, indignant but resigned, sitting by the back door of the house. According to Finn, Barrel didn't like bars.

“The others are going to stay and ride home with Jodi,” Finn added, pulling her to him for another kiss.

“Save it for later,” advised Jodi, flinging open the door.

Shit,
Claire thought, caught, guilty.

But Jodi barely seemed to notice. She sniffed. “Coffee. Hah. Coffee is for amateurs.” But she poured herself a cup.

“Tomorrow,” Finn said with a smile. He touched the tip of Claire's nose and slid away.

Claire watched him go.
Not tonight, then,
she thought. No tangled sheets and sliding bodies and . . . oh, well.

She turned as Jodi poured sugar into the coffee at warp speed. “Leave some for me,” Claire said. “Looks like I need the energy more than you do.”

“Energy? Oh, I've got energy to burn,” Jodi said smugly. She slugged back the coffee.

Claire took a cup and filled it and drank it straight, hoping the bitter taste would help. It wasn't bad. Okay, it wasn't good, but she'd had worse.

“LADIES,” bellowed Eric. That's what he called his waitresses.

Jodi rolled her eyes. “COMING, MOM,” she called back. To Claire, she said, “Give me another minute, would'ja?”

“Sure.” Claire downed the last of her coffee and pushed back out into the bar.

Eric squinted at her. “I don't care what you ladies are doing back there, but don't take so damn long,” he growled. He began setting beers on a tray. “Table three in the—” he began.

But he didn't get to finish.

The door slammed open, and a man burst in, his shirt torn and a fresh cut open above one eye. The bouncer was right behind him, holding a strip of cloth. The doorway behind the bouncer filled with what seemed like a mob of people screaming and shouting and pushing to get past.

Bob the bouncer turned and gave the nearest person a mighty shove, and the whole group reeled back out of sight.

Seizing his chance, the bloody man ran like a rabbit past Claire and into the room where Jodi was finishing her coffee.

“Help me,” he cried. “They're trying to kill me.”

Fouurteen

The entrance door slammed open again. Three men crashed through on top of the bouncer. Everyone in the bar seized this moment to leave. The room cleared as tables and bar stools went over. Claire would remember later how quickly and quietly it emptied. One minute it was a smoky bar full of smoky people, and the next minute she was practically all alone as the three enraged men rolled over the bouncer. One of them went down with a howl as the bouncer got to his feet.

Claire heard Jodi shout something behind her.

Eric cleared the bar in a single bound, a baseball bat like a toothpick in one massive hand.

Glass broke, wood hit concrete as more tables went over.

Bob the bouncer was—bouncing. He'd gotten hold of one man, a guy wearing a red bandanna twisted around his head, and was doing his job very thoroughly.

It was nothing like the movies.

Then the exit alarm in the door behind Claire sounded,
and the men wheeled toward the noise. It put Eric off his stroke, and the bat he raised came down on a chair back, splintering it.

The five men fell apart. Then the bouncer seized the nearest one and hurled his catch past Claire and into the wall.

Claire caught a glimpse of sideburns and pitted skin, and then the man half-stood, bloody but still full of fight. He got one foot up and into Eric's middle as Eric charged. Eric thudded backward into the bouncer.

They went down again, and the man rolled under the swinging doors as he scrambled to his feet.

Eric came behind them like a freight train.

“The first guy went out the back,” Jodi shrieked. “He knocked the coffee cup right out my hand!”

“Oh no, you don't,” said Eric and closed one baseball mitt hand around one of the red-bandanna guy's shoulders as he dove for the exit.

The guy jerked up and back as if he were attached to a rope and harness.

Sideburns, still in pursuit or possibly running for his own life, crashed through the exit door and out into the night.

Shaking the guy who struggled in his grip as if he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes, Eric growled, “What the hell.”

“Let me go,” the man said. “It's private.”

“When you bring it to my bar, it's not private anymore.” Eric continued to shake the man as he talked.

The bouncer came up, dragging the third guy, who was definitely sagging. The fight had gone out of him.

“Don't I pay you to keep this out of my bar?” Eric turned on the bouncer.

“Three against one,” said Bob, unmoved. “Four, if you count the rabbit.”

“Don't call the cops,” said the bouncer's prize.

“Cops!” Eric snorted. He took two giant steps to the back door and hurled the man into the night. Claire heard a crash and a howl.

A smell of rotten garbage blasted through the door.

“Two points. You got the Dumpster,” said Jodi wrinkling her nose. But she was smiling as if she was enjoying some huge private joke.

“Turn off the alarm. It's disturbing me,” said Eric and went back out into his bar.

Bob stepped past them, preparing to hurl his victim into the Dumpster, too. But on the upswing, the guy flew free of his jacket, fell, and rolled. He scrambled to his feet, and they heard him lurch away, kicking bottles and cans.

Jodi rushed forward and slammed the door against the smell. “Nice work, Bob,” she offered the bouncer.

Bob shrugged, turned off the alarm, and left without answering.

Eric shouted, “Ladies all right?”

“Fine,” shouted Jodi.

“Then get up here and help us. Drinks on the house.”

Claire looked out the door. Bob was turning tables and righting chairs, and Eric was lining up a long row of drinks. The people who had melted away had magically reappeared. She noted that Linley and Max were among them.

Linley looked thrilled, Claire thought. She would.

Except for the trashed front of the bar, it was as if the whole thing had never happened.

She turned to Jodi. “He didn't say, ‘Clear,'” she said. Now her voice sounded shaky.