Worcester Nights - The Boxed Set

Worcester Nights

The Box Set

Books One to Four

Ophelia Sikes

Copyright © 2014 by Ophelia Sikes

Minerva Webworks LLC

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Ophelia Sikes

Book design by Ophelia Sikes

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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and events are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First Printing: February 2014

Kindle ASIN B00IJPOUGS

- 6 -

Half of all proceeds from this book benefits battered women’s shelters.

You are unique out of seven billion people.

Let your individual gifts and talents shine!

Book 1: Dwell in Possibility

Chapter 1

Dwell in Possibility.

-- Emily Dickinson

Crash!

M
y shoulders instinctively hunched as I spun to look through the large row of plate-glass windows which fronted the bar. Kelley Square sprawled in full, glorious view under the sharp moonlight, eight roads converging into a chaotic mess which is routinely nominated as the worst intersection in Massachusetts.

If Boston had been designed based on Colonial-era cow-paths, Kelley Square had been constructed by wild, lust-crazed gerbils drunk on Jack Daniel’s.

The source of the ear-shattering crunch was easy to spot. A fire-engine-red Ford F-150 had T-boned a bumblebee-yellow hummer. I was surprised tangerine-colored shards weren’t spewed across the pavement. A muscular black man leapt out of the first, a beefy Hispanic out of the second, and they launched into a shouting match worthy of the WWE.

A bystander in a leather jacket stepped forward like he might try to intervene. Worcester was no place for heroes. They wound up maimed – or dead.

Trouble was a heartbeat away.

Don’t do it. Please, just –

He turned and stared right at me. I could only see his shadow in the dark night, but something sizzled, and my breath caught.

Then he was stepping into Death Match Round One.

I jolted back into reality. My hand reached automatically for the phone hanging above the cash register of the bar, but I needn’t have bothered. A Worcester patrol car was already screaming its way into the mix. A pair of lanky patrolmen leapt from the vehicle and hauled the combatants apart.

The stranger melded into the mist and vanished, as if he’d never been there at all.

There was the sharp crack of pool balls as the game swung back into motion at the far end of the room. The remaining patrons – all four of them – turned with disinterest to the large-screen TV on the wall opposite the windows. Just a few days prior the Sox had won the World Championship – in Fenway Park no less. Somehow all other sports seemed to have lost their luster. The middle-aged men watched apathetically as the Celtics strove to hold their own against Milwaukee.

I sighed, grabbed a clean rag from beneath the sink, and ran it across the main counter’s mahogany surface. Jimmy, the owner, did a decent job of trying to make a go with this place. The chairs and stools were clean, forest-green vinyl. The walls were mostly dark wood, decorated with Cork road signs, Guinness promotions, and a few posters depicting rolling green hills dotted with sheep. If the scenery out the window could morph into a line of pastel-colored row houses, rather than the chaotic swirl of cabs and cars trying to dent each other into origami shapes, we might almost be in County Kerry rather than an hour west of Boston.

The phone rang, and I brought it to my ear. “O’Malley’s Bar. How can I help you?”

The voice on the other end was male, no-nonsense, and thickly brogued. “It’s Seamus. Get Jimmy for me.”

“Of course, Seamus. Just a minute.”

I put the phone down by the cash register and waved a hand to the thin, lanky guy sitting on a stool by the door. Joey was practically a bar fixture, arriving when we opened, hanging around until the lights went out. His mouse-brown hair was uncombed and his eyes had a slightly unfocused look.

“Joey, watch the bar for me for a second?”

He nodded, his eyes not leaving the TV. “Sure thing, Kate.”

I turned left and walked through the open doorway to the narrow hallway which ran the length of the bar. There were the restrooms, the store room, Jimmy’s office, and then a door leading to the back parking lot. Not that cars could fit in there, of course. Between the dumpster, the shed, and the rusted, burnt-out hulk of a 1982 Camaro, you’d be hard pressed to fit even a motorcycle through the mess.

I came up to Jimmy’s office door and rapped my knuckles on it. “Jimmy?”

No answer.

I sighed, then pushed the door open. I had a good guess what I’d find.

Sure enough, Jimmy was sprawled, naked, across the ancient oak desk which stretched across the back half of the small room. I’d take bets that the reason he bought such a massive piece of furniture was for this very purpose. A nude young woman with short, dark crimson hair and breasts the size of watermelons straddled him, rhythmically bouncing up and down.

His wispy brown hair sprawled even further askew as he turned his head to growl at me. His voice came in time with her bounces. “Jesus – Mary – and Joseph – What – the Hell – Dy’a Want?”

The woman – perhaps twenty – looked as if she had a pair of angry water balloons strapped to her chest and they were fighting for supremacy. Jimmy had to be at least twenty years her senior. His paunch jiggled in time with her movements, which had not let up at my entrance.

I’d grown up with four older brothers. You’d think I’d have gotten used to this by now. But my father had passed away when I was thirteen. Those brothers had turned into my knight protectors, and as a result I’d barely dated in high school. I’d also been carefully shielded from all of my brothers’ testosterone-laden adventures.

My cheeks flamed with heat and I kept my gaze on the wall behind the desk. My voice was tight with embarrassment. “Seamus is on the phone.”

Jimmy seemed half-willing to grab the woman’s waist and finish off the process, but then he cursed and rolled, plunking her into the faux-leather chair behind the desk. He barely glanced at her as he grabbed up his jeans from alongside the desk.

“You stay put – I’ll be right back.”

I turned and went back out to my position at the bar. Jimmy joined me in just a few seconds. He grabbed up the phone. “Yeah, Jimmy here.”

Seamus’s blast came so strongly through the earpiece that I could clearly hear the words. “Do you have another whore at the bar?”

Jimmy’s jaw went tight. “No, no, Seamus, of course not.”

The hard edge of Seamus’s voice drew tension along my shoulder blades. “If my sister finds out, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Jimmy was shaking his head before Seamus finished. “She don’t know nothing,” he swore. “I’ve got it under control.”

Seamus’s voice dropped into a lower register and I couldn’t hear his response. Jimmy nodded a few times, mumbling “sure” and “yes,” and then he hung up the phone.

The woman came out of the hallway, dressed in tight jeans and a black, spaghetti-strap tank with Elmo smiling across its front. She attentively chewed at a wad of gum in her mouth as if she were a cow who had found the most delicious clover patch in the field.

She spoke in a bored tone to the room in general. “My sittah leaves in five minutes.”

Jimmy’s brow furrowed, but he waved to me, and I nodded. I picked up the phone and hit the first button on it.

An elderly male voice answered. “Ethan’s Taxi Service.”

“Ethan, it’s Kate.”

A smile brightened his response. “Oh, sure, Kate. Need a pickup?”

I gave a wry smile. “That we do.”

“Be there in five.” He hung up.

Jimmy went around the bar to give the girl a hug. She glanced around the bar before carefully agreeing to the most distant of embraces. Then she turned with a swoosh of her crimson hair. The bell above the door gave a high tinkling noise as she stepped out to the sidewalk.

A minute later Ethan’s yellow taxi pulled up smoothly through the maelstrom of traffic. The girl vanished within, and he was gone.

Jimmy slumped onto one of the six stools fronting the bar, running a hand through his thinning hair. “Pour me some Redbreast, Katie.”

I turned and pulled the green bottle of whiskey from the shelf, pouring him his double, neat. I put the glass in front of him, placing the bottle alongside it.

He waved a hand at the glass. “Have a sip.”

I had only been filling in at the bar for about a month. The usual bartender, my good friend Eileen, had gone to County Kildare to be with her ailing grandmother. But I already knew well enough not to argue with Jimmy. He liked for me to take a sip before he began drinking, and truth be told, I’d come not to mind. The whiskey was one of his local favorites from County Cork and had rich flavors of toffee, honey, and raisin.

I took my drink, rolling the flavors around in my mouth, coating my tongue. Then I handed the rest back to him. He took down a swallow, staring at the amber liquid for a moment. Then he shook himself and looked over at the far wall with its TV and memorabilia.

“I’m going to make this into a proper place, Katie,” he vowed. “We’ll put on a second floor for the offices and be able to expand this level to hold a trio of dart boards. We’ll host a team. We’ll have local bands in here on the weekend. We’ll make it into a real bar.”

“Sure, we will, Jimmy,” I soothed him. I’d heard this every night for a month. But every day, rather than working on his dreams, he was sliding his hand into another co-ed’s shirt and dragging her back into that rat-infested room that passed for an office.

I was counting the days before Eileen returned, before I could get back to my job search. I had graduated in May, but with my degree in journalism, work was hard to come by. Then again, in this economy, it seemed that everybody was having it rough.

Jimmy went on with his rambling, the few patrons trickled out to their homes, and finally it was time to close up. Ethan picked me up as usual, his wiry, grandfatherly warmth pleasant in the two a.m. moonlight. He drove me the short half-mile to the sturdy three-decker I boarded at. My landlady would be sound asleep by now, so I was careful with the front door, then turned right into my room.

I sighed as I stepped into my small sanctuary. My acoustic guitar rested against the left wall, my futon mattress filled the right corner, and the one small window looked out over a quiet street lined with three-deckers nearly identical to mine. A set of sagging laminate shelves held my textbooks and journals.