Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) (5 page)

I’d worked up a thirst for drinks garnished with fruit and although thankful to be in a bar, whispered, “I can’t believe he didn’t check our I.D.’s,” wondering why I’d parted with a twenty at the Registrar’s office.

Katie Lee led the way to the bar and Macy, and I followed. A window air-conditioner hummed, sending beads of rust-tinted water down the tropical wallpaper. Musty air smelled of fermented yeast and oak veneer tables dotted half of the dimly lit room. A dance floor, no bigger than the room I shared with Katie Lee, rested in the far corner. Near the restrooms, a lonely jukebox flashed SOS signals.

Macy slapped her purse on the bar. “This place is a dump and it’s empty.”

A bartender wearing a straw fedora rested his foot on a keg as he concentrated on a TV remote, eventually settling on stock car racing. Over his shoulder, he asked, “Ladies, what’ll it be?”

I whispered to the girls, “Is that a canary on his shoulder?”

Macy corrected me. “That’s not a canary, that’s a fuckin’ cockatoo.”

“What’s your bird’s name?” Katie Lee asked.

The bartender moved toward us. His eyebrows were full, but the ink black hair under his straw fedora thinned against his neck. His nametag read, Stone R. Stroking the still feathers, he leaned toward Katie Lee. “Give Lolita a pet. She’s friendly.”

Katie Lee used one finger to touch the taxidermy bird.

“Um, Stone R,” Macy said, “I hate to tell you, but your Lolita is a stiff.”

Stone looked at his shoes then smiled at Macy. “What can I get you ladies?”

As long as Stone R didn’t stir my drink with a feather plume, I was happy to ignore the stuffed-bird he’d fastened to his shoulder.

Katie Lee straightened the edges of a napkin pile and picked up a handful of snack mix. “Three fireflies with pink lemonade and a lemon twist.”

“What the hell is firefly?” Macy asked, making me feel less amateur.

“Trust me,” Katie Lee said, “you’re gonna love this drink.”

“Is it a green flaming shot?” I asked. “Cause I don’t know how to swallow fire.”

Macy strummed her nails against the bar. “With the right attitude, you can swallow lots of things.”

With a pocket full of quarters from my laundry money, I bought the first round. We settled around a high bistro table, where my feet dangled from the pleather-upholstered bar stools. Stone R. supplied a steady stream of the non-flaming, sweet drinks that warmed my face from the inside out. I traced the darkened water stains on the tabletop with my finger while the three of us hashed out the pros and cons of our freshman classes and theorized why campus went quiet on weekends. We agreed the workload was too heavy, and Macy and I needed to find out where the available guys hid.

Macy stool faced the door. After an hour, she clunked another empty drink down and asked, “Where the fuck is everyone?”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking the entire student body left campus on weekends. None of us had cars, but it seemed the rest of the students did.

Katie Lee rested her elbows on the tabletop and slurred, “Y’all, boyfriend or no boyfriend this is not a happy start for experiencing freedom and intermingling with coeds.”

We’d each bought a round and Stone delivered a round on the house. Katie Lee quizzed the bird-loving bartender. “Why the fascination with cockatoos?”

Stone slid a stool up to our table. “I’m studying to be an ornithologist. The U.S. needs to ramp up security in airports and at border crossings to stop the illegal bird trade. Traffickers are extinguishin’ the world’s population of exotic birds. If they’re not stopped, the virgin rain forest diversity and ecological balance will change the earth.”

Macy placed her hand on top of Stone’s. “You’re wearing a dead cockatoo. How’s that going to help?”

Stone gleamed, and he pretended to pinch her cheek. “Lolita brings about curiosity. Curiosity sparks conversation--the beginnings of awareness.”

I’d listened to a bunch of bird-talk from a guy who had a fixation with feathers. The phone under the bar rang, and Stone went to answer it. It was past ten, and I realized I’d plunged into a buzzed funk, dismayed at yet another uneventful weekend. The truth serum disguised as firefly freed my lips and I confessed, “This is not the college life I envisioned. I’ve never been with a guy and at this rate will die a virgin.” I threw my arms up in the air and clonked my forehead into the table to organize my thoughts. “I feel cheated. Almost an entire month--and nothing. No obsessions, chance encounters or drunken nights that I can’t remember or want to forget.”

I considered the night finished and was ready to head back toward Campus Drive, when Macy’s nail tips made train tracks in my upper arm.

“Ouch,” I yelped. “Watch the talons.”

“I think those are students coming in past Max.”

We watched a steady stream of underage students surge in. The music got louder, and the night didn’t seem entirely lost.

I’d been happily sipping my drink and darting my eyes around the room. The girls and I analyzed all the students that had piled in. Macy startled me with her warning. “Oh, no. Don’t look, but here comes a blond guy, cowboy boots--redneck looking. So not our type.”

If you tell someone not to look, it actually means look, but carefully. I needed to see this guy for myself. He could be the one. Rotating my body, some klutz from behind knocked my elbow, propelling my arm forward. The cocktail I’d been enjoying launched from my hand like a bottle rocket until it made contact with a tall redhead who, thanks to me, wore soggy hair and her eye-makeup had seen better days.

“I wasn’t finished with that,” I said, when I caught sight of the ice cubes from my cup being plucked from wet hair. Standing a mere stick’s length from me, the Amazonian redhead shouted, “Bitch.” I turned and looked behind myself. No one else faced my direction.

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve just apologized for my clumsiness and hoped the situation went away. Unfortunately, Katie Lee didn’t share the same etiquette philosophy. Energized with liquid courage she shot Red an indignant sneer for the unwarranted venomous tone. Leaping off her barstool, she guided me by my arm and anchored me to her hip. Digging into her inner-alpha, she puffed out her chest and delivered a scolding. “Back off. It was an accident.”

This wasn’t the meet-and-greet southern belle roommate I’d spent a month living with. She had morphed into some ballsy, fight-seeking nut. It had to be some sort of delayed emotional distress, caused by the Nash drama. She turned this little drink spill into Niagara Falls. God she made me nervous, getting in the face of a complete stranger.

“I’ll show you an accident,” the redhead snarled. With dulled senses from a steady flow of sweet tea vodka, my legs faltered, and I tripped on my stationary feet. Katie Lee held me steady. In disbelief, I watched this stranger take a step back and concentrate to align her palm with Katie Lee’s face. My drink had landed on someone who could be categorized as certifiable koo koo.

Calculating the likelihood of this situation ending quietly, Macy distracted me. For her, this was entertainment and her chuckle destabilized her ass, landing it on the floor. Odds of Macy rescuing us in a make-nice, forget-it-happened exit were not in my favor.

Alarm paralyzed my limbs as if I’d been stung, and I didn’t move for fear of spreading venom. Trapped in a duh moment the only word of warning I uttered was an involuntary hiccup, and if I’d blinked, I would’ve missed seeing Katie Lee duck. Despite the noisy bar, a “Wap” noise echoed and the guy with shoulder length blond hair who Macy wanted to avoid became the owner of a left cheek slap.

He shook off the blow. “Is there something I should remember?”

Unsteady on her feet and drunk off her ass, post-slap momentum whirled the redheaded, Tasmanian-She-Devil. She melted in a stumble-drop onto the nasty self-stick, carpet square floor.

Having climbed back on her stool, Macy glanced to the ground and confirmed it. “The bitch is down.”

The guy whose name we didn’t know wrapped his arms around us. “Hey, I’m Hugh Bass. Y’all need a drink?”

Slipping out of his hold, my eyes had darted to the far corner and glinted upon a hallelujah moment. Mentally I concentrated on a tall, undeniably attractive man who stood across the room and leaned against the jukebox. He laughed and his smile creased the corners of his eyes intoxicating me into a dizzying trance. A parrot dangled on a perch above his head, and he wore a tent-green jacket that camouflaged him into the tropical banana plant wallpaper.

My focus became sidetracked when in front of me, Hugh offered his hand to help the girl who’d slapped him stand up.

Swaying to her feet, the redhead mouthed, “Asshole,” to Hugh. A devilish spark filled her marbled topaz eyes and slowly crept down until it curled the corners of her sealed glossy-pink lips. She shook out her hair and straightened her shoulders before edging two fingers over Hugh’s brass-eagle belt-buckle. She tugged his denim waistband in a teasing manner, which confused Hugh.

Her boldness embarrassed me, and I wondered if she always used men’s pants to steady herself. I didn’t think I should be watching this intimate exchange, but it was better than HBO. Hugh smiled, captivated by her forwardness, until she snatched the cold beer out of his hand and dumped it down his pants, carelessly discarding the plastic cup to the floor. I wondered if women always treated him this poorly.

Apparently shocked at this sinister vixen, Hugh jiggled his leg before biting his lip on a garble of choice phrases. Being more polite than she deserved, he asked, “Now, why did you go and do that?”

“You psycho-path Bitch,” Miss Manners, a.k.a. Katie Lee, said and stomped her foot bull’s eye on one of She-Devil’s open toe, strappy sandals.

From behind me, a freckled brunette delivered a premeditated Vulcan pinch. Her cutting nails, which had to be acrylic, dug into my shoulder, and I dropped to my knees to squirm out of the grip. Stitches split on my favorite gingham button-down, and the smell of ground-in aged yeast wafted off the floor making me convulse. Peering up, I saw a hand grabbing Macy’s neck. She dodged the invader’s fist and slammed her own knuckles under her attacker’s delicate chin.

It was an ambush, courtesy of the Tasmanian-She-Devil’s friends. As far as I could tell, there were four of them and three of us. Outnumbered, they left me no choice but to open my can of whoop-ass. I bit the bare leg in front of me, sending it into orbit. From my view line, the space we’d claimed had become infiltrated with moving Keds, ballet flats and jelly shoes. I pondered where to flee or whom to fight when some unexpected company dropped to my sight level. Curled in a ball Hugh cupped his wet crotch with both hands.

“Ouch,” I sympathetically told him, guessing that one of the girls had sandwiched his peanut butter and jelly.

Straining to speak, he motioned for me to follow him in a crawl. He led the way under a nearby table and out of the mayhem until the two of us popped up at the bar, a few feet away.

Looking back, Katie Lee stood on top of the bistro table and pushed a bar stool against She-Devil’s chest like a lion tamer. Hands tugged on her ankles. She wobbled, and we watched her leap into the crowd. Failing at an attempt to body surf, she landed hard and took two male patrons with her. Hugh shouted, “Damn,” and I cringed. Katie Lee stood up, rubbing her forehead, and I knew she’d be wearing an egg on her noggin. Katie Lee’s limbs seemed to be working, and I didn’t see blood, so I focused on locating Macy.

Back at the bistro table, Macy tucked back some dark wavy locks that had fallen in her face, and clutched the neck of an upside down Heineken bottle as a club, high in the air. The fighter girls left an open berth around her.

Stone R. and Max had abandoned their posts. In a struggle against knees and nails, each chose a girl to secure in operation straightjacket. It took two trips to shovel the girls out the door. Still in the bar, She-Devil tripped over her feet and swung her purse above her head like a lasso. My heart sank when the hot guy I’d seen wearing the tent-green-jacket lifted her under his arm, like a piece of timber. What was I thinking? Lusting after someone who had a relationship with a lunatic, who’s only positive feature was her tasteful choice in shoes, was mad.

Fantasy man carried She-Devil on a path that would cross mine. In an astral body experience, I reached behind the bar gripping the hose control for soda and water. With a single nod of his head, Hugh gave me a ‘go on’ look of consent and stood to conceal me. As they passed by, I stretched the hose under Hugh’s armpit, and power washed She-Devil’s ass with Diet Coke.

Hugh gave me a high five. “Damn good shot. I’d think twice about taking you to a rifle range. Might tarnish my standin’.”

Despite the purple turnip on Katie Lee’s noggin, she made it safely back to the table, and Macy, I noticed, she had surrendered her empty Heineken. Powdering her forehead, Katie Lee assured Max and Stone R. of our innocence. “Y’all, we’ve never seen them before. Those girls attacked us from nowhere, for no reason. We’re certainly not the type to go looking for trouble.”

Hugh backed up Katie Lee’s claim and pointed to his wet front which convinced them we were the victims. Stone smoothed Lolita’s feathers. “Y’all can stay, but no more well-drinks.”

In hopes of drying out, Hugh stood. “Go get a bar towel,” Macy suggested, “and stuff it down there.”

“Hey now. That might send a message to all the ladies in the room that I’m not prepared to answer.”

With a skinny torso and wide shoulders, Hugh carried a cowboy physique. He wore his fine blond hair in a jagged edge cut an inch short of brushing his shoulders. He was a likeable guy, but I wasn’t attracted to him in an ‘I want to rip your clothes off’ kind of way. My bells chimed for something taller that wore a green jacket and rescued crazed redheads.

Leaning toward Macy, I whispered, “Hugh looks like Tom Petty, with a mustache.”

She choked like a cat working on a hairball and the two of us left Katie Lee with Hugh to get Macy an ice water from the bar. “I don’t want to hang out with cowboy Hugh,” Macy said. “He’ll ruin our chances of meeting guys to fool around with.” I had to agree, so we went to the ladies room, smoked cigarettes outside and strolled the perimeter of the room, twice. Macy didn’t find anyone to pursue, and I was devastated. The cute guy under the parrot had left, and I fretted that it was a one-time, rare-bird sighting.