Page 11 of Come As You Are
I was still thinking about it now, days later every time I saw Vee, every time Olivia walked through the club. Vee had been off Sunday, which had given me a bit of a reprieve, but Olivia had come down to sit at the bar again that night. She’d been a complete distraction for me, but I think I’d covered well.
So, no, while Toby was trying his hardest to interfere with my work, he was having a difficult time up against the shit that was whirling through my head. I was busy counting bottles and watching Vee practice a dance routine, and couldn’t tell if I wanted Olivia to appear or to keep her distance and enable me to focus. My head was a busy space at the moment, and Toby’s antics barely registered.
“I need to head to the storeroom,” I told him when I finished my count. We were down on some staples, and I also wanted to check on the stock. I still wasn’t sure what had happened a few weeks back, but I’d been keeping an eye on what was in the back room ever since then, surreptitiously keeping my own inventory tally on my phone. Today, I had something else I wanted to check. “When I get back, I want to try out some new drinks. How’s your liver today?”
Toby flashed me a wicked grin. “Ready and willing,” he said and snapped me a salute as I lifted the bar pass.
It had occurred to me that morning that there was more than one way to skim premium liquor besides stealing the bottles from the storeroom, and I had had an idea on how to figure out if that was the case. Under the guise of trying out some new drinks, I was going to pull a few premium bottles and sample what wasin them, then compare them against what was on the shelf in the bar. If my suspicions were correct, I’d probably find that what was in the bottles wasn’t the same as the newly opened bottles from the storeroom.
The only risky factor in my plan was being caught by Mal who would tell me it was wasteful to open a new bottle when there was already a bottle at the bar. It wouldn’t be the first time Mal had disagreed with me on how to run the bar, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but something wasn’t sitting well with me at all.
The storeroom was cool and quiet even before I closed the door behind me and blocked out the chaos coming from the club. I loved this space because it was peaceful, but today it gave me a bit of breathing room and a chance to get my head on straight before my crush on Olivia got me in trouble. That I was attracted to Olivia was not news to me. I think I’d been in love with her from the moment Antonio hired me. I’d tried hard to keep my feelings under wraps because she was Antonio’s assistant manager and sister, and I would never do anything to jeopardize my job or make her feel uncomfortable around me. I think I succeeded about ninety-five percent of the time.
Or at least I had until that dance with Vee and the way Olivia had watched us.
The feel of Vee against me had been more intoxicating than One-Fifty-One rum. It had made all sorts of inappropriate thoughts run through my head, fantasies I had no idea I harbored of threesomes starring myself and Olivia and Vee.
I shook my head to clear away those thoughts and concentrated on finding the case of Belvedere that had come in last week. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be, which puzzled me because I was the one who had received the order and put everything into inventory. I didn’t want to have to tear the storeroom apart, but I noticed some other cases had been shiftedas well. My organizational system was shot to hell, and my blood boiled at the thought that Mal had been in here changing where things were located without telling me. It would make it trickier to find things quickly in the middle of a shift if I didn’t put things back the way I needed them to be. With a sigh I set to work, alternating between pissed off and bewildered as I moved boxes and bottles.
I’d just found the case of Belvedere when Vee burst through the storeroom door. He glanced frantically at me, then around the space, settling for a moment on the shelves behind me before stammering out some bullshit excuse about forgetting where the bathroom was and apologizing for startling me. With a last glance at the shelves, and then at me, he left.
With a shake of my head, I turned back to the case of vodka that had initiated my need to reorganize the storeroom, but something niggled at me about Vee’s entrance. Curious, I turned to look at the shelving unit behind me and realized it had been pulled away from the wall by about a foot. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now it was clear it had been moved. When I peered around the corner, I understood why. Someone had created a small nest behind the shelves out of blankets. Space on the lowest shelf for a backpack and some photos had been carved out by pushing the boxes of liquor forward and then using cardboard to create a false back. It would be almost impossible to see that anything was amiss unless you were specifically looking for it.
I stepped around the end of the shelves and looked at the makeshift bed. It was easy enough to figure out that Vee had been sleeping here. I would have suspected it even without the photos of him and his brothers, and I was pretty sure it hadn’t been going on for too long. The space didn’t smell like he’d been here for more than a couple of days. Not that I was an expert or anything, but I’d lived in a squat with no running water for afew months. A space like this would definitely have developed an odor if Vee had been living here since he started at Illyria.
Mal would hit the roof if he found out, so I gathered up his things, put them in a box, and planned to talk to him after Olivia’s meeting. Then I finished up what I needed to do in the storeroom and got out of there.
Vee eyed me as I returned to the bar, the box with his things in my arms along with a couple of bottles. I nodded at him, then tipped the box in his direction. When his eyes grew wide, I winked at him and shook my head. Hopefully he got the message that I was covering for him and wouldn’t freak out too badly before I had a chance to speak with him.
At eleven o’clock, Olivia came down the stairs from her office accompanied by Mal. I could tell just by looking at her that what she had to say wasn’t good news, and unfortunately I was right. The club was in financial trouble.
“It’s not so dire that closing our doors is imminent,” Olivia said. “But we don’t have a lot of room for unplanned expenses. I’m hopeful that with the holidays, we’ll make up our shortfall, but I also am open to any ideas any of you might have for special events or ways to bring more customers in on our least busy days.” She glanced at Mal with narrowed eyes, a definite warning in her expression. “You’re welcome to come to me directly or to Mal who will pass on any and all ideas.”
There were murmurs among the employees. It was unsettling to hear that your employer was having financial difficulties, but I also thought there was a note of optimism as well.
“What about a pageant or dance-off?” someone asked.
All heads turned in the direction of the speaker, and I was surprised to see it had been Vee who’d spoken.
“What are you thinking?” Olivia asked.
“Like a drag queen pageant or a dance contest for go-go boys,” Vee said. “We could invite performers from all the Castro clubs. It would be kind of like a Castro’s Got Talent thing.”
“A talent show?” Mal scoffed.
“No,” Vee responded, and I thought his voice was a bit sharp. “It would just be open to people who already perform in the clubs. We could even do it as a charity event and raise donations for a local nonprofit.”
“The idea is to make money for—” Mal said, but Olivia cut him off.
“Let’s talk about it,” she said. “Vee, come up to my office after lunch.”
Vee blushed. “I don’t know how to organize something like that. It was just an idea.”
“And it’s a good one. I want to explore it some more, flesh it out a bit, then come back to everyone so we can see who wants to be involved. You won’t have to take this on, getting it organized will be my job. Okay?”
Vee nodded, and Olivia asked if anyone else had thoughts about events the club could put on, but no one else had anything near as good as Vee’s suggestion. At least as far as I was concerned.
The meeting broke up soon after, and Maria and the queens headed out for lunch as did most of the go-go boys. Vee hung back, and I knew he wanted to talk with me about the storeroom, so I nodded my head down the hallway and told Toby I’d forgotten something I needed for one of the new drinks I was envisioning. He nodded and waved me on my way, a lazy smile on his face.
