Elise Blackwell
Because I am not a good-looking man in anyone’s book, with my slit eyes and thorny hair, her attention could only have been eventual. Our first weeks working together were polite, her saying she’d take the left side of the bar or that one of us had better head back and make sure the bathrooms weren’t too gross.
A few weeks later, she asked my advice on a new concoction: a pousse-café she could set on fire. Everclear, I told her, for a top layer light enough to float but boozy enough to catch. Some of the layers were purple, so she called her drink a flaming violet, smiling as customers knocked back shot glasses, her tender fire extinguishing in their wet mouths.
One night a guy drank four of them before he asked if her panties were purple, too, and anyway could he smell them. Before she blinked a second time, I had a pool cue through his legs and was walking him tiptoed to the street. She tried to thank me, and I told her she wasn’t paid to put up with that kind of shit. Her glances were different after that, but I wasn’t sure if she was drawn to the protection or the whisper of violence. Both, I decided, happy I could give her anything she wanted.
Every shift I planted myself near, listening for some drunk to cross a line. I walked her to her car before trudging the party-dirty street to lock up alone. When opportunity came in the form of a barfly’s wrong word or a step too far, I relished grabbing lapels or balling my fists to prove they were ready. I’d point to the exit with a finger raised like a sword. Once or twice, I tossed a guy who’d just asked for her number, but we were a tourist place in a tourist city and didn’t depend on repeat customers.
One midnight, some real trouble came to the Quarter and I made the news for being in the right place at the wrong time. The next day, which was her night off, I felt brave enough to knock on her door. When she asked me how I’d found out where she lived, I could tell she didn’t really mind. On her little balcony she poured me a dark glass of wine, and we watched dawn seep in like fog and called it the real new year.
That’s how it all started, and just because something doesn’t end well doesn’t mean the beginning wasn’t beautiful.
Elise Blackwell is the author of five novels, including Hunger and The Lower Quarter. Her short fiction has appeared in Witness, Atticus Review, the Collagist, the Offing, and elsewhere. Her sixth novel, The Forgetting Curve, is forthcoming next year.
Photo by Aleksandr Popov on Unsplash