Little miss Mariah
Painting one's toenails is usually done at the foot of a bed, bathroom, or other such home-oriented place. However Mariah, a particularly daring specimen at the moment, was currently varnishing her smallest digits –a tasteful pink no less- at the edge of a fire escape which had had its railing stripped off for some reason or another, allowing the platform of grate-work an unimpeded view all three stories down to the bottom of an Asian alleyway.
A particularly dirty one.
Now, one might question why this girl- any girl or boy- would climb through a window and paint their toenails on a fire escape when similarly adequate articles of far more…plushness were inside the tiny hotel room just begging to host the coiled women while she adorned her feet one nail at a time.
Switching now from one foot to the other, she swathed the lacquer onto her last third, second, smallest digit and held them over the edge of her perch to dry in the hot summer breeze. Rocking them one and than the other, she slid back onto her elbows and slumped into a kind of lazy sit-up and then at last into a full and proper lay down. Using her hands as a kind of headrest, she fell into comfort and let out a long, drawn out kind of breath.
The sliver of sky between the top of the next building occupied her until it faded into the rat-work of the upper levels of fire-escape. The slim section seemed just interesting enough to draw her mind away in the blaring August heat.
A jet passed in a slow, lazy kind of way. The sort where the solid single tone of its engine just seemed too unreal to not merit some kind of blurry, unintentful stare.
The stark pencil-sketch of its engine drew across the sky. She sighed. Properly this time. Her hair drew out some of her much needed sweat and was gathered and thrown into the room, saving it from salt degradation and affording her nape the soothing contact of the platform's shade-saved coolness.
If she had her walkman in reach it would probably be on right now. But frankly, she told herself, the summer noise and a good cool patch of shade where all she needed.
The phone rang. Once too many times, and the machine ushered the caller to leave a message for when she returned. The tone bothered her.
"Hi, yeah, Mariah, umm…Lee here, your hours are set, and we discussed this, but...yeah, Claudia's toasted from that contest on Thursday, she's cool an' all, but if you…want some hours or sometin' you can come in, I'm not telling you but 7:30 tonig-"
The machine cut him off. The sun was just starting to think of maybe setting and her toes where dry.
Mariah twisted over and pulled herself through the window, her short-shorts where raunchy with sweat and her tank-top was wetted. Her closet slid open and the sill shut with a snap. Her drenched pair of Sun-time clothes flew off and she delved into her wardrobe
"I love bonus Fridays" she mused to herself.
The fan in her room buzzed its reply. The "work" sections of her garments were pulled front and center and the curtains were drawn.
She felt in her gut this summer night was just going to roll
"Tsukasa Shine" is a dance bar in North Osaka. Buried between a two story Chinese eatery and a local quarter-block storehouse, it sat on the edge of the party district and had a perennial halo of Smokers perched on two of the three exits. The front was replete with indigo and violet neon and the trademark "Shine-on moon" stamp stenciled onto the wooden gate which met the street and led to the glow- lit front door. Not exactly tall, it was easily the shortest of its immediate neighbors and had no front windows to speak of.
Just as well, it had the look of the places drifting party kids called "mystic" and never seemed to be empty. The bouncers were svelte and keen, and rarely the exact some pair. There where three and only two were male. The almost courtyard the front wood fence created corralled in the line into rows of teens propped up against the walls. The back was cushioned in garbage and fag ash while the remaining side was occupied by torched-out musical acts after their set.
Inside was usually a different matter, sporting a chalet style catwalk over the dance floor, the ceiling was ringed in lighting for both the five-member band stage and the hardwood dance floor. Music was ample and mood nights were common. Some nights blue and soft, others black and heavy, and sometimes even a little contemporary, ya' know?
The bar was black and still had loose stools, where most places had little welded bird perches.
Mariah didn't work there.
The extra-special thing about "Tsukasa Shine" was that its staff had a little bit of a thing going on. You probably think French maid outfits or mesh, but it's really more… involved.
From the day the club had opened to the latest hire, ever one of them had undergone mild anthrofication.
Big word, it means that where people had sock-stuffed tails and plastic kitty ears to kick off the 'ol instincts, you can now get a real pair for little more then a tummy-tuck (which is now affordable like cable) as well as the ever popular slit eyes, dressed up in the colour of your choice. Heals like a tattoo (also represented in force) and your ready to hit the dance floor.
It's the "new" piercing, where piercing went just a little wrong. No hipsters to ruin it.
While the cosmetics are great, the real money (for who ever) lies in a treatment that renders a dancer's grace into even the shoddiest of hip-shaker. It's a new age for the body and in the words of the next generation, flesh for the mind.
Kon Rei turned eighteen a while ago, and then he turned nineteen. Sometime later he asked for a job at Tsukasa Shine and has worked there since.
He's not really a talkative fellow.
Outgoing and pleasant enough, he mixes drinks for the melonite coated bar and keeps his personal life as simple as that.
He's told he's attractive, but he really feels too humble to believe it.
Glib is an understatement when one is asked about his past. But…that was a while ago. A Chinese man in the club culture of Japan, Rei has found himself to be more than a little at odds with…everything sometimes.
But then again… He's a little odd himself.
"Rei! can you throw me a rag?" The man named Yukio yelled up from the back room.
With no more then a smirk and a chuckle, the man up front tossed it to the door way and his co-worker's hands.
"There's some sticky crap all over the gin, did you do something back here?" he yelled up front again as the sounds of polishing glass leaped out from the back.
A woman in an ankle skirt and a monotone tube top walked in from the staff room, her Amazon green eyes slit and adjusted to the fluorescent day lights and her ears twitched upon her head. Her name was Junko.
"Yeah sure, Rei here did someone over the booze, I heard 'um yesterday. Big stud, good job." Her flat reprisal peaked at the end and she broke into a giggle. She effortlessly slid over the bar and pulled up alongside Rei and began to clean the shot glasses.
Rei chuckled again and gave her a wily smirk, then swept her into a ballroom dip and winked in his haughtiest way.
"You know me tooo well Yamarisa-san," he laughed fully this time in his moody, sultry kind of voice. "But I'd never defile the panty-remover" He winked again and shared a giggle with his fellow bartender.
"AAAHH! If this is either of yours, or some crap like that…AAH! Come on guys!" Yukio yelled up from the back. Needlessly really, out of the three only Yukio hadn't grown into his advanced anthro hearing.
"Its tonic water, Yuko, Marishi spilled the junk last night." Her roomy voice ended the man's complaints.
After that the two sneaked knowing glances at each other and made to seem like some little joke had passed between them. Neither of them could place it, for the idea of Rei screwing with some girl in the back was as absurd as Junko giving a lap dance. In public.
"So, what's up tonight? Docket wise." Rei passed to her after the pause of cleaning glasses staled.
"Nothing much, you know, Claudia's back in the bar tonight after that pole contest, I don't know if someone is coming in to-" She cut herself off as she noticed the pink haired women suddenly sitting three seats down, sipping lemonade out of a straw.
"Hi." She said with a wink and a flash of her implanted fang.
"Well hello Mariah! I thought you were off 'till Tuesday." Junko replied, sliding her pile of to-be-cleaning down in front of the new arrival. The two girls beamed and flew into a frenzy of discussion while wiping down the drinking vessels. Rei chuckled deep in his throat and drifted just a bit closer. He'd expected to clean the glasses alone, but now his work was half done without him. He finished off the highballs and hopped up onto the bar.
"So Lee called and well you know, felt like it was that kind of night." She giggled in a way as to perfectly ripple off her pastel hair and wholly pink and white attire. "Hiya' Rei," she said and glanced at the man down the bar, who was dearly trying not to look like he wanted to talk to her.
"Hello, Mariah-chan" he beamed and smiled, she reciprocated the gesture and pushed her drink away.
"How goes it?" Mariah balanced her head on her hand and her elbows on the bar. It was just past six and the chairs and tables were all out, the club opened at eight and Mariah had come with sweats over her dancing gear.
"I'm fine, better now, but you know beer, beer everywhere" He scoffed and Junko leaned against the back of the bar.
"I didn't know you drank Rei-kun" Junko took out her cigarette holder and gave it a few chews, which meant she was fixing to disappear for her break in a minute or so.
"I don't, and I can finish up here if you want." She smiled and brushed out through the back, leaving Mariah and Rei to stack the glasses back up under the bar.
"I like her skirt, you know." She mused, and swung over the bar. Rei tried to not sneak a peek at the crease between the legs of her knee pants.
"Umm, The Chinese like that sort of stuff, you know." He quipped as they both began stacking the swath of glass under the table, avoiding the others hands where ever possible.
"Really?" she locked eyes and made them laugh just a little bit.
"I wore the same one until I was eight." Rei replied and almost snorted.
"Shut up! No you didn't!" she broke into laughter and almost dropped a glass.
"Maybe…" he recovered it and rubbed his eyes.
Mariah stopped and smirked back at him. "I've got a feeling about tonight, ya' know?"
Rei flicked the cash register on and just let his mind wander. "Somethin' in the air, eh?"
Neither one really replied at all, Mariah wondered over to the staff door and turned back to him. "Yeah, I'll see you tonight Rei, okay?" He nodded and both smiled just a little bit.
"Something I should know about, no, Rei?" Junko returned from her break ripe with tobacco.
"Yeah, maybe" he replied.
Imagine some kind of bass composed of people where every surface is a kind of speaker.
That's a club for someone with jacked-up hearing like the staff at Tsukasa Shine. Pleasant in its own way.
At about a quarter to eleven, Rei was pulling up Tequila for a party of computer techs from Kowloon, while a loud and a throbbing rock-Techno beat pounded the dance floor and backlit the laser show sparkling across the quartet of cat-girls having at it go-go style while a mess of hipsters in overpriced pleather did a poor impression of the stage set example.
Rei had to marvel, as he threw a bottle up and caught it backhand before disgorging its contents into a line of shot-glasses, at just how crazy some people will get just to blow off a little steam.
"Makes ya' think…" He muttered into the noise, spinning the empty rye bottle around his palm and hearing the tip jar fill up. He was never one for cacophony but on the right night he had nothing to say to a blaring trance set but the movement of his feet. He shook them a little and then broke into a jazzy hip shake. He would have completed it had a triple set of college girls not given him a cat-call salute and made him feel more than a little exposed. He smiled and brushed it off.
"Can I help you girls with-!" he started as a waitress vaulted onto the bar and slid on cow-girl boots down the line of booze, giggling wildly as her tail brushed the gelled up hair of the patrons, all whistling their admiration for the show of agility.
"YEEEE HAW!" She cackled at hopped off the end off the counter, landing with a crash as the glasses on her tray rattled like the change piling into the tip jar.
"Merry Christmas Rei!" she called out and swept her tray into the used shelf, before hiking off her leather vest and making an overdrawn display of flattening her halter top.
He couldn't help but peel off a chuckle while she leaped right back up onto the counter and pulled off some kind of twirling club move, just as the music track switched into a remixed western play-off.
That was Claudia for you, he thought and watched her pull up the first single girl she saw onto the bar and twirl her around like skateboard.
Shaking his head, Rei pulled empty glasses out of her way and tried to keep the pair from kicking alcohol into the gathering crowd.
"Claudia, you'll kill us all!!" he mocked as she smirked and aimed a boot at him, which he ducked and the audience cheered at, the clapping and encouragement where starting to hurt his ears and it was very obvious that neither of the girls were going to last much longer, the lucky customer was half-wasted at the time and Claudia was next to carrying her around the bar.
"ONLY IF I TRY REI-REI!!" she called back and dropped the girl back into the arms of the crowd before practically slide-tackling her way to the end of the bar and disappearing out onto the dance floor.
"Who was that piece?!" one over zealous man in a wife-beater called out to Rei while he tried desperately to usher around the orders which surged in after Claudia's performance, The track changed back to a rave beat and he was drowned out in the swell of patrons wishing to get back out on the floor.
"RYE!"
"Double of So-"
"I said Tequila slam-"
"Look she's mine yo-"
"HEY TSUKI!!"
The noise melted into itself as Rei threw himself around the bar face. Junko was helping lug in more beer with Yokio while the other bar tenders were all off, and who thought three bartenders on a Friday was a good frickin' idea?!
"Here Miss" he dashed off as he thrust a dozen shots into a group he vaguely thought ordered them. They evaporated into the crush and seemed to give him enough room to stuff a handful of cash into the register and decline a rich kid the use of his credit card.
Somehow he managed to skelter around through the next five minutes and breathed a heavy sigh when Yukio emerged and worked the far side of the bar, then the crowd dispersed enough to let Yukio and he fill the rest of the orders and stock a waitress' tray with an oversized flask of Saporro.
That happened just in enough time for Rei to be unceremoniously put on break by Junko and watch the blurry wash of club dress melt behind the staff curtain. A cheer went up and a vocal number came on, meaning that a fresh dancer squad was on and the first shift of the night had just been burned off for twenty minutes to recuperate.
He cursed himself for not having a habit to indulge in and made his way down the concrete staff corridor to the modest lounge stocked with furniture which belonged in a basement somewhere.
The staff sections were built for the most part along the left side of the building; the staff lounge/makeup room was in the far corner and along with the musical prep room across the stage, boxed in the far side of the club. The owner had bought the building as an abandoned theatre and that satisfied the architectural style somewhat, the catwalk with lighting board and the management office being the only room on the second floor seemed to fill out the explanation.
While not being an especially big club, there was still enough of a walk to keep the lounge area an eight-stair case down from the stage and have a mostly empty band prep space separate from the alcohol-storage and private rooms. The sparsely lit corridor Rei had walked was buffered by plastic bottle skiffs and inexplicable boxes marked things no one read.
Rei collapsed into the closest creaking chair and thanked kami-sama for not landing on any loose springs. He let his head back and took a full ten seconds to notice anyone else.
The only male waiters were absent tonight but the DJ's assistant was sipping water from an unmarked bottle at his side.
Another thing about having such a small place to house the staff was that if the dancers had to change the other employees got kicked out and had to spend their break outside or crammed in the hall, so it always helped to know if any where about to boot you so they could dress.
Only three bartenders on duty meant one was going to be rotated out every little bit and sit by his lonesome trying to catch his breath. He didn't know if he liked that or not.
Rei had heard a new dance routine mount up just as he had left but no sweat-drenched entertainers had emerged from the shorn sheet which segregated the stage area from the club-proper.
"Long night for everyone, huh?" he posed to no one and let his head flop back again. The DJ had his headphones on and was memorizing his next beat, while a waitress who had been sprucing in one of the half-dozen desk mounted vanities didn't answer and beat it back down the tunnel. The only way the lounge heard from the outside was from the stage or the hallway, the wall facing the dance floor was solid concrete.
"KAMI-SAMA!!" came screaming through the curtain and a trio of nekojin spilled into the lounge area, decked out in suitably revealing dance-wear and the healthy sheen of a hard earned sweat.
Rei propped his head up and tried to not look destroyed as one of the girls dumped a bottle of water on herself and toweled off.
"Have fun." Said the DJ, whose name Rei had never learned, as he went back the way the foursome came, up behind the curtain and out into stage left where the music booth was set up for the night.
"Will do Koyo." The last girl to enter replied and ran a towel over her head.
"Hey Rei, lookin' beat!" Rei cocked his head and smiled at the girl, Miriama was her name and tonight she was working her raven-blue hair off a heavy striped number which left little more then her bra covered up top and show-cased her lean shaven legs below. He didn't know western clothes all that well but he had to say it looked a little like beach wear.
Two of the other women waved over to him and even gave a wink, Hilary was the one with spiked girl hair and a violet mini-skirt tank combo and a gold ring through her furry kitten ears, while a blonde woman with major red-backlights whose specific title eluded him had same kind of jacket-pant thing going on. It matched her hair.
"We saw that rat race at the bar there Rei-kun, you hanging in there?" Hilary chimed in, her own exertion showing.
"Just fine! And worry about yourself, dancing makes bar-work look like kids stuff" he dismissed and grinned. She returned the gesture and collapsed onto a sofa, the other girl joined her and neither opened an eye for a solid minute.
"They're done for tonight, Rei, are you sure you're alright?" Miriama questioned as let her high bound ponytail down and brushed out the kinks.
"Don't worry," this time he rose and relocated to a more cushioned chair, trying to keep the dancers from concerning themselves. "I can handle it. My break's over in fifteen anyways." Miriama shook her in that familiar female way and continues her brushing.
"Hey Minriama-San?"
"Huh, Rei?"
"Where's-" He was interrupted by the fourth and final member of the dancers colliding into his toned chest and then giggling wildly as her shock of cotton candy hair enveloped him.
"Mariah!" He called and managed to dump her in the most careful way onto a recliner, her skin tight vinyl clothing leaving a wet reminder across his front.
"Hehehehe!" was her jovial response as she cleared her bangs from her face and beamed her foxy yellow eyes into his.
"Audience wanted an encore." Was her simple, unasked reply to the stares of the room.
"Hehe, always a crowd pleaser, huh, Mariah?" Rei posed as he through her a towel. And she stuck out her pierced tongue comically.
"Thanks for the catch Rei-kun, I'm still on a high after all that." Her eyes twinkled, and he had to admit, her cheeks weren't the only ones to flush.