[1.2]
I was sipping on my third glass when Emma entered the bar. Despite this being our regular joint, enough eyes turned towards her and then stayed for my hand to tense around the glass. She'd always gotten this kind of attention, one way or another. But it did get rather frustrating after a while.
In typical Emma fashion, she didn't let their scrutiny faze her. Weaving through the closely packed tables she made her way towards the bar. I beckoned her with a raised hand and pushed back the bar-stool before she reached. An old vice, though not one of my worst. Still, she chuckled as she sat, asking Jake for her regular gin and tonic.
"You know," she started, swirling the top of the stool half-towards me, "one of these days you'll forget to do that and then I'm just going to be absolutely devastated."
"Then why do you ask me to stop every time?"
She smirked. "Obviously to ensure that you don't."
If the bar had had atmosphere once upon a time, it had been beaten out of it. The tables bore their deep gouges and half-broken counters with pride—just like their patrons. In the past couple of years the bar had turned from struggling dive for dockworkers, to a bohemian hangout, and then back towards some awkward amalgamation of the two. You almost expected a burly dockworker-type to walk in with a beatnik cap perched upon his forehead and awkward poetry in his hands.
The bugs I'd planted all across the bar hadn't pinged on anything, despite that initial sharp reaction to Emma's entrance.
In the end, these were my kind of people.
I had tagged each and every one of them with more than a single bug, nonetheless.
I took a deep swallow from my glass. Not the first time I'd found myself feeling excessively paranoid today. Lisa had pretty much unsettled my constitution. I couldn't decide on whether to take a getaway car or a Gatling gun to our 10 pm rendezvous. Not that I could afford a good specimen of either.
Emma placed her palm atop my tapping fingers, stilling them. Lowering her voice, she said, "You're surly today. What's wrong?"
I kept the glass aside. "I think I fucked up, Emma."
"Okay," she said, drawing out the word. "A case? Didn't know you had one right now, but… no, not that? Wrong guy? Girl? What are you in the mood for these—"
"Bigger," I said, stopping her before she went too far down that particular road.
Her fingers atop my hand tensed. "Bigger?" she asked, her voice having shed that false perkiness she had gotten so used to adopting.
I turned towards her. She wore a grey jacket from below which hints of her red dress peaked out. Her hair fell off her head in these fine strands that felt like the curtains of a decedent boudoir. Unlike her arms, her legs were uncovered and had a yellowish glow in the light of the bar—no scars there to hide. Her mouth was pursed as she leaned towards me, tense, and that highlighted the superficial scarring still left by the deep tears around her lips. I brushed the hair back from her cheeks, my fingers ghosting close enough to her empty eye socket for her to flinch back.
"Oh," she muttered, a dozen quiet moments later. "It's like that."
"It's like that."
Her shoulders collapsed inwards and her breath sped up.
"Who is it? The police? Or did the gang find out somehow?"
"I don't know." At her confused look, I continued, "A woman, Lisa, came by today. Rich as fuck. Tinker-tech up the wazoo—the kind of stuff I've never heard of. She's probably working for somebody else, but she knew things. About my powers, definitely. About the rest… probably. She didn't flat out say it, just hinted it loudly enough. Took your name a couple of times, too."
Emma smiled a wide bitter smile, and stooped back over the bar, cradling her glass. She sipped from it for a long minute, her gaze boring into the wood. And then, coming to a decision, she drowned the remainder of the drink, stood, and buttoned up her coat. "Let's go then. You should have told me to pack – I would have understood. It's not like we haven't… planned this scenario out."
Jake was ambling towards us with a frown and another bottle of beer.
Emma stood looming above me, and beyond that impassive gaze she'd long perfected, I could see little hints of gladness. Her fingers found mine again and pressed. "What are you waiting for?" she hissed.
"Sit," I said. Then smiling up at Jake's raised eyebrow, I added, "No more for me, thanks. I have work tonight."
Jake gaze lingered on us for a moment, but he bit his tongue and moved away. Only after he'd left did Emma relax her biting grip on my fingers. "What is it then," she said as she sat down again. Her coat pulled up her thighs, pushing the hem of her red dress higher. I fought the urge to pull it back down to a decent length: touching her in this mood would earn me nothing but a punch. "You're not coming with me?"
"We're not going anywhere. Not yet." I sighed, taking a sip from an empty glass. "Think Emma. You never think these things through. I told you she had tinker-tech—lots of it. How far do you think we can run from that kind of money?" I gave her my most imploring, reasonable voice, and it seemed to burrow through that wall that her anger and fear so often erected. She had a sharp mind, when she wasn't too sick to use it.
"So, you're going to scope her out? See how much she knows." She canted her head towards me. "You said you have 'Work tonight'—you already know where to look for her."
I smiled, mostly to myself. "She arranged a meeting. I guess her afternoon one didn't go as planned."
Somebody turned on the music, and the deep bass of Cohen's voice wafted across the room like the smoke from a beloved cigarette. Nobody danced to the kind of music they played here, but you still felt it in your bones. I could see half the bar moving in their own little ways to the tune: tapping toes, shivering thighs, and reverent eyes. We talked as the song progressed, and the heady perfume she wore enveloped me as I leaned close and told her about what had happened in the afternoon. The perfume was strong, too strong. If she'd applied it in the morning, it would have faded by now. But of course, she hadn't.
Half an hour later, we were out onto the streets, with the cool evening wind curling through my hair and calming the flush that had risen inexorably up my neck. My skin felt heated, sensitive and expectant.
She looked worse.
I barged on, not wanting to linger on that. "Keep yourself at the edge of Magnolia street—if it goes down sour, I'll still be able to alert you to hightail it out of there with my bugs."
"Okay."
"I'm serious, Emma. If it goes bad, you leave. Go to your father. He'll be able to protect you from whatever shitstorm these guys try to bring down on our heads."
"And where exactly are you going to be?"
"Don't talk like that. I'm not martyring myself. They've taken a lot of trouble to get to me. Don't think they're going to off me just yet."
"Okay."
I felt like wringing her neck. The blush in her cheeks and the wet wide-eyed look on her face was either arousal or excitement, it was hard to tell which. But both were equally unwelcome. "For fuck's sake Emma…"
"It's okay Taylor." She said, putting her arms on my shoulders and pulling me close. "We all have our parts: you play the hero, again, and I'm… well, you know what I am."
I closed my eyes and let her hug me. Life hadn't been good, but it had been predictable, understandable, and through that, surmountable. Lisa had turned it to shit in a single afternoon. I could feel the ghosts of our past nudging at our knees.
She spoke into my shoulders, making it worse. "It's been a while since we've done something like this, hasn't it? I'm feeling kind of excited about it now."
I pulled away, scowling. Despite it all, she was in an end just a pretty girl unable to resist a thrill. Your try to point them in the right direction, and when you can't, you just have to buckle up and protect them.
I'd learned that the hard way.
"Take a couple of Michael's guns. I hate that girly shit you carry."
She continued to give me a stupid, pretty smile.
