Future's Past, part 10
Will Riker's personal log, May 11, 2008, Kansas City, Missouri
How many nights has it been? What, seven or eight? At least a week, but I've stopped keeping track since Tasha moved out.
We'd had another argument. It wasn't as loud as the first blowup we'd had, but there were far too many low blows exchanged, the type that aren't easily taken back. Unfortunately, most of them came from me. And I deeply regret that.
Surely she'll come back, after she cools off.
We made the fortuitous decision to get cell phones around three months ago. I haven't tried to call her, but I hope her phone's battery was well-powered before her hasty exit. She left her charger plugged into the bedroom outlet.
One week earlier, May 2, 2008
Tasha had the kind of evening at work that tempted her to quit her job, and join folks hanging out on street corners. She was tired of people drinking themselves into sickness, of her feet hurting, of being treated like shit by patrons who trampled their way through life. She wanted to throttle a man for whistling to call her to their table, as if she were a dog.
Tonight's bachelorette party had been lively, too long, too crowded. Attendees had been a bit too friendly with the band (not that the band minded), and became so obnoxious that they were cut off from purchasing more drinks.
That resulted initially in arguments. And then, predictably, everyone started getting sick from having piled Long Island Iced Teas atop the glasses of wine they'd sipped earlier.
Tasha was assisting one of the revelers—the maid of honor, as it turned out—toward the bathroom when remnants of the evening came up. The inebriated woman, already wobbly on her feet, slumped into Tasha's embrace and vomited over her shoulder, down the collar of her shirt and the backs of her legs.
Gary sent her home to shower. But it was early enough in the evening that she needed to return to work after she'd cleaned up and changed. She declined his offer of a ride back to her apartment, not wanting to mess up the vehicle's interior, and walked back to the apartment.
Dribbles of vomit had migrated into her socks and shoes. Her entire back was coated with it, and rivulets had run down the backs of both her legs. She was walking with her back to the wind, so it was impossible for her to ignore the stink of half-digested Sushi and liquor. She tried to ignore her left shoe that squished with every step.
But when she arrived at the apartment, she discovered the door had been dead bolted. She couldn't get in without kicking the door open. And the telltale block of wood was hanging outside the door.
"Oh, fuck me. . ." she muttered. No, fuck him, she thought. He's the one getting lucky tonight. . . She knocked at the door, gently at first, then more urgently. She absolutely had to get into the shower. The stink of vomit wafting around her was making her nauseous.
After a couple of minutes, the door cracked open and Will leaned sideways to peer out into the hallway. He was disheveled, sweaty, missing his shirt. She suspected he was missing more than that.
"What is so important?" he hissed through the barely open door. "I'm busy!"
"I need a shower and a new set of clothes," she whispered. "Someone threw up on me but they need me back at work."
"OK, hold on," he replied, then shut the door. Maybe he's getting dressed, she thought.
A minute later, the door opened again—barely—and one pair of jeans and a t-shirt were stuffed through the barely open door, which shut and locked again before the clothes even landed on the floor.
Tasha initially didn't know what to do as she stared at the pile of clothes wrinkling on the floor. Suddenly outraged that he'd lock her out when she really needed to come inside, she kicked the base of the door.
"Will, I am covered in vomit!" she called out, almost shouting, her voice echoing throughout the dark hallways. She knew their neighbors already wondered about them, but up until that moment she never had cared what they thought, before.
Now, it mattered. How messed up was this? Her roommate had locked her out so he could screw around with some woman he'd just met, again. She fleetingly thought about kicking the door in, but that would result in repair bills, plus they'd never be able to secure the door until it was fixed, and then their landlord would be on their case . . .
Humiliated, she picked up her clothes and walked back to the bar. She slipped in the back entrance, and did the best she could to clean herself up with paper towels in the back bathroom. She changed her shirt and jeans, but needed to wear the same shoes and socks. She tied her vomit-covered clothes and socks in a trash bag that she'd take back to the apartment, and had decided that Will was doing the laundry for the next two weeks. He owed her, big time.
"I thought you were going to take a shower," Gary remarked, drawing beer for another group of people.
"Will had company," Tasha replied. "He shoved some clean clothes out the door."
"You're kidding!" Gary said. "He didn't let you in to take a shower?"
"I'll deal with it when I get home."
"I'd like to be a fly on your wall when you get hold of him."
She just shrugged. "I'll deal with it later," she said.
"Now I'm glad you're off tomorrow."
Most patrons were too blitzed to know what had happened to her. Others could tell, but they made their own assumptions. As Tasha delivered four pitchers of beer to the table that included the man who had whistled at her, earlier, he caught that unmistakable whiff of vomit that she'd been unable to completely scrub away with wet paper towels and bathroom soap.
The man made a face at her.
"Goddamn, are you bulimic or what?" he said, and then laughed. Tasha stared at him, failing to see the humor in much of anything, at that point.
May 3, 2008
After closing the bar at 0200, Tasha wandered for an hour, then nodded off in JC Nichols Park. She wasn't about to go back to the apartment so she could spend the night in the hallway again. So she watched the sunrise and recalled the last time she'd spent the night in this park, nearly a year ago and under similar circumstances.
What is it about May? she thought, glancing at her watch. The coffee shop was open by then, so she walked three blocks, had a leisurely cup and pretended that everything was just fine. She waited there until 0800, until she was sure that Will's company had departed, and then returned to the apartment.
The woman had left by then. Will was asleep on his bed, barely stirring as Tasha grabbed some clothes and fresh towels, and finally had a shower.
By the time she emerged from the bathroom, she knew what she needed to do and had hoped he would still be asleep so she could quickly pack a bag and get out without an argument. Tasha normally wasn't one to avoid conflict, but she knew if they fought now, she'd say things she'd regret, later. But he was awake, standing at the refrigerator, drinking milk right from the carton. He heard her rummaging around in the bedroom.
"Sorry about last night," he called out.
When she didn't respond, he walked back into the bedroom and saw her stuffing clothes into her backpack.
"Going somewhere?" he said, sounding as innocent as possible.
She glared at him, but kept moving, grabbing two more shirts. "Will—," she began.
"Yes, that's my name," he replied, not hiding his sarcasm.
"—smartass, you aren't even listening!" she interrupted, equally angry.
"What, then?"
"I have slept in that hallway," she said, her voice intense and cutting, more forceful with every syllable. "I have eaten meals on the floor out there while people walked past. I have listened to our neighbors insult you for being such a womanizer, and insult me for putting up with it! And last night, I was locked out again, only this time I was wearing someone else's vomit and I needed a shower."
"I gave you some clothes!" Will replied. "Maybe you should bring extra clothes to work, since you seem to be a target for beer and vomit and urine and who knows what else."
"I ought to be able to take a shower in my own apartment!" Tasha countered. "I shouldn't have had to BS my way through explaining to Gary why I'm cleaning myself up with paper towels in the back bathroom. This whole—everything about this is fucked up! I put up with it for awhile—."
"Can you climb out of the gutter and speak Standard?"
"No Standard verb can describe what is going on—"
"Complicated," he suggested.
"Yes! That's—thank you! It's complicated," she agreed. "And fucked up. I'm done!"
"Where are you going?"
"Out of here,"
"Where?"
"I don't know, yet," she said, and that was true. She had a few ideas, but only knew for certain that she needed to leave.
"What about rent—."
"I don't know, yet!" she said. "We just paid it, and we've got three weeks. I just need some time, and I need to get out of here before I say something that I might regret."
"I'm glad you've gained some tact, but your impulsiveness still needs work," he said.
She saw no reason to mince more words.
"I really worry about you," she finally admitted, her gaze boring into his. "If we can both catch colds that are going around here—and supposedly we've been vaccinated against all of that—there's some scary, sexually transmitted stuff also going around, and it's not like you've got Beverly Crusher around to bail you out of that mess if inoculations don't protect you."
"Thanks, Mom," he said. "I have better taste than that in my dates," he replied. "Stephanie works at the gallery. You'd like her. She's into yoga."
"Oh, last night it was Stephanie. I see she hung around like all the others did," Tasha remarked. "What is the Will Riker 'ho count these days?"
He stared at her, feeling his anger reach the boiling point within a second. Then he went for the jugular.
"How about I cut right to the point?" Will came back. "You aren't one to be talking. In your pre-Starfleet line of work, you were exposed to at least as much as I have been. Am I right? Only you didn't have a choice in your 'dates'," he continued, completely intending to hurt her, throw her off balance. "I'd be willing to bet there was as much disease on Turkana as there is, here. But you came out of that all right, correct?"
"In one manner of speaking," she replied, through her teeth, figuring that he couldn't have understood the ramifications of what he'd just said. It had taken a Federation hospital admission just after her escape from Turkana to treat the physical scarring, both from trauma and from disease. She was told that she was lucky, that she would heal completely, and that she could still have children if she wanted to.
I guess I came out of it all right, minus a lifetime of nightmares and near-paralyzing insecurity, and always second-guessing my worth. . .hey, I came out of it all right, Will. But she wasn't going there outwardly. She knew that was his aim, to tear her down so she'd back off.
"Is sex all you think about?" she said, trying to redirect the assault back toward him, to ignore that he had really, really hurt her with what he'd just said. "Is that the extent of your relationship ability?"
He rolled his eyes.
"Well, at least someone living in this apartment is having a relatively normal sex life," he came back. "At least with something that isn't on a positronic network."
She didn't bat an eye, though she hadn't prepared for him to bring Data into this.
"You're rolling with low blows this morning," she said, walking toward the door. "Hope you feel better, now that that one's out there, too."
"Thought I'd do an encore comeback after your 'ho count' remark," he replied. "Because you're not the one to be talking."
I need to get out of here, she thought, genuinely hurt but still holding her head high, still thinking of the next comeback. That was about all she had left; withering pride and a smartass attitude. She glanced around the apartment, hoping she had everything that she needed, because she could feel a lump building in her throat.
"Well, my regards to Stephanie Sloppy Seconds, or whatever the hell her name is—" Tasha finally said, pushing past him as she walked toward the door. But he wasn't finished with her, yet.
"How comforting, to have a tough-upbringing-sob-story so people will feel sorry for you," he added, and he wasn't moving from where he stood in the kitchen to follow her. "Must be nice to be able to omit that you worked in a brothel, but I guess it's convenient, isn't it? No one feels sorry for a whore."
"I hate you," she hissed through clenched teeth, refusing to look back even as she slammed the door behind her.
43rd Place, May 12, 2008
Tasha had picked up weather-related cynicism in the past year, watching bar patrons shouting at TV weathercasters who interrupted programming over and over. Litigation-leery TV station managers directed broadcasters to overreact rather than risk being sued by viewers who felt they weren't warned sufficiently about impending danger.
The result was incessant breaks in programming, which quickly grew old, especially to native Midwesterners who knew how to read tweather patterns. Sports weren't the only programs that elicited a response from the bar crowd.
One perky, local weathercaster who meant well but viewed every rainstorm as potential catastrophe for the entire viewing area, stayed on the air much longer than all the others. As clouds began bubbling up across the central plains, she often interrupted regularly scheduled programming for a long-winded description of . . . nothing.
"What the hell?" one of the bar patrons was getting upset. "We're gonna miss Survivor!"
"What's going on?" Tasha asked. She'd just come back down the stairs, empty tray in hand, and heard the groans that usually meant someone had either fouled out or dropped a ball. But the game wasn't on. Instead, they seemed fixated on a popular network program that seemed stupid and staged to Tasha. But bar patrons enjoyed it, so it brought in business. Some crowds even had viewing parties there.
People in this century seemed so easily entertained.
But instead of watching bedraggled campers bickering at each other and participating in 'challenges,' they got to hear about the jet stream and downdrafts.
"Oh, it's raining in Chillicothe," Gary muttered. "Nothing's going on! Lady Doomsday just likes to hear herself talk. I'm waiting for her to tell us to put football helmets on our kids and have the whole family sleep in the basement. Remember when she did that last year—?"
"This is Tornado Alley!" the patron said, laughing throwing his hands in the air. "The wind blows and it rains here. If people are too ignorant to know what to do, they need to get the hell out! Move to Alaska!"
That remark reminded Tasha of Will Riker, an Alaska native who wasn't at the bar tonight to defend his home. He hadn't come in at all in the past week, and that was fine with her. She had hopped aboard a city bus after leaving the apartment, and rode all the way up to North Kansas City, across the Missouri River and back again, just considering her options. She remained so angry at him that she had to force herself not to think about him, so her thoughts didn't snowball.
Though she was welcome to stay at Reconciliation, she was reluctant at first to do that until Day 3, when she finally told her manager that she and Will were "having problems, but he's not a danger to me and we're just taking a break" and that she needed someplace to stay until they worked things out, one way or another.
The Rec manager, LaDonna, was only upset about one thing: That Tasha hadn't said something sooner. When she wasn't working at the bar, she became entrenched in life around the Rec, complete with the usual crowd of drunks who showed up for their daily bread. At this point, she knew many of them on a first-name basis.
The center and adjacent church were in the throes of preparing for it annual community festival, so that kept Tasha busy, making phone calls and helping organizers to plan a festival she hadn't been to, before, where there would be plenty of music and activities and food. She liked being busy. It kept her from thinking too much.
Gillham Park, Kansas City, Missouri, May 14, 2008, 1430 hours
The weather had been unusually hot and humid all day. By noon, the digital thermometer at The Rec registered 90 degrees. Tasha had grown accustomed to the Fahrenheit scale, but was always relieved to see the Celsius measurement . . . though, not on this day, when it said 32 degrees. Yuck, and it's only noon, she thought.
News outlets had been squawking about the weather all morning, about how it was supposed to get ugly later in the afternoon. But it was always "supposed" to get ugly, and then it would only rain, and then bar patrons would shout at the television weathercasters for "making too much out of nothing".
Tasha was walking to work, cutting across Gillham Park, five blocks from work but only a couple of blocks from the apartment. She stole a glance in that direction, but quickly saw something else that ominously caught her attention.
The sky toward the southwest was darker than usual, and clouds were roiling overhead, moving in her direction. Gillham Park was large enough that Tasha knew she wouldn't have time to make it to any structure, let alone to the bar.
Tasha heard the wind picking up, and opted to cower beneath the only shelter immediately available: A tree.
Large drops of rain began pummeling the area, then blew sideways. Tasha braced herself behind the tree, where the wind wasn't as intense, but still was immediately drenched by the torrential wind picked up again, and chunks of hail began shattering on the nearby sidewalk.
Huddled next to the tree, Tasha covered the back of her head with one hand, and held onto the tree trunk with the next. Winds were whipping around her, and anything that wasn't tied down went flying past: Tree limbs, innumerable leaves, trash. She felt several, hard objects strike her, felt her eyelids being peeled off her eyes. She tried to stand up, intent on running across the street to the nearest building. But the wind made standing difficult, and walking next to impossible. So she hunkered down again, on the opposite side of the tree, which offered only 20 centimeters worth of protection against the whipping wind and hail. She felt something strike the top of her head.
Tasha didn't know her scalp was bleeding until after the wind let up a few minutes later. Entire tree branches were down, car alarms blared all around, and the city took on an eerie cast of light. Torrential rain still fell, but by then the wind had let up enough for her to run to the nearest building.
Somewhat dazed and bleeding, Tasha stepped over clumps of leaves and debris and waded across a flooding side street to an apartment complex. The building was locked, but it had an overhang so she could assess her situation.
She was drenched to the bone, but could feel and taste blood dripping into her mouth from someplace on the top of her head. Initially rebuffing attempts by passersby to go to the hospital, she finally blurted the excuse that she planned to go home, instead, and that it was "just over there," she'd said, nodding toward her own apartment building, one block away.
But she walked past it, and retreated to the bar, instead.
43rd Place Bar & Grill, May 14, 1500 hours
"Oh my God, were you outside when that hit?" Shaun Conaghan greeted Tasha Yar as she straggled inside.
There was no electricity, and the bar would be closed for business until power could be restored. Some patrons waited for the rain to subside before leaving. Tasha was immediately worried about the potential for looting, since she didn't know how widespread the damage was. Electrical outages made businesses prime targets.
She trudged inside the bar, leaving puddles everywhere she stepped. Rainwater dripped off her jacket, and a thin line of blood trickled down the left side of her face. Her bedraggled appearance drew some good-natured cheers from some regulars, but concern from others.
"You OK?" Shaun asked again. He was worried, by then. She hadn't snapped one of her typical comebacks, but instead trudged back to the employee bathroom. "Hey, your head's bleeding."
"I'm all right," she finally replied. "I just need to be back here for a minute."
"There's no light back here," Shaun said. "We don't have any power."
Tasha nodded, stopping to drop her bag behind the bar. She finger-combed her soaked hair away from her face, then winced when her fingertips touched one of several lumps on her head. "I tried to cut through that park on Gillham, and didn't make it," she said. "I never thought it would be that bad."
"Those hailstones were as big as golf balls," Shaun remarked. "Like you needed another hole in the head."
Tasha didn't know how big a golf ball was, and didn't care. She only knew that her head felt like it had been pummeled with rocks. Her hands and arms hurt, also, contused from protecting her head. Better my hands than all over my head, Tasha thought.
"43rd Street is closed just east of Mission Road from fallen trees," Gary was saying to a patron about to leave. He'd driven to the bar from his house to check on the damage, and was giving the closed-road report to anyone heading west. Then his brow furrowed as he saw Tasha had a head wound from falling debris. "She all right?"
Tasha nodded her head.
"Look up at me for a second," Gary asked, putting both his hands on her shoulders. Tasha blinked, then glanced up at him.
"What year is this?" he asked.
"2364," Tasha stammered. "No, it's 2008."
Shaun's brow furrowed. "Did you say 2364?"
"No, I said 2008."
"You said 2364," Gary said.
"Yeah, that storm must have knocked me into the future," she replied, her face flushing as she shook her head, hoping it came across as a joke. "I'll be fine."
"You've got to learn to read the weather around here. When you see that darkness over the treetops to the southwest, a wall of dark gray clouds dangling lower, you'd better be finding shelter," Gary said. "From now on, you get inside. I want you to stay here for awhile so I can keep an eye on you. Your head got hit pretty hard."
Tasha only nodded, and didn't argue when Gary ordered her to stay seated while he, Shaun and Al closed the place up. Gary found some ibuprofen for her, which took the edge off her headache.
Kansas City Power & Light personnel supposedly were on their way, but he suspected it would be a long wait for him. The entire neighborhood was without power.
"How are you doing?" Gary asked after about 45 minutes.
"Oh, I'm humiliated," Tasha replied.
"That's a good sign. That means you'll be all right."
She nodded.
"2364," he remarked.
"I don't know why I said that," she replied, but she could feel her heart beating faster. Did I really say that? How could I have been so stupid?
"Anything you want to tell me about?" he asked, straight-faced.
She looked up at him. "Not really," she responded.
He shrugged. "All right, suit yourself," he said. "I'm going to be here until our power comes back on just to make sure nothing catches on fire. Shaun will give you a ride back to your place."
Tasha initially protested, but didn't want to tell either of them why. The last place she wanted to be was the apartment, but she wasn't about to tell Shaun Conaghan that she'd left the apartment, nor that she was staying at a shelter. But Shaun was persistent, and finally she relented to a five-block ride in the front seat of his pickup, which smelled like vanilla beans from a fragrance card that hung from the rearview mirror.
She'd never been inside a automobile, before, and struggled with the seatbelt, having never used one until now. She copied what Shaun did, then watched intently as he activated the ignition with car keys that he'd kept in his pocket.
"Where's your apartment?"
"37th and Washington," she replied, already formulating a plan of action after she arrived. She'd play along with being dropped off, but wasn't planning on going upstairs.
"This is it, right here," she said.
"Sure you're all right?" Shaun asked as she struggled to unlatch the seatbelt.
"Yeah, I just . . . don't know how to get this loose," she said, somewhat flustered. He reached over and pushed the bright, red button, and the belt unlatched. "Thanks," she said, and stepped out of the truck. "You working tomorrow?"
"No, I get to take a pharmacology final tomorrow," he replied. "I'll be in on Friday and Saturday."
"I'll see you Friday, then," she said. "Thanks for the ride."
Tasha walked into the apartment building, rounded the corner after climbing the first flight of stairs, then stood against the wall where Shaun couldn't see her through the front door. One minute later, after she was sure Shaun's vehicle had left the neighborhood, she exited the apartment complex and walked back north, toward The Rec.
At the apartment, May 15, 2008, 1130 hours
Will was shaking his head at himself, wondering what had possessed him to leave the southwest corner window open when he knew there was bad weather approaching. The storm had struck yesterday, and even though he'd slammed those windows shut and had blotted dry the carpet, it still was damp and now the apartment smelled dank.
It didn't help that there was no electricity, thanks to the storm, so there was no air conditioning. But otherwise, Will didn't possess much that needed electricity. His cellphone had been charged when the storm hit, and now the charger cord sat idle, alongside Tasha's cellphone cord, which she'd forgotten to grab.
He was re-reading yesterday's paper when his cell rang, and a dart of adrenalin shot through him. He hoped it was Tasha.
"Hey, Will, it's Shaun Conaghan, from softball."
"Hi, Shaun! How are you?" Will replied.
"I'm glad to be done with finals," he said. The pharmacology final at 8 that morning had been an absolute bitch. "I was just checking up on Tasha. Is she all right? She's not answering her cellphone."
"She's not here," Will replied, a pang of concern arcing through him. "Why wouldn't she be all right?"
"What, she didn't make it into the apartment?"
"She moved out last week," Will replied. He no longer saw any no point in lying about it. "What happened?"
"She got caught outside when that storm came through and hailstones hit her on the head," Shaun said. "She was sort of dazed, so I dropped her off at the apartment late yesterday afternoon."
"She never came into the apartment," he replied. "She forgot her cellphone charger, so her phone probably is dead."
Shaun sighed. "Shit," he said. "Man, I'm sorry. I didn't know all that had happened."
"Yeah, me too," Will replied. "And now I'm worried. I've been here since I got home from work Tuesday night, so if she'd been here, I'd have seen her."
"You know where she's staying?"
"No, I don't," he replied. "She volunteers at a shelter at 31st and Troost and she goes to that dojo off Broadway and 39th. She might be there. I'll try getting hold of her and have her call you back. Other than that, I don't know where she'd be."
Reconciliation, May 15, 1330 hours
"Hey, Tasha, you got a phone call," LaDonna shouted across the gymnasium, where Tasha was shelving folded-up stretchers that had been used the night before. LaDonna already had confronted Tasha about the bruises on her arms, and wasn't sure Tasha hadn't just been in a fight, instead of being out in the weather like she said she was.
Hope it's those folks from St. Theresa's, Tasha thought, striding into the office to take the call. She was waiting for one more vendor to return a call about the community festival, and had placed a call the week before to St. Theresa's Hospital. But it wasn't the hospital calling.
"How are those lumps on your head?" the voice on the other end was to-the-point.
It was Will Riker.
"My head is fine, thanks," she replied, forcing coolness over her voice even though she was a bit flustered inside. How the hell does he know about what happened, she thought.
"When are you coming back?"
"I don't know," she said.
"Well, you need to do two things," he said with a terse tone, because he was in no mood for going nowhere. "You need to come get your charger cord. It's here in the apartment. And you need to call Shaun Conaghan, and tell him that you're all right. He was worried about you and called me, since you weren't answering your cell phone."
She didn't reply, her mind in tumult.
"Are you there?" he finally asked.
"Yeah, I'm here."
"When are you coming back?"
She was silent.
"Tasha . . ." he began.
"I need to go," she said, and abruptly hung up the telephone.
43rd Place, 1430 hours
On his way to work that afternoon, Will stopped at the 43rd, to offer his olive branch. He didn't know whether she'd be there that early, or not. Gary was there, but Tasha hadn't arrived, yet.
Hi, Will," Gary remarked. "How've you been?"
"I've been . . . in the doghouse," Will replied.
"I heard Tasha was the one in the doghouse."
"She's the one who left, I'm the one in the figurative doghouse," Will said. "I brought her cellphone charger. She stormed out of the apartment without it."
"I'll make sure she gets it when she comes in to work this afternoon," Gary replied, grabbing the wound-up cord off the bar and stashing it beneath the back counter. "You want something to drink?"
"No, but thanks," Will said. "I've got to be at work in 20 minutes.
"How about a glass of water, at least?"
Will nodded. "Sure," he replied.
Gary slid a small glass of ice water down the bar toward Will, who was glad to have it.
"You have any storm damage?" Gary asked, figuring he'd continue the conversation with something simple, before getting to the meat-and-potatoes of what he really wanted to know.
Will shook his head. "Just wet carpet from having the window open," he replied. "It's still drying, but it should be all right. How about you?"
"Lost power here, had a few branches down onto the back deck, but no real damage," Gary said. "Tasha came in here yesterday with lumps on her head and blood running down the left side of her face, from being outside when the storm hit. She was a little out of it, so I asked her some easy questions, what year it was. Know what she said?"
"Uh, 2008?" he replied. What else would she have said?
"She said 2364," Gary said.
Oh shit, Will thought, suddenly grateful that years of poker playing had given him a nonchalant expression, even as a jolt of semi-shock shot through him. "She said what?" he managed to reply.
"The year 2364."
"Why the hell would she have said 2364?" Will asked, trying to foist across the most innocent tone he could.
Gary shrugged. "I don't know," he replied. "Just thought it was interesting."
If we get found out, we'll wind up in the mental health ward, or under arrest, or both, Will thought. What the hell was she thinking? He forced calm over himself.
"That is interesting," Will finally said. "Other than not knowing what year it is, how's she doing?"
"Fine, as far as I can tell," Gary replied. "Very pissed off at you. She hasn't said much about it, but I can tell she's pretty mad."
"Yeah, I screwed up," Will remarked, admitting it outright. "I was thinking with one head, and one head only, that night."
"Your date must've been something," Gary replied with a glint in his eye.
"She sure was," Will replied. "Hey, aren't you married?"
"Well, Kim and I have a rule," Gary said. "I'm a guy. I'm gonna look at beautiful women even though I'm married to one, and Kim's gonna drool at the triathlete who trains down our street even though she's married to a 45-year-old guy whose hair is thinning and going gray. Bottom line, we can window shop. We just can't go try anything on, know what I mean?"
Will nodded, grinning back. "That's a fair rule."
"I thought you and Tasha weren't a couple."
"Oh, we're not," he replied. "It's just . . . complicated."
Gary nodded. "I don't doubt that."
43rd Place, Friday, May 16, 2008, 2330 hours
Thanks to a packed house of patrons (many of whom had just finished Finals Week from the nearby University of Missouri's Kansas City campus), Tasha could pretty much avoid anything more than work-related conversations with Gary Tobin and Shaun Conaghan.
Gary knew that things had happened, but wasn't one to sweat things that weren't major. He also knew her well enough by then to understand that the best therapy was hard work, and this was a good night for that. But Shaun didn't so much as look at her for a couple of hours, then saw his chance when he saw her retreating to the back bathroom. He was waiting in the back hallway when she reemerged, and cut right to the point.
"Why didn't you tell me you'd moved out?"
She stopped in her tracks. "Because I don't like dragging people into my business."
"You still could have told me," he said. "I tried calling you that next morning to make sure you weren't dead."
"Yeah, Will told me you called."
"And he told me you'd moved out last week," Shaun said. "You didn't need to lie to me about that."
"I don't want to talk about this, right now—," she began.
"I was worried about you!"
"Thanks, but I'm not going to discuss this—" she pushed past him, intending to dive right back into work. He knew better than to physically stop her from leaving. She could toss him over the bar counter without much effort if she wanted to.
Still, she sensed him right behind her, she turned and shot him a dirty look. He immediately backed off, holding his hands up and glaring right back at her. He grabbed a tray and disappeared upstairs while Tasha darted behind the bar.
"Holy mofo, did you see that?" observed the tipsier of two women sitting at the bar. They had seen the interaction between Tasha and Shaun. Thanks to their out-loud observation, so had Gary.
"Tasha," Gary said.
"Yeah?" she took a few steps to stand beside him, so she could hear what he was saying over the live band's tuning up.
"I don't know what it's about, and I don't care," Gary remarked, quietly but firmly. "You two will cease fire while you're working in here. Got it?"
"Yes, sir," Tasha replied, instinctively adding the 'sir'.
"Stop 'sirring' me," he remarked, half smiling. "I just manage the place."
Tasha and Shaun ignored each other for the rest of the night, until 0115, when Tasha was upstairs, piling empty glasses onto a tray to be delivered to the dish room. Shaun was doing the same thing, without a tray, across the other side of the upstairs loft.
After crossing the loft while hoisting eight glasses by their rims, Shaun plopped them all onto Tasha's tray.
"I've got this," he said tersely, starting to slide the tray toward the edge of the table so he could pick it up more easily. But instead of picking it up, he took a step closer to Tasha and leaned against his knuckles onto the table, looking sideways at her.
"I know you're tougher than any of us, which is great, because I was tired of getting my ass kicked by drunks before you started working here," he said, keeping his voice low in case anyone — especially Gary — might be within earshot. "But if you want to keep ignoring people who care about you, that's chickenshit cowardly, and that's not you."
Her initial, angry glance in his direction softened somewhat, but remained intense.
"So, I'll see you tomorrow," he said, hoisting the tray to carry it downstairs. "And don't forget your charger cord. I don't want to know where you'll be plugging it in."
43rd Place, Saturday, May 17, 2008, 1550 hours
Pre-rush time at the bar was typically quiet enough for bartenders and wait staff to restock and prepare for the Onslaught of the Thirsty, as Shaun put it. He was in a giddy mood, having finished his finals earlier that week, and was looking forward to taking the next week off to go to Truman Lake with his parents and younger brother.
Tasha had collected all the napkin dispensers throughout the bar so she could restock them all at the same time. Just after she'd hauled another, large packet of napkins atop the counter, Shaun leaned against the counter so that the side of his shoulder touched hers, and deliberately said nothing until she glanced at him.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"What for?" she replied.
"For being an ass the other night."
"You were being a well-intentioned ass," she said. "I'm the one who needs to be sorry."
"You all right?" he asked, quietly.
She nodded.
"That's good, because I'd hate to worry about you while I'm on my dad's boat getting drunk next weekend," he remarked.
"Well, if you're too drunk to fish, then I'd be worried about you," she replied, forcing an impassive expression across her face.
"We OK?" he asked.
"We're OK," she replied. A second later, Shaun abruptly leaned closer to kiss the side of her head. A bit surprised, but not at all ungrateful, Tasha turned toward him and lost the impassive expression battle.
"Oh my God, are you smiling?" Shaun exclaimed, gaining the attention of the still-sparse crowd in the main room. "You are smiling! I got her to smile, again, and look, she's even blushing! Ladies and gentleman, The Enforcer has recovered from her hail experience."
He stacked up eight of the just-filled dispensers and hauled them upstairs, calling downstairs from the loft, "She still smiling, Gary?"
"She's still smiling," Gary hollered back, and winked at Tasha, who nodded.
"You guys . . ," Tasha said, but was glad for the interaction. Her smile was genuine.