CHAPTER 10
My next workday was Friday and I was on the lunch shift with Jillian. Lunch shifts were generally easy and boring and pretty crummy on the tips right up until the last hour or so when the dinner crowd started in. Jillian and I spent the slow hours of the afternoon bringing up stock, sanitizing the taps, and waiting on the slow trickle of customers. There was nothing like a slow afternoon to remind a girl just how much work was involved in the upkeep of a bar.
All in all, the afternoon passed more quickly than I was used to lunch shifts passing. I made quick forays into the walk-in fridge (and even quicker ones into the freezer) to verify the dates on meats and salad dressings and other things you really don't want to keep around longer than you should. Then Jillian disappeared into the stockroom for almost an hour. She emerged, white t-shirt dusty, clutching six heavy mugs by the handles with straining fingers.
The mugs, it turned out, were from the original business that had occupied what was now Merlotte's Bar and Grill. The building was older than I'd known. It had been built, according to Sam, as a soda shop sometime in the twenties. The mugs proclaimed, in frosted writing, that they were for "Jimmy's Famous Root Beer Floats." Sam hadn't even known they were in the stock room.
I suggested Sam sell the mugs as collector's items. Old people in Bon Temps love old stuff. Actually, I think old people everywhere love old stuff. But Sam just shrugged and gave a mug each to Jillian and me and took the rest back to his office, shaking his head. He re-emerged a few minutes later, looking like he'd forgotten something. "Sookie, Jillian," he said. "Can you stay an extra hour this afternoon?"
"But Sam it's been dead all day!" Jillian protested. She'd grown a bit of lip since she was no longer the new girl.
"I know," he said. "But this afternoon was the first game of a double-header against Monroe. Home game."
"We'll stay," I said. Baseball season was almost as big as football season in Bon Temps and there was an old rivalry against Monroe. The post-game dinner rush should probably be pretty big, and, if we won the game, the tips would be excellent even with Emma in for the swing shift and Holly and Danielle coming at five.
Jillian was pretty entertaining company. I quickly found out that she could nearly match Diantha for breathless speech as she chattered away non-stop for the better part of half an hour, sucking air in through her little upturned nose and letting it out as a constant stream of words.
I learned several things in those thirty minutes: all the latest happenings on a reality TV show that I'd never heard of, that she was battling stretch marks from the birth of her son, and that Mattel had announced that a vampire Barbie and Ken would be out in stores in time for little girls' summer escapades. I pictured a vampire Ken doll that looked a lot like Eric. I laughed to myself. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Mattel called him up to take a cast of his face. Most guys would probably balk at being the new face of a line of girls' dolls but I could just see Eric posing in Shreveport malls for nighttime promotions of the product and keeping a stock on in the Fangtasia gift shop alongside the vampire of the month calendar. There'd be no living with him after that.
"Oh, Sookie!" Jillian exclaimed, interrupting her own story of changing a flat tire and my thoughts of Viking Barbie. "Me and Emma are going to this bar tonight after she gets off work. It's over near the NLU campus. You should come," she said enthusiastically. "It's really fun. The beer's domestic and the staff's imported." Jillian's face said 'yum.'
"Oh, I don't know," I said skeptically, though I did know that I didn't especially want to go out to bar (after getting off work from a bar) with an underage co-worker. I'd spend too much time wondering who was taking care of her son. I also didn't know yet how I felt, or how I should feel, about Emma.
"Come on!" Jillian encouraged. "It's no fun cruising for guys with Emma and it'd be just the thing to get your mind off of …." Then Jillian caught sight of my face and changed her tune. "Oh, do we like pale, blonde and fangy now?"
"Yes," I said primly. Jillian didn't know yet that I was usually pretty private about my personal life.
Jillian didn't really take the hint and proceeded to tease and to ask me not very well disguised questions about what she clearly thought were common vampire fetishes. She wasn't entirely wrong about a few. She also didn't seem to notice that I'd gone from shouts to shy smiles over Eric practically overnight. I saw in her head that she'd never really felt one way or the other toward him and her reactions sprang from a staunch 'stick up for your girls' mentality.
I was surprised when business started to pick up considerably around two-thirty but then my customers cheerfully reminded me (verbally and mentally) that plenty of spectators swung by Merlotte's for a pre-game drink and took a sandwich, boxed up, to the big event. I was always impressed by the number of people in our small town who didn't have to work on a Friday afternoon and could go to a high school baseball game.
Just after three, we had a genuine rush on as folks trafficked through in a hurry so they could be up at the school by the first pitch. Holly had showed up promptly at three, explaining that Sam had called her in for the pre-game rush. D'Eriq showed up on time as well, Lord bless him, so we didn't have to bus our own tables anymore.
Ten minutes after three, I was quickly filling a bucket with ice from the kitchen to replenish the near-empty ice chest behind the bar. Holly put an order in the window. "Where the heck is Emma?" Holly asked. "Isn't she on swing?" Swing shift started at three and ended whenever the evening rush died down some, usually a little after eleven.
"She came in like fifteen minutes ago," D'Eriq said. He was tackling a huge mound of dishes in the dish tank. "Went to the bathroom."
"You think she's okay?" I asked.
D'Eriq grinned in the way only a seventeen year-old boy can. "Some guy followed her in there."
"What guy?" Okay, now I was a little concerned even if I hadn't decided how I felt about Emma's role in my … Eric's torture.
"Don't worry 'bout it, Sookie, "Antoine hooted. "You know that girl ain't knockin' it in there with no guy and you know she can sure take care of herself." Antoine had been present for Emma's takedown of Kit Dawson which had almost matched Sam's change into a lion in its legendary status. "Probably wasn't no guy anyway. Or he was glowing and looked like an angel. Ain't that right, D?"
D'Eriq paused in his washing of a plate. "Well he was glowy." D'Eriq said like he was talking about funny skies that might mean a tornado. "But not like a vampire or like that angel-man I seen. He was like—his skin was too thin and he was kinda bright inside."
Antoine hooted again but then saw the concern on my face. "Remember I told you, Sookie," he said. "D'Eriq's always seein' things. Don't mean nothin'."
I remembered. I remembered when D'Eriq had seen Niall and thought he was an angel. D'Eriq had been wrong, of course, but the other patrons in Merlotte's had barely noticed my great-grandfather.
I quick-stepped to the ladies' room, leaving the ice bucket half-full. "Emma!" I called, knocking and pushing the outer door to the bathroom at the same time.
"Sorry Sookie," Emma said. She was washing her hands. "I'll be out in just a second. I wasn't feeling so hot."
There was no one else in the small bathroom unless she (or he) was in the stall with her feet pulled up so I couldn't see them. But I had that feeling you get when you walk into a room and know right away that you've interrupted a conversation about you. And I had another odd feeling too. It was like sitting down on a warm sofa cushion and finding someone's half-drunk glass off tea on a coaster on the end table and getting a whiff of his cologne on the air. Like someone had just been there but I'd missed him.
"You feeling any better?" I asked. She looked perfectly healthy to me, all rosewood skin and track-star limbs.
"Yeah. I'm fine," She said, though her complexion was more convincing than her voice. "How 'bout you? You talk to, ugh, Eric?"
"We talked," I said as evenly as possible since I didn't know what said talk meant for Emma.
"Good," she said in a similarly flat voice. "I'll be right out."
The next three hours of my extended shift were a blur as the dinner crowd became the post-game (victorious!) dinner crowd. We ran low on sweet tea since we saw a lot more families than usually come in and Sam sent D'Eriq out to the Piggly Wiggly for more ketchup when a bunch of the bottles seemed to run dry at once.
About half an hour before I was set to go home, a man, neat, gray, and clearly not from Bon Temps, took up residence at one of my tables. "Just some water with lemon, please, Sookie," he said politely, in a voice so quiet I had to lean forward to hear, when I gave him my waitress spiel. "And if it's not too much trouble, might Emma wait on me this evening?"
"Sure thing."
I went to get the man his water and told Emma to take his order when she got a chance, I'd pick up her next available two-top. When I brought the water the man thanked me, popped something dark and round into his mouth, and took a sip. Whatever it was, it was too big to be a pill. Maybe it was a piece of candy. It was definitely not my business. I told him Emma would be right with him and made the final rounds of my tables before turning them over to be split between Holly and Danielle.
"Hey, I don't think I'm up for going out tonight," Emma said, as she, Holly and I excused ourselves past one another to the taps while Sam mixed drinks for our orders. I had a few refills to run before I was cut for the evening.
"But Sookie's not coming either!" Jillian protested with dismay from the other side of the bar. "My sister's watching Colin and everything!"
"Oh, you really should go, Sookie," Emma said since I was conveniently there to play scapegoat.
Jillian shook her head, looking less upset. "We like Eric now," she said in a very loud whisper as she took off with her tray of drinks, grinning all the way. She, of course, had no idea about how absurdly complicated 'liking Eric' was now that he was good and dead again (what with vampire politics and the blood bond and all its warm and fuzzy problems) so she could just be happy for me. Someone should.
"Oh do we!" Emma said cheekily as if I hadn't (sort of) told her as much in the bathroom. "That's good," she said, but sounded less convinced now that Jillian was out of earshot. Sam was not out of earshot and I saw him very pointedly turn to his drinks and away from our conversation. "Since you're not coming out tonight we should hang out some other time, Sookie. We could even stay in, chat about your man, you know, girl talk." Her tone was too serious for what she was claiming to offer. Somehow I didn't think the invitation had much to do with my refusal to go to the bar or with girl talk.
"Sure," I said and Emma went off to wait on the guy who'd requested her.
When I finally got out of the bar, about twenty minutes later than promised, I found D'Eriq smoking a cigarette I knew he was too young to smoke in the employee parking lot. "Did you see him, Sookie?" the busboy asked excitedly, waiving the cigarette enough that I thought it might go out.
"See who?" The guy with the whispery voice?
"The glowy guy in the bathroom." D'Eriq clarified while his mind inquired whom else I could think he was talking about. Well, what it actually said was 'Duh.'
"Emma was the only person in there," I said gently because D'Eriq was so excited.
"Really?" The boy's face fell and he took a drag on the cigarette. "I thought you'd see him."
I didn't know if D'Eriq's tendency to see things other people didn't was a true 'gift' of some kind or just the imaginings of a teenaged mind but I understood wanting someone else to see the world the way you did. I'd spent my whole life looking for someone who knew the things I did about other people and never found one until I met Barry in Dallas. "What did he look like, D'Eriq?"
D'Eriq's face got serious as he considered a question delivered by an adult. "He was like, maybe about your age," he said. "And he kind of looked like Emma. Except he was glowing, of course. I figured maybe they were related, that's why I wasn't worried about her. I only said that thing about a guy following her in because I already knew Antoine would get on my case." When he said 'said that thing' I assumed he was talking about the suggestive way he'd waggled his eyebrows.
"I'll keep an eye out for him," I promised.
D'Eriq shrugged. "Don't bother. He came out right when you opened the door. If you didn't see him, you're not gonna." D'Eriq sounded pretty certain on this point.
I gave the suddenly glum busboy a smile. "Okay, well let me know if you see him again." I was just glad that D'Eriq seemed less inhibited about this maybe interaction with the supernatural world than I had been at his age. In his position, at seventeen. I wouldn't have made a peep.
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Amelia had dinner on the table when I got home. She made a few jokes about what a good housewife she was and then we got down to eating. I complimented Amelia on the roast and vegetables. She thanked me and then announced, loudly, but kind of defensively, "So, I snooped," like admitting she'd invaded my privacy cleared her of guilt.
I wondered what she could possibly be referring to but her mind supplied that answer quickly enough. She'd borrowed one of my books a few days ago and finished it while the roast was cooking. The sequel to it just happened to be the book I was currently reading and had left in the living room.
She held up my book, a romance poorly masquerading as a mystery novel, and stuck her thumb in to hold my place as she removed my makeshift bookmark. Her face was almost suspicious. "Where'd you get this?"