There were so many different aspects of her job that she hated, that on any given day, Alexis couldn't even name the one that was worst. The patrons of the bar were either arrogant and wealthy, or cheap and mildly retarded. But as any good bartender learned, Alexis was a professional at faking interest and ignoring passes. She went about her business; the bar was fairly empty until about 7, when men and women, looking to get lucky or get trashed, started rolling in by the dozens.
Alexis had taken to wearing a belt buckle that doubled as a bottle opener, for she found that men really jacked up the tips when she used it to open their beers. Sometimes, when she really thought about it, it made her feel cheap. But that feeling was always overshadowed, mostly by forceful loathing, and it was soon buried under the piles of internal issues that Alexis had yet to deal with.
"Uh, bartender?" A young man, in his late twenties, scoffed loudly.
"What can I get you?" Alexis replied, without returning his coy smile. She grabbed her tips off the bar before they got lifted, which was common, and turned her attention to the blonde, straight-laced looking guy, with an aura of entitlement that he wore like his pretentious, overpriced suit.
"Well, for now, I'll just take a couple shots of wild turkey, but just so you know, if you're lucky, maybe I'll take you home with me tonight," he spoke, liquor already coating his breath, and his suited friends laughed and high-fived a few steps behind him.
Alexis usually took advantage of a display of unwarranted cockiness, but for some reason, tonight wasn't her night. She poured the shots in silence, not giving him the moment's satisfaction like she was at all entertaining the repulsive thought of a conversation, and she slid the shots over towards him.
"Ten bucks," she stated, un-amused and extremely annoyed with his half grin.
"Tell you what, I'm gonna put down a 50, and we'll call it a tip for now. But it's really a deposit for later,"
Alexis looked down at the Ulysses S. Grant staring up at her. In her heart, she was offended, and revolted. But it had been a long time since her heart and head had connected on something. She picked up the fifty-dollar bill, and gave the man her best fake smile.
"Yeah, about that," Alexis replied smoothly, "we're just gonna call it a tip."
She walked away to help another customer, a young woman who appeared as if she had already had one too many cosmos, by the looks of her smudged makeup and unfocused eyes. The girl giggled as a fairly handsome man ran his fingers softly over her neck.
Alexis watched cautiously as she habitually mixed the cosmopolitan. From the minute she arrived in Los Angeles, years ago, she knew that she didn't like the city. There was something unwelcoming, and unnatural about the night here. Not that it was any better than where she grew up. Alexis casually turned around and glanced in the mirror along the back wall of the bar. There was the girl, off-balance and starting to slur her speech, and there was the guy, sleazy, but present in the picture. Alexis exhaled, partially relieved, but mostly annoyed.
Sometimes, she wished that all men were vampires. At least it would explain how they could be so awful.
Most nights took a while to come to an end. She began work around 3:30, and rarely finished until around 2 in the morning. Long hours, terrible pay, and the people were enough to make you wish yourself into oblivion. But it was something she knew; Alexis was familiar with every corner, every tiny bit of the dive bar that employed her. Somewhere, deep within her soul, that was enough to stay.
"Lexi," her manager, Dustin, started in as he closed the front doors behind the last customers, leaving at a tilt, "How'd you do tonight?"
"Better than last night, I guess," Alexis mumbled, thumbing through her tips, shoved haphazardly in her pockets. "I made about 300."
Dustin gave her a weak smile. He was one of the only people Alexis had regular contact with, mostly because it was a requirement of her job.
Dustin had been the first, and since only, person to give Alexis a second glance. He was a middle-aged man, the hair on top of his head was grayed and starting to thin. When he smiled, which he did often, all the wrinkles in his face scrunched up, giving him a traveled, worn down look.
Alexis knew he wasn't human, at least, not completely. His eyes were older than she could imagine, and there was an air about him that was unexplainable. But he had given Alexis a job when she needed one, and he always had a kind word for her. She didn't know what he was, where he came from, or why he was here. But that didn't much matter to her anymore. She couldn't even answer most of those questions for herself, so who was she to hold someone else accountable for their own answers.
She finished cleaning the floor of the bar, and went into the backroom to put away the mop. As she wiped the glisten of sweat from the very top of her forehead, Alexis glanced across the room into Dustin's office, where he sat quietly and diligently, looking over the bar totals for the night. She grabbed her jacket, and slid it on slowly.
"Lex," she heard Dustin call to her. She crossed the floor of the backroom towards his office and stood in the doorway, leaning up against the frame and attempted her best smile.
"I'm done with the floors, all that's left is the trash," she started in.
"I'll get that, no worries," he continued as he thumbed through the currency that lay out in front of him, in incredibly straight piles. Not a corner was bent, nor stuck out from the structured existence that he had placed them in. "Is your boy coming to pick you up?"
"No boy, just me," Alexis said with a weak smile and a shrug of nonchalance.
"There was no heart in that answer," Dustin responded, looking up from his work. "But I have known you long enough to know that you don't put your heart in most conversation. Although, not to be intrusive, but if you aren't putting it in your words, leads me to wonder where it is?"
"In a lockbox, very far from this existence," Alexis replied, flatly. "I'm fine, Dustin. You know that. You know I'm fine. Everyday I wake up, and I'm fine. That's just who I am."
Dustin looked into Alexis' eyes with a soft, empathetic stare. He said nothing else for a few moments, and it was clear to Alexis that no more would be said of the matter. She liked that about Dustin. Somehow, he always knew when the conversations were over. Sometimes she thought maybe he could read her mind. And in her moments of pure loneliness, she wished with all of herself that there would be someone that could.
"You should hail a cab. This city is cruel at night," he stated, getting back to tallying his expenses.
"I know," Alexis stated, and without a moment's hesitation, she continued, "I will."
The air was humid that night. Within the first few minutes of her walk, Alexis determined that Dustin must not be a mind reader, or else he would have known that she had no intentions of hailing a cab. Or maybe he was, and simply knew it would be fruitless to argue. It would have made complete sense to do so, seeing as how trouble always seemed to find her, no matter what, but Alexis feared much greater things than monsters and vampires. The intangible objects that kept her up at night dwarfed such physical beings.
About ten minutes or so into her walk, Alexis heard footsteps coming from behind her. Rather than postponing the confrontation, which was normally her first option, she decided to stop and turn around, to see what company she was keeping. And it was to her surprise, and annoyance, that the individual strolling behind her was a familiar face. It was the over-tipper that was now gleefully approaching her.
"I told you I'd see you again," he commented as he caught up.
"I don't know what planet you came from, but in this country, this is called stalking," Alexis retorted and turned to continue to walk.
He reached out and grabbed her arm. She spun back around to face a challenging smile, and eyes that were like wild fire, completely lacking inhibition. He was taller than her, most definitely, maybe about six feet. His dirty blonde hair was now unkempt, partially due to the breeze but mostly from a night of drinking. He was a medium sized frame, but still resonated a strength that Alexis feared she might not be able to compete with. Still, her emotional resilience was fighting, full force.
"You should let go of me, right now," she spoke steadily. He simply smiled and released her arm, airing a full confidence that she would not be able to truly get away.
"Do you think that I just picked you out of no where? Do you think that you are someone random, Alexis Reynolds? Believe me, nothing in this life is random."
Her last name struck a familiar chord of uneasiness somewhere within her chest cavity. There should have been no reason for him to know even her first name, for she had never told him, and he had not asked. And yet, somewhere inside her head, she knew that he knew so much more than just a name. As she stared up at him, she recognized that he knew where she lived, who she was, and what would keep her right where he wanted her.
Alexis wrapped her jacket tightly around herself and crossed her arms. Still, she said nothing. 'What was there to say?'
"We will have something special," he began, starting to pace around her, "for a while at least."
He laughed, a familiar laugh; a laugh that came from one who looked to her as someone below himself. Inside, she felt like breaking. As if the blows would never stop coming. It just kept getting harder and harder, and then when she thought that it would let up just a little, it got just a little worse. But this was no time for misery. There was a fighter somewhere beneath her skin, someone had once told her that.
"You're pathetic, you know that?" Alexis responded, finally. She could feel her blood rushing through her veins, getting hotter and faster with every second that passed by. "You think you have some kind of power over me? You think I care that you know who I am? If you do, then clearly you know nothing of me. Tell me something. Was your big plan to come here and make me feel powerless? Were you going to bring me down with your words and your trivia until I was just a scared, trembling shell of myself? I am not afraid of you. I have lived through evil more powerful, more infinite than your dismal, little mind can even fathom. So you want to play head games? So sorry, I don't."
And as the last syllable of the last word left her mouth, the hastening fury inside of her came to a screaming finale as her fist connected poetically with his nose. And as he reached up with his right hand to hold his face, her other arm swung around to catch his left eye.
He staggered back, seemingly in shock, trying to regain his composure. There was so much tension; so much anger in her mind. Alexis could only see her own pain, built up over so long; nothing else was clear. But she waited. She waited for him to walk away. She waited for him to finally understand; to be the first in her life to understand what she meant when she said 'no.'
"So you like to play rough?" He tried his best to be light-hearted. There was blood running down his face; Alexis was sure she had broken his nose. "I'll be seeing you, Ms. Reynolds, you can count on that."
For a moment, she thought about chasing him down, hurting him in a way that might enable him from ever being able to walk again. Alexis toyed with the idea of finally being free from the abuse that seemed magnetized to her. And yet, her feet did not leave their position on that dimly lit sidewalk.
She looked down at her hands, expecting them to be the source of the hurt she felt inside. However, her hands were numb, as was most of her body. There was not a fresh spot on her physical being that she could find hurt. It was a reopened wound on her soul; these people that came and went from her life all seemed to know exactly where to stab. And yet, at the same time, she felt better, less tense. Punching someone in the face really had a relaxing effect on her. And with that thought, and exhalation was released, and she turned around.
It wasn't until she was in the comfort of her apartment, which she had arrived at without anymore interruptions, that Alexis found a piece of paper, a business card specifically, in the pocket of her jacket. She placed her keys down on the kitchen table, and fumbled around for the back of the chair. Feeling it, she slumped down in it and flipped the white card over to read the words "Angel Investigations" with just a phone number listed. There was a picture, a little logo, that she assumed was supposed to be an angel, although to her, it looked more like a lobster.
Alexis wasn't quite sure what to do with the card. She had no recollection of where it came from, how it ended up in the pocket of her jacket. She placed it down on the table and just looked at it for a few minutes. Investigations? Seemed like a strange business card to just have lying around. She whispered the phone number out loud to herself once or twice, seeing if maybe the sound of it triggered something inside of her, but there was nothing.
She left it, face up, on the table. She made her way to her bedroom and changed into a pair of red cotton shorts and took off her Cub Scout shirt, leaving her in just the shorts and a black tank top. She washed her face and went into the living room. The wall adjacent to her bedroom was completely hidden with shelves, which held hundreds, maybe even a thousand of vinyl records she had collected since as far back as she could remember.
Alexis gingerly selected an old Leonard Cohen album and placed it on her turntable. She smiled as she ran her fingers over the top of the record, letting her fingers sink into the grooves, feeling the music just waiting to be reproduced off of it. After she dropped the needle at the beginning of the album, and the smooth melody of the record leaked and poured out of her speakers, she found her way to the kitchen.
Out of the refrigerator, Alexis selected a red apple and brought it over to the sink to rinse it off. She leaned up against the counter and she took a bite out of it, peacefully distracted by the deep, gentle voice resounding out of her speaker cabinets, enjoying the plunking sound that the bass made every time a new note was played.
Regardless of the drama that her day had brought, it was always fixed with an old album and just a few moments for her to get lost. Music took her away, swept her off her feet, welcomed her with open arms, and made the world seem less tragic, or more tragic, depending on the record. But the music that made her feel that maybe the world was even more tragic than she previously thought still made her feel better. Because it was the music telling her that even though the world was hell, it wasn't a hell that she had to experience alone.
Alexis pulled herself up to sit on the counter in the kitchen, and she sat there for the next hour or so, just listening and slowly eating her apple in peace. She smiled along with the music, when you could hear in his voice that he was smiling, and she reflected on the words that he spoke, as if he was speaking directly to her.
And as the record ended, Alexis tossed the core of her apple in the trash and walked over to the turntable. She pulled the needle off to the side and put the album away in the exact same spot where she had originally pulled it. Checking the locks once more on her front door, she walked back into her bedroom and slid into bed.
Her red drapes were still shut from that morning, and she left them that way. She turned over on her side and curled her legs slightly. Her knuckles felt a little strange from when they had connected with that man's face, but it's shadow of pain served only to remind her of what was at stake. This life was not what she thought it should be, but it belonged to her. And it would not be ripped away.