2.04 - Queen of Hearts
It didn’t take long for everything in the lounge to return to normal after witnessing an overdose. I imagine that kind of thing would typically bring an end to the festivities for the night, but not here. Everyone just kept drinking and getting high on the same drugs that just had a young woman dragged out. For a few minutes, I feel like the only person in the room who finds it odd.
Then I spot the bartender in a far corner of the room. A woman, roughly the same age as me, although I imagine I’m a harder to look at. Warm brown skin, dreadlocks braided into pigtails, a full figured woman carrying her weight in all the right places, black eyeliner, lipstick and gold fangs on her upper teeth make the look complete.
“Happen often,” I ask as I take a seat at the end of the bar.
“Only on days that end in the letter y,” she cleans a glass. “What can I get you?”
“Something that’s not going to leave me knocking at death’s door.”
“Water it is,” she laughs and pours a bottle into a tall glass.
“Water is perfect,” I laugh as I take the glass from her. “My name is Efrem.”
“I’m Barbara,” she smiles back at me.
“Hey, can I ask you something Barbara?”
“Is it my contact info.”
“I was going to say I’ve been away for a while and was wondering how things got like, well, like this,” I wave a hand around the casino.
“Well, that’s easy. Everyone has a vice. Gambling, drugs, alcohol,” she pauses, “sex. Nobody cornered the market around here. They just built a temple to vice and people come worship at it every day of the week.”
“And nobody does anything?”
“Pay off the right police and nobody has any choice but to look away, even if most of us hate it.”
“Working a job you hate for people you hate, I get it.”
“Don’t we all,” Barbara laughs.
“I got one more question for you.”
“If it’s not about my contact information you can get the hell out,” Barbara smiles. “I’m only half joking.”
“That’s good, because I was going to ask for it.”
I wasn’t really planning to ask for her contact information, but when a beautiful woman wants to give you her contact information, you take her contact information and make sure you call her. I guess that’s one benefit of coming here tonight. I just confirmed this place was everything I thought it was. I’m not any less convinced that it doesn’t need to be shut down. I exit the elevator and decide to take the back exit.
Outside in the alley I hear a commotion. The bald bearded man from the blackjack table earlier is being punched and kicked against the wall by some of the security guards. I know it’s not my fight, but they’re probably going to beat him to death if I don’t step in.
“Hey, let the guy go,” I call out.
“This ain’t your fucking business,” one of the guards shouts.
“If you keep talking to me like that it will be.”
One of the guards takes a wild swing that I’m just barely able to dodge in time. I use the opportunity to put all my weight into a right punch aiming at the other guard. My metal fist makes perfect contact between his eye and ear. I’ll have to tell Edan I knocked a guy out with one punch. I turn just in time to catch a punch to the ribs from the first guard. I retaliate by putting my hand in his face and pushing him away so I can regroup. I fake a punch only for me to grab his neck and bring it down to meet my knee. When he falls over I begin to land punches on his head hoping to put him out. But he’s still awake when I hear sirens. I wipe the blood from my fist on his shirt before making my way to the bald man.
“Why were the beating you,” I ask.
“I paid for a night with a woman and when I got to my room they took my money and drug me out here.”
“Well you should get your money back while they can’t fight back.”
I don’t hear what else he says, I make my way from the alley to the street where a crowd is starting to gather. I keep my head down and just walk with no real sense of wear I’m heading off to. A car pulls up next to me.
“You look like you could use a ride,” Barbara calls from inside the car.
“My hero,” I don’t hesitate to get in.
“Where to,” she asks as we begin to move.
“Anywhere you want to go,” I smile at her.
