Helluva Luxe (4 page)

After last call, Mofet parked the mystery girl with me while she went to the office to do the night’s books. I couldn’t complain. I’ll babysit some eye candy any night as long as nobody hurls on my bar. And she seemed nice enough. We shared a couple of beers while I broke everything down. That was it. Lots of looks, little talk.

Mofet wanted her to have the guest room for the night, which, back then, was a converted attic. I accidentally slipped her the key to the private washroom instead. Mofet wasn’t happy to find her girl sacked out on the stage the next morning. Ash never insinuated I did it on purpose. Neither did Mofet. But since Zayzl was acting weird, too, we both got sent on mandatory vacation. In retrospect, I think Mofet would’ve found a reason to send us away that week if we hadn’t given her one. The bottle she’d corked needed time to breathe. Know what I mean?

So Zayzl and I returned just in time for a huge bash.

Second only to the weekend before school starts is the weekend after school starts. I felt like I’d been gone a month instead of just a few days. I knew the back bar was closed while I was gone, because nothing was out of sorts by my regulars. I found a copy of Friday’s paper by my register, folded open to the club’s weekly spot. Usually it took up a third of a page, but that week we covered the whole damn thing.

“Helluva Luxe: Cendres d’été,” it read.

Ashes of Summer.

There was the silhouette of a woman and a bird behind a spiky new font, and the ad was talking up a new format and a new DJ with quite a bit of sexual innuendo. It was brilliant. And it was obvious Mofet spent some extra dough. Even more obvious when I looked up at the booth and caught sight of the makeover queen.

Pay attention now. This is the part of the story where the killer slips in wearing leather for days. She had on a black vest with no shirt underneath, for crying out loud. And that hair, my god, I just wanted to knot my fist up in it.

She was on fire.

Mofet cut something loose that girl had kept hidden when I met her before, and it was crawling all over the bar. I recognized it the minute I saw Ash in action. Blood doll.

I crossed my arms and thought, now let me get this straight. Mofet pulls some puppy in off the streets, slips on a shiny new collar, and it turns out this stray is an amazing jock, with looks and skill, who can pack the club in under a week?

Hell, yeah. And that’s not even the best part.

Lily was up in the booth with her. Almost the entire night. She was perched on a stool in the corner, and every once in a while I caught the white of her teeth through the flashing lights from the dance floor. I was transfixed by it.

I’d never known Lily to actually befriend anyone. Hell, I was a member of the family, and she barely let me peek over her big walls. I mean, sure, she had lots of groupies, but she didn’t stop moving long enough to make any real friends.

But with Ash, she sat still.

You gotta hand it to Mofet. Introducing those two, giving Zayzl and me the week off so we’d be out of the way. If I couldn’t keep my eyes off the booth, you can be damn sure there were plenty of customers drooling down their drinks.

And vampire wannabes the world over could smell Zayzl’s blood boiling. I got his version of the dish on Ash after close when he was half-lit and helping me stock my cooler just so he could complain. He kept looking over his shoulder and calling her colorful names. But he didn’t have any real dirt on Ash, just jealous bullshit speculation. He said she had a dark past, one so dark it hit a nerve with Mofet. And inspired her to violate every house rule she ever made concerning loyalty and family as she shuffled this total stranger right on up to the top.

I wasn’t bitter.

Seriously. I was making too much money and drinking too much booze to be bitter.

But Zayzl thought he was being weeded out. I tried to talk him outta his tree, but he’d climbed too high up there, man. The crazy eyes had set in. He wouldn’t stop ranting about the horrid injustice handed down on him from the DJ booth up high.

I gotta say, I don’t understand insecure men and this demon that sneaks out whenever they get upstaged by a woman. Being upstaged turns me on.

However, in the next few weeks, Zayzl resorted to base levels of trickery. He did his best to submarine the new DJ when he thought nobody was watching.

That’s the thing about this place.

Someone is always watching.

He slipped things in her drink, swapped out her CDs, hid her wires, and stole her tips. He was the quintessential bad boy who couldn’t get enough of mama’s attention. At the fucking age of thirty.

Ash ignored him. And she was phenomenal on the board, in spite of the rumors she’d never set foot in a booth before. She could ride a crowd like no jock I’ve ever seen. I heard she did radio once upon a time, but I heard she did a stint in the loony bin, too, and that was a lie, so who knows.

The rumor never matters anyway. Right, Nick?

Only that there is one.

And people were definitely talking about Ash. Talking, paying the cover, buying drink after drink. They couldn’t get enough of her. Again, I considered being jealous, but my pockets were too full. And she seemed completely blind to all the attention. She was totally likeable, if not a little scary. Nothing touched her.

Well, nothing but Lily.

If Lily wasn’t up in the booth or out on the dance floor, Ash could summon her without looking up from the board. And her bag of tricks was pretty badass. I don’t know where she found half the shit she played for Lily. It was Goth music to crawl out of your clothes to. Sex just rolled from the speakers behind these songs with beats thick as blood. The crowd didn’t know what they were feeding off of, just that they were starving. Sometimes Ash would dance, too. Up in the booth alone, head bent, hair falling in her eyes, cigarette in her hand. On those nights, when they both got going at the same time… Well, let’s just say we could’ve charged more at the door. They could still a room and not even notice.

Before long Ash was taking most of Mofet’s shifts, as well as her own. And they were both pulling in live music, the likes of which this place had never seen before. Everybody who blew through town wanted to play the Luxe all the sudden. The bar was out of the red for the first time in years. We were flying high.

And that’s when Mofet died.

Here, have a beer, Nick.

Death shocks the hell out of you whether you see him coming or not. We all knew she was sick; we just didn’t want to talk about it. Then one night after we closed, she fell. Right there on the stairs behind where you’re sitting. She had a glass of wine in her hand and a smile on her face, and she was giving me grief about finding a lover. I flipped her off, she winked at me, and then she was gone.

She wouldn’t have had it any other way.

At least that’s what we told each other.

Lily and Ash were up in the booth. They got to her first. I just stood there with a bar rag in my hand, wondering if the damn Cure song that was playing was going to make me completely lose it from that night on.

The answer is yes.

Several hundred people showed up to bury her. We had the service in an old university chapel that was set to be demolished. Rubble, dust and cobwebs everywhere, like a tomb. It was every little Goth girl’s fantasy funeral, complete with broken stained-glass windows and a crumbling roof. Lily covered the place in black flowers and lit so many candles the fire marshal should have shut us down. Instead, he showed up with his wife and kids. All of the regulars got up to speak. It took hours, and nobody left.

All the time she created was returned.

When the service ended, Ash fired up the tables, and we had a balls-out bash in the chapel courtyard.

Scandalous, right? It helps to have connections.

I thought somebody might have to bury me the next morning. Instead, we all went back to an empty bar without our mama. None of us knew what to do with ourselves, or each other, so we shut down, literally and figuratively, for a couple weeks. Until the reading of the will.

When the lawyer said Zayzl’s name, I almost came up out of my chair. Yeah, that’s right. Mofet left the controlling percentage of the bar to Zayzl. He got forty-six percent. Lily, Ash and I each got eighteen.

I know it sounds like bullshit at first, but Mofet knew she was our glue. The four of us never would have stayed together after her death without some pull from the grave. She wasn’t a fool for leaving him the bar—she was a mother. And her priority was always her kids, kid number five being the Luxe.

She wanted Ash in the booth, Lily on the dance floor, and me behind the bar. But she couldn’t snub her only son, so she handed him the keys to the castle. I’m sure she thought he’d grow up eventually. Instead, he hooked up with this greasy-eyed groupie he met at the funeral party. She was giggling too loud and wearing a backpack shaped like an animal. I hated her on sight.

Zayzl’s ego had no boundaries once he took over the bar. He moved that slimy girlfriend of his in upstairs as soon as the remodel was complete. The remodel was Mofet’s parting gift. She designed a separate room for each of us by extending the old attic, and she installed an antique spiral staircase that led up to a catwalk. Lily’s room was next to Ash’s, while I shared a wall with Zayzl and his tart. Never heard anybody fake it like that in my life. Lily was the only one who even bothered to learn her name. I doubted it was worth the time. Anybody that would go trolling at a funeral… For fuck’s sake, where’s the self-respect?

It didn’t take long for the regulars to lose interest in her. And for her to get bored sitting alone every night while her boyfriend pretended he could run a bar. When she finally walked out on him, he was floored, never saw it coming. And he was embarrassed. She bounced her stuff down the stairs during business hours, spitting and frothing the whole way out the door.

So he took it out on Ash.

He snitched some of her shifts, claiming they were special format nights that required guest DJs. She just took off with Lily. Then he started scheduling her to work the door once a week. So she just got it covered and took off with Lily. See the pattern here? It wasn’t long before the regulars started talking.

People were afraid Ash wasn’t around because she lost her edge over Mofet’s death. That she didn’t want to be here anymore, and neither did Lily. Zayzl saw his opportunity and fed the rumors, but they didn’t stick. On the nights he did get out of her way and let her spin, she clearly hadn’t lost a thing. In fact, she just kept getting better. The cooler she was, the more he fought to get a rise out of her, but nothing worked.

There were many theories concerning why she didn’t kick his bony ass on more than one occasion: loyalty to Mofet, loyalty to the bar, she had nowhere else to go, needed the dough, blah, blah, blah.

I knew the real reason.

Lily.

Ash put up with all of it for Lily.

If the bar was closed, those two were nowhere to be found. They’d take off on Ash’s bike at dawn and come rolling through the doors right when they opened. It drove Zayzl nuts, partly because he was a control freak, and partly because he felt left out. He thought they were up to something, and he scheduled excuses to keep them hanging around, but they were laughable. Like cleaning day. Like Jyhad night.

He had a valid point, though.

It felt like the family was fragmenting. But then the sun set, happy hour hit, and the house came to life. Our ability to pack the place was solid, even when nothing else was, and all’s well until dawn.

But then one night Ash and Lily didn’t show.

I didn’t think anything of it, at first.

Zayzl stomped up to the booth to put on some music, grumbling about Ash being late. It was such a farce. Everybody knew he’d use any excuse to hop on the board. He annoyed the hell out of my regulars with some off-format crap for about an hour, and then people started trickling through the door, asking for Ash at the main bar. They wandered up to the DJ booth like sheep, confused, disoriented and overdressed, requesting songs Zayzl wasn’t playing. It got nasty. He could’ve won them over that night just by following the damn list, but he was so pissed off they were asking for Ash he didn’t see his opportunity.

And then I glanced up, and she was standing at the back door alone, dripping all over the floor, dressed in leather with bits of leaves stuck to her face. She looked like the Lady of the Lake’s hot girlfriend. She scanned the room, a little crazy around the eyes. I waved her over with one hand and poured her a shot with the other. My gut told me we were about to get to know one another better, and sure enough, she ducked under my bar, avoiding her usual seat. She tossed back the shot, motioned for another, leaned against the cooler, and lit a cigarette. She didn’t say a word, so I just kept pouring. Finally she looked up at me with an awkward laugh, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and rolled her eyes.

I knew exactly what she meant.

Then Zayzl train-wrecked “Enjoy the Silence” into “Personal Jesus,” and Ash’s head snapped around like Beetlejuice. Several painful gasps came from the dance crowd, followed by a round of shrieking from the Moders.

“He knows that’s the same band twice, right?” I asked.

“Tough to say.”

“I’ll get a sitter and meet you in the booth.”

“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t look away from Zayzl. “Bring the bottle. And one to break over his head. Something cheap.”

Somehow she made it across the dance floor and up the stairs to the booth without getting ambushed by any crazed dancers with unanswered prayers. I saw her lips move, and then Zayzl took off down the stairs. He grabbed the register tape as he went by the front door and stomped off to the back office like he had work to do. Three of my girls volunteered to step up so I could follow Ash. They’d do anything to keep Zayzl off the board.

I got the booze she wanted and another pack of smokes. As I was crossing the dance floor, Depeche Mode faded out, and Ash mumbled something over the mic. The bar roared back to life at the sound of her voice. Then she kicked on “Dead Stars,” and they screamed so loud the hair stood up on my arms. I climbed the stairs and sat down in the shadow of a speaker. Ash was bent over the board, setting up the next song. I offered her a smoke when she turned. She looked me dead in the eye, took it, and leaned into my light.

“Thanks,” she said. She smelled like a thunderstorm.

I nodded and leaned back against the wall, waiting for her to start talking, tell me where Lily was. Eventually she did.

“We crashed an art show on the West Side. It was in some empty condo. There were pictures of hot Asian women wearing bugs for clothes.” Then her eyes wandered off a little. “Mofet would’ve dug it. ‘Infectious,’ I think it was called.”

I nodded. I knew where she was headed already.

She took another drag, turned away and mixed in “Wasted” by And One. The crowd blew up again. Somebody screamed her name, and she rolled out this grin to beat the devil. When she turned back to me, I got a full dose of it. Almost knocked me off my seat. She leaned back against the deck and went on with her story.

“It was the most pretentious bunch of bullshit I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Not the art—the people. The art was decent. We looked around. Then we got a drink and went outside to smoke. It was raining. Lily said she was cold, so I went in for her coat. I got back outside, and she was on the ground. She fell. She was hurt. And instead of helping her up, the bitch got out his camera.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Kendol Strike.”

She looked like she wanted to hit something, and I thought it might be me. “That’s the one,” she said.

“You took Lily to a Zombarbie show.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“So you’ve heard of them?” I said.

“Who hasn’t?”

She turned like she sensed there was a guy in a skirt and eyeliner coming up the stairs. He leaned over the wall and held out a twenty, said he wanted to hear “A Daisy Chain 4 Satan.”

“I’m your white rabbit,” Ash replied. She winked at him and slipped the bill in her back pocket. The guy was drooling. He tripped a little when he went back down the stairs. All I could do was shake my head.

“So where is she?” I asked.

“She’s with him. At the after-party.”

I tried not to scowl.

“Didn’t you say she was hurt?”

“That, I did.”

Kendol and Zombarbie were notorious step-siblings, a photographer and his muse, trust-fund babies. They made their name here and then moved out to LA. Every time they blew back through town, the designer elite would piss themselves.

Kendol could get almost anybody to drop trou for his camera. I’m convinced he struck a deal with somebody higher up than the devil. There were other theories, of course. I heard he doled out illegal party favors, along with cash and clothes. I also heard he had a really big dick, but I prefer to stay in the dark on that one.

Zombarbie was his first muse. Twisted sister, indeed. I gotta say, that girl makes gore look good, but nobody should be looking at the camera like it’s meat when their brother’s on the other side. They wanted people to wonder. And their scantily-clad scandal nicked the local art world’s attention until higher ups in higher places could see Kendol actually had talent under all that trash. They got so much notoriety off the first show that Z stopped modeling and became Kendol’s full-time promoter, part-time bait. And all of his shows became known as “Zombarbie” shows, even though he’d retired his flesh-eating hottie. I think there’s a print of her left on the office door.

Anyway, Kendol always had his lens poking out of his pants, looking for the flavor of the month.

Which is about how long Lily was gone.

A little over a month.