Authors: Shay Kassa
Kathy smiled a little. Gina was a million miles away from her and Mark's friends. Her and Mark's... her face fell. “All of our friends are going to want to know what's happened,” she said quietly. “I don't even know if he's told any of them...” She was usually so busy with work that Mark handled their social life. Her friends were all mostly his friends, and she had drifted out of contact with many of the people who she had known before they got together.
“Have you checked your phone?”
Kathy hadn't. She forgot to switch it back on after the flight. It was as good a time as any to go find out. She went back to the hall for a moment to collect it from her case, and hit the power button as she returned to the kitchen.
A flood of messages appeared as soon as it picked up the signal, from regular texts to Facebook updates. Kathy flicked through them with a rising sense of horror; Mark had publicly posted a long, heartfelt letter about how she had thrown him out after he brought a friend home. She saw herself presented as a mean, unfeeling, jealous harpy who had over-reacted because he wouldn't let her control his life. She saw their friends commiserating with him. She saw message after message asking her for an explanation, and those were the kinder ones.
Kathy placed the phone down on the table, her head dizzy from the shock. This couldn't be happening. Someone would believe she wasn't capable of this, wouldn't they? Gina picked it up and read a little, and her eyes widened.
“Oh my god... He's made you look like the Anti-Christ.”
Kathy nodded, biting her lip and trying desperately not to break down again.
Gina left the phone on the table, shaking her head in disgust. “I can't believe it. I've seen some shitty moves, but this beats everything. Are you okay?”
“No.” Kathy swallowed another sob, almost curling up in her chair in pain. “I can't handle this, I just can't.”
“Come down to the bar with me.”
“What?” She looked up at Gina, but the redhead was being completely serious.
“You don't want to deal with Mr. Shitface and whatever he's saying to your friends, you come down to my bar,” she said firmly. “You can hide out there and chill for a while until you're ready for this. I'll call a guy I know who can change the locks – I mean, once I find my phone, that is.”
Hiding... it was cowardly, but she had never felt so hunted. Still... “You don't have to help me,” Kathy said. “I mean, I don't even know if I can trust you. No offense.”
“None taken. I just feel like I owe it to you, you know? Anyway, he lied to me.” Gina's face darkened. “No one lies to me like this. Anything I can do to fuck his shit up is good.”
She seemed sincere. Kathy still hesitated. “What kind of bar is it?”
Gina grinned at her. “The loud kind.”
*****
Only two hours, a change of clothes, and a hot shower later, Kathy was pulling up to a rather seedy-looking building with a row of motorbikes parked outside, and feeling even more ambivalent about her decision. A rusted sign saying GUN METAL hung over a set of double doors. There was no way to tell if it was even open for business.
Gina was as good as her word. The locks were changed in record time by a soft-spoken man called Lucas, who had refused payment and said he'd square it with Gina later. Then she had had to find some black clothing – faded black top, black skirt, black jacket, and a pair of boots she hadn't worn in years – just to avoid looking out of place.
Gina directed her around the back, to the little employee parking lot. Kathy's respectable silver Prius would actually be bad for business, she explained. There was already a giant black pickup truck there, as well as a little Mini Cooper with a skull decal on the bumper.
She turned off the engine and sat there for a minute, staring at the steering wheel and wondering what the hell she was doing. She was a business analyst, for god's sake, and this was the kind of bar in a part of town that polite professionals such as her did not enter. The woman that her boyfriend had cheated on her with was sitting beside her in the car like it was no big deal. She was wearing clothes that would get her ejected from many of the more upscale clubs she went to with Mark.
Then she felt a sense of grim coldness; Mark had come here to pick up dates, and probably for that exact reason. Not one of their usual circle would be caught dead in these streets, not even if they got lost.
Gina touched her shoulder, and she flinched. “You okay?”
Kathy nodded. “Yeah. Just never been in a place like this before.”
“I know it looks kinda shitty, but it's really not that bad on the inside. I think the owner just likes to keep the tourists away.” She got out of the car. “C'mon, it'll be quiet for a while yet. I'll show you around.”
Kathy took a deep breath, and got out as well. She followed Gina through a small 'Employees Only' door, which lead to a narrow staircase leading down. There were garish posters in the stairwell of dozens of different heavy metal acts, none of which Kathy recognized. It seemed that they were descending for more than one floor, and then it opened out into a short corridor with a couple of dressing rooms on either side – complete with little star sticker.
“We have bands here pretty regularly,” Gina explained. “Plus we have our own house band every Saturday night, if there isn't something else going on.”
“Just how big is this -” Kathy stopped dead when Gina opened the door at the end of the corridor. This wasn't the greasy dive bar she had expected – the room was enormous, and must have taken up the whole block. The ceiling was better than twenty feet above her head and supported by industrial steel columns. The bar itself ran the length of one wall, with separate booths taking up the opposite wall and tables scattered in between. They had come out just beside the stage, a broad raised platform where a few men were setting up amps and drums. The actual entrance was another set of double doors at the far side.
“Oh, wow,” she said.
“Yeah, everyone's got that reaction at first.” Gina smiled at her. “Come meet the guys.”
There were three of them moving things around on the stage. One of them was tall, lean, and dark-skinned, with tribal tattoos peeking out from under his shirt. The guitar guy – who was carefully tuning a long black bass – was a more normal height, and wore a sleeveless shirt with spiked bracelets.
The one setting up the drums caught her attention. He was almost as tall as Mr. Tribal Tattoos, and twice as broad. The faded Led Zepplin T-shirt he wore strained against his muscled arms and thick torso. He wasn't toned, simply built on a bigger scale than normal, and had a slight gut that suggested he liked either his food or his beer. His long black hair was tied back, and he had a goatee with what looked like a day's worth of stubble growth. Of all of them, he looked the most like he could pick her up in one hand and break her in half.
Kathy was very nervous as she came forward to be introduced to the trio. The place was quiet – only them, another waitress, and a couple of people sitting up at the bar drinking – but she was out of her depth here, in unknown territory, in a parallel world where going to a heavy metal bar was a normal thing to do.
Gina waved at them by way of greeting. “Hey, how you guys doing?”
“You ain't working til six, Gina. You miss us or something?” the guitar guy said playfully. “Who's your friend?”
“This is Kathy. She's, uh, just got some man trouble, so we're hanging here for a while. Kathy, meet Tony, Axeman and Eddie.”
She got smiles and handshakes from all of them. The broad one that seemed so intimidating, Eddie, had a very gentle grip and surprising warmth in his fingers. He was better than six inches taller than her, and couldn't help looming over her a little, but he did try to put her at ease. “Can I buy you a drink, beautiful?” he asked, his voice deep and powerful. “You can tell us all about your man troubles if you want.”
Kathy blushed to her roots. “Uh, sure. Thanks. I mean, if we're not interrupting...”
“I'm all set up here, how about you guys?” He looked to Tony, with the tattoos, and Axeman with the guitar.
“You go on, I'm not done here yet,” said Axeman.
They left him to mess about with his bass, and Gina sat them down at one of the booths and went to collect a few beers from the bar. Kathy still felt uncomfortable, seated as she was beside two men she had never met before, but Tony and Eddie were nothing but friendly.
“You must have some pretty bad trouble to want to hang out here,” Tony said. He had a very slight accent, one that suggested Latino or European descent. “So what happened?”
Kathy didn't know what to say, and felt her face getting red again. Eddie elbowed his friend in the ribs. “And what if she doesn't want to tell us, man? She just met us, c'mon.”
“Alright, I'm just curious-”
“My boyfriend cheated on me,” she blurted out. “I caught him sleeping with another woman last night. And now he's making it seem like
I'm
the bitch and he's the innocent one.”
The two guys looked at each other for a moment. “Wow. Why'd he do that?” Tony asked. “It kinda seems stupid to me because you're smokin' hot – OW!”
Eddie withdrew his elbow again. “Tony, you remember last week when I said you were being a dick and you better shut up?”
“Ow, yeah, I do.”
“You're doing it again.” He turned to Kathy. “Sorry. You don't have to say anything. That's a really shitty thing for a guy to do.”
“Yeah, it is,” said Gina, setting four beers down on the table. “He's being a real dick to her, and all her friends believe him. He needs a punch in the face.” She slid one over to Kathy. “That's on your tab, Eddie.”
“Thanks,” Kathy said, even though she hadn't drunk any beer since she started making enough money to buy good bourbon whiskey, and had never liked the taste.
Eddie smiled at her and raised his beer for a toast. “To man troubles.”
Kathy managed a half-smile in response.
*****
Gun Metal wasn't that bad, Kathy decided. When Gina went to work, and the place started to fill up a little, Tony and Eddie laughed and joked with her and generally kept her spirits up. Then Tony had to help Axeman with something, and Eddie sat a little closer, and she found herself forgetting about Mark for a while.
It wasn't that she didn't feel hurt anymore, but a couple of drinks and good company in a new place, with no reminders of him, made it easier – even if she didn't really like the drinks in question.
Eddie had her in stitches with a story about a singer with halitosis he had met once, then gestured at her with his beer. “Alright, beautiful, how about you tell me a little about yourself?”
Kathy stared at the table for a moment. “Well... I work in insurance. I spend most of my time in front of a computer looking at numbers. It's like, you know, working out the odds of things happening and all that.”
“Sounds boring. How'd you get into that?”
“I studied it in college. My parents wanted me to do something useful. How did you get into heavy metal?”
He laughed at that. “I just like the music. I stayed because the money is good.”
“Really? For drumming?”
“Oh yeah, around these parts anyway. Good drummers are hard to come by, and there's plenty of gigs for a drummer who's reliable and mostly sober, or a roadie who can toss amps around.” He held out his arm and flexed the muscle. “Gives you a great upper body workout too, so I moonlight as a bouncer here sometimes.”
Kathy ran her fingers over his forearm. It felt rock hard, with every tendon clearly defined. He could probably punch someone through a wall, which was completely at odds with his easygoing nature. Maybe it was precisely that; he knew his own strength, and he knew how to be gentle. She found herself wondering what it would be like to be held by him.
Oh my god, she was
attracted
to him – to a tall, hairy, heavily-built drummer with a beer belly. The sudden realization almost took her breath away. Mark's cheating had done more than shake up her world; it had dropped her into the damn Twilight Zone, where up was down, left was right, and Eddie looked good to her.
He caught her hand. “Hey, you okay?” he asked.
She gulped, feeling a lot more light-headed than she normally would be after a few beers. “I'm fine. I was just thinking about my boyfriend – my ex-boyfriend, I mean.”
Eddie didn't let go. He held her hand in both of his. “Do you want to talk about him?”
“He's a jerk,” she said bitterly. “I came back from a conference late last night just so we could be together on our one year anniversary, and I found him in my bedroom with another woman. All the people I know were friends with him before they were friends with me, so of course they believed him. I just wish...” She began to choke up again. “I never suspected for a minute that he was sleeping around. He could have been doing it all the time, and I didn't know. I don't even know if anything else he said was true.”
“Hey,” he said, “you know now, that counts for... wait, is that how you know
Gina
?
She
was the woman he was sleeping with?”
Kathy went red. “Yeah, it is,” she said quietly.
“And you guys somehow got talking?” he asked incredulously.