My jaw hardens. “I don’t need charity, Auntie.”
“So you’re back to callin’ me ‘Auntie’ now?” Ma-Ri asks as she sidles closer.
I drop my head and rub a hand over the back of my neck. “I know why you did what you did, but I really don’t want to fucking talk about it tonight, Ma-Ri,” I say. “Not… tonight.”
Ma-Ri doesn’t say anything until Tracy returns with the whiskey. When I reach for it, she snatches it up and turns away.
“Hey!” I whirl around, but she starts walking towards the back hallway.
“I never said it was for you, boy,” she says. “If you want to wallow, then do it in my office, not out here.” She pauses at the mouth of the darkened corridor and looks back over her shoulder. “You’re souring the fun mood with all your dour looks.”
My upper lip curls back away from my teeth, but I hop off the stool and follow after her regardless. I came here for a fucking drink and I intend to get it.
Ma-Ri leads me back into her crowded shoebox of an office and only when the door is shut behind us does she hand me the whiskey. “I might have a good working relationship with the police department, but not so much that he can handle seeing someone underage drinking at my bar,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “I need plausible deniability.”
With a grunt, I lower myself into one of the rickety chairs stationed in front of her desk. “I didn’t even notice he was here,” I say.
She eyes me as she rounds her desk and takes a seat. “So I gathered.”
The amber liquid in my glass calls to me. “You know I have a fake ID that would take care of the problem.”
Ma-Ri rolls her eyes and opens a drawer, shuffling her slender, wrinkled fingers through the contents for a moment. “That might work when it’s just a uniform,” she says. “Not the chief. You should remember that—the front is for when there are no cops about.”
“Noted.” I tip the glass back and suck in a mouthful of the liquid. It burns a path down my esophagus and into my gut, warming my insides as I close my eyes and inhale through my nose, relishing the sting of the liquor.
The sound of papers ruffling and then a lighter being struck has me opening my eyes again as Ma-Ri lights a cig and puts it to the end of her holder. Putting the narrowed end between her red-painted lips, she inhales and blows out a cloud of smoke.
“So,” she starts. I return my attention to the whiskey. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
My head thumps back against the chair and I groan. “I don’t fucking know, Auntie.” That old burning sensation returns to my eyes and it’s a pain to keep it at bay. My fingers tighten around my whiskey.
“You don’t know if you want to tell me or you don’t know what’s going on?”
“Both.” I lift my head and put the glass back to my lips. I swallow the first mouthful and then the second and another for good measure. Now all that’s left is a single layer of liquid at the bottom. So, instead of letting it sit there, I tip my head back and drop the rest in my mouth.
“That bad?” Ma-Ri blows another cloud of smoke out over my head as she sucks on the end of her cigarette holder.
“Worse.”
Ma-Ri is quiet for a long moment and the silence of the room echoes between us. I need another glass of whiskey. Hell, I need a whole fucking barrel.
“Does it have to do with…” Ma-Ri doesn’t need to say her name. We both know who she means.
I laugh, the sound bitter and hollow. “Of course it does. She’s…” Something white-hot and angry slithers up my chest and wraps scaley muscles around my throat.
If Ma-Ri senses my sudden shift, she doesn’t show it. But she does take pity on me because she reaches forward and presses a button on the old landline phone sitting half under a pile of papers and lifts the receiver.
“Bring a bottle of Woodford back here, Tracy, and a second glass. Thank you, darling.” She hangs up the phone and fifteen minutes later, there’s a subtle knock on the door. It cracks open and the bartender from earlier eyes me as she steps inside, holding a bottle of amber-colored whiskey and a glass that matches my own.
“Set them on the desk, please,” Ma-Ri instructs. Tracy does as she’s told and then disappears back out to the main part of the club, closing the door behind her once more.
Without waiting for an invitation, I reach forward and grip the bottle by the neck. Ma-Ri arches a perfectly painted brow in my direction as I rip off the plastic seal and uncap it.
“Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?”
I don’t answer as I fill her glass and pass it to her. She chortles. “And here I was expecting you to take care of yourself first.” She takes the offering and sips on the whiskey.
“My mama taught me better than that.” My words are quiet as I refill my glass, giving myself more than the double from before.
