The Bar Next Door Page 5

  He gives me a quizzical look. “They’ll let you take their dolly?”

  I’m about to ask him why I wouldn’t be allowed to use the dolly at my own bar when I remember.

  He still doesn’t know I’m the manager.

  The knowledge is like a final ace clutched in my hand, and I know I’m currently at risk of showing all my other cards. If I can keep this one a secret, I’ll have at least one advantage over him. He might be willing to tell me things he’d keep tight-lipped on if he knew who I was.

  What I’ll even be able to use that advantage for, I haven’t the slightest idea, but still, any sense of leverage is comforting. Plus, it feels cool and badass to have a secret identity

  I am Lady Midnight, a cold-blooded assassin trained from birth to infiltrate even the most elite of defensive forces.

  So cool. So badass. Not embarrassing at all.

  “Yeah,” I tell Julien, “they trust me.”

  He shakes his head. “Just how often are you at that bar? Should I be concerned?”

  I cross my arms in front of me. “What I think you should be is a little more grateful.”

  “Of course. Where are my manners?” He places a hand on his chest and stares off into the distance, like an actor performing a melodramatic soliloquy on stage. “Mademoiselle Monroe, I can make no answer but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks—and oft good turns are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay.”

  Be still my beating, treacherous heart.

  “Did you just...quote Shakespeare at me?”

  “Twelfth Night. Act one, scene five.” He pauses to assess the way my jaw is now in danger of colliding with the sidewalk and chuckles to himself. “I’m kidding. I don’t know the act and scene. I don’t even know who says it. That line just always impressed me. English can be so...inelegant, but there’s an honesty to it that French doesn’t have. Shakespeare captured it better than anyone.”

  Like a repeat of our first meeting in this very spot, I stand on the sidewalk gawking at his figure in the doorway with all the sophistication of a startled baby cow.

  “Sorry,” he tells me, misinterpreting my stare, “I sound like a...Mais, as you’d say in English, like a douchebag.”

  I should leave it at that. I should respond with, ‘You said it, not me,’ and bolt for Taverne Toulouse. I should get out of here.

  But the words demand to be uttered.

  “No legacy is so rich as honesty.”

  My voice is soft, a whisper in the night.

  Julien’s whole body seems to tense up for a second, to flinch with the same reflex I felt when he spoke those lines to me. It was the sensation you get when you catch sight of your reflection somewhere you weren’t expecting to see it: the ice-water shock of recognition, the stinging spark of familiarity that comes without time to prepare.

  He shakes his head from side to side, a rhythmic motion I can’t look away from as the alarm in him fades to amusement.

  “From...Much Ado About Nothing?”

  I can’t keep the smugness off my face. “All’s Well That Ends Well.”

  “They’re both comedies. I think I deserve half a point.”

  “I don’t give half-points.” I take a step back. “I’m going to go get that dolly now. I’ll meet you at your back door.”

  I practically flee to Taverne Toulouse and try to pull myself together as I stride through the front of house and into the kitchen.

  He’s just a guy who knows Shakespeare. Lots of people know Shakespeare. Anyone with a high school-level education has been forced to read at least one Shakespeare play.

  Dylan gives me a curious look as I haul the dolly out and wheel it over to the back door.

  “Didn’t you leave like fifteen minutes ago? And what’s getting delivered at night?”

  “They need help next door.”

  He pauses where he’s pulling a plate of nachos out of the oven and gives me a doubtful look. “I heard next door is the new enemy? Oh wait, this is you we’re talking about. You’d probably ask a serial killer if he needed a glass of water before he murdered you.”

  Dylan’s been around long enough to know he can get away with some sass, but I still respond with a muttered, “Just remember I make your schedule.”

  Julien’s already standing outside with his back propping the door open, letting light spill into the otherwise shadowed alleyway where all our deliveries show up. I don’t know what his tile company was thinking dumping goods on Avenue Mont-Royal. If I was him, I’d be calling them up and demanding compensation before vowing to never use their services again.

  While still remembering to say please and thank you, of course.

  “Do you know the owner there or something?” Julien greets me. “It can’t be normal for customers to just walk through the back of the bar, even if they are regulars.”

  “Don’t ask questions of your saviour.”

  “Right.” He throws both his hands up in the air and suddenly exclaims, “Deus ex machina!”

  I try my best to look unamused. “Don’t make classical Greek theatre jokes at your saviour either.”

  “You’re not a fun saviour at all, Monroe.”

  “Do you want the dolly or not, Julien?”

  He steps aside so I can wheel it past him, holding the door open for me with the tips of his fingers.

  “I think that’s the first time you’ve said my name.”

  His tone begs me to look back at him, to let those arctic eyes bore into me like they’ve already done way too many times tonight. Julien seems to possesses this weird ability to liquefy everything around him, to make the world ebb and flow with a tide that’s difficult to fight—a tide that’s difficult to want to fight.

  I kick and flail and flounder my way into less insistent waters.

  “Hurry up!” I urge as I march the dolly through the room. “I think I see a tile thief outside.”

  We load the boxes up together and take turns wheeling them over to a corner of what was once the front of house. Each one feels like it contains two—possibly three—baby elephants inside, and we end up ditching our jackets to huff and puff our way through the task. By the time we’re finished, we’re both red-faced and mopping sweat off our foreheads.

  “These better be some fucking nice tiles,” I grumble as I lower myself to sit down on one of the boxes.

  “I should hope so.” Julien leans against the wall opposite me and lifts his foot up to rub it.

  “You did hurt yourself, didn’t you?” I ask.

  He waves me off.

  “I’ll survive. Merci.” His expression goes suddenly serious as he places his foot back down. “Really, Monroe. Merci mille fois. You didn’t have to stay this whole time. It was extremely kind of you.”

  I pat the box beneath me, feeling the warmth rise in my cheeks and blaming it on the exertion. “I think we can agree that I did have to stay. You think you could have done all this yourself?”

  “Not at all. I should hire you to help with the renovations. We’d be done well before June with you around.”

  “June?”

  The shock and panic in my voice slips out before I have a chance to disguise it.

  “It’s ambitious, I know,” he adds, mistaking my alarm for disbelief, “but I want to start hiring in June and be open by the end of the summer. Of course, we’d have to change plans if I buy the place next door. I’m not sure what to do. I’ve had to wait so long to start this project that putting it on hold for any longer just feels...exaspérant, but it could be so much better with a bigger space.”

  His project—like investing hundreds of thousands into a new business venture is a hobby. There’s something inescapably entitled about him. It’s not even arrogance; it’s the obliviousness of being born into invulnerable wealth, of viewing money as a constant instead of something subject to the dangers of flux and flow.

  Every day I’ve spent as a manager has been marked by the shadow of that danger. It’s one thing to be an employee, to know that
no matter how well the business is doing, you still get paid. Sure, you might lose some hours and your tips might suck, but at the end of the day, your pay is your pay.

  There’s no minimum wage for how much a bar makes. When you run the business, there’s no guarantee you walk out with anything at the end of the night. Sure, I’m entitled to my salary, but the reason I put in so many hours for free is that I’m constantly running numbers that tell me if I don’t do the overtime, I’m not going to have a job at all. When you take on the duties of a manager, you’re signing on for a permanent devotion to the ‘greater good.’ It’s no longer about watching the clock waiting for your shift to be up; it’s about obsessively watching the net profits rise and fall and doing everything you can to keep them out of the red.

  Julien talks like the red doesn’t even exist.

  “This wall,” he says, knocking on the plaster beside him, “is my dilemma.”

  We’re silent enough now that I notice the thumping of the music in Taverne Toulouse for the first time. If I strain my ears enough, I can hear people laughing. I can imagine Dylan singing rap songs to himself in the kitchen. I can see DeeDee dancing around behind the bar in her crop top, pouring shots and giving her famous order for anyone leaving to do ‘one for the road.’ I can picture Zach staring at her like she’s the sun.

  And here on the other side, I’ve just spent a half hour piling up boxes with a man who has a dangerous ability to make me forget about all of them.

  That wall is my dilemma too.

  Suddenly everything shifts back into perspective. He’s a threat again, something I have to outsmart and overcome. So many people are depending on me doing just that. I tell myself to pretend he’s a drunk at the bar and I’m convincing him to go for a glass of water instead of another whiskey.

  “Can you even change your plans this late in the process?” I ask. “You’re already getting tiles delivered. Things seem pretty...final.”

  “They are.” He sighs and reaches up to scratch the back of his neck. “It would be one hell of a headache to change everything now.”

  Sweet Jesus, let him put his arm down. I can’t think with his shirt riding up like that.

  A thought seems to strike him, and he laughs to himself. “I feel like you’re my bartender right now.”

  I glance around us. “This is hardly a bar.”

  “Then let’s go to one.”

  “Huh?”

  He pushes off the wall. “Let me buy you a drink. I owe you at least one for all your help tonight.”

  “I should get home.”

  The response comes out like a reflex, an innate defense in the face of imminent danger. Being alone in a booth with Julien Valois at this hour of the night has to be the definition of imminent danger.

  “I probably should too,” he tells me, “but...”

  His fingers brush over his chin like he can tell exactly what he does to me, like he’s charging his facial hair up with its mystical beard powers.

  “...I would really like to get a drink with you.”

  Say no. Do it. Just grab your dolly and walk out of here like a boss.

  But then again, he does have information I could use, and he seems to be in the mood to give it. If he’s planning to start hiring in June, I’m going to have to work a lot faster than I thought to convince Fournier I can turn things around. Even if Julien doesn’t seek him out, Fournier will no doubt present him with an offer to sell if I don’t get my ass in gear first. I need to be prepared for anything. I need to know exactly what’s going on next door.

  I tell myself that’s why I’m agreeing as I hold up a finger and answer, “One drink.”

  Five

  Julien

  FINISH: The impressions of flavour and texture left by a wine after consumption

  “I don’t think I’m dressed nice enough to go in there.”

  I turn to where Monroe has paused at the top of the stairs. She started leading us to a pub back on Avenue Mont-Royal, but I had other plans and ordered a car to take us down to the Old Port. I walk back up the few steps that lead to the basement bar and meet her on the cobblestones.

  “You look ravissant.”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  I reach for her arm and pause just before I touch her, giving her a chance to pull away. She doesn’t. I tuck her hand in my elbow and lead her reluctant procession down the stairs, concentrating on keeping us from falling as the pressure of her gloved fingers seems to send warmth shooting all the way up my arm.

  I’m too old for butterflies.

  I’m too old for any of this: the flirting, the drinks, the maudit Shakespeare, the staying out late with a girl when I should be checking on my businesses and trying to fit in a few hours of sleep before doing it all again tomorrow. My work is my life. It has been for a long time. My alarm goes off at six seven days a week, and I haven’t been able to put my phone on silent since the day I opened my first restaurant.

  If there’s a flood at one in the morning, I’m there. If someone accidentally sets half the kitchen on fire during a dinner rush, I’m there. If a delivery company fucks up and dumps a load of expensive tiles off when there’s no one around to receive it, I’m there. There’s no time for my life to be anything but work.

  And yet here I am, hoping against hope that my phone will stay quiet for just one single hour as I try to figure out why the woman on my arm has been hanging around my head like a line in a poem I can’t quite figure out. She’s a brilliant metaphor I’m not smart enough to understand. She’s a simile that slips out of my grasp every time I think I’ve caught the silver flash of its scales between my fingers.

  I don’t even know her. I can’t even tell if she likes me, but I feel that same compulsion I did a few days ago when I saw her standing outside my property’s door. She’s a test, and I don’t want to fail her again.

  I’ve failed far too many people in my life.

  “I’m not mocking you,” I tell Monroe. “I’d let you into my Michelin star restaurant without hesitation.”

  She pauses on the stairs, making me stop too. “Now I know you’re mocking me. You don’t own a Michelin star restaurant.”

  I stare her down. Her brow creases.

  “...Do you?” she finally squawks.

  I can’t help it; I burst out laughing. She’s impossibly cute—even more so as she pulls her arm out from under mine and smacks my shoulder.

  “Call another Uber. I’m going home.”

  “Attends, attends. Wait, wait.” I move so we’re standing on the same step. She has to tilt her head back almost as far as it goes to look at me. For some reason, that gesture makes my chest tighten. “I meant it, Monroe. You are...You are not someone who is easy to stop looking at.”

  I expect her to smack me again. I’d probably deserve it. I’m doing worse at this than a stuttering sixteen year-old boy out on his very first date.

  Instead, her pupils seem to grow even wider than they already have in the dim light of the street. Her inhale is the barest hint of a gasp, a breath of desire so brief it must be unconscious and—much more likely—probably imagined by me. Still, she starts walking down the stairs again, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure I’m in tow.

  I could happily stand taking in this view for the rest of the night. She really is ravishing. The huge winter boots and puffy red coat would be old lady-esque on anyone else, but paired with her unrelenting curves and those damn perfect lips, she looks like a girl you want to throw over your shoulder and carry off to a warm cabin where you can spend the better part of a weekend making her walk around in just those woolly boots.

  I’ve never even been to a maudit cabin.

  Get it together, I order myself. One drink. That’s all you asked for, and that’s all she offered. You don’t have time for more.

  Not tonight. Not this weekend. Not ever.

  I learned that lesson the hard way.

  The bar’s hostess, a heavily done-up woman in heels and a little black
dress, leads us to a table flanked by two arm chairs along the back wall of the room. The place is on the smaller side and themed like a speakeasy: leather seats, panelled ceiling, velvet curtains covering the walls. The room hums with muted conversation, glasses clinking and catching the reflection of the dim lighting so it looks as if the guests are holding crystals in their hands.

  It’s a small miracle to have gotten a table at this hour on a Saturday night. I brought us here on the off-chance; I expected to have to try somewhere else. The hostess offers to take our coats. I slip mine off and find Monroe still fumbling with hers.

  “May I?” I ask.

  She glares at my raised hands like she has no idea what I intend to do, and I nearly start laughing again. There’s something about her round face and arching eyebrows that makes her confused expression look almost childish, like a kid getting frustrated as they stumble over a math problem.

  She relaxes when I reach for the shoulders of her coat and turns so I can help her out of it. Her hair has slipped forward over her shoulders, leaving a triangle of white skin bare before it meets with the band of her shirt.

  I swallow as I finally get the coat off her.

  Just one drink.

  Yet even the thought of Madame Bovary alone in my condo waiting for the organic treats I pay far too much for doesn’t stop me from wishing this evening with Monroe could stretch on into more.

  The hostess leaves with the jackets, and it’s only a minute or so more before our server arrives with drink menus. He makes brisk conversation with us about our evening, and I answer his French questions in the same language before he hurries away to the next table.

  “You’re not from here,” Monroe states in English once we’re alone again.

  “What makes you say that? Never met a Québécois man so charming?”

  Again with the flirting. I haven’t flirted in longer than I care to remember—not like this, at least. This is the same easy feeling that comes when you’ve had just a little more wine than you should. It’s the heady warmth that coaxes words off your tongue when they’d normally be smart enough to stay put.