Chapter 2: Part 2

Lucia stared into the space in front of her, eyes not really taking in anything.  There was nothing to see behind the bar.  She held her glass in her hand, swirling it absently.  The ice made a clear ringing sound that cut through the low, indistinct chatter around her.

 

“Back again, huh?”

 

Lucia froze in a way that came close to defying human anatomy.

 

The bartender had more hair than any woman Lucia had ever seen.  Most of it was pulled back into a full ponytail that reached her shoulders, but there were enough stray red hairs to frame her face.  Huge, warm brown eyes.

 

She was also built.  She had a thickness to her that was intriguing.  Her sleeves were rolled up in a way that showed off her arms, and the way she was wiping the glass clean said she knew exactly what she was doing.  Very purposeful.

 

“No,” Lucia lied.  “I’ve never been here before in my life.”

 

“Couple nights ago,” she replied, easily.  “Came to see the show, right?”

 

Lucia narrowed her eyes and, with a wave of her hand, said, “This is not the Latina you're looking for.”

 

“No?” she asked, and then gave Lucia a look that said We both know you’re lying.  It was all cocked eyebrows and quirked lips.

 

Lucia sighed, shook her head, and went back to staring through the wall in front of her.  “I plead the fifth."

 

The bartender smirked and moved a couple steps closer toward her, so that they were about diagonal to each other.  "You know that scene in TV shows where someone goes into a bar and asks the barhand have you seen this woman, or whatever, and they say something back like I see a thousand faces every night, how am I supposed to remember one?  That's not me.  I'm good with faces."

 

"Oh yeah?" Lucia said, tilting her head slightly.  "What else are you good with?"

 

The raised eyebrow she received in return was so wild, so unimpressed, and at the same time so impressive.  That eyebrow was working overtime, getting paid time and a half.

 

Thick eyebrows too.  Lucia suppressed a shudder.

 

"If it helps," the bartender said, "I grew up here.  I know all the right spots to stand if you're trying to hide, and I know what the people standing in those spots are doing."

 

"The game was rigged!" Lucia exclaimed.  "So, grew up in a bar, huh?"

 

The bartender shrugged and moved a little closer.  "My dad used to own this place.  So what's going on?"

 

Lucia took a sip from her glass to buy herself a moment to think.  "Nothing."

 

"It’s okay," the bartender said.  "You can tell me.  I'm a doctor."

 

"You're a doctor," Lucia said, without inflection.

 

"Oh yeah," she replied, keeping a very straight face.  "As soon as Harvard approves the thousands of clinic hours I've put in around here, listening to other people’s problems, it's just a matter of time until they mail me a degree."

 

Lucia laughed and threw up her hands.  "You won that round."

 

"What were we playing for?" the woman said, moving even a little closer.

 

Lucia leaned forward over the bar, and bit her lip.  "What are you up for?"

 

Without missing a beat, the bartender smiled at her, and propped herself on the bar with her elbow.  "I dig your tats.  How far up do they go?"

 

Lucia looked down at her arms and smiled back.

 

"I got a room upstairs," the bartender said, "if you wanna—"

 

Lucia nodded vigorously, and downed the last of her ginger ale.

 

"Through the door in the hall," the bartender said, nodding toward the back of the building.  "The one across from the ladies room."

 

As Lucia was making her way across the room, she heard the bartender yell, "Karl, I'm going upstairs for a bit.  Cover the bar."

 

She didn’t hear Karl’s reply.

 

Lucia could have sex with just about anyone, given the right circumstances, which is not to say that she was without standards.  Her range of attraction crossed race, age, and gender, but anyone who did not meet those standards only required some extenuating circumstance to bridge the gap.  The greater the gap, the more pressing the circumstances required.  She had once gone down on a heavyset man she didn’t know on the side of the road, and none of those details helped.  The fact that he was a cop had not worked in his favor either, but her expired, out of state license and lack of insurance had made it just about the easiest blowjob she’d ever given.

 

The bartender was one hell of a woman.  Her lion’s mane of red-brown hair was perpetually shrouding part of her face as she moved, giving her a ridiculous air of mystery.  She caught up to Lucia at the top of the stairs, working her arched eyebrow like the deadly weapon it was, and unlocked the door.  Lucia only made it a few steps inside before the bartender took her hand and led her toward the bed.

 

As far as Lucia was concerned, sex was a commodity and had always been something she leveraged in the pursuit of her larger goals.  Sometimes it had felt like the only thing keeping her band together was the sex she orchestrated.  It kept the tensions down, the morale high, and the creative juices flowing.

 

The apartment above the bar was mostly one large, open space.  Tall windows that ran from her knees clear up to the ceiling let in a wild carousel of indirect neons from the assorted signage up and down the other side of Main Street, painting the bartender in a kaleidoscope of baby blues, soft whites, and pinks.  Her grip, her touch, was gentle but firm.

 

In hindsight, Lucia knew she’d crossed a line with Vivian.  Her erstwhile bandmate had caught feels even before Insanity Hall became Insanity Hall, and hadn’t ever been very good at hiding it.  She had often looked at Lucia with a longing that gave her a lump in her throat, but Lucia had always been able to see sex for what it really was: power.  An exchange.  She had given Vivian what she could, and in return Vivian had given them four stellar albums in five years, each better than the last: art she was proud to have her name on, and that had been a fair deal all around.

 

Or at least, it had seemed like it at the time.

 

That first kiss, next to the bartender’s bed, was good.  The second one, after shirts had been tossed and bras had been unhooked, was great.  The third, as Lucia crawled backwards on her elbows while the bartender moved with her, over her, on hands and knees, was goddamn dynamite.  

 

It had been over a year since the accident, and almost exactly a year since Vivian had come back… different.  Serious.  Driven.  Everything had gotten so messed up.  Lucia had completely lost it at the prospect of being the only one of them left standing, at having to be the responsible one, stubbornly insisting all the way down her spiralling tailspin that she had it all under control.  The speed with which it had unraveled often made the now-sober Lucia wonder if she’d ever had any control to begin with.

 

The bartender had the largest breasts she’d ever played with, which was not saying much.  Lucia’s previous experiences with women had almost exclusively been with other addicts, and substance abuse rarely aids in the retention of body fat.  The bartender’s were enhanced to some degree, surgically, but they suited her torso, and her build.  Perfectly, Lucia thought to herself, if I’m being honest.  Being underneath, on her back, afforded Lucia a magnificent view, the wonderful feeling of being comfortably crowded, and two free hands to explore with.

 

The worst part about giving in to Vivian was that it had tainted sex ever so slightly.  It felt as good to be touched as it ever had, and orgasms still made her eyes cross just a little, but, when given the chance, Vivian had shown her a level of tenderness, affection, and vulnerability that had been fulfilling in ways Lucia had never known.  It had been scary, with her stomach in her throat like a free-fall, to ransack her vault of secrets; scary, but not painful.  Certainly not agonizing, like she’d always thought it would be.  She had told Vivian things she’d never told another living soul—not everything, but enough—and it hadn’t brought the world down around her ears.  What it had done instead was to grind the last bits of Vivian’s reluctance to embrace her into powder, and the madwoman had gone all in.  She had ruined everything, and whether that ‘she’ was Vivian or Lucia depended on the day.

 

The bartender drove a thigh into Lucia’s, groaning and biting her lip as Lucia squirmed beneath her.  Lucia crossed her own legs at the ankle, squeezing that thigh and grinding her pelvis against it.  Flat, dull pressure at the apex.  It felt good.  She cupped one of the bartender’s breasts in both hands, teasing the pale pink tip with her tongue, and soaked up the sound the other woman made.  Lucia was still wearing her jeans, but they were tight enough and stretchy enough that the grinding was totally working for her.  The bartender, though, was down to just her panties, which made it very easy for Lucia to slip one hand down inside the waistband.

 

The worst part about sex with Vivian was the way it had taken up residence in her head, rent-free.  It had been inescapable with all of the partners she’d had since leaving Portland eight months prior.  She compared every part of what she felt to her memories of lying in Vivian’s arms, rose-colored though those memories might be, and the present always came up short.  It wasn’t even that sex with Vivian had been particularly great.  The black-haired bassist had skills, to be sure, but it had been a fairly vanilla affair every time.

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The bartender had cum easily, shuddering and convulsing after just a minute of lightly stroking with the pad of her middle finger, but it hadn’t slowed her down.  If anything it had only lit a fire under her, as evidenced by the way she ripped off Lucia’s jeans, threw her feet back over her head, and fell upon Lucia’s wet folds like a wolf on the hunt.

Little by little, Lucia straightened herself.  First, she brought her feet down, toes balanced lightly on the outer mounds of the bartender’s well-muscled shoulders.  The arch of her feet molding around the back of the other woman’s neck.  Heels digging in just beneath the shoulder blades.  

 

One moment, her thighs were resting gently against the bartender’s shoulders with her arms fanned out beside her, gripping the sheets.  The next, her legs were clamped tight around the bartender’s ears, and each of her hands held a fistful of auburn locks.  She clenched her teeth, riding that glorious dopamine high, and then every muscle relaxed in her body simultaneously.  Limp from her forehead to her toes, and for a little while her mind was quiet.  Time moved around her, but she didn’t notice.

 

The bartender was quite a sight from behind, haloed by the lights streaming in through the windows, in just her panties.  She reached for her bra, and looked back over her shoulder with a smirk.  Lucia couldn’t help noticing that the bra was exquisite.  Gorgeously intricate lace.  She still hadn’t moved, trying to catch her breath and enjoy a few moments of clear-headedness.

“The door over there leads down and out the back,” the bartender said, gesturing.  “Might want to turn on the light before you go out so you can see your way down the stairs.  If you do that, lock up behind you.”  Then she paused for a second before adding, “Or, you know, come back down?   Have another ginger ale?  Maybe have an actual conversation?

 

“Either way,” she said, with a smile, “that was fun.”

 

Lucia watched, silently, as the other woman dressed herself and went back downstairs.  She, seemingly very purposefully, hadn’t looked back to see what Lucia was doing while she gathered herself; there had been no pressure.  In another life, Lucia would have happily taken that door to freedom and held up the whole experience as yet another example of the goodness of humanity, or how natural casual sex can be.  She would have told herself that she’d done the right thing.  The truth was, though, that she had deflected with sex.  She really did want someone to talk to, and she didn’t want to bother her sponsor.  Stan would happily answer if she called, but it was late and his job required him to be up early.

 

She was lonely, and alone, and she didn’t want to do the stupid thing she always did when she was lonely and alone, so she put on her clothes, checked her eyeliner in a mirror, and went back downstairs.  The bartender had a smile like honey, slow but sweet, when she came around the corner.

 

“Why don’t we start over,” she said, as Lucia sat back down, and she extended her hand.  “I’m Helen.”

 

“Lucia.”

 

“Pleased to meet you, Lucia.”  Helen smirked as she flicked a button on the hose in her other hand, and she filled a glass with ginger ale.

 

The bubbles tickled Lucia’s nose when she went to take a sip.  It made her feel like she was seven again, sitting on her abuela’s couch under a heavy blanket when she had a cold.  “Thanks.”

 

“So.”

 

“So,” Lucia replied.

 

“Ginger ale, huh?”

 

Lucia narrowed her eyes.  “Yup.”

 

Helen nodded slowly.  Her eyes wandered around them, slowly, before she whispered, “I’m gonna guess… Narcotics Anonymous.”  Then she smiled and waited, patiently, while Lucia choked and coughed.

 

“God, I’m not that obvious,” Lucia said, red-faced, once she caught her breath, “am I?”

 

The redhead gave her a rueful smile.  “Most people don’t come to a bar to sit alone and drink soda. Could’ve been AA, but those folks usually avoid coming to the bar at all.”

 

“Ah,” Lucia said, nodding slowly.

 

“How many months?”

 

The wording of the question forced her to answer with, “Eight,” which was still not as cool as two hundred and forty four.

 

Helen rested her elbows on the bar and leaned forward, seemingly peering into Lucia’s soul. Whatever it was she saw, though, she kept to herself.  Instead of continuing to pepper Lucia with questions, however, which Lucia was increasingly uncomfortable with, the bartender said, “So this one day, after wrestling practice, I’m just sitting there in the locker room, right?”

 

“As you do,” Lucia said.

 

“I’m like, I don’t know, I think seventeen.”  Helen smiled, staring off into the distance where her memories lived.  “I was staring down some pretty heavy life stuff, and my… husband… or the man who would later become my husband.  We’d known each other for years.  We were just friends at that point.”

 

Lucia squinted slightly, processing what she was hearing.

 

“Anyway,” Helen continued, “I’m sitting there, and he comes over, and he sits down on the bench opposite me, and he just, he stares at me, right?”

 

Something wasn’t quite adding up for Lucia, but she bit her tongue and waited.

 

“He asks me how I’m doing.  I say fine, but I guess something in the way I answered, or in my face, it wasn’t right, and to be honest I don’t think I was trying to hide that I was going through some stuff.  I was.  For sure.”  Helen swallowed, which appeared difficult, before continuing.  “But instead of pushing, he just starts talking to me.  Telling me about his dad, who was abusive.  Mostly toward his mom, but also toward him and his little sister.  Really not good.

 

“He’s telling me about all this stuff, but he’s not doing it in a way that’s, like, placing an emotional burden on me, you know?” she said, tenting her fingers against her chest.  “He’s not telling me so I’ll hug him and tell him it’ll get better, or to make himself the center of attention.  He’s showing a little bit of vulnerability, and… you know, meanwhile, I’m sitting there trying to grapple with my identity, and with my sexuality, and my dysphoria.”

 

Lucia… pinged, and judging by the way Helen grinned at her it must have shown on her face.

 

“I didn’t tell him that day, but he was the first person I told about my dysphoria, and that I wanted to transition.”

 

“Ooooooooh,” Lucia said, blinking and replaying the previous twenty minutes very quickly through her head.  “Wait a minute.”

 

“You get ten seconds,” Helen said.  “No more.”

 

Lucia blinked a few more times, shrugged, nodded, and said, “Huh.  Okay.  So that was...”

 

Helen arched her eyebrow again, and it was strange how the contours of her face seemed to be designed around that arch: the set of her big brown eyes, the quirk of her lips, her prominent cheekbones, all in service of that almighty brow.  

 

Lucia said, with a firm nod, “Sorry.  Continue.”

 

Helen chuckled, shifted her weight so she was leaning more casually on one elbow, and looked up and down the bar.  “I’m glad I told him first, because he had the right reaction.  He just hugged me.  We were two straight AMABs, you know?  We’d never hugged before.  Little by little, he got me to open up, talking about his dad.  My dad wasn’t abusive, but I had an uncle that was an alcoholic who could be pretty scary.”  She took a deep breath and stared into the distance for a moment, saying, “It didn’t happen right away.  I don’t think I really started talking about myself for a couple days, but, you know, in the meantime, he kept up with me.  Checked in on me.  He was…”

 

A slow smile spread across Helen’s face.

 

“He was something.  The further I went with things, the more important he became.  He was there for me.  Saved my life.”

 

Lucia stared down at her drink and sighed.

 

“He was good to me, you know?  He helped me change.  For the better… and I miss him.  A lot.  He wanted more for me than for me to just spiral out of control, and that meant the world to me.”  She laughed sheepishly, adding, “Probably not something you should say to someone you just slept with, but...hey...”

 

Lucia wasn’t really aware of herself as she started to walk away.  She was somewhat cognizant of Helen, behind her, trying to get her attention.  Most of Lucia’s attention was on Vivian, and how much she missed her, and how much it hurt, and she didn’t think she could stand another second of empathy toward someone else’s lost love.

 

So she left.

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