Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge by Paul Krueger Read Free Book Online Page A

too bright. The lights that were on during evening shift made the furniture look dark brown; the sun made them gleam almost purple and showed exactly how chipped and scarred everything was. The walls looked farther away from one another and the ceiling seemed higher. Seeing it like this—clean, empty, smelling more like Pine-Sol than bargoer sweat—Bailey felt a pang of preemptive nostalgia. She was fond of the Nightshade. It really wasn’t
that
bad a place to work.
    Then she caught sight of the closed bathroom door. Okay, mostly not a bad place.
    Three bartenders stood behind the counter. They weren’t wearing black robes, but they looked like judges anyway. A large burgundy flag hung behind them, with the cup-shaped logo of the interlocked
C
s stitched in glinting gold thread. On the right was a wiry black woman whose bald scalp gleamed. On the left was a lumpy man whose shape and coloring reminded Bailey of a pile of mashed potatoes. Standing between them was Zane’s uncle and the lounge’s owner, Garrett Whelan.
    Garrett was even smaller than Bailey, and Bailey was pretty small. (Her college friends called her a midget; she preferred
waifish
, or, when she’d had a few beers and was trying to chat up some beef-brained econ major,
fun-sized
.) The way she remembered Garrett, hisenergy was as outsize as his body was petite. He didn’t walk so much as bounce, moving with the noodle-limbed energy of a depression-era cartoon. His slicked-back hair was gray, but only just; in another year or two, it’d be full-on white. His mustache was a shade darker and curled up at the corners like a hairy smile. Growing up, Bailey had seen Garrett forever parked behind the Nightshade’s counter—because when Zane was your best friend, playdates involved reading comics by a jukebox while slurping down free Shirley Temples—but now he mostly left the bar to Zane.
    Bailey wasn’t sure whether the circumstances called for her to be overtly cheerful or just coolly friendly, but she hazarded a wave either way. Garrett gave her a generous nod.
    “Miss Chen. A pleasure, as always.”
    Bailey smiled. Garrett wasn’t her uncle, but he’d always been generous with the soda gun. Plus he had let her take a job at the Nightshade with no questions asked. (Well, besides “When can you start?”)
    “Haven’t seen you around here much these days!” she said.
    “Idle hands, Ms. Chen.” Garrett clucked his tongue and shook his head. “There’s little for me to do around here with young Zane at the helm. I’m occupied with establishing enterprises elsewhere.”
    “Enterprises,” Bailey repeated. “Like a new bar?”
    “Garrett, if you don’t mind.” The bald woman interrupted, her voice clear, high, and ever so slightly annoyed. “Let’s begin.”
    Garrett took a shot glass that bore the same double-
C
symbol and banged it on the counter like a gavel. “I call to order this convention of the Chicago chapter of the Cupbearers Court,” he said to his audience of four. “
Bibo ergo sum
.”
    “
Bibo ergo sum
,” everyone except Bailey replied.
    “The members of the Tribunal will identify themselves for the record,” Garrett continued.
    “Standing for the South Side, Ida Jane Worth,” said the woman.
    “Standing for the West Side, Oleg Petrovich Kozlovsky,” said the lumpy man with a clipped accent.
    “Standing for the North Side, Garrett Duncan Whelan,” said Zane’s uncle. He turned to Bailey. “And we of course are familiar, but if you would kindly oblige the Court?”
    “Oh, right,” Bailey said. “Um, Bailey Chen. No middle name.”
    He nodded. “And keeping the Court record for this session is …”
    Zane raised his hand, which was holding his phone. “Got it.”
    A frown creased Garrett’s already wrinkled brow. “Zane.”
    “Come on,” Zane said. “I type way faster than I write. You can’t even read my handwriting. Plus this way we can keep the records digitally, instead of cramming up another