Wild Ones (The Lane) by Kristine Wyllys Page B

He was high somewhere and had lost track of the days. He was hiding out. He had overdosed.
    Brooding Turner had killed him.
    Shit.
    I climbed out of the car, clutching my shoes and backup purse, the one I’d moved everything into. I was shaking but I wasn’t sure if it was out of anger or worry. If Preach was guilty, I wanted to be his judge and jury. I didn’t want someone else playing executioner. It didn’t take much to picture Turner in that role, even having just met him. If you could even call what had happened meeting someone.
    By the time I slipped into the back door of Duke’s, the night was already in full swing. Jax and Aaron, our Sunday night bartender, were mixing drinks with the kind of gusto only Sunday nights could bring. Suzy and Miranda were doing their intricate tangos in that graceful, practiced way of theirs. On the platform, however, it wasn’t Chase belting out Elton’s “Rocket Man,” but the smooth voice of Louis, our backup piano player.
    I frowned and gestured to Suzy as she swayed past me.
    “Where’s Chase?” I asked. Louis moved on to Dylan’s “Hurricane” and I did have to admit, he sounded a hell of a lot better than Chase ever did.
    Suzy’s brow furrowed in response.
    “That’s the thing, isn’t it? Didn’t show back up. King never commented on it. No idea,” she replied in that breathless, shorthand way of hers.
    “But he wasn’t hurt that bad, was he?”
    “No. Thanks to you.” She gave me a wan smile. “Still hasn’t been back. Not since then. Weird.”
    “Yeah. Weird,” I echoed as she flitted away, back to the floor and her tables.
    Jax was scrutinizing me as he fixed a drink. I jerked my head in Louis’s direction and Jax shrugged. Scrunching up my nose, I glared at him. It was my stink face, my “Don’t fuck around with me” warning expression, and Jax, noting it, shook his head. He was telling me he didn’t know, hadn’t thought to mention it and wasn’t trying to keep anything from me. I nodded, taking his word for it, not failing to note the irony that we hadn’t actually spoken a single word. The ability to communicate without speaking and the courtesy of taking what wasn’t said at face value were courtesies I extended only to Jax.
    The night slipped by in spurts and drags, as Sundays so often did. They were my shortest day of the week, but they inevitably always ended up feeling like the longest. Maybe it was the subdued crowd we got in on those nights, the souls that threw up a finger to the pearly gates and came down to have a drink with the sinners. Maybe it was the knowledge that we only had one night to go in our work week. Whatever the reason, time stretched on and on. Then, out of nowhere, the lights were coming up, Louis was singing Semisonic’s “Closing Time,” and Duke’s was suddenly no longer a dangerous speakeasy where the cops were able to come bursting in at any minute. It was just a basement, the bare concrete walls a little depressing, the mismatched tables and chairs kinda shabby. The magic was gone in a blink of an eye, and the last of the stragglers shook themselves awake, no longer under a spell, and headed toward the stairs.
    We rushed through cleanup, laughing as Louis provided us with background music, songs he wasn’t allowed to play during the night. We were dancing around to his renditions of Creedence Clearwater Revival, singing along to “Bad Moon Rising” and “Run Through the Jungle,” wiping down tables, and pausing for shots Jax or Aaron poured us in between their own cleanup. We were seduced by our own youth, the infiniteness that came with it, charged with excitement. It was twirling behind us, the seducing excitement, dancing along with us.
    When we were through, we shut out the lights and filed out the back door, pausing only long enough for Jax to lock up. Our animated chattering and laughs were their own kind of music as we headed up the stairs to the street, a soundtrack of anticipation. Suzy