(no subject)
Title: Rachel Morris
Author: elaborationlove
Fandom: Original
Characters/Pairings: Original
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General, humor
Summary: Rachel Morris promised she would never become her mother.
Author's Notes: Written for creative writing class.
Warning: None.
Disclaimer: I own it all.
Word Count: 3516
“Another.”
Twenty-four-year-old Rachel slammed the blue-tinted glass down on the bar for the second time. She no longer bothered with full sentences, being too buzzed and apathetic to string coherent sentences together. The bartender, a middle-aged man with a Santa beard who looked like he could belong to Hell’s Angels, eyed her with a raised eyebrow and poured the liquor into the squat glass, letting it splash over onto the abused, mahogany bar.
Still, he spoke with a patronizing and gruff tone. “You’re sure you can handle another, girly?” He slid the short tumbler to her, further scratching the wood. Rachel wrapped her fingers around it begrudgingly. So much for not becoming her mother. A relationship fails and the best solution she can come up with? A drink. She had been so good about staying away from alcohol this whole time and the first big breakup and she fell apart. Rachel felt her eyes narrow in anger at herself. The barkeep smirked. “Do you even know what day it is?”
“October eleventh,” she snapped.
This time it went down her throat more easily. The first one had been harder. They always are, she had heard. When she banged the glass down again, she stretched her arm out across the bar and rested her head on it, tiredly and morosely. Her inky hair fell over her eyes and she produced a puff of air, attempting to remove it from her vision. The bartender glanced with knowledgeable sympathy.
“You ungrateful little bitch!”
The sting of her mother’s black satin glove was something new to Rachel. Usually, it was just a slap of the hand or something similar. She bit her lip, squeezed her hands shut. Her neon orange nails bit into the skin of her fourteen-year-old palm, trying to wipe out the pain inflicted by the glove. The pinch couldn’t compete. She managed, however, to keep the tears hidden. It wasn’t so much the physical pain as it was the fact that her own mother was the one feeding it to her. Not that she did any real feeding-of food, that is. She was often too drunk to do anything but pour another glass of expensive, high-end French wine and pass out on the white leather couch. Rachel was always amazed the furniture never had any wine-or whatever the current poison of choice was-spilled on it. If there had been an Olympic sport for holding onto a glass of alcohol while sleeping, Rachel’s mother would win the gold, hands down.
Anger building up and threatening to spill out inside her, Rachel felt as if she could be the first person to actually have steam spurt from her ears. How could her mother possibly justify being drunk ninety-eight percent of the time? How could she dare to call herself a mother? It was inhumane and obscene and disgusting and…and…. Rachel was sick of it.
Yet, still, the men came, filing in one after the other, it seemed. An unending trail of them. Colin-something was the current “boyfriend”. Rachel could think of more appropriate names for what he really was, but didn’t utter them in front of her mother-or anyone, for that matter-not that she had anyone she could utter them to-in fear of being somehow punished. Cruelly and unusually. If there was one thing her mother was good at besides drinking, it was coming up with clever punishments. And it wasn’t just cell phone restriction. Rachel never had much confidence in cell phones anyway-all they did was give you thumb arthritis and probably caused brain tumors. The only good of it was to have a life line if you were being raped or mugged. But who has time to dial a phone when they’re being attacked, anyway?
There were a lot of things Rachel would certainly like to say to her, even through a cell phone. “Grow up,” to start. It was the first thing to come to mind when her mother stumbled into the house, tripping over her Prada shoes as she kicked them off, revealing panty hoes with more than one run. “Why did you even bother having me if you were going to treat me this way?”, “How could you do this to another human being?”, “What the hell is your problem?”, “Why won’t you get help?”
But most importantly, “Don’t you love me, Mommy?”
Rachel felt she already knew the answer.
She ground her teeth and glared up at her excuse for a mother. “I will never be like you,” she spat.
Despite her tipsy state, Rachel remembered the incident without struggle. It hadn’t been particularly violent besides the satin glove part, but when she had actually said that, it had made things different. Rachel’s mother didn’t stop drinking: she never did, not until the day she died of liver failure. Their relationship hadn’t even really changed after the occurrence. It was more that Rachel felt herself become independent. She no longer needed her irresponsible mother’s approval. After she made her vow, Rachel found herself dealing with it. She found herself living.
She went to the mall more often. She dated occasionally. She joined a club at school-even though Rachel constantly told herself clubs were for over-achievers. Life was better. When her mother died, things were awkward for a few months. People sent sympathy cards and flowers and food. Rachel felt like she was stealing, somehow, accepting the condolence gifts. To be honest, she didn’t feel a whole lot of remorse for her loss. Sure, it was too bad for her mother, who was no longer living, no longer enjoying her drink, but Rachel didn’t feel all that badly about it. Guilt weighed her down for that, too, but when she talked to her friend and psych major, Caroline, the blonde confidante justified the situation and Rachel went back to living like she did before her mother died.
“Rough day? Can I buy you a drink?”
Rachel lifted her head and glanced at the man half-heartedly beside her. Hadn’t she sworn off men yesterday? He had apparently just sat down, as he squirmed, trying to adjust his stance on the small barstool. As he did so, she wondered briefly if vegans ever refused to go into bars because of the leather used on the stools, if they demanded some other furniture on which they could sit. She snorted at the thought. Vegans could be so damn self-important.
“Sorry?” The man cleared his throat after asking.
“Oh. Uh…no, thanks. I’m pretty ehh…pretty toasted already,” she managed quietly. “Thanks, though.”
“Uh…maybe I could call a cab for you or something instead? A friend?” He motioned to the bartender, raising his fingers.
“’Get ya something?” the Hell’s Angel’s Santa asked.
“Apple martini?”
“Uh…yeah.” The bartender stalked off, muttering something about women’s drinks and pansies.
“So, can I call someone for you?” He shifted his body to face her.
“What do you care? Enjoy your martini. Lemme alone.”
She eyed him again, taking the pinstriped designer suit jacket and matching pants in. He wore a designer T-shirt, which featured some fancy design that apparently advertised for some band or something-thought Rachel had no idea what, beneath it. What was it with bands and making all these swirled lines around their name on logos, anyway? Wasn’t the point to just get the damn name out there?
An edgy, well-dressed business man. Apple martini.
Must be gay.
The guy shrugged, clueless to Rachel’s assumptions. “If you need anything…”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll holler or whatever. Now go away.”
He whistled. “Damn. I thought I had a bad day.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Is it a guy thing?”
“No, it’s a leave-me-alone thing.” She glared at him and then rested her head back on her arm, sick of the meaningless banter.
“I don’t think so. No. You were in a bad mood long before I walked in. This is something else. I’m putting ten on it’s a guy thing.”
“First, you try to buy me a drink,” Rachel felt her head clear a bit as her annoyance built and she continued to speak, despite her best efforts of trying to get the guy to leave her alone. All the times the teachers and other adults had told her to “ignore them and they’ll leave you alone” had somehow vanished from her memory and she was going to have the last word. “Now you’re trying to win money off my personal life, which, you have no business in because A, it’s my life and B, I only just met you, if you can call this meeting someone.”
“An angry drunk,” he teased, grinning. “Kind of cute.”
“Nice. Did you get that from Pick-Up-Lines-R-Us or something?”
“And if I did?”
“Then you need to find a new supplier. ‘Cause that sucked.” Rachel reigned in her pride, careful not to show it.
“Thanks.” He grinned, as if unbothered by it.
“Fine,” she snapped. “You really want to know why I’m in such a bad mood?”
“Well, I didn’t really ask you, but if you-“
“My joke of a boyfriend…”
As she launched into the story, the man finished his sentence, “-really want to tell me, you can,” quietly.
“Hey.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind and pushed her hair from her ear with his nose.
She turned to face him. Kissed him. “Hey yourself.”
“I have a present for you.”
“Oh God. What now? It better not be dog crap.”
“Oh, I’m not that evil. Besides, whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Las time I checked, that still stands in this country. Sort of. Well, theoretically. M y clients tend to go to jail with little consideration on the jury’s part.” Ian was a lawyer. With tattoos. But the suits covered them up conservatively and modestly, although sometimes you could see the tip of a bird’s wing on his wrist if the sleeve of the jacket was high. Rachel noticed he usually got the harder criminals-who usually had tattoos themselves. She often wondered if they chose him because he had tattoos: he was sort of one of them in an unconventional way. Most of his tattoos had meaning, though, and Rachel figured he didn’t just get them for the good of his firm. The publicity. It was for himself. It just worked out well for the firm. Lately, he’d been asking about fonts for her name to be inscribed on the back of his lower neck. She was sort of uncomfortable with the idea, but it was sweet, so she’d gone over pages of scripts to choose from with him. They had narrowed it down to eight, somehow, but she didn’t’ see how they could possibly pick one. She had jokingly suggested they throw out two of them and then write one letter of her name in each of the six remaining fonts. Ian’s goal was to get the tattoo by the end of the week-two days from now, on March fourteenth.
“Most of them are guilty,” she reminded him.
“Still.”
“Okay, whatever. Are you going to tell me? The suspense is killing me.”
“Just don’t laugh, okay? I already went through enough humiliation when I got them.” He stepped away from Rachel and reached into the breast pocket of his grey suit jacket and produced an envelope. His name was written in messy capital letters on the front and there appeared to be some ketchup or something on the lower right corner.
“Um. Ew.” She made a face when he handed it to her.
“Just open it.”
The triangle of the envelope was tucked inside, rather than licked shut. Rachel nearly got a paper cut trying to pry it open but managed to save her dry skin by adjusting the position of her long fingers. Inside the envelope were two strips of thicket paper. The edges of the strips were bumpy, as if they had been torn from a length of strips, like raffle tickets, but bigger.
On the strips, there was a lot of information. A few words stood out in bold.
The Wang Theater and Boston Ballet is Proud to Present:
Beauty and the Beast
Rachel scanned the tickets for the date and seats. The date of the performance was located beneath the title. October 12, 2007-seven months from now. The seats were reported on the upper left corner. Row F, seats twenty-six and twenty-seven.
“Oh my God! Ian! These are incredible!”
“Well, they’re not first row, but…”
“No, these are fantastic! It’s not good to be too close, anyway. How did you get these? They’re like, impossible to get!”
He chuckled. “You’re welcome.”
“Oh!” She jumped up, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. “Thank you thank you thank you! You’re so wonderful! Thank you! Eep!” Rachel pushed off of him and skipped a few feet away before twirling around, holding the tickets in the air and singing excited nonsense.
“I am so stoked! You have no idea! They’re-”
“Impossible to get, I know.” He grinned, glad she was so ecstatic. He had been a little hesitant, originally, when it came to him on a ride on the MBTA. There had been an advertisement posted on the graffiti’d walls. Ian remembered Rachel telling him stories about the few years she had been enrolled in a ballet class, when her father had still lived with her. Then he committed suicide shortly after her ninth birthday, and she had to quit the ballet school for lack of money. The funds in the family, instead, went to supporting her mother’s addiction.
“Did you get them from a client or something?”
“No. Those guys are mostly scalpers anyway. No connections. I just called up and reserved some tickets and then stood in line for, oh, I don’t know…three hours.”
She pulled him into a hug again, grinning. “You’re amazing!”
----
“You are the worst person I have ever known in my life! You’re worse than my mother! At least she didn’t lie to me!”
“Rach…Rach…wait,” his words came out jaggedly as he struggled to pull his pants back down. His brain seemed to have trouble remembering to get the pants on first and then try walking. Or running. Whatever.
“The show is in four days, Ian! Four days! You couldn’t at least wait until then?”
“It’s not like I planned for you to find out, Rach. Just wait a second!”
The girl in his bed sat uncomfortably, fiddling with the top of the sheet she had pulled up to her chin. She twitched awkwardly, unsure of what she should do. If she had known Ian had girlfriend-though it certainly explained a lot-she never would have gotten involved. It just went to show, you can never trust a lawyer.
“No. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“What are you talking about? We had plans today.”
“Oh, my bad. A white lie. Shame on me.”
He reached for her hand, trying to earn a chance toe explain.
“Get the hell off of me!” Rachel shrieked and pulled away.
While the two were distracted, the girl Ian had apparently been about to sleep with pulled on her clothes slowly, taking deep breaths. When she was finished, she picked up her red clutch bag off the leather chair in the corner and walked past them, her head down.
“I’m sorry,” She whispered to Rachel. “I had no idea.”
Rachel nodded sadly, pitying herself. This whole trusting people thing really wasn’t working out. Caught up her thoughts, she briefly thought about how much the president had to trust his staff, especially his chef and security guards. Celebrities, too.
“Do you want the tickets?” he said softly.
“I have the damn tickets. Look. I’m going to make this easy on you. Not because I want to, but because then it will be easy on me. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to hear about you. You got me? I catch any scent of you and I will tear you apart so fast you won’t have time to feel it.”
“Rachel, please, I-“
“I don’t want to hear it. Go find some other cheap slut to share your little pity party with. Have a nice life.”
With that, she left.
And here it was, October eleventh. The ballet was tomorrow night and Rachel had no intention of going, despite the fact that she hadn’t lied when she said she had the tickets.
“I’m Jared, by the way.” The guy at the bar stuck out his hand.
“I don’t go for your type.”
“My type? What’s that supposed to mean? Besides, I haven’t even asked to see you again. Just offered some help.”
“And I don’t want it. So leave me alone.”
“Seeing as how you just told me the life story of you and your ex-boyfriend, I’d say you’re definitely warming up to the idea of me at least calling a cab for you, if not accepting a drink. It doesn’t even have to be alcohol.” He turned to look for the bartender again. “A Coke, please?”
“My type isn’t gay.”
Jared bit back a smirk, not wanting to further aggravate the poor girl. “You think I’m gay?” He put on a mock-gay voice. “Darling, there is no way I’m gay!” His voice eased back to its usual, smooth tone. “Seriously, though. I’m as straight as they get.”
“I bet you are, Mr. Apple-martini.”
“My ex-girlfriend got me into them. So sue me.”
“Sure. I’ll sue you. My ex-boyfriend can be your lawyer. I’m sure you’d make a great team.”
The bartender arrived with the glass of coke. It was more like a glass of ice with coke in it, but Rachel was too thirsty to object to either the obscene amount of ice or the fact that she was getting a free drink. It was out of pity, she figured, but she didn’t really care.
She sighed, finally, and looked up at Jared. “Thanks.”
“What for?”
She shrugged. “I’m not downing shots like candy any more, am I?”
“No, I guess not.” He reached out hesitantly. “You do have mascara all over your cheeks, though.”
“Okay, the fact that you know that this is mascara and not eyeliner, definitely proves it. You’re gay.”
He held up his hands defensively. “Fine. I admit it. I’m gay. I listen to Michael Jackson in my free time, spend my nights at gay bars and knitting clubs. Oh, and I go to the annual Cross Dresser Convention.”
“Really?”
“No.” The tone was total deadpan. Rachel found herself holding her stomach as she laughed.
“Um…so…” Rachel could think of nothing to say as her laughter abated.
“That was rather articulate.”
“You bet. I know, you wish you had my speaking skills. Some people just can’t be this talented.” Her hands flourished as she gestured to herself. “Anyway. I don’t suppose you like the ballet.”
“I thought I wasn’t your type.”
“Well, that was when you were gay. I suppose I could make an exception for someone who is willing to put down four bucks for like…” she held up her glass, inspecting it, “two ounces of Coke.”
“Sounds like pretty cheap cocaine to me.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“You two done for the night or do I need to call the supplier for more alcohol?” The bartender stalked over to them and rested he heels of his palms on the bar.
“I’m all set,” Jared said. “Can I get you anything else?” he asked Rachel.
“No, I’ve had too much to drink already. I am…buzzed. Hence the ballet comment.”
“We’re all set,” Jared told the bartender. “I’ll take the bill.”
“Not for my shots, you won’t.”
“I will,” he insisted.
“Please don’t.”
“It’s no big deal.”
Rachel sighed. “Alright. But…at least let me see it.”
When the bartender returned with the bill, she snatched it from him before Jared could see it. She didn’t even look at the total before flipping the slip over and scribbling some numbers on it.
“You’ve got until three o’clock tomorrow or I’m scalping the tickets.”
“Well, I can’t let you do a thing like that.”
“Why? ‘ Cause it’s dangerous?” she teased.
“No, you’d rip the people off.”
Jared took the bill from her and copied the numbers onto a napkin. He signed the other side of the paper and handed it back to the bartender who returned the credit card to Jared.
“So…I’ll see you tomorrow?” Rachel asked softly, timidly.
He lifted her hand and pressed his apple scented lips to her knuckles. “Yes. I’ll call for your address.” Jared leaned forward, bringing his lips closer to her ear. “I’ll be very disappointed if this is just some random number, too. Oh. And, please don’t mark it against me just because my brother’s an asshole.” He raised an eyebrow and, not giving her a chance to respond either way, walked out of the bar onto the street, his steps bouncy and light
Author: elaborationlove
Fandom: Original
Characters/Pairings: Original
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General, humor
Summary: Rachel Morris promised she would never become her mother.
Author's Notes: Written for creative writing class.
Warning: None.
Disclaimer: I own it all.
Word Count: 3516
“Another.”
Twenty-four-year-old Rachel slammed the blue-tinted glass down on the bar for the second time. She no longer bothered with full sentences, being too buzzed and apathetic to string coherent sentences together. The bartender, a middle-aged man with a Santa beard who looked like he could belong to Hell’s Angels, eyed her with a raised eyebrow and poured the liquor into the squat glass, letting it splash over onto the abused, mahogany bar.
Still, he spoke with a patronizing and gruff tone. “You’re sure you can handle another, girly?” He slid the short tumbler to her, further scratching the wood. Rachel wrapped her fingers around it begrudgingly. So much for not becoming her mother. A relationship fails and the best solution she can come up with? A drink. She had been so good about staying away from alcohol this whole time and the first big breakup and she fell apart. Rachel felt her eyes narrow in anger at herself. The barkeep smirked. “Do you even know what day it is?”
“October eleventh,” she snapped.
This time it went down her throat more easily. The first one had been harder. They always are, she had heard. When she banged the glass down again, she stretched her arm out across the bar and rested her head on it, tiredly and morosely. Her inky hair fell over her eyes and she produced a puff of air, attempting to remove it from her vision. The bartender glanced with knowledgeable sympathy.
“You ungrateful little bitch!”
The sting of her mother’s black satin glove was something new to Rachel. Usually, it was just a slap of the hand or something similar. She bit her lip, squeezed her hands shut. Her neon orange nails bit into the skin of her fourteen-year-old palm, trying to wipe out the pain inflicted by the glove. The pinch couldn’t compete. She managed, however, to keep the tears hidden. It wasn’t so much the physical pain as it was the fact that her own mother was the one feeding it to her. Not that she did any real feeding-of food, that is. She was often too drunk to do anything but pour another glass of expensive, high-end French wine and pass out on the white leather couch. Rachel was always amazed the furniture never had any wine-or whatever the current poison of choice was-spilled on it. If there had been an Olympic sport for holding onto a glass of alcohol while sleeping, Rachel’s mother would win the gold, hands down.
Anger building up and threatening to spill out inside her, Rachel felt as if she could be the first person to actually have steam spurt from her ears. How could her mother possibly justify being drunk ninety-eight percent of the time? How could she dare to call herself a mother? It was inhumane and obscene and disgusting and…and…. Rachel was sick of it.
Yet, still, the men came, filing in one after the other, it seemed. An unending trail of them. Colin-something was the current “boyfriend”. Rachel could think of more appropriate names for what he really was, but didn’t utter them in front of her mother-or anyone, for that matter-not that she had anyone she could utter them to-in fear of being somehow punished. Cruelly and unusually. If there was one thing her mother was good at besides drinking, it was coming up with clever punishments. And it wasn’t just cell phone restriction. Rachel never had much confidence in cell phones anyway-all they did was give you thumb arthritis and probably caused brain tumors. The only good of it was to have a life line if you were being raped or mugged. But who has time to dial a phone when they’re being attacked, anyway?
There were a lot of things Rachel would certainly like to say to her, even through a cell phone. “Grow up,” to start. It was the first thing to come to mind when her mother stumbled into the house, tripping over her Prada shoes as she kicked them off, revealing panty hoes with more than one run. “Why did you even bother having me if you were going to treat me this way?”, “How could you do this to another human being?”, “What the hell is your problem?”, “Why won’t you get help?”
But most importantly, “Don’t you love me, Mommy?”
Rachel felt she already knew the answer.
She ground her teeth and glared up at her excuse for a mother. “I will never be like you,” she spat.
Despite her tipsy state, Rachel remembered the incident without struggle. It hadn’t been particularly violent besides the satin glove part, but when she had actually said that, it had made things different. Rachel’s mother didn’t stop drinking: she never did, not until the day she died of liver failure. Their relationship hadn’t even really changed after the occurrence. It was more that Rachel felt herself become independent. She no longer needed her irresponsible mother’s approval. After she made her vow, Rachel found herself dealing with it. She found herself living.
She went to the mall more often. She dated occasionally. She joined a club at school-even though Rachel constantly told herself clubs were for over-achievers. Life was better. When her mother died, things were awkward for a few months. People sent sympathy cards and flowers and food. Rachel felt like she was stealing, somehow, accepting the condolence gifts. To be honest, she didn’t feel a whole lot of remorse for her loss. Sure, it was too bad for her mother, who was no longer living, no longer enjoying her drink, but Rachel didn’t feel all that badly about it. Guilt weighed her down for that, too, but when she talked to her friend and psych major, Caroline, the blonde confidante justified the situation and Rachel went back to living like she did before her mother died.
“Rough day? Can I buy you a drink?”
Rachel lifted her head and glanced at the man half-heartedly beside her. Hadn’t she sworn off men yesterday? He had apparently just sat down, as he squirmed, trying to adjust his stance on the small barstool. As he did so, she wondered briefly if vegans ever refused to go into bars because of the leather used on the stools, if they demanded some other furniture on which they could sit. She snorted at the thought. Vegans could be so damn self-important.
“Sorry?” The man cleared his throat after asking.
“Oh. Uh…no, thanks. I’m pretty ehh…pretty toasted already,” she managed quietly. “Thanks, though.”
“Uh…maybe I could call a cab for you or something instead? A friend?” He motioned to the bartender, raising his fingers.
“’Get ya something?” the Hell’s Angel’s Santa asked.
“Apple martini?”
“Uh…yeah.” The bartender stalked off, muttering something about women’s drinks and pansies.
“So, can I call someone for you?” He shifted his body to face her.
“What do you care? Enjoy your martini. Lemme alone.”
She eyed him again, taking the pinstriped designer suit jacket and matching pants in. He wore a designer T-shirt, which featured some fancy design that apparently advertised for some band or something-thought Rachel had no idea what, beneath it. What was it with bands and making all these swirled lines around their name on logos, anyway? Wasn’t the point to just get the damn name out there?
An edgy, well-dressed business man. Apple martini.
Must be gay.
The guy shrugged, clueless to Rachel’s assumptions. “If you need anything…”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll holler or whatever. Now go away.”
He whistled. “Damn. I thought I had a bad day.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Is it a guy thing?”
“No, it’s a leave-me-alone thing.” She glared at him and then rested her head back on her arm, sick of the meaningless banter.
“I don’t think so. No. You were in a bad mood long before I walked in. This is something else. I’m putting ten on it’s a guy thing.”
“First, you try to buy me a drink,” Rachel felt her head clear a bit as her annoyance built and she continued to speak, despite her best efforts of trying to get the guy to leave her alone. All the times the teachers and other adults had told her to “ignore them and they’ll leave you alone” had somehow vanished from her memory and she was going to have the last word. “Now you’re trying to win money off my personal life, which, you have no business in because A, it’s my life and B, I only just met you, if you can call this meeting someone.”
“An angry drunk,” he teased, grinning. “Kind of cute.”
“Nice. Did you get that from Pick-Up-Lines-R-Us or something?”
“And if I did?”
“Then you need to find a new supplier. ‘Cause that sucked.” Rachel reigned in her pride, careful not to show it.
“Thanks.” He grinned, as if unbothered by it.
“Fine,” she snapped. “You really want to know why I’m in such a bad mood?”
“Well, I didn’t really ask you, but if you-“
“My joke of a boyfriend…”
As she launched into the story, the man finished his sentence, “-really want to tell me, you can,” quietly.
“Hey.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind and pushed her hair from her ear with his nose.
She turned to face him. Kissed him. “Hey yourself.”
“I have a present for you.”
“Oh God. What now? It better not be dog crap.”
“Oh, I’m not that evil. Besides, whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Las time I checked, that still stands in this country. Sort of. Well, theoretically. M y clients tend to go to jail with little consideration on the jury’s part.” Ian was a lawyer. With tattoos. But the suits covered them up conservatively and modestly, although sometimes you could see the tip of a bird’s wing on his wrist if the sleeve of the jacket was high. Rachel noticed he usually got the harder criminals-who usually had tattoos themselves. She often wondered if they chose him because he had tattoos: he was sort of one of them in an unconventional way. Most of his tattoos had meaning, though, and Rachel figured he didn’t just get them for the good of his firm. The publicity. It was for himself. It just worked out well for the firm. Lately, he’d been asking about fonts for her name to be inscribed on the back of his lower neck. She was sort of uncomfortable with the idea, but it was sweet, so she’d gone over pages of scripts to choose from with him. They had narrowed it down to eight, somehow, but she didn’t’ see how they could possibly pick one. She had jokingly suggested they throw out two of them and then write one letter of her name in each of the six remaining fonts. Ian’s goal was to get the tattoo by the end of the week-two days from now, on March fourteenth.
“Most of them are guilty,” she reminded him.
“Still.”
“Okay, whatever. Are you going to tell me? The suspense is killing me.”
“Just don’t laugh, okay? I already went through enough humiliation when I got them.” He stepped away from Rachel and reached into the breast pocket of his grey suit jacket and produced an envelope. His name was written in messy capital letters on the front and there appeared to be some ketchup or something on the lower right corner.
“Um. Ew.” She made a face when he handed it to her.
“Just open it.”
The triangle of the envelope was tucked inside, rather than licked shut. Rachel nearly got a paper cut trying to pry it open but managed to save her dry skin by adjusting the position of her long fingers. Inside the envelope were two strips of thicket paper. The edges of the strips were bumpy, as if they had been torn from a length of strips, like raffle tickets, but bigger.
On the strips, there was a lot of information. A few words stood out in bold.
The Wang Theater and Boston Ballet is Proud to Present:
Beauty and the Beast
Rachel scanned the tickets for the date and seats. The date of the performance was located beneath the title. October 12, 2007-seven months from now. The seats were reported on the upper left corner. Row F, seats twenty-six and twenty-seven.
“Oh my God! Ian! These are incredible!”
“Well, they’re not first row, but…”
“No, these are fantastic! It’s not good to be too close, anyway. How did you get these? They’re like, impossible to get!”
He chuckled. “You’re welcome.”
“Oh!” She jumped up, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. “Thank you thank you thank you! You’re so wonderful! Thank you! Eep!” Rachel pushed off of him and skipped a few feet away before twirling around, holding the tickets in the air and singing excited nonsense.
“I am so stoked! You have no idea! They’re-”
“Impossible to get, I know.” He grinned, glad she was so ecstatic. He had been a little hesitant, originally, when it came to him on a ride on the MBTA. There had been an advertisement posted on the graffiti’d walls. Ian remembered Rachel telling him stories about the few years she had been enrolled in a ballet class, when her father had still lived with her. Then he committed suicide shortly after her ninth birthday, and she had to quit the ballet school for lack of money. The funds in the family, instead, went to supporting her mother’s addiction.
“Did you get them from a client or something?”
“No. Those guys are mostly scalpers anyway. No connections. I just called up and reserved some tickets and then stood in line for, oh, I don’t know…three hours.”
She pulled him into a hug again, grinning. “You’re amazing!”
----
“You are the worst person I have ever known in my life! You’re worse than my mother! At least she didn’t lie to me!”
“Rach…Rach…wait,” his words came out jaggedly as he struggled to pull his pants back down. His brain seemed to have trouble remembering to get the pants on first and then try walking. Or running. Whatever.
“The show is in four days, Ian! Four days! You couldn’t at least wait until then?”
“It’s not like I planned for you to find out, Rach. Just wait a second!”
The girl in his bed sat uncomfortably, fiddling with the top of the sheet she had pulled up to her chin. She twitched awkwardly, unsure of what she should do. If she had known Ian had girlfriend-though it certainly explained a lot-she never would have gotten involved. It just went to show, you can never trust a lawyer.
“No. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“What are you talking about? We had plans today.”
“Oh, my bad. A white lie. Shame on me.”
He reached for her hand, trying to earn a chance toe explain.
“Get the hell off of me!” Rachel shrieked and pulled away.
While the two were distracted, the girl Ian had apparently been about to sleep with pulled on her clothes slowly, taking deep breaths. When she was finished, she picked up her red clutch bag off the leather chair in the corner and walked past them, her head down.
“I’m sorry,” She whispered to Rachel. “I had no idea.”
Rachel nodded sadly, pitying herself. This whole trusting people thing really wasn’t working out. Caught up her thoughts, she briefly thought about how much the president had to trust his staff, especially his chef and security guards. Celebrities, too.
“Do you want the tickets?” he said softly.
“I have the damn tickets. Look. I’m going to make this easy on you. Not because I want to, but because then it will be easy on me. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to hear about you. You got me? I catch any scent of you and I will tear you apart so fast you won’t have time to feel it.”
“Rachel, please, I-“
“I don’t want to hear it. Go find some other cheap slut to share your little pity party with. Have a nice life.”
With that, she left.
And here it was, October eleventh. The ballet was tomorrow night and Rachel had no intention of going, despite the fact that she hadn’t lied when she said she had the tickets.
“I’m Jared, by the way.” The guy at the bar stuck out his hand.
“I don’t go for your type.”
“My type? What’s that supposed to mean? Besides, I haven’t even asked to see you again. Just offered some help.”
“And I don’t want it. So leave me alone.”
“Seeing as how you just told me the life story of you and your ex-boyfriend, I’d say you’re definitely warming up to the idea of me at least calling a cab for you, if not accepting a drink. It doesn’t even have to be alcohol.” He turned to look for the bartender again. “A Coke, please?”
“My type isn’t gay.”
Jared bit back a smirk, not wanting to further aggravate the poor girl. “You think I’m gay?” He put on a mock-gay voice. “Darling, there is no way I’m gay!” His voice eased back to its usual, smooth tone. “Seriously, though. I’m as straight as they get.”
“I bet you are, Mr. Apple-martini.”
“My ex-girlfriend got me into them. So sue me.”
“Sure. I’ll sue you. My ex-boyfriend can be your lawyer. I’m sure you’d make a great team.”
The bartender arrived with the glass of coke. It was more like a glass of ice with coke in it, but Rachel was too thirsty to object to either the obscene amount of ice or the fact that she was getting a free drink. It was out of pity, she figured, but she didn’t really care.
She sighed, finally, and looked up at Jared. “Thanks.”
“What for?”
She shrugged. “I’m not downing shots like candy any more, am I?”
“No, I guess not.” He reached out hesitantly. “You do have mascara all over your cheeks, though.”
“Okay, the fact that you know that this is mascara and not eyeliner, definitely proves it. You’re gay.”
He held up his hands defensively. “Fine. I admit it. I’m gay. I listen to Michael Jackson in my free time, spend my nights at gay bars and knitting clubs. Oh, and I go to the annual Cross Dresser Convention.”
“Really?”
“No.” The tone was total deadpan. Rachel found herself holding her stomach as she laughed.
“Um…so…” Rachel could think of nothing to say as her laughter abated.
“That was rather articulate.”
“You bet. I know, you wish you had my speaking skills. Some people just can’t be this talented.” Her hands flourished as she gestured to herself. “Anyway. I don’t suppose you like the ballet.”
“I thought I wasn’t your type.”
“Well, that was when you were gay. I suppose I could make an exception for someone who is willing to put down four bucks for like…” she held up her glass, inspecting it, “two ounces of Coke.”
“Sounds like pretty cheap cocaine to me.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“You two done for the night or do I need to call the supplier for more alcohol?” The bartender stalked over to them and rested he heels of his palms on the bar.
“I’m all set,” Jared said. “Can I get you anything else?” he asked Rachel.
“No, I’ve had too much to drink already. I am…buzzed. Hence the ballet comment.”
“We’re all set,” Jared told the bartender. “I’ll take the bill.”
“Not for my shots, you won’t.”
“I will,” he insisted.
“Please don’t.”
“It’s no big deal.”
Rachel sighed. “Alright. But…at least let me see it.”
When the bartender returned with the bill, she snatched it from him before Jared could see it. She didn’t even look at the total before flipping the slip over and scribbling some numbers on it.
“You’ve got until three o’clock tomorrow or I’m scalping the tickets.”
“Well, I can’t let you do a thing like that.”
“Why? ‘ Cause it’s dangerous?” she teased.
“No, you’d rip the people off.”
Jared took the bill from her and copied the numbers onto a napkin. He signed the other side of the paper and handed it back to the bartender who returned the credit card to Jared.
“So…I’ll see you tomorrow?” Rachel asked softly, timidly.
He lifted her hand and pressed his apple scented lips to her knuckles. “Yes. I’ll call for your address.” Jared leaned forward, bringing his lips closer to her ear. “I’ll be very disappointed if this is just some random number, too. Oh. And, please don’t mark it against me just because my brother’s an asshole.” He raised an eyebrow and, not giving her a chance to respond either way, walked out of the bar onto the street, his steps bouncy and light