The Voice Inside

21

“Another drink?” the bartender asked.

Rudy stared into the ice melting at the base of his lowball glass. He swirled it in his hand. “Sure. Why not?”

“Same again?”

“Yeah. G and T. Bombay.”

“Coming up.”

The young bartender made the empty glass disappear. He was small and Asian, with feminine features and black hair gelled into a bird’s nest. Maybe he was transgender, maybe not. Rudy had been away from the San Francisco scene for too long to be sure.

The downstairs lounge and sushi restaurant in Japantown was almost impenetrably dark and half-empty. Sconces over the liquor bottles on the bar made the mirrored glass shine red. Rudy sat at the far end, away from the stairs that led down from the street. He wore a black fedora with two braided yellow bands around the brim. His sunglasses had tiny square lenses, like postage stamps. Wearing sunglasses in a dark bar didn’t attract attention here. It was the cool thing to do. He’d shaved for tonight, and he’d found dress clothes at a secondhand shop to fit the look. Gray mock turtleneck. Leather jacket. Black jeans and boots.

“Here you go,” the bartender told him, putting another gin and tonic in front of him. “You want some sushi?”

“How about a volcano roll?” Rudy said.

The man — if he was a man — grinned with his pale lips. “Sure thing.”

Rudy took a sip and felt the cold of the gin chill his insides. He had a ritual for these nights, and Bombay was part of it. He took each breath slow and long, feeling the air swell his lungs. He put up his right hand and slowly turned it around, front and back, admiring its steadiness like a work of art. He bent and unbent his fingertips, which were loose and limber. He’d wondered after all this time if he would be nervous, but he wasn’t. He was a machine.

He checked his watch. It was already midevening, and time was passing more quickly than he liked. He eyed the others in the bar, who were getting drunk and loud. They were mostly twenty years younger, but age didn’t matter. Someone always had a yen for an older man who looked like he had money. His gaze moved from face to face, connecting with the women. Some looked back, and some didn’t.

The bartender leaned on one elbow in front of him. He was bored without a big crowd to serve. Rudy thought he was wearing lipstick, and his eyebrows were neatly plucked. The bartender’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed Rudy’s face.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Rudy said without removing his sunglasses or his hat. “Do you?”

“You look familiar, but you’re not a regular.”

“I guess I have that look,” Rudy said. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Are you a guy or a girl?”

The bartender didn’t look offended. “Depends. What are you into?”

“Girls.”

“I can pull that off, if you don’t mind some surplus parts.”

“Pass,” Rudy said. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay, your loss.” The bartender grabbed a towel and began wiping down the bar.

Rudy drank more of his gin and tonic. This one was strong. He looked around at the middling crowd in the bar again and decided that his plan needed some help. “Actually, I’m drowning my sorrows,” he told the bartender.

“Yeah? How so?”

“My girlfriend dumped me today.”

“Sorry about that.” His girlish eyes checked out Rudy’s face again. “I mean, you’re a decent looker and all. A rough type, but a lot of girls like that. You must have a couple bucks, too, if you’re ordering Bombay. You ask me, you should just forget about her and move on.”

Rudy slid a hand inside the pocket of his leather jacket and put two concert tickets on the bar. “Yeah, I’m not crying about it, but I’ve got two tickets for the Fillmore tonight. I don’t really want to go on my own.”

“Who’s playing?”

“Japandroids. I could sell the tickets, but I’d like to hear them play.”

“No kidding? You ready for decibels like that? You don’t look like the ‘Evil’s Sway’ type.”

Rudy cocked his head. “What?”

The bartender laughed, as if Rudy were speaking a different language. “Um, duh? That’s one of their songs?”

“Oh. Sure.” Rudy laughed, too, but he seethed inwardly at his mistake. That was what happened when he didn’t have the time to anticipate every detail. “Anyway, I’m looking for a girl who wants to go with me. I figure somebody must want a free show, right? Plus, it’ll just kill my girlfriend.”

“Revenge. Nice.”

Rudy reached into his jacket again and found a fifty-dollar bill that he slid across the bar. “I was hoping you might be able to help me hook up. It’s always a little easier when you’ve got somebody to break the ice, know what I mean?”

The cash disappeared into the bartender’s pocket. “An icebreaker, sure. I’ve been known to do that. What kind of companionship are we talking about? If you want the paid kind, I have to make some calls.”

“Not paid,” Rudy said, “but let’s say open-minded about what happens after the concert.”

“Alcohol has been known to open many a closed mind,” the bartender told him.

Rudy slid another fifty across the bar. “Well, work your magic.”

The bartender pursed his lips to blow him a kiss, and he disappeared. Rudy stopped trolling the bar and decided to let his wingman do the talking. He nursed his drink. Somewhere in the bar, he heard the noise of bad karaoke, but he didn’t recognize the song. That was the price of four years away from the music scene.

His volcano roll came. It was an artistic blend of spicy tuna, cucumber, avocado, and shrimp tempura. The sauce had kick. He alternated between the fiery sushi and the cold cocktail. He stared straight ahead, ignoring the other people in the bar, but his senses were alert. Conversations drifted in and out of his head. Every few minutes, he examined his hand again, his killing hand, as if it belonged to someone else. His fingers were still steady as a rock.

Half an hour passed.

Then, behind him, he heard the tap of feminine heels. Perfume broke over him like the opening of a candy shop door. Lips brushed his ear, along with a voice that had trouble putting together words. “So what’s your name?”

He turned as a thirty-something brunette poured herself onto the stool next to him. She wore a black dress down to her knees. Half a martini was in her hand.

“Rudy. What’s yours?”

“Magnolia,” she said, drawing out the first syllable with her mouth slightly open.

“That’s a pretty name.”

“It’s the name of a tree. I am a tree. A magnolia tree.” She drew it out again as Maggggggggnolia.

“Well, magnolia trees have lovely flowers,” he said.

“That’s a sweet thing to say. You’re sweet.” Her tongue licked the wet rim of her martini glass, and she took a swallow of her drink, which was pink with a layer of white foam.

“Do you come to this place a lot?” he asked.

“First time.”

“Me, too. What brings you here, Magnolia?”

“I never leave my apartment. I work all the time, and I’m sick of it. Tonight, I promised myself I would go out and have fun.”

“What do you do?”

“I code. I’m a programmer.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know, so my fingers are really, really nimble.”

Magnolia blinked seductively, but she had some trouble focusing. He suspected the bartender had concocted strong drinks for her. Her big eyes were blue, and she wore matching eyeshadow that was a little too dark and applied a little too thickly. In the scarlet glow of the bar, she was pretty, but her lips kept squeezing into an embarrassed smile. She tossed her long hair nervously out of her face.

“So whatcha eating, Rudy?”

He had two pieces of sushi left. “A volcano roll. Want some?”

“Okay.”

He picked up a piece of sushi, dipped it into a bowl of soy sauce mixed with wasabi, and slid it into her open mouth. She smiled and chewed at the same time in a failed attempt at sexiness. When she swallowed, he leaned over with his napkin and wiped away a little drop of soy sauce that had dribbled from her lip.

“Mmm. Spicy.”

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Sure. Spicy is good.”

He smiled and watched her stare intently at him as she drained the last of her martini. Her eyes squinted, as if she’d begun to realize he looked like someone she’d seen before. This was the delicate moment, wondering whether she would put two and two together. The face on the news. The face in the bar, hiding behind sunglasses. Sometimes people could recognize a photograph come to life, and sometimes they couldn’t.

She didn’t make the connection.

“I hear you have tickets to Japandroids at the Fillmore,” Magnolia said.

“I do.”

“I love them.”

“Well, maybe you’d like to go to the concert with me.”

“Well, maybe I would.” She squirmed on the chair; she wasn’t good at this. “You got dumped, huh? That’s what the bartender said.”

“Yeah.”

“Getting dumped sucks. I got dumped last month.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t really like him. Screw both of them, right? We don’t need them.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Do you smoke?” Magnolia asked.

“No.”

“Good. I don’t like smokers. They stink. Smoking will kill you, you know.”

“I’ve heard that,” Rudy said.

“When’s the concert?”

“Pretty soon.”

“Guess we should go,” she said.

“I guess.”

He climbed off the bar stool, and he held out an elbow for her. She giggled, stumbled a bit as she disentangled herself from the chair, and held on tightly as he pointed her toward the stairs. She had trouble climbing back to the street, and she grabbed the railing in a death grip for support. Outside, it was a little wet, and he took the fedora he was wearing and dropped it on her head.

She grabbed the brim with both hands and smoothed it. She tilted the hat far forward on her face. “Cool. Bet I look cool with this.”

“You do.” Rudy patted the pockets of his jacket. “Hey, I forgot something at the bar. Wait right here, okay? I won’t be thirty seconds.”

Magnolia put her head back against the glass door, which had a greenish glow from the lights on the stairs. She closed her eyes, and she shivered. “Hurry back.”

Rudy steadied her shoulders to make sure she didn’t fall, and then he jogged back down the steps into the bar. He waved over the bartender, who approached him with a grin on his delicate lips.

“How’d I do?” the man asked. “She what you were looking for? I made sure those martinis packed a punch.”

“Perfect.” Rudy slid another fifty-dollar bill from his jacket, and then he took out a notepad and wrote a phone number on a piece of paper. He handed both of them across the bar. “Do me a favor, okay? Call this number. Tell the woman who answers that Rudy says hi.”

“Sure thing. Is she your ex-girlfriend? You want to rub it in her face?”

“That’s exactly right,” Rudy said. “And be sure to tell her that I’m leaving with a pretty girl.”