Bad Stereotypes - 10. Friday 21st June 2013

Just before midnight the South Alaska was rammed. We’d been full since we opened, it was a nice hot sunny day and the people staying out after work to drink were crossing over with those who had come out for drinks before clubbing and everywhere was full. James and I had been so rushed off our feet, that neither of us had been able to take a break until Batty arrived and when Sal got there at ten, we shoved her behind the bar for half an hour so that James could smoke and I could run upstairs, change shirts, and wash my face, and eat something. Tinned peaches with a fork and half a pork pie.

While I ate I stared at Issac’s number, tacked to the fridge. During the day I had nearly dialled his number a dozen times. I had rung Thursday, but got an answering machine, and I was way too scared to leave a message. I didn’t want to sound like a needy kid. I was about twenty minutes into my break when it occurred that there was no point waiting for him to ring me back, because he didn’t have my number.

I gulped. I dialled. I hung up. I dialled again. I felt sick. I waited. Three rings.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” My voice was smaller than me at that moment. Wherever Issac was it was loud, “Hey. Issac.”

“Bay?” I made an affirmative noise, “Hey. I was wondering when you’d call. Hold on!” I couldn’t work out if the shout was for me or someone else in the background, “Sorry Bay.” It was quieter now, “Service at the restaurant.”

“Sorry. I should’ve…shit.” I felt like an idiot. Issac was a head chef, which meant that when other people ate dinner he was really busy. It was dinner time.

“Don’t be sorry. You working too right?”

“Yeah.”

“When do you get off?”

“Like, probably not until three.” I doubted he would want to be up that late.

“OK. I’ll call you then. Got your number now kiddo.”

“OK.”

“Gotta dash!” Just before he hung up someone obvious opened the door to wherever he was hiding and I heard several voices shouting, “Chef!” and “Come on robot-boy, get out here!” and, most exciting, “Stop flirting on duty boss!” “Bye Bay.”

And then he was gone.

But by midnight I the club was so rammed that I almost didn’t notice the time. Between James, Batty and myself we kept everyone afloat, all liquored up and dancing and flirting. All those girls and guys out to get laid. I covered James when he went for a quick spin and mosh around the floor with Sal and in a quiet moment Batty asked me how things had gone with Zoltan and Zupan.

“I don’t think Zupan likes me much.”

“Zu’s a dick. But he’s a good guy,” I frowned at Batty, thinking her nickname might be a little more descriptive than I first thought, “He does this to everyone. You wind people right up until they snap, and his theory is that the strong ones stick around. Those are apparently the people worth becoming mates with.”

“Well I’m glad not to make the cut.” I regretted what I said instantly. Issac was friends with the burly twins, and if he was good with them… Instinct and experience told me that getting on with the people who were friends with the guy you fancied was important. “I don’t mind Zoltan. He seems nice enough.”

Then we had another rush of customers, and all the conversation any of us could have was shouting orders, catching glasses and bottles as Batty served, James worked cocktail magic and I did everything else. On a pass around the dance floor I saw the two girls from the bar swirling and dancing in a group, and the one with the tattoo designs made for me across the bar.

“Hey!”

We were heads close together, basically shouting to be heard.

“Hi! How are you?”

“Good. Do they not give you a night off?”

“No!” I grinned to show it was a joke, “Having fun?”

“Yeah. I’m Rose!”

“Bay.”

“See you around Bay!”

I saw Rose and her friend a few times over the evening, and they waved to me as they left at closing. Zoltan locked up the main door after the customers, and everyone came down for a drink as we cleared up. I cashed up the till, counted and bagged the money and locked everything in the safe, then hid the key. Everyone thought the key was in the office desk drawer, because that’s where Dale dropped a hunk of metal once he’d gone to the safe. The actual key lived in a gap between bricks in the beer cellar.

It had been a long night, and I was ready to roll into bed and collapse forever, but I saw everyone to the back door so that I could set the alarm.

“Issac!” Zoltan clapped his friend on the arm, “Been a long time since you came to pick me up after work.”

Issac was dressed in red sweats, with a denim jacket over a white t-shirt. He looked delicious. He grinned, running a hand through his short brown hair, eyes sparkling in the three am gloom.

“I ain’t here for you Zol.” His gaze slid past the big bouncer and I gripped the door as Issac smiled at me in the most lovely manner, “I’m here for a drink with Bay.”

Batty let out a really loud wolf whistle.

“Right in my ear!” James growled and jabbed her with a fist and by the time they had finished their scuffle, Issac was right by my side.

“Night boys,” Zoltan said in his patronising sing-song voice, “Stop robbing the cradle, robot-boy.”

We watched the other staff moved away down the street. When I tore my gaze away, I found Issac watching me with a smile. He looked tired but happy.

“You don’t mind? I know I said I’d call.”

“It’s fine.” I gulped, shivering in the cooler night air, “You wanna come in?”

I showed Issac into the bar, with nerves that made me shake, and poured him a bourbon and coke as I had on Tuesday.

“I have to set the alarm.”

“Alright.” Issac took the drink from me and I stop breathing when his fingers touched mine. It had to be deliberate. I locked the doors, checked down the bar, made sure the fridges were shut and the kitchen was closed down and set the alarm. I turned to find Issac leaning against the bar, watching me. “You’ve grown into the place well.”

“Um… thanks. I like it here. I live upstairs.”

“Nice.”

A heavy silence. I fidgeted with the hem of my t-shirt. I knew I looked rumpled, I’d been working all night in the hot club in jeans and t-shirt, boots and the scent of spilled beer. I felt silly.

“You wanna come upstairs?”

“Sure.”

I felt nervous. I did know what to do or where to put my hands, I thought I looked like a kid. Issac was tired, but cool, calm, confident. As I unlocked the door to upstairs I felt the heat of him behind me, his breath on the back of my neck. I froze.

“Bay…” My jeans were suddenly too tight, “You don’t have to be so scared. It’s just drinks.” His breath was warm, and made my skin prickle, I could feel him standing close behind me and I wanted to lean back into his body. He smelt clean, like soap and cotton.

“Sorry.” I jumped up the stairs and wished that the flat looked either slightly cleaner, or like a actually lived there. Apart from my laptop and Issac’s number pinned to the fridge it was just the same as it had been when Dale had first given it to me. “I should have a shower. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise so much.”

I nearly said sorry again, but instead dashed for the shower. Under the jet stream it was easier to concentrate. I washed, shaved (chin, armpits and the sparse, pointless hairs on my chest) and scrubbed myself with an acid green body wash the smelt like apples and chemicals. In the tiny steam filled bathroom I stared at myself in the mirror and wondered what on earth I was doing. There was a really hot guy sitting on my sofa, and I was in the bathroom worrying about how I looked. And the last thing Zoltan had said made me feel like a little kid. I grabbed a pair of sweats off the floor, towel dried my hair and swallowed nervously.

“Well don’t you look like a walking felony.” Issac was grinning at me from the kitchen, standing at the fridge, “Do you not eat at all Bay?”

“Can’t cook.” I shrugged, it had never seemed like a big deal before, “You hungry?”

“No. I never eat after service.” Issac shut the fridge and handed me a glass of water clinking with ice, “So how was your shift?”

We ended sitting opposite each other on the sofa, me turned with one leg tucked underneath the other to face Issac as we chatted about our evenings. I told him how busy it had been, how bad Sal had been at serving behind the bar and how envious I was of James’s cocktail skills. He chatted about the food, the waitresses who dropped things, the table of twelve whose bill came in at four figures and had the maitre’D drag him out from the kitchen so they could applaud his new summer menu.

“So you meet anyone fun at the club tonight?”

“I met this girl who I was serving the last time you came in. She designs tattoos. Rose.”

“Then you must have met Thorn too.” Issac grinned at my dumbstruck reaction. “Her friend the metalworker. Those two go everywhere together. Rose’s real name is Scarlett, I don’t think I’ve ever know what Thorn’s actual name is. They started at the uni together.”

“That’s cool. I like Rose’s tattoo designs. She seems talented.” I rubbed my shoulder, imagining where I might get my first ink.

“She is. I have one of hers.” Issac smiled at me, swirling the now much smaller ice cubes in his glass. “You want to get inked?”

“Yes.” I glanced Issac up and down, but the question must have been written all over my features, because Issac grinned widely and reached for the cuff of his sweats. He rolled up the right leg of his trousers and I noticed three things: calf muscles could be sexy, the guy obviously ran a heck of a lot, and somehow the winding pattern of branches and leaves looked like an extension of Issac in a way that made no sense. The tattoo was beautiful, intricately detailed patterns of the braches of a tree decorated with leaves, vibrant dark flowers that didn’t look in the least girly and thick swathes of dark Celtic weaving all combined into a pattern that vanished up into the rest of Issac’s sweats.

“It turns into a hare further up, with birds flying over the sky.”

“It’s beautiful.” I had no idea what I wanted to ask him next, so I just smiled, and sipped my drink.

“So what sort of thing would you have done Bay?”

And so we talked.