CHAPTER 22
Crack
Of all the different hats Sharp wears in the course of being our Pres, today he must be wearing his lazy hat. I made the mistake of sticking my head through his office door this morning to say ‘hello,’ and got landed with what feels like his whole day's schedule of tasks.
Visit the diner, check on this. Visit the club, check on that. Visit the tattoo shop and check on the other. It’s a miracle he didn’t ask me to eat his breakfast and then go shit it out for him! I started the day in such a good mood and now I’m ready to rip someone’s head off.
I think I’ll bypass breakfast here and grab something when I visit the diner. If any of the brothers pick up on my mood, they’ll take great pleasure in making it worse, I’m sure. Hell, I’m outta here.
Deciding the tattoo shop can be my first port of call, I take a steady ride and let the rumble of my hog's engine soothe my mood. It’s not long before I feel my face crack with a smile.
Arriving at the shop, I leave my hog out front, where I can keep my eye on it. No one has ever messed with any of the club's bikes, but there is always a first time. Walking into the building, I hear the old-fashioned bell over the door give its little tinkle. I’m surprised to see both Scribe and Needle chilling with a coffee and not already working on someone.
“Morning, Crack. Piss the bed to get you out of it, or what?”
Scribe grins over his mug at Needle’s comment.
“Fuck off. I thought you’d be busier than this.”
I look around and the shop is spotless. I’ve seen some tattoo ‘parlors’ that were a shithole and the ‘roaches wiped their feet on the way out.
“It’s only eight-thirty, man. We’re not open for another thirty minutes yet. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
Scribe asks, still grinning over his mug.
“Sharp has dumped all his day's tasks on me. Wants to know where you are with hiring a receptionist?”
Throwing myself into one of the tattoo chairs, I wait for what I’m sure is going to be a negative answer.
“Well,”
Needle says, “we’ve had some interest since Shar put the notice in the window, but no one that we were interested in hiring. They’ve all been women, not surprisingly, and the last one was covered in tats. She was probably good looking before that, but her tats were some of the worst we’ve ever seen. They were hideous, Crack. You couldn’t let her be the face of a tattoo shop.”
Scribe sits forward, still gripping his mug, as though someone is going to try to take it off him. “We’re not saying that we need some model to be the receptionist, but like Needle says, we need someone to be the face of the business, and no tattoos would be better than bad ones.”
“I get that, guys, but beggars can’t be choosers, if you’re getting dragged off the job every few minutes, or having to turn down work by not answering the phone.”
The words are only just out of my mouth when the bell over the door tinkles again. Looking up as one, we see a young woman enter and then stop and look at us. When none of us speaks, she does a curtsy, spins around and curtsies again.
“Like what you see, gents?”
Head tilted to one side, she waits.
“Speaking for myself, yeah. I like it.”
I’m not shy to let her see that I’m openly looking her up and down. She’s not my type, but she is certainly worth a second, or third, look.
Her hair is short and white. Not blond, but white. She has a few ear piercings, but none on her face. She has a killer figure that wouldn’t look out of place in one of those burlesque shows. She has curves in all the right places, and none are overstated. She can’t be more than 5’4”
tall, yet her proportions are perfect in every respect. Maybe I should reconsider my type.
Jumping out of the chair, I walk over and offer her my hand. “My name’s Crack. What can I do for you on this beautiful, sunny morning?”
“Hi, Crack. My name’s Autumn. I’m your new receptionist.”
Deciding that I already like her and her attitude, I look back at Scribe and Needle. “Well, guys. Looks like you’ve got an interview to do before your first clients arrive.”
Smirking at them, they side-eye each other and I can see that they are about to dump this on me. “No way, brothers. Your business, your decision. You’re not going to come back to me in a month's time and try hanging me out to dry at church.”
Giving Autumn a mock salute, I head out of the door and back to my hog. Looking back as I grab my brain box, I see Autumn watching me from the doorway. If I’m not mistaken, she looks more than a little interested.
Giving her no encouragement, I let my hog roll me out of there and concentrate on the road to the diner. My mind keeps wanting to wander back to Autumn, though, which is distracting.
Arriving at the diner, still with my mind on Autumn's curves, I again leave my hog where I can keep an eye on her and do the next of Sharp’s tasks. The place is pleasantly full, without being crowded. Seeing a couple of fresh faces among the servers, it looks like they’ve been busy with recruitment. Taking a seat against the side wall, where I can still see my hog, I wait for a server to come over.
The server that approaches me is tall, and I mean tall. I’m 6’2”
and she can’t be far off 6’ herself. Her hair is in a ponytail but reaches a long way down her back even though it’s wrapped in one of those hygiene net things. She is too skinny for my taste, though. There’s nothing to get a hold of, or to keep me warm at night. Hiding my thoughts behind a smile, I see her name on her badge states, Sharon.
“Good morning. What can I get for you today?”
Her smile makes me smile without thinking. “You’re quite handsome when you’re not scowling or deciding someone's not your type. If we played poker, I’d read you like a book.”
Still with that smile on her face.
I burst out laughing and then apologize for being so rude as to be sizing her up.
“Hey, I understand that I’m more woman than most men can handle, but when I find the man for me, God help him. He won’t know what's hit him. Now, what can I get for you?”
“I’ll have coffee and whatever goes for a big breakfast around here, with toast, thanks. I don’t suppose they call you Shar, for short, do they?”
I ask her, thinking that there can’t be two of them, surely.
“Not unless ‘they’ want to speak falsetto for the rest of their lives, no. The name is Sharon, plain and simple.”
Turning, she walks away and I watch her long strides take her to the counter in only a few steps.
When she brings me a cup and a pot of coffee, she looks a little sheepish. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were one of the owners.”
“Sharon, you stay just as you are. We don’t hold to airs and graces in the MC, and I think the man that you decide on will want you to be true to yourself. He sure as hell isn’t going to be some shy wallflower to take you on.”
I look her straight in the eye as I talk to her and see her look right back.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, I think. Your breakfast won’t be long. Sourdough saw you come in and put extra meat on the grill.”
Giving me a wink, she tops off my cup then goes off to her other tables.
When the breakfast arrives, it is fit for a king. I even have a piece of steak in there. Taking my time, I make sure to empty my plate and then go to speak to Sourdough. Never having spoken to him before, though I have seen him, I only have what Bank told me to go on. Supposedly, he’s a tough nut to crack until he decides if he likes you or not.
Staying at the kitchen entrance, I wait for him to acknowledge my presence and then introduce myself. Washing his hands first, he comes over and gives me a good, strong handshake. Complimenting him on my breakfast and then on the service I was given, I see him deciding if I’m trying to butter him up.
“Credit where credit’s due, Sourdough. Everyone these days is too quick to complain and too slow to compliment. I had an excellent meal with excellent service. Are you up to speed now with servers? Sharon is at the top of her game. The other new one, Madeline, isn’t it? She hasn’t stopped either since I got here.”
Watching him puff his chest out a bit, I think I may have got myself into his good books.
“These two ladies only worked with Madison for a couple of hours, and she was happy to let them loose on their own. I have two more on the opposite shift, and the guy, Sebastien, is as good as these two. Annmarie is taking a little more work from Madison. I don’t think Madison thinks she’s going to cut it. From our talks, it seems that Annmarie is one of those that likes to do the bare minimum, and as Madison is at the opposite end of the scale, I doubt it will be long before Annmarie gets her marching orders. I kept a couple of names on file from the interviews I did, just in case.”
“Well, it seems that we have a first-rate team in here, if you ask me. I’ll let Sharp and Bank know that you’re on top of everything, including a back-up plan.”
Shaking his hand, I turn to leave when I see Mayor Grant Stonewall walk in.
“What are you doing here, Mayor? A bit outside your normal range, aren’t we?”
“Hello, Crack. I’ve been to a conference and need some time to wind down. Some of these conferences are nothing more than an excuse for public figures to get paid time away from their actual jobs. This one was a proposal for more wind farms to help with global warming. One of the damn members that was proposing them thought that the wind turbines were there to blow air across the land and cool the earth! It had to be explained about them generating electricity without using fossil fuels, and that was how they contributed to reducing global warming. Blowing air across the land! What is the world coming to?”
The mayor looks as though he’s about to pull his hair out.
“While we’re talking along the lines of saving the world, I know something that Sharp was going to speak to you about.”
I hope this is the right time to throw this out there, I think to myself. “You know that we are interested in buying the junkyard? Well, we’ve come across something that you need to be aware of.”
“Okay, what’s that? I doubt much could surprise me today.”
Mayor Grant slips into a booth near the window and I continue standing.
“The junkyard is going to need a lot more spending on it than we originally thought. After taking a quick walk around it, it needs an oil recycling area, battery recycling, tire storage and recycling.”
I look at him and see the cogs turning, slowly at first and then gaining speed rapidly.
“If you need to put those things in place, do I want to know what he’s been doing with that shit all this time?”
Running his fingers through his hair, he looks up at me.
“From what we saw, or didn’t see, the oil is going straight into the drains. We think he may have been burying the old batteries in holes all over the edge of the property or maybe on neighboring properties. I can’t begin to guess where the tires have been going, Mayor.”
Watching the fury taking hold, I’m glad that it isn’t the MC that is going to be on the receiving end.
“I’m going to get my late breakfast or early lunch and then pay that asshole a visit. Tell Sharp I’ll contact him later, but if he hasn’t heard from me by four o’clock this afternoon to call me. I may need breaking out of the county jail after having murdered somebody!”
Shaking his hand and not envying him his job, I get out of there and leave the mayor to his meal and hope it doesn’t give him indigestion.
Riding by the tattoo shop, I slow down and peer through the front window. I’m not totally surprised when I see Autumn still there, and with several clients standing near her reception area. Her reception area? Yeah. Somehow, I felt that’s exactly what it was going to be from the moment she walked in and announced she was our new receptionist.
Riding into the parking lot behind the strip club, I see Shar’s SUV parked. If Shar’s here today, what the hell am I doing here, for Christ’s sake? Sitting on my girl for another minute, I take a couple of deep breaths. No good going in there, guns blazing. It isn’t Shar’s fault, after all.
Walking through the back door, I hear raucous laughter from the front of the bar. Wondering what the cause is, I walk slowly into the bar and watch what’s going on. Stella is crying with laughter and tears are streaming down her cheeks. Nate has his hands on his knees and is belly laughing like I’ve never seen him do before. A couple of the dancers are also in hysterical fits of laughter and Shar is in the middle of it all, cursing up a storm.
Before I can ask what it’s all about, Shar launches herself at the stripper pole. She spins around the pole twice and then slams into the stage below. Stella is waving her hands in the air as though fighting off a swarm of bees and tears keep rolling down her face.
One of the dancers steps forward, and I have to say it, gracefully takes the pole in her hands, flips upside down, wraps her legs around it and spins with her arms outstretched. She does a half dozen turns and then holds the pole, lowers her legs to the stage and bows.
Shar shouts something that sounds like ’clever bitch’, then has another go on the pole. Slowing it down this time, she grips the pole, and to her credit, gets her legs above her. Before she can grip the pole with her legs though, she slips down and face plants on the stage.
I can’t help myself and join in the laughter with everyone else. That has got to be the funniest thing I have ever seen, made all the funnier just because it was Shar.
“Not one word outside of this club, Crack. Not one fucking word, do you hear me?”
Shar looks so angry that I can’t help but laugh even louder. “Please, Crack. Don’t tell anyone about this, I’m begging you…”
Right now, I can’t agree to anything as I slide down the side of the bar, tears streaming down my face as I relive every moment.