6. Gauge
GAUGE
The hell crawled up her ass and died?
“I’ll be back,” Dallas muttered as he stepped out of line.
I grabbed his wrist and rooted him to his place. “After the meeting.”
“She needs this information.”
“After the meeting,” Deacon muttered.
There was no use in chasing after her, anyway.
We had already determined that her job was fine.
She was a good bartender. Needed a bit more training, but not in the basics.
Plus, she was a nice little thing to look at while bellying up to the bar.
If anything, she was the one thing we agreed on between the three of us.
Char stayed, so long as she agreed to being trained in the flashier ways of making drinks.
Dallas ripped his wrist from my grasp and turned his attention back to the meeting where Deacon was still getting bombarded with questions.
“Are you going to answer anything for us?” the feisty young woman with the exponentially curly hair asked.
“And you are?”
“M.J.,” she said as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Well, M.J., we can take the questions one by one and we’ll answer them as thoroughly as possible.”
“Perfect,” the gangly chef with angry brown eyes said. “You can start with the questions we’ve already asked.”
Deacon simply shrugged. “Everyone here has as much time as they want here. No one is being fired, unless you prove that you aren’t a good fit for what we’re going to turn the bar into. But, those decisions won’t be made until after the renovations are done, which will take weeks.”
“In terms of opening up for lunch and dinner, that’s eventually in the plans,” Dallas said. “But, we’ve gotta get this place put back together before we welcome more people into it.”
“No menu change,” I said.
Deacon held out his arms. “Did we miss anything?”
“So, nothing is changing?” DeShawn asked.
“For now, no,” Deacon said. “Though, there will be changes coming after the renovations, as stated earlier.”
“Will the renovations shut the bar down?” M.J. asked.
Deacon gazed around at all of the eyes staring back at him. “Is there a reason why there are only two of you talking?”
“Yes,” M.J. and DeShawn said in unison.
Looks like we found the two people we needed to win over. I’d say three, but, we already had Char in our pockets.
Women were easy that way.
“Answer the question,” DeShawn said.
I pinned him with a look and he cleared his throat. “Please.”
Good boy.
“Some of them will, yes,” Deacon said.
That’s when everyone else’s voices kicked up.
“Where are we going to find work in the meantime?”
“We’ve all got bills to pay!”
“How long will it be shut down for?”
“When is it shutting down?”
“Can we use our paid vacation while it’s shut down?”
Deacon held up his hand as the voices grew, and almost immediately everyone settled down.
Good, they were learning. It was imperative that they learn, otherwise they’d be left behind.
Then again, Deac had always been good at commanding a room.
Just like his father, Axel, who was our President before.
It wasn’t until the entire bar went silent that Deac spoke. “I can assure you that we will do our best to stagger the renovations so that it doesn’t shut down the bar for too long. But, during the times that the bar simply can’t operate, you’ll be paid as if you’re on vacation leave.”
I took the silence that followed as agreement.
No bombardment of questions meant that we had appeased them for now.
However, a creaking floorboard above my head caught my attention.
I tilted my stare toward the ceiling. I listened as footsteps prattled around.
And as I raised my finger into the air, I leveled my head back onto my shoulders.
“Who’s upstairs?”
Miss Lilly sighed. “That’s Char. She lives up there, in the studio apartment above the bar.”
How convenient. “Has she always lived up there?”
“Ever since I employed her, yes.”
“I’m assuming that apartment came with our purchase?” Deac asked.
The chef scoffed. “You bought a place and don’t even know the layout?”
“You want to be the first one fired?” Dallas shot back.
Slipping away wasn’t as hard as I figured it might be.
Dallas’s accusation sparked a fury amongst the bar’s workers, and it made for a great cover as I slipped out of line.
I meandered around the bar as everyone continued yelling questions above Deac’s head.
But, he took it like a champ as he stood there, answering them one by one.
I didn’t have that kind of patience. That’s why I preferred building our businesses like we had in the past.
And as I slipped into the backroom, covered by the sheer darkness of it all, I heard the pitter patter of those soft footsteps above my head.
Before a door creaked open.
I slid my hand along the wall, searching for a light switch.
The sounds had stopped, making me curious as to what Char was doing above our heads.
My finger smashed into the light switch and I flipped it up, flooding the backroom with a warm array of white lights plastered all throughout what I found to be the stockroom.
Then, the footsteps struck up above my head once more.
We need to get this damned place reinsulated.
That marching around would be annoying as fuck to a restaurant full of patrons.
If we were eventually going to be opening for meals and shit, then we had to do something about her clopping around upstairs.
No one wanted to listen to a bull in a china shop above their heads while they were trying to enjoy a refreshing drink with their burger and fries.
But, just as I reached for the doorknob at the other end of the room—a door that would surely spill me out into the side alley—I heard a soft sound.
Quiet as a mouse, and yet completely unmistakable.
I heard a fucking sniffle.
“I’ll never find another job like this one,” I heard Char say.
Fucking hell, she was talking with someone.
Who was she talking to? I couldn’t help myself as I grabbed the knob of the back door.
I inched it open, holding my breath as her sniffles grew more apparent.
Fucking hell, I hated crying. I hated the sensation.
The sounds. The snot pouring from people’s noses.
Crying looked horrible on anyone, no matter the person.
And yet, as I stood there with the back door cracked, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
“I mean, this job was everything, you know?” Char asked. “It’s given me a place to stay. A living wage. I mean, at least for this little town. Which isn’t saying much, but it’s more than what I had, you know?”
I tilted my head as I listened to the one-sided conversation.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever felt successful at something. You know, outside of testifying and putting that motherfucker in prison.”
My heart slammed against my sternum so hard that I thought it was going to crack my ribcage open. Did she just say what I thought she just said?
Holy fuck, we’ve got a rat in the bar.
“It doesn’t matter, though. I guess. None of it matters. It still ruined my life. I still had to run. And no one will hire me, you know they won’t. I don’t even have a fucking GED. No one gives a shit about people who don’t even have a fucking GED.”
You got that right.
Everywhere I went, people looked at me like I was just some meathead.
Some jacked-to-the-tits gym bro who ate nothing but steroids from all five meals.
They looked at me like I was some kind of dumbass who didn’t know how to do anything else except slam my fists into walls and make people bleed with just one look.
Like I was somehow incapable because I, too, didn’t finish high school.
It made me wonder what had happened.
But, her crying got worse and I couldn’t stand it.
The sound was like nails on a chalkboard to my ears.
I’d heard enough crying growing up. I’d wiped away enough tears of my own in showers, which was about the only place no one ever bothered me growing up.
I knew that life. I had lived that life.
And I hated that she understood. No one should understand my life.
That didn’t matter, however. She had a history of tattling on people, and Deac needed to know that.
Even if it got her fired. Even if it kicked her out onto the street.
This had to work; this bar had to pull through.
And if we had someone in our midst with her kind of history, I damn sure would’ve wanted the guys to tell me about it.
So, I blocked out her sobbing and made my way silently back inside.
I had to tell the guys we had a rat in our midst.