You know you work on Bourbon chapter 9

You know you work on Bourbon

“bye babe, have a good night” Mayson gave her new roommate Henry a light kiss goodbye on the cheek before she left her afternoon shift and stepped out to the wall of heat on Bourbon Street.  She was convinced she would never get accustomed to the southern summer.  You simply just stopped being an “outdoor” person.   Your exercise consisted of rushing from AC to AC like a cockroach scuttling from shadow to shadow.  She was sure that if you cut her, the blood would be as thick as molasses and smell like a blend of Rum and Magnolia.  She started down the street and was roughly tapped on the shoulder. She turned ready to punch someone only to see Moses.

“Give me a smoke M?” 

The first time she had seen Moses was on her second night working in the Quarter and she watched him struggle down the street dragging his gouted leg.  He kneeled in front of the bar doors and grabbed a dirty cigarette butt off the street, whipped it off and smoked the few drags with such pleasure lit across his face.  It broke her not yet jaded heart and since then she had collected the best butts out of the bar ashtrays to give to him.  He must have seen her working and waited out here for her to come out.  If he ever tried to come into the bars the managers chased him out with a stick and a holler. 

“I need a smoke Mayson.” 

“Hold on you ungrateful bastard” Mayson smiled at him as she dug into her red backpack and found the old Marlboro pack she stashed his prize in and shook the several cigarettes into his shaking dirty hand. 

“Thanks” and just like that he turned and walked away the tourist crowd giving him a wide berth unwilling to touch the filthy bum.  Well at least he didn’t have to fight the pack.  Mayson put her head into the mass of tourists that moved unbearably slow gawking at street signs or balconies.  They were never sure where to go or when they should get there.  She slipped through the holes in the crowd like a racer not making any eye contact.  She stepped into the Peaches main bar on Conti Street and was immediately soothed by the amazing AC that blasted her face.  She looked around for Alex who should have been done with his shift by now. 

“Over her Mayson.”  Alex yelled and waved from behind the pizza station on the far side of the bar.  The three bored employees behind the counter waved acknowledgment to her as she made her way across the empty space.  It was just a little to early for the big floods of people to send them running to fill drinks. 

“Let’s get out of here I need a drink. Maybe dinner and marg’s at Jaun’s, pool at Half Moon?”  Mayson leaned into the small partition for pizza serving and gave Alex a light kiss of greeting before leaning on the cool clean tile giving him her best big begging eyes.

“I have to work a fucking double the new guy didn’t show.”  Alex spit out flinging his skinny arms up in exasperation and his face started turning red in anger.  His big blue eyes glared at her as he flung things around in the little kitchen.  Our slave driver managers had demanded all of us to do doubles many times.  They would shuffle us between the three Peaches bars to avoid paying us overtime or exceeding any maximum working hours.  You were welcome to complain if you wanted to find a new job.  Your position could supposedly be easily filled by any idiot that walked in begging for a job. 

“What a bummer, I’m sorry Alex.  At least it will be good tips with this convention in town.”

“Yeah true that, get out of here before Nick see’s you he needs more slaves.”  His arms waved me away like he was trying to scare a large cow and I ducked out just as the manager was coming through the office door with that familiar sour expression across his angry face. 

With Henry and Alex at work she was doomed to deal with an empty house.  She had moved in with the guys to avoid just that.  Mayson headed to her second home just two blocks west.  Despite her don’t fuck with me face and posture that she used to get through the crowd the early drunks still hollered.

 “Hey, Hey honey wait” many felt the freedom of Bourbon gave them the right to try to grope and grab her.  She snapped her teeth and growled like an angry dog at them and was able to get off Bourbon without anymore harassment.  She had to jump over a conventioneer that was dressed head to toe with Ohio State pride.  He was sitting on the sidewalk propped against the brick wall.   His mouth wide open a neon green hand grenade cup spilled on his lap. He was snoring, so he was alive.  Mayson banged through the double swinging doors to the dark empty cave of the Three Legged Dog.

“Hey Mayson didn’t expect you today, want a drink?”  Smith started pouring Captain Morgan into a plastic 24 oz iced cup before she could even answer.   He was a tall skinny fella with long limbs and big puppy dog brown eyes.   He was trying to pull of a Tom Selleck mustache this week and it almost worked for him.   They had a nice friendship.  Mayson sensed Smith wanted more but he just wasn’t her type with his soured attitude toward life at the moment.   The bar was empty. It catered to the Quarter service industry primarily and it wouldn’t get busy till about midnight. After that it would be packed until daylight or on a good day noon.  They were one of several 24-7 bars in the Quarter and a favorite of the Peaches crew.  Mayson sat down on the last bar stool closest to the kitchen after putting her bag on a hook on the other side of the bar. 

“Thanks Smith, I was ready for this a few hours ago.” The tall dark haired bartender placed her drink down and sat on his stool opposite her.  “You aren’t getting any overflow from this convention?”  Mayson asked.

“We had a few for lunch, but nothing that wasn’t more of a pain in the ass than was worth having them here.”  Smith flipped through the channels on the TV above their head.  “What do you want to watch?” 

The service industry ending long shifts kept streaming in packs through the door.  Mayson had been sitting on her bar chair for hours, drinking slowly and chatting with Smith. They had eaten dinner and watched a whole movie before the first of the night shift started to show their faces.  When they first walked in it took a few minutes of anger release to co-workers ranting and gossiping. As the minutes and drinks passed you saw the release.  Smith sat next to Mayson now. Aaron had just came on duty and was pouring shots like a card dealer precise, neat and quick.

“Why can’t I be like them?”  Mayson asked staring at a shot girl half naked on top of a table gyrating like a go go dancer.  She was in complete abandon loving the lust in her bouncer boyfriends eyes.   She didn’t hold back, no embarrassment even when he slapped her on the ass.

“Why would you want to be like that?”  Smith leered at the drunk girl rolling his eyes before looking back at the TV. 

A stripper with breast that could never exist in the real world came in.

 “Give me a shot Aaron.”  Her tank top just covered her nipples and was cut off so you could see the curve of the bottom of her breasts.  A few of the men stared, but most had been there done that so her revealing attire went with out comment in this bar.  Aaron had the shot of Jaeger poured and put it on the bar. She wrapped her hand around it her long talon like fingernails making it hard for her to grip and flung the shot down her throat.  She grabbed the nearest male patron and smashed his face between her enormous fake breasts screaming “ahh fucking Bourbon!!”  She left big pink lipstick lips on the top of his bald head. 

“I don’t know Smith it seems like they have let go of inhibition throwing the whole concept away like rubbish.  Without the burden of it they seem so free, guilt free.  I can’t go there.  Maybe I teeter every once in awhile but something holds me back.  I think I could have so much more fun if I could just drop the ‘care’ idea.  Mayson shook her head and sucked down the last of her drink Aaron hearing the slurp had another round in front of her before she finished the last drop. 

Mayson in a normal reality would have been sober and cozy in a bed at 8:00 am.  Instead she was squinting, one eye open on drunk a vision, racing through the CBD with complete abandon laughing like Hunter S. Thompson. Business men going to work already wilting in the heat stared at her crazy grin as they crossed the street when she squealed to a stop at the light. O if she only had a cigar.

She slumped in her car, both hands squeezing the steering wheel.  Convinced this grip would help her to not swerve or weave.  The words to Johnny Lang’s Red Light song started to blare out of her speakers taunting her.  The stop light of life, and she did allow herself to wonder, how fucked up is this? Was she drinking too much?  Did alcoholics ask them selves if they were drinking too much?  Day after day on automatic pilot the months adding up and she had nothing to show for it except an amazing tolerance for alcohol and hours logged behind a bar. What was she missing out on and did she care? Finally the light changed, but would she?

The city, work, the Quarter had turned into a sexy beast pleading her to come closer, and once she had shuffled to it’s beckon it had flashed a toothy drooling grin and devoured her.  Her initial innocent love affair with a beautiful city and what it offered had turned into something akin to continuing to go back for the great sex even though the guy was a total jerk. Could she break off the relationship with the Crescent City her wicked lover?

Six months ago Mayson had been told that her true love was on his way, but every day she woke up alone.  The more time went by the more she worked exhausting hours then drank equal hours.  This schedule made it so she wouldn’t dwell on the fact that she was depending on a fairy tale to make her happy.  Was she really depending on a man to make her happy?  How sad did that sound? Maybe she should go find that damn gypsy and she could narrow down “over the horizon” into a time frame?  She punched her car forward up an empty Magazine Street and pulled next to the curb in front of her new place. 

She had left her loft and moved in with two co-workers to cut the cost of living.  One saving grace to her well being was her need to nurture her friends. It gave her purpose to wake up and she had found two projects in her roommates. 

Mayson adopted Henry first; he was a sensitive soul that leaned towards the macabre. She admired that he loved the written word.  On rare nights off or days he didn’t go out to the bars she would find him reading, and with that one question, “watcha reading?”  They had begun a ritual of sharing a book then later staying up till all hours of the morning pushing each other to fresh thoughts. Then his dad, the English teacher would send another, “new author to watch” and the daily hurry up, or where ya at? would begin until they could enthusiastically flop down in the living room, and the debate would begin again.  After the second time of Mayson bringing up a thought about a book that had haunted her the night before at breakfast, and Henry looking at her with a curious face did she learn to not count on him remembering their intense banter.  He too craved the fade that alcohol brought him and had perfected his method for several more years than her.  She would get disappointed, but who was she to judge he was already beyond the crossroads of choice that she was standing.

She had taken Alex in next, a completely different fish to fry.  She remembered the first time they had worked a shift together. His skinny arms flailed about as his Alabama drawl voice would tell a story. She had never encountered a deep southern spark plug before and she just watched him open mouth.  If he wasn’t sleeping he was moving. She was all about keeping the bar stocked and clean but sometimes it made her tired to watch his ADD perfection.

He had suggested working with a cousin over here to his family. The boy might as well have been kicked out a moving car his parents had been so anxious to finally get him out of the house. He had been robbed once, beaten up twice and Mayson had to drive down to NOPD to bail him out of jail.  He was more innocent to the big bad world than she had been.  She cared for both of them, just two of the many she had bonded with that worked at the Peaches. 

Their neighbor Mr. Vincent sat on the porch they shared as she climbed up the cement steps to her front door.  “Hey Mr. Vincent, how are you today?” He sat on his large wooden chair atop a big blue cushion, sunglasses already on for the bright day.

“O my joints are aching but I’ll get bye.” He rubbed his wrists and cringed as she topped the big flight of stairs. “You just  getting home sugar?”

She heard a low mumble of someone talking to themselves and turned to watch one of the regular bums from the neighborhood stumbling down the street and stop in front of them.  He proceeded to rustle around in the garbage bin. 

“Mike you git now,” Mr. Vincent jumped up and waved his hand at him until he shuffled to the next block. Mayson couldn’t help but chuckle at the harsh realty she witnessed every day and her neighbor shooing it away like an errant cat. 

“The bar was busy this weekend.”  She grabbed her pack off her back and set it down to dig through the pockets and find her house keys. 

“You are going to break with all this work pumpkin.”

Mayson sighed, “Na I’m tuff, and I made great money, gotta pay that rent right?” She had removed half the stuff in her bag to finally find the keys.  She wrapped the key ring on her finger and picked the whole mess up in her arms. 

“Goodnight Mr. Vincent.” He laughed low and deep sitting in the morning sunlight.

 “Yes, good night love, sleep well.”  She made it through the several locks to get into the living room to find the house was still.  Her feet fell heavy up each step to her room.  Henry was snoring loudly when she passed his bedroom door. It was always a relief to know he had made it home.  Her bed felt like a cloud of heaven when she finally flopped back into the center of it. She was exhausted from the too many shifts this week.  Or was it the following work and staying up all night at the bar? Being home in her comfortable bed made her feel less bummed. Despite all the bad things she could analyze about this life she was trying on, the good part was every morning, or better yet every late afternoon she woke up curious to see how this next night might turn out.  She allowed that spin dissolve her many doubts as she immediately fell asleep.

Mayson didn’t need an alarm to get up for her night shifts. Same time pretty much every day lightning cracked over her roof and thunder played like a giant drum out her large bedroom windows. After a few minutes of nature’s symphony rain would burst from the clouds releasing it’s heavy down pour all at once. It would flash flood the streets that never drained. She lay on her bed and listened to the water rush down Magazine. Her body was heavy and tongue thick, but she rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.  The steady tap, tap, tap from Henry’s room was just annoying enough to keep her from dreamland.  Every morning he chopped up his cocaine for the day. He hated getting nose bleeds so would obsess with his razor until he achieved the consistency he liked. 

“Henry enough all ready” she screamed.  Who would have ever thought one year ago that sound would be part of the rise and shine that consisted of her home waking up.  Then Alex started downstairs, everything he touched ended in a noise, clatter or clang the boy couldn’t do quiet. Dishes, really we needed to dishes right now?

 “Dammit” she threw the sheet off her sweaty body.  At some point in the morning she had taken her clothes off and they lay either tangled underneath her or lying on the dirty wood floor This happened a lot and she always worried the house was going to catch on fire and she would end up standing outside in all her glory.  She sighed then jumped out of bed and stomped over to the corner window and blasted the AC unit as high as it would go.  She flung herself back on top of the bed, belly down.  Chop, chop, chop the noise so subtle but just enough to drive her crazy. 

“HENRY Jesus h Christ” she shouted again, she was not a morning person. At work not a soul would doubt her flawless charm and spin on a situation, but her roommates knew the girl sans the fake charm, unfortunate for them.  Dreams were an escape from realty and right now she wanted to blame Henry for depriving her of that.  Another lightning bolt slapped the block and she heard Henry’s door squeak free from its swollen frame.  She was naked with her head resting on her arms, face looking at the door when Henry whispered a knock and shoved his shaved head in her room his tired puffy eyes got a little bigger when he saw her bare flesh. 

 “Hey stop yelling at me, do you want something or you just ranting?” he asked with a just woke up grumble. She lifted her eyelids halfway to catch him ogling her. 

“Honey, you need to get out of my room and just, just be quiet.” She yelled with hostility.  “I can’t deal with the refining process right now.  Can’t you get it pre done for crying out loud?” this came out more like a whine the scream wearing down.  “Fuck you, you can’t hear that” he laughed at her. You always hurt the ones you love and she had gotten into the habit of releasing her bitchiness on Henry.  Mayson could scream, kick and cry in front of him and he just absorbed it without flinching. It was a personality trait she admired in him.

And true to type he ignored her mood “Hey, I’m just finishing Cold Mountain I think you’ll like.  I’ll leave it out for you. Which bar you at tonight?” 

“Suckers with Deacon I think,” Mayson growled, she knew he was prolonging the conversation so he could memorize the view of her bare ass but she was too tired to cover up her backside. 

“I’m stuck at Absinthe on pizza.” “Ok, Henry, whatever go away.”  He closed her door softly.  She gave up on going back to sleep, but still luxuriated in her soft bed.  Tonight she would start a week of babysitting whiskers the devil cat at Smith’s.  No drug factory or tweaky boy, only her, a cat and a full bar downstairs, Umm, goodie.