CHAPTER 12

.....The engine of the monster truck roared and the giant tires spun as Pierce wheeled a brody in the parking lot of The Teapot Cafe, leaving Lolita in a cloud of Wyoming dust.
.....She coughed and brushed the grit from her white blouse as she turned to complete the last day of her bartender training. As she stepped across the threshold, she was greeted by Bonnie Tyler’s ‘I’m looking Out for a Hero’ rasping from the jukebox.
.....Europe may be the place where forgotten pop stars go to live on forever, but the jukebox of the Teapot was their final American leg of the one-way tour. Not too many bars in the country could boast about offering Terry Jacks’ ‘Seasons in the Sun’ one selection above Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids in America’.
.....Even fewer bars would boast about something like that.
.....Tanya greeted her with a sour look that started with the clock over the bar, which noted without a word that Lolita was five minutes late. The look was all that needed to be said about the matter, and the final exam began. Tanya led off with a snap of the bar towel.
.....The only patron at the bar, Doc sat in as the budding mixologist’s crash test dummy. He was nursing a Sea Breeze at the moment.
.....“What are your Breezes?” Tanya prodded her new intern.
.....“Vodka and cranberry,” Lolita recited. “Topped off with grapefruit for the Sea Breeze, pineapple for the Bay, and OJ for the other one.”
.....“Madras,” Tanya clarified. “Substitute Southern Comfort for the vodka and throw in some Sloe Gin with that one and you have an Alabama Slammer. It’s not the exact recipe, we don’t have Amaretto, but anyone silly enough to order it won’t notice the difference.”
.....And so it went, and as it went Doc began to get more than a little loaded. Tanya slid him an occasional pint of ice water to help him maintain.
.....“Want a Long Island Iced Tea, Doc?” she asked. His eyes went wide and he shook his head.
.....“Good.” Tanya turned and explained to Lolita: “The thing about the Long Island is that anyone who orders one is a fucking idiot. They want to get drunk and drunk fast, which means that you have to keep an eye on them the rest of the night. You only have two eyes for all of the customers, so no one deserves that kind of attention. Especially the kind of fucking idiot that orders a Long Island Iced Tea.”
.....She eyed Lolita. “What’s in a Long Island Iced Tea?”
.....“All the white well boozes, topped off with Sweet ‘n Sour and Coke,” Lolita recalled without a beat. “A squeeze of lemon, and give it one shake.”
.....“The girl did all her homework,” Doc noted approvingly and Tanya nodded. The girl showed promise. She’d given Pierce’s girlfriend a run behind the bar a couple of weeks before, and both of them had ended the week in enthusiastic agreement that Debbie definitely did not have what it took to be a bartender. It was too sticky for Debbie’s taste, and Tanya just reckoned that the girl was an idiot.
.....Lolita wasn’t the latter, and seemed to have no problem with the former. And as Doc would have noted if Tanya had bothered to ask, the girl was more than a little easy on the eyes. Tanya didn’t need to ask. The approval was written all over Doc’s face.
.....Harding being small town Americana, the drink menu wasn’t all that hard to memorize. The Manhattan for the lawyers, and the Cosmopolitan for the ladies that had began to follow Sex and the City once it hit syndication. The occasional Old Fashioned for the random old school drinkers that might be seeking a break from The Larkspur, and that was about all the girl needed to know to fly solo.
.....Tanya peeled off and made her way to the other side of the bar and parked next to Doc. She pulled over his ashtray and lit up one of the pre-rolled smokes that Doc had placed aside in anticipation. She closed her eyes and inhaled deep, held the smoke, then let it out with a slow, long sigh. She eyed the clock; she still had a couple of hours before her shift at the radio station.
.....“I’ll try one of your Bloody Marys,” Tanya said, and eyed the Doc. “You want one?”
.....Lolita’s back was to him as she started the process, so Doc felt free to wince and shake his head in remembered pain. He’d had one of the girl’s trial attempts at mastering the drink the day before. She was showing promise in most other ways, but that particular drink wasn’t something that you master overnight. A bad Bloody Mary wasn’t something you could just drink through, and Lolita’s initial try had been just plain godawful.
.....“I’ll take a Mojito,” he smirked. Lolita eyed Tanya, who was mock glaring at Doc.
.....“What’s in a Mojito?” she asked.
.....“Don’t worry about it,” Tanya said, shaking her head. “Mojitos are one of those frou-frou drinks women order when they just want to fuck with the bartender.”
.....She turned back on Doc and gave him the evil eye. “Don’t fuck with my bartender.”
.....He threw up his hands in mock surrender as Lolita placed the Bloody Mary down before her. Tanya wasn’t as discerning as the Doc; the drink had plenty of booze in it and perhaps a bit too much Tabasco, but otherwise booze was booze. “The bar’s all yours when you’re on that side. It’s your bar and you are the law. Any questions?”
.....Lolita laughed as she eyed the drink: it was already half gone. “What if I have to cut you off?”
.....“I don’t get that drunk,” Tanya replied, and threw Doc a narrow-eyed look when he choked on his drink.
.....“Here,” she amended.
.....She wouldn’t do that to her employees. It was bad form. If she needed to cut loose, she did it over at The Larkspur. There, no one would really notice in the hubbub if she was starting to misbehave. She didn’t really misbehave all that much any more, but once a reputation was set in smalltown-minded Harding, it was hard to outlive.
.....Lolita spared Doc’s empty Collins glass an inquiring look.
.....“I’ll take a glass of the cabernet,” he finally responded after giving the matter some fuzzy thought. He could nurse the wine for a bit and get back on an even keel. It was still early and he had no desire to go to bed early. He had even less of a desire to wake up at five in the morning with nothing to do and no booze to do nothing with.
.....“Is there anyone I’m not supposed to serve, or just need to keep an eye on?” asked Lolita as she poured the wine. Tanya shrugged as she went through her mental Rolodex.
.....“Not really,” she finally said. “Most of your problem cases stay over at The Larkspur. Other than that, just always keep an eye out for the middle-aged men with mustaches.”
.....Lolita blinked. “Pretty much every middle-aged dude in this town has a mustache...even some of the women.”
.....Tanya waved her hand dismissively, the cigarette leaving a arc of smoke and ash in its wake. “I’m talking about the ones that you don’t know. Generally, they’re either trolls looking to score on the unescorted drunk females, an undercover cop from over in Lumbeck, rednecks looking for a fight, or some random gay dude that lost his way off of the highway. If you throw them all together in the same room, somewhere along the line the shit’ll hit the fan.”
.....“Do undercover cops really come in here?” Lolita asked, beginning to reevaluate her choice of a career move.
.....“It’s the ABC you need to watch out for,” Tanya said. “Alcoholic Beverage Control. They never drop by these parts, ‘cause it’s too far out in the boonies and they might miss that night’s episode of C*O*P*S. But if they do it’s an occupational hazard. They’ll try to get you to serve a minor, so always check the ID. Or if they’re really being assholes, they pop you for over-serving an obviously intoxicated patron.”
.....She gave Doc an evil look.
.....“Hey,” he protested. “Always let me know if I’m looking obviously intoxicated... it’ll mean I’m slipping.”
.....Tanya laughed, then turned back to the warning. “This is probably the only service industry job you’ll find where you can go to jail just because you didn’t do your job right, and lose a few months wages on top of that.”
.....Lolita had the fear properly installed in her. “How often do they come by?”
.....“Only when someone is looking to get re-elected over in the county seat,” Tanya explained. “Don’t worry, Jason will always have someone call and give us a heads up. They usually end up nailing one of the bartenders over at The Larkspur for over-serving a drunk. The charges always end up being dropped after the election passes.”
.....“It helps if your brother-in-law happens to be the District Attorney running for reelection,” Doc added.
.....Lolita looked perplexed. “Why even bother then?”
.....“Politics isn’t about solving a problem,” Doc explained. “It’s about looking like you’re solving the problem. If you solve the problem, then you have to go through the bother of finding another problem that it looks like you’re working on solving.”
.....Lolita nodded as if she understood. “And if the shit hits the fan?”
.....“Call the cops.” Tanya took another sip of the Bloody Mary and made a mental note to bring the girl in for a special Bloody Mary-making seminar. The drink wasn’t very good after all. It was pretty nasty, actually. “I don’t want you out on the floor if something bad is going down. Usually you’ll have some gentleman in the house that’ll have your back.”
.....Doc tried to keep the leer off of his face. “Shush, you,” Tanya cautioned.
.....“What if they come at me behind the bar?”
.....A dark look settled over Tanya’s face. Even the green of her eyes went a shade darker.
.....“Kill ‘em,” she replied. “I’m not joking, here. If someone comes at you from around the bar, don’t dance with them and don’t fuck around. Smash a bottle -- from the well, not top shelf -- and jam the fucker in their face. Go for the eyes.”
.....“Then kick the bastard in the nuts.” She took in the shocked look on Lolita’s face. “And then call the cops.”
.....Doc drew back from her. “Remind me to never to piss you off.”
.....“Don’t ever, ever piss me off,” Tanya reminded him, then considered what was left of her Bloody Mary. “Lolita, dear?”
.....Wide eyes looked up from beneath the bangs. “Hm?”
.....“You might wanna use a li’l less vodka in your pour.”