Cupidity

Willow was late.

Half-dressed and bolting explosively from her tiny apartment complex. A disheveled mess of sleep rumpled curls knotted irreparably around a silver necklace adorned by Jesus Christ. Hazardously applied makeup streaking almost gothic in the street lights. Short-shorts still unzipped. Part of a flannel clutching crazily to her right arm like a rabid animal. Heels hanging by a pinky. Purse streaking behind her on ribbons of haste.

She was a hot mess headed for oblivion.

At least it wasn’t cold, and the pavement simmered beneath her bare feet in reminisces of the sun’s piercing gaze.

Here in Myrefall, there was little to no need for clothing.

This part of sunny so-Cal boasted about a week of rain to slake its thirst for the year. And a sun hot enough to dehydrate the entire downpour within a day. Willow was sprinting down the crack riddled sidewalk at breakneck speed. Leaping over piles of grimy garbage. Dodging puddles of discarded cigarette butts and crashing through decaying leaves in the clatter of her scramble.

Her shift at The Laughing Pinnacle started at seven, right about when the sun gets sleepy enough to contemplate turning in for the night. At eight o’clock, sunset was well on her way to dreamland. Leaving Willow with a maze of shadows to navigate in addition to the cluttered angles and tangles mangling Myrefall less than glamorous. It wasn’t a pretty city. It wasn’t a cozy city. It was just a cramped pile of graffiti clad buildings and roads that more or less lead to nowhere.

Willow could run with her heels on, but opted out for the sake of several reasons. Number one: that kind of action ruined your stilettos. Number two: it made a lot of unnecessary noise. And number three: heels are bad enough on the joints without sufficing for workout attire. Add a good run to an eight hour shift, and you were looking at tendons stiff enough to break steel across.

“WILLOW!” Mariah exclaimed as she burst through the wide swinging arch of their doorway, out of breath and jonesing for a good hard cup of joe. Mariah was all over her, keening about the busy Friday night. How she still didn’t know how to mix a proper Sex on the Beach. That’s what everyone was asking for. She’d broken an entire bottle of Absolut too, and Emmet was taking it out of her check.

Sean already got kicked out for inability to pay. Jacey had thrown up in every bowl but the toilet’s. Some dude was angry they didn’t carry aged rum. Some kid was drinking enough to get elephants drunk. Some other kid kept spilling his Long Island Iced Tea and he wasn’t drunk.

It was just a mess.

A total mess, Willow!

Collapsing in a puddle of agitation at Willow’s waistline and burying her face in her stomach, “I thought you’d never come! I thought you’d left me to fend the fort all by myself!”

Dramatic today, aren’t we? Obliged yourself on one too many curtesy drinks…

Willow patted Mariah’s luscious blonde and blue hair comfortingly with one hand, scooching her flannel up towards shoulder height with the other. This was her favorite flannel. Purple and blue. Shimmering sparklets of enticement beneath the multicolored lights that decorated the bar brilliant. Over a lacy black bra, she was already getting much wanted attention and earning the longing gaze of tippers ready to throw money down for a show.

Zip me up will ya, Mariah? Make yourself useful for once. And please… please do not rip the piercing in your plight… It was just a simple belly-button piercing, dangling a pentagram from its nest within her navel. But considering Mariah dropped at least two drinks per shift and spilled approximately ten, it wasn’t unthinkable that she’d manage Willow’s evisceration in her upset.

“You’re late.” Emmet observed, cocking an eyebrow interestedly over the refill of a regular’s mug.

Willow shrugged, flashing him a cheeky grin. You hired me for my looks, not my punctuality. Balancing into her six-inch ebony heels and wriggling her feet to conform to the height. Scooching slowly away from Mariah’s onslaught of hysterics. Four foot ten on a good day, Willow was about the size of your average jockey. She needed every inch she could grow.

Mariah on the other hand, towered over Willow in a pair of two-inch wedges like some kind of Amazon warrior from the great unknown. She was elegant, doe like, with a perfect splash of school girl curiosity and an innocent bubbliness that made up for her klutzy tendency toward disaster.

Men were whistling by now, cat-calling their usual good-natured jives with the tact of honeybees overdosed on acid. Not that Willow minded. More looks meant more tips. More tips meant more money, meant more savings, meant more hope for a better abode than the kind which resided within the folds of downtrodden Myrefall.

And she swung her hips delicately towards Emmet, not bothering with her fly until the bar’s ledge concealed it from prying eyes of the horny.

“You’re free to go!” Emmet blew a kiss to Mariah and turned to Willow, “Got an excuse tonight?”

I had this wild idea that maybe this time, my alarm would wake me up at exactly six o’clock p.m. And I’d have half an hour to run a brush through my hair, you know? Maybe wash off some of the excess makeup caked to my face. Try something new. Something different. And maybe I’d find a pair of shorts that didn’t suffocate my buttocks in weary ripped jean. And I’d relieve Jesus of his noose before I got here.

And maybe I’d even put on my shoes before I walked in.

But then it was eight o’clock.

Willow rolled her big green eyes and pecked Emmet on the cheek apologetically. Shifting her long black mess of a mane into a sloppy ponytail before waltzing into the back room. Hunting for a coffee cup that wasn’t eroded by masses of sugar nor caked with brown stains the consistency of diarrhea. Emmet went ahead and followed her, shadowed by the coos and jibbers of men who should have been cut from the tap about an hour ago.

Running a grimy gray towel through his scarred slender hands. Shaking his mass of brown curly cues out of clear blue eyes, “You ever have coffee at your place? Or is mine just that good?”

Willow shook her head and gestured to the outer world of bouncing music and boisterous laughter. Shrugging and raising her eyebrows to query about who was running the show tonight.

“Jamie will be here at nine.” Emmet replied, “In the meantime, try not to spill anything else. I swear, Mariah costs me more than she makes me somedays…” As the owner, it wasn’t unheard of for Emmet to pull an all-nighter with one of his girls. Bouncing out guys that got a little bit too handsy, breaking up the occasional bar fight, or mixing drinks while the girls waited tables flirtatiously enough to keep the rounds going.

But Jamie was more fun to work under.

And it wasn’t such a bad job, the music covered for Willow’s lack of a voice and the regulars covered for her lack of friends. The Laughing Pinnacle was an oasis in this rundown desert city of the desperate. And the booze was just as good as the coffee, if not more so. Teeming caffeine around her tongue piercing. Igniting the fire for another night of rat racing requests.

Buttoning up along the length of her cleavage, Willow took her coffee out the archway for another day in paradise.