Page 3 of Dangerous Devotion

I’ll give Ronnie an earful over this. I said I’d step in and look after the bar for a week even though I don’t like the seedier atmosphere. I swear there’s secondhand smoke clinging to this place from the eighties. Everything has that ugly yellowed look to it, but I guess the dinginess is kind of the point. It attracts the neighborhood drunks and gamblers, the ones that are so far gone they don’t care if everybody knows what they are.

No more hiding the habits and pretending respectability. Sit down at Bettino’s and you might as well dig your grave and climb in it. Let’s just say there’s not exactly an alumni reunion for this joint with fond memories and old friends. It’s a bunch of poor bastards trying to screw each other out of money for a drink or a late payment on a bad debt.

This joint depresses the hell out of me. If my pop was still around, he’d laugh his ass off at me thinking about dusting off a chair with my handkerchief before I sit down, but this is a nice suit, and I don’t want it soiled by contact with the decades of smoke and hopelessness inside these walls. It’s a profitable concern, if you don’t think about the scavenger aspect of the business. It does a good amount of liquor sales, and the bookies love it here. Fuckin’ vermin. I like the profit margin, but nobody wants to see the sausage get made as it were.

“Ronnie said you was comin’ in to babysit this place while he’s out. How do ya like it? I bet you ain’t been in here since you was too little to get up on a stool,” Foz chuckles as he lines up glasses on the bar.

He’s not far from wrong. I had a lot to learn about the business and didn’t spend much time hanging out in the crappy bars with backroom poker games that cost people their houses, cars and the occasional ear or thumb.

“You’re right about that,” I say, shaking his hand, “But it’s an institution, everybody knows that.”

“Right you are. You’re the spittin’ image of your old man, but he never cleaned up so nice.”

“Thanks, Foz,” I say, “Don’t let me catch you checking me out.” He laughs heartily which spills straight into a smoker’s cough that rattles hard. I make my way to the dim, cluttered office.

I’m about done checking over the payroll and ordering which was a damn mess when Foz comes and knocks on the door. The joint’s been open for a couple hours and even though it’s early, there’s always a crowd of sad sacks warming the stools and drinking over sob stories. I tell him to come in because I know he wouldn’t bother me unless it was urgent. I stifle a sigh. I don’t want to deal with this shit.

“Sorry to bug ya, but there’s a lady here.”

“A lady?” I ask, wondering when we started calling them ‘ladies’ if they hang around here.

“A real one. She don’t have fake tits or fake eyelashes neither. I never seen her before. She’s not leavin’, and she wants to talk to the boss. She got no idea she’s gonna get the real deal tonight.”

I follow him out to see what the situation is. Before she turns around, I know which one he’s talking about. She stands by the bar all self-possessed, shoulders back and beautiful legs, a hint of her thigh peeking out beneath the hem of a red dress. A red dress like she saw Bugsy when she was a kid and has no fuckin’ idea what she’s doing getting mixed up in the Bettino’s crowd.

Her dark hair is pulled up showing the sweet curve of her bare throat. My first instinct is to get her the hell out of here. Nothing fresh and young belongs inside these walls, that’s for sure. I clear my throat and she turns around, understanding the cue. I don’t know which one of us is more shocked. Me by the pretty face that’s way too young to even know about this joint or her by the recognition I see click in her dark chocolate eyes.

“Blackjack Marino,” she breathes.

“The one and only,” Foz says proudly as if he’s brought out an exotic animal to show this girl.

“Do I curtsey or what?” she asks, recovering her sass almost instantly.

I’ve seen grown men piss themselves when they find out who they’re face to face with. I give the kid credit for being brave at least. I rake her up and down twice with my gaze. Once to intimidate because I’m assessing whether she’s even worth my time and the second look is just for me, taking in every detail from her trim ankles a little wobbly in heels she’s unaccustomed to all the way to the exact part in her hair where it’s pulled up and pinned in place.

“I’d kiss your ring but you’re not wearing one. I assume you count yourself on par with the Pope,” she adds. I just stand and wait, letting my presence and the weight of the silence coax her into spilling her reason for showing up here.

Finally, she gets to her point. “All right, I’m Serena Mayfield. My father, Joel, apparently owes a significant amount to Mr. Shapiro. I was hoping to speak with someone about working out a payment schedule so I can repay his debt.”

“You’re here to pay your daddy’s gambling debts,” I say, my voice rough. Looking at her, the pretty little sacrificial lamb, I want to slam my fist into her dad’s face repeatedly. What kind of man does that, runs up a bad debt and leaves it to his daughter to clean up his mess? No kind of man at all, I think scornfully, and letting her come into a place like this, he might as well send a tender veal chop to the lion’s den to negotiate.

I can already see the regulars checking her out. Sweeping up the line of her bare legs with hungry gazes that make me want to throw a coat around her and maybe shoot somebody’s fuckin’ hands off if they don’t keep them where I can see them.

The younger Nelson boy is here, redheaded and good for nothing, but with a smile that charms the ladies. The way he looks at her I feel the urge to feed this little shit his own balls to teach him to keep his eyes in his head. I wonder how many of them have already offered to buy her a drink. Part of me wants to know who they are, wants to warm them off.

I’m not sure what’s going on—heartburn maybe? I haven’t eaten in hours, but the feeling I got in my chest is a burn like I’m dying. Something itches below my collarbone, a tug that takes me off guard. I finally put a name to it but wish that I hadn’t. I want to protect her. She’s in a goddamn cesspool dressed like that and no idea what she’s got herself into.

Every man in here would like to slide that dress further up her thighs, bend her over that bar and rail her without saying a word. I know because I’m thinking about it myself. There’s no way she can sense that or she’d run for the hills and never look back. She really thinks she can come in here and talk to someone about a payment schedule like we sell used cars. I’d chuckle but my mouth went dry a while back.

“That’s not how it works around here,” I say.

“How does it work then?” she challenges.

“It works however I want it to,” I can’t resist saying. “We’re down a waitress tonight. You can fill in while I think of some way for you to pay off his debt. How much did you say it was?” I prompt.

“I didn’t,” she says a little miserably before she straightens her shoulders again. “Sixteen. thousand,” she says clearing her throat. “I’ll need some time to come up with the money. And if working a few shifts here will help, I’ll do that. I don’t have much waitress experience. I work on the stepdown unit from ICU at St. Anthony’s as a CNA. Or I did before I had to leave work early again. I can provide medical care. You know, on the DL.” She drops her voice to a whisper conspiratorially.

I chuckle, “I haven’t heard anyone say ‘on the DL’ in a long time, Serena Mayfield,” I tell her. “Maybe I’ll keep you around cause you’re funny. Get an apron and Foz’ll tell you what’s what. Come see me at the end of your shift. I’ll draw up papers on his debt, figure out some installments for you,” I say.

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