Page 16 of Cosmo

“There is a jam session at the blues club I’d like to go to, if you can spare me.”

“Not until after midnight. That okay?”

“That’s great! It starts at one, so plenty of time. Thanks, Murph,” he said as he slid off the stool and then, to Liam, he said, “Welcome aboard, Cosmo.”

“Thanks,” Liam said, wishing he could have chosen his own name, if he had to have one at all.

They all had a beer in their hands as they sat outside on the veranda, as Eazy called it, except for Haze, who was working at the bar that night. The veranda was over the corner entrance of the bar and looked out on the city.

It was a nice place, the hum of the city like a strange music that accompanied their lounging.

Murphy and Eazy sat together on the loveseat that was dark wood and subtle sage cushions. Abs sat with Goldie across from them. Abs’ legs slung across Goldie’s as they laughed at some inside joke.

Mims was on the phone, off in a corner where they couldn’t hear, sipping on his beer while listening to whoever was on the other side of the line.

It was nice, it was peaceful, and felt like family, so Liam hated it. It made him uncomfortable, watchful, wondering what the hell was going on under the sweetness and light. There was always something underneath that. Something sinister, and possibly even murderous.

He bade everyone goodnight soon after he’d finished his beer and made it back to his room after only a couple of wrong turns along the way. Locking the door, feeling old thoughts stirring in his head, he wished for the sweet feeling of being alone.

In the room, he was, of course, but Liam felt them all around him. He felt their eyes and looked around the room for cameras. Maybe being in prison was better. He’d made no genuine connections and felt alone, even in crowds.

Still, he’d had to dodge men much bigger, with their entourage attached at the hip, in order to keep himself from being raped. That had become a full-time job for him. He’d succeeded, however, and he wasn’t looking to go back to that.

The next morning, after knocking on his door and Liam letting him inside his room, Goldie took him to the basement where the gym was located. As soon as they got down the concrete steps, he saw weights, rowing machines, stationary bikes, and more.

“This is a nice setup.”

“It is. I’m down here a lot,” Goldie confessed, and Liam believed him. “Helps with anxiety. I was a mess before I started working out.”

“When was that, when you were twelve?”

Goldie laughed and pointed to the archway and closed door on the right hand wall. “That’s storage for the pub. You’ll need to know where everything is once you begin work. We make quite a few trips downstairs on weekends. Murphy tries to help, but it’sfaster to do it ourselves, and, sorry to say, the new guy is usually the runner.”

“Gotcha.”

On the left hand wall were two built-in bookcases, sunken into the cinderblock wall. Liam thought that was weird, having bookcases in the gym, but he shrugged that off, glad to know there were books he could read when he wanted.

In bed that second night, Liam slept fitfully. Too much family time in the pub had already brought back the nightmares. He finally got up at three that next morning and made it to the kitchen, where he drank two glasses of water and sat on the stool at the kitchen island as he thought over his new reality.

Better than prison, sure. Did he trust any of the men? Not even a little. For the time being, however, he planned to go along until he could find his own job and a way to distance himself from all human beings.

Like he wanted it.

Chapter Five

The first time heworked was on the third night after he was at the pub. Murphy wanted him to work with Goldie and once Goldie laid things out for him, he stared at all the bottles in a daze. Goldie waved a hand over them in the back bar, and Liam heard his words, but none of them penetrated his mind.

“When you get good, you can hold all the liquor bottles in two hands for a Long Island, Scorpion, and those kinds of drinks. Shots, you gotta pour fast, so set them on the black plastic with the holes at the bar, pour and the excess runs off into the drain.”

“Long Island? Scorpion? I, uh, never did this and all I’ve ever drank is shots and beer.”

“Hey, that was most of us when we got here, Cosmo.”

“Do you really have to call me that?”

Goldie jerked his head to the end of the bar, where there were two stools for the bartenders. They sat and Goldie explained, “Listen, it took me a long time to get used to mine too. There are a ton of reasons for it, having these names. Number one, though, you’ll get the first night, I guarantee it. A lot of guys, and women too, for that matter, come here just for us. They could go to anybar to drink and listen to music. It’s us they come here for, and some get…a little more into us than most others do. If they knew our names, they’d look up our social media, get our names from those people-finding sites and find out everything about us.”

Liam heard that and immediately swallowed his shock. “I never thought of that.”

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