Page 18 of Steve's Barmaid
“Oh, just get on with it and open the stupid window,” she said, rolling her eyes.
I was discovering I liked embarrassed Billie. Embarrassed Billie was adorable—flustered and pink-cheeked. Was I… flirting? We took turns embarrassing each other. I put the thought out of my mind as I easily flipped the latch and opened the window. It was large enough to fit most of the furniture, but the dining table and the bed would have to be cut up.
“Alright, boss, what is salvageable, and what is being tossed out the window?” I asked. I was hesitant about the plan, but Billie was in charge.
Billie looked around at the furniture carefully, running her fingers across the dining table.
“You know what,” she said suddenly, “I want it all gone. I want to start from scratch. I’ve never gotten to pick out my own furniture—it has always been hand-me-downs. With all the help I am being offered and the tribe’s clear investment in reopening the bar, I think I should get new stuff, right? This stuff looks like it is at least fifty years old,” she said, wincing. “Not like I’m ungrateful, but?—”
“I don’t see why not.” I kicked a chair leg, and it bowed. “We have Osif willing to teach us and plenty of eager novice woodworkers. A new set it is!”
With that, I swiftly picked up a dining room chair and easily chucked it out the window. Then we heard it crash to the ground outside the bar.
“Steve!” Billie gasped.
“What? You said all new things?”
“Yes! But you can’t just throw a chair out a window without checking if—you know—there is someone on the ground below? What if you just knocked out Joey or Reykr?”
I blanched. Reykr would be fine if someone hit him with a chair, but Joey was tiny, even smaller than Billie. I rushed to the window and peered out. No one outside and nothing on the front lawn other than a very broken chair.
“We’re safe,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Okay, next time you throw something, at least check first?” She laughed.
“Yes, boss.”
Billie grinned at me as she picked up another chair, looked out the window, then dropped it with a resounding crash.
“I think this is going to be kind of fun,” she said, picking up another chair.
We spent the rest of the morning clearing out the attic, starting with the pieces that easily fit through the window. We chatted as we emptied the space. Billie was easy to talk to and was as curious about my life as I was about hers.
Hearing about her family made me feel more at ease speaking about my own truthfully.
“I was the youngest of three,” Billie said. “But none of us were close. Our childhood wasn’t the best. My parents were very religious and didn’t really care about us as long as we did what we were told. I wasn't allowed to date. I wore a purity ring, and my virginity was my entire value. Whatever my dad said was law, whether or not he understood the consequences of it. The three of us scattered as soon as we hit eighteen,” she explained.
There was a flatness to her voice, as if she was trying to hide a pain that wasn’t fully healed. “Where did your sisters go?” I asked.
“They both fled as soon as they could. They distanced themselves from the family as much as possible. Because I was the youngest, it was harder for me to justrunwhen I definitely should have,” her breathing hitched.
“Eventually, even though I couldn’t imagine leaving my parents, I had to. I needed a life of my own. I found a job and a roommate and moved out. I stayed local, but I was no longer under the thumb of my parents. I was free to figure out my future. I ended up working at a restaurant and was happy there, but I didn’t have any long-term goals. That’s what I am doing now that I am here. Making long-term goals. Billie, the bar owner.” She grinned at me.
I reflected on her upbringing. Orkin were communal by nature. We ate together, often lived with our parents until we took mates, and rarely left our tribe of origin. All of this hadalways felt irksome, but I brushed it off. Now, it made me wonder if the human part of me wanted to make my own way—forge my own path. Whatever guilt Billie had felt about leaving her parents behind, she had clearly moved past it.
“How did your parents react to all of you leaving?” I asked.
“They were surprised, honestly. I think they thought that because they didn’t hit us and they fed us, they were exemplary parents. But the reality is a lot more goes into parenting. They never reallysawany of us. I think people of their generation had kids because that was the norm, not realizing how badly you can fuck up a kid. Now it is becoming more common to choose not to have kids.”
“Are you angry at your parents?” I asked.
“No. Just sad. Sad for them because they don’t understand why we don’t have a relationship. Sad for me because if I ever do decide to have children, I don’t have a model of what a parent should look like. I’ll probably do the opposite of whatever my parents did. I wouldn’t want my kids to meet my parents. I wouldn’t want to expose them to their archaic way of thinking. Honestly, having parents that follow a religion that is thousands of years out of date sucks balls,” she said, looking downcast.
“Hey, I don’t think you need to have had great parents to be a great parent. Just recognizing what your parents lacked in raising you sets you up to be a much better mother someday,” I responded, trying to comfort her. “I think of some of the things my parents did and how I would do them differently. I wouldn’t have stayed holed up in the mountains, even if we did have an orkling. I would travel, show them different places on Niflheim, and go on adventures together. I know that is what Mom wanted deep down, but she was too scared to expose me to the unknown. And I don’t think Dad ever wanted to leave.”
“You’d want to take an orkling on adventures?” Billie asked, grinning.
“Yeah, maybe?” I shrugged, but was smiling. “I’d want them to see the ocean and meet the other tribes. Maybe we could explore the forest. Snaerfírar has hunter cabins that are nestled around the Fjall Mountains. We could explore and stay in the cabins.” I thought wistfully about what it might be like to have a mate and an orkling that I got to raise with the freedoms I never had. I had never considered orklings before. It seemed out of the realm of possibility before Billie. But here she was, encouraging me to create a future I wanted.
