Page 11 of Surface Scratch
Even Ophelia asked him how he was doing on that first night back—once, and then she never brought it up again. He hadn’t even expected her to ask him that, so he’d felt somewhat flattered in that moment. Those reactions made him feel somewhat better about coming back, but he knew he was on edge and just muddling through each night feeling like every corner he turned would result in unconsciousness. He had been promised that what happened that first night would never happen again, but he couldn’t keep his nerves at bay.
Then there was Marcus. Just the thought of him made Caleb’s heart beat harder, matching the thumping bass of the endless music that played throughout the building. It seemed pointless to allow himself to linger on those feelings, but his body reacted to the memory of the kiss even when he didn’t want it to. He just had to keep telling himself that it had been a one-time event, a temporary lapse in judgment on both their parts, and it would never happen again. There were twenty years of life separating them, at least, and there was no way they would work.
Marcus had made that abundantly clear when he’d unceremoniously left him sitting alone on that couch until Ophelia reappeared to walk him home at the crack of dawn. The only thing she’d said to him was further instructions on how to take the medication she thrust into his hands in a brown paper bag.
Their interactions at the club since had been short and formal, as if nothing had happened between them. Caleb didn’t bring it up at all, not even when they were passing each other in the empty halls or bumping into each other in the bathroom, but the small piece of him that yearned for rebellion made him want to ask him what the hell that was all about. He wanted to grab Marcus and refuse to let go until he got a clear answer.
That idea only ever lasted for a second, until Caleb remembered that he had never had a confrontational moment in his entire life. The yellowish bruises that lingered on his torso were a reminder of that. He chased the idea from his mind and looked toward the bar from his spot near the DJ booth. Ophelia was at the register running a credit card, not staring at him like she wanted to place him directly into a dumpster outside, so that meant she didn’t need anything.
A long black straw appeared from above, hovering in the air with droplets of something carbonated dripping from it. Caleb looked up, seeing Tariq leaning over the railing of the DJ booth with a smile on his face. He motioned for Caleb to come up.
Caleb took another quick scan of the room before dropping his hand from his mouth and nodded at Tariq. He rushed up the stairs, looking behind him to make sure no one was following him, and joined Tariq behind the tall booth.
Tariq handed him a Walkie-Talkie and an earpiece, motioning for him to put it on. Caleb did it, looking down at the receiver to make sure it was on.
“Can you hear me?” Tariq’s voice came through his right ear. Caleb nodded. “Good, this will make it easier to communicate from now on. We usually use these on wild nights, but Marcus thought it would be a good idea to have one assigned to you permanently.”
Caleb hesitated and scanned the room again. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling of dread that Vincent was out there, waiting to drag him back into whatever perverse game he was playing. He looked over to Ophelia again as she jumped from patron to patron, her bored expression pulled tight on her face. This time Marcus was with her, leaning over the bar and appearing to laugh at something. As if he could sense Caleb’s eyes on him, he looked up and their eyes met across the distance. His heart skipped a beat and his stomach fluttered.
Caleb turned away, leaning against the desk and trying to push the intrusive memories out of his mind. It was weird, but just having Marcus in the same room with him sometimes washed that anxiety away—even before he knew he was there.
“Thanks, Tariq.”
Tariq cocked one of his thick, dark eyebrows. “You look a little lost tonight. Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah, just feeling on edge,” Caleb admitted. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black dress pants, nibbling at his lower lip. Andrew had told Caleb that Tariq had worked at the club longer than any of the other staff, so he probably knew the regulars and patrons of the Members Only area better than most.
“You don’t have to worry about that guy coming in for a while, and the boss told him to stay hands off when he is allowed back in or he’s going to get banned for life,” Tariq said. He clicked a few buttons on the keyboard of his laptop and pulled up a spreadsheet as he turned it toward Caleb. “See? He’s got a month-long ban, and the door guy has the picture, just in case.”
Caleb looked at the list, his stomach knotting at the image of Vincent’s driver’s license. Beside the image was a future date and the name “Vincent Bellenger” in bold letters. “What does the bold font mean?” Caleb asked, noticing that some of the names and dates were in regular script. He didn’t see any other names he recognized, but that wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t like he knew the kind of people who were regular clubgoers.
Tariq shrugged. “I dunno, something important to the boss.” He clicked out of the window and back into the program he used to cue the music. “You don’t have to worry, man, we got your back,” Tariq said. He checked his smartwatch and grinned at Caleb. “Look, we got three hours until close and then we get paid. Stick around afterward, yeah? Some of us hang out for a drink and shoot the shit.”
Caleb smiled and shrugged. “Okay, why not.”
“That’s the spirit, buddy.” Tariq pulled his headphones back over his ears and twisted a knob on a board in front of him, causing the overhead lights to strobe with green and white light.
Caleb took that as his cue to head back down. Back on the main floor, he could feel the bass once again bumping in his chest, attacking his senses along with the scents of beer, liquor, and what seemed like a hundred different perfumes mixed with sweat. Even with the ever-lingering paranoia in the back of his head, he had begun to enjoy coming to work. Everything here was vibrant, always moving, and so full of life. No matter how much he dreaded clocking in, he ended most nights smiling, with coworkers wishing him well or making him laugh at some bizarre thing a drunk patron did.
Club Euphoria was the exact opposite of what his life had been.
As he reached Ophelia’s bar, he did one more quick scan of the club. He spotted Andrew across the room at the other bar, a flashlight in hand, crouching down next to a young lady on all fours clearly searching for something she had dropped. That was a surprisingly common task the two of them did: help find rogue contacts, earrings, and cell phones.
Caleb nodded a greeting to Ophelia as she violently shook a tumbler, her cheeks red from exertion. “Nice earpiece,” she said over the music and murmur of the people gathered around the bar. She pointed to the glasses drying behind him. “Martini.”
Caleb blushed, suddenly realizing it was a rather silly accessory, and handed her the martini glass. “Should I take it off? Does it look bad?”
“I guess it’s fine,” she said. She popped the top off the tumbler and strained a thick, dark red liquid into the martini glass. She placed it on a napkin and pushed it toward one of the women at the bar. “Tariq whispering sweet nothings to you over that thing?”
“No, no, nothing like that, I don’t think he—” Caleb started with a nervous laugh.
“Chill, I’m just teasing.” Her voice never sounded like she was teasing. “Plus, it’s Tariq. The man would fuck a donut if it had legs and could smile.”
Caleb snorted as he laughed. That may have been the first time he heard her tell a joke. “I won’t tell him you said that.”
“You should absolutely tell him I said that. If he could contract something I bet his dick would have fallen off twenty years ago,” she said as she popped the caps off of four beer bottles in front of her in rapid succession.
Caleb paused as he tried to make sense of the math in his head. Tariq didn’t look a day over thirty. “Wait, what?”
