Cold
Bella-Donna always looked best before opening.
The dark red and black velvet on the walls, the VIP booths with gold feathers inside the vases and the warm, amber lights. The old microphone stood beneath the curtains, polished and waiting. In another hour, the stage would be lit and the club packed. By ten, there would be barely enough room between Bella-Donna’s tables to carry two drinks without apologizing to somebody.
I had known the place for over two years by then. My mother had brought me here first, accompanying Cynthia to her job interview. My mother had never performed here herself, although that had less to do with modesty than with the unfortunate fact that she couldn’t sing. Dancing had never been the problem.
Cynthia always opened up the night show. That evening, she was wearing the red set I had picked for her backstage, after she spent ten minutes insisting the black one made her legs look better. It didn’t.
The red suited her copper curls and warm skin far better, especially beneath the amber stage lights. Tiny crystals followed the cups of her corset and scattered down toward the fringe at her hips, catching whenever she moved. She had already put on her lipstick.
“Turn around,” I told her.
Cynthia obeyed with a sigh, lifting her curls away from her back while I fixed her straps quickly, ready to go back to serving the first customers.
I had watched every number enough times to know them by heart. On slow nights, that left me with very little to do besides bother the girls backstage and find ways to entertain myself between orders. The customers were usually more entertaining. A good smile and a light touch on the arm after somebody made a stupid joke about my pheromones earned me sixty dollars on average. If I gave them a twirl, I could push it closer to a hundred.
By the second number, I had stopped finding the customers entertaining. At first, I blamed the heat. Bella-Donna always grew warmer once the tables filled, especially beneath the stage lights, but that night my collar had started sticking to the back of my neck before we were even busy. I pulled it away from my skin and continued collecting glasses.
Then the smells started bothering me. Usually, I could separate them. Perfume. Liquor. Somebody’s cigarette smoke. The occasional Alpha whose blockers were beginning to wear thin. That night, everything seemed to sit on top of everything else until breathing through my nose became unpleasant.
I checked the date on my phone between orders. Too early for my heat. But my nape burned and stung as if someone were pressing needles beneath the skin. It hadn’t bothered me this badly since November.
I put my phone away and picked up another empty glass. By the time I reached the end of the table, somebody behind me had released enough pheromones to make me dizzy. I took the long way around him, dropped the glasses at the bar and rubbed the back of my neck with two fingers.
I needed five minutes. The next number had already started, which gave me enough time to disappear backstage before anyone needed another round. I grabbed my cigarettes from beneath the counter and pushed through the curtain.
Leyla came rushing past me halfway out of her stage costume, one heel already in her hand.
“Cynthia, do you have $50 to give me? I need to pay the stage fee!” She shouted as she threw the heels in the middle of the room, already grabbing her purse.
“I thought you were leaving at 1 today?! What’s going on?” Cynthia looked at her with a worried look while fanning herself, holding up her curls.
“I have to pick up my son. My nanny says he has food poisoning…” Leyla explained quickly, grabbing her coat. “Come on girl! Throw me $50!”
Cynthia stood up from the vanity immediately and searched inside her purse, almost dropping all her stuff from inside the bag, rummaging inside. She pulled out numerous bills and managed to find the $50. “Take’em and leave right now!”
“Love you! See y’all on Thursday!” Leyla screamed as she ran out, her coat half open.
Maybe coming back here was also a mistake. The girls were hectic, putting on a second layer of make-up for the next number, changing shoes, throwing around wigs and corsets and spraying perfume. I should have gotten iced water to cool down; however, I did not want to turn back and walk past the bar. I took my cigarette pack and walked towards the back exit.
“Kento, wait! Take my coat honey!” Cynthia called out, placing her stuff back into her bag. “It’s too damn cold outside. Looking at your legs makes me freeze!”
I was going to take my own jacket, but Cynthia already threw hers at me as she finished speaking. Not thinking much of what I was holding, I went outside.
The cold hit my face the moment I pushed through the back door. For the first few seconds I welcomed the December air that cooled the sweat along my nape. Whatever had been sitting heavily in my chest inside seemed to loosen.
The door clicked shut behind me. It was technically an emergency exit, although nobody had treated it like one since the alarm broke the year before. Management had promised to fix it. They hadn’t. By then, it was simply the smoking door.
I stepped farther into the shared backyard and reached for my cigarettes. There wasn’t much to look at. Bella-Donna shared the space with the Italian restaurant next door, which meant several garbage bins, dirty snow pushed against the walls and whatever crates their kitchen hadn’t bothered bringing inside. On busier evenings, they kept their side door open and I could hear the kitchen staff answering somebody I never managed to hear. “Yes, Chef. Sorry, Chef. No, Chef.” were the responses I could hear. Always loud enough to reach our side of the yard. It made me laugh every time.
Tonight, their door was closed. They had probably finished hours ago.
“Fuck,” I muttered as my lighter sparked and immediately died.
I cupped both hands around it and tried again. By then, the relief of being outside had begun losing its charm. My fingers were trembling badly enough that the flame kept slipping away from the end of my cigarette.
Cynthia had some nerve telling me I would freeze before throwing this at me. I pulled her denim jacket tighter around myself. It barely reached my stomach. Denim. In December. Apparently the woman who complained about looking at my bare legs had decided this constituted winter protection.
My outfit wasn’t helping. Thin velvet and lace covered most of my legs in theory, while the loose white shirt did fuck-all against the wind. I had more material hanging around my neck in accessories than I did keeping the rest of me warm.
My teeth knocked together. At this rate, my snake bite was going to lose the fight. I sparked the lighter again, when I heard a crunch in the snow for afar. My thumb stopped on the wheel. Somebody was walking through the snow.
As I looked up, I couldn’t tell whether he belonged to the restaurant or had wandered around from the front of the club. I had seen most of the neighboring staff at least once, but I didn’t recognize him.
He was difficult to miss, though. A scarf wrapped twice around his neck and covered almost everything below his nose. His beanie had pushed dark hair down over his eyebrows, leaving the streetlight behind him to only cast shadows where I should have been able to see the rest of his face.
Something red hung over one shoulder, reaching almost to his hip. He noticed me looking, then one gloved hand lifted in a small wave.
“Hey,” a deep voice carried across the yard. “Are you not cold out here?”
I looked down at myself. Cynthia’s jacket had fallen open again. There were easier ways to start a conversation, although I had heard considerably worse ones inside. I took another useless strike at the lighter and looked back at him. I chuckled, still shaking from the cold, my shoulders moving up and down.
“A bit,” I responded. “I wanted to smoke one quick, but my lighter is being difficult.”
“Oh, you have a metal rotator one? I hate those.” He nodded, as if approving my complaint. “May I come closer to you?”
My fingers gripped the lighter tighter as he finished asking. That was a new one. What an interesting guy. Usually, a man who caught me alone in one of my work outfits had already decided I wanted his attention before I had the chance to disagree. And, looking down at the lace disappearing beneath Cynthia’s tiny denim jacket, I could already imagine where this one’s thoughts might have wandered.
A small rush of adrenaline climbed into my chest. There was nobody else in the yard, and whatever his winter coat concealed, it certainly wasn’t a small man. The restaurant door remained shut behind him. Bella-Donna’s was several steps behind me.
But he hadn’t taken another step. My grip on the lighter loosened. Maybe I wanted to see what he wanted.
“Yes, you may,” I managed to move my lips, my voice quiet.
I watched him close the distance, half expecting the usual change once he got near enough to get a proper look at what I was wearing. But the closer he got, his eyes moved over me briefly, stopping on my face.
Up close, the winter jacket hadn’t exaggerated his size much. He really was that big.
He stopped with enough space still left between us that I didn’t have to tilt my head too far to look at him. I straightened slightly, looking at him, trying to see his face. But the strands of hair protruding from underneath his beanie dropped over his eyes, and the light was not bright enough.
That was when I noticed the red thing hanging over his shoulder properly. I had assumed it was part of his clothes from across the yard. It wasn’t.
“I’m not going to bother you long,” he said. “I just saw you while locking up the place out here, and I knew you must be cold. Here.”
He took the red object hanging around his shoulder and put his arm out towards me. It was a blanket. As his hand got closer, the smell of garlic and butter appeared and disappeared depending on how strong the wind was. The blanket smelled like detergent, so it must have been his hands that smelled of garlic.
“Thank you,” I said, pulling the blanket tighter around my shoulders.
That seemed to be it. I waited for whatever usually came next. A compliment. A question about the club. My name, maybe. Instead, he stood there with his hands tucked back into his jacket.
I looked at him again. There still wasn’t enough light to make much of his face. His scarf hid the lower half, while the hair escaping from beneath his beanie cast the rest in uneven shadows. Only his eyes caught anything from the weak light reflecting from the now, dark and glossy whenever he moved his head.
So I looked there. He held my gaze for a moment before blinking hard. His eyes dropped somewhere beside my shoulder, and he adjusted the scarf higher over his face. He took a step back and looked away.
“Oh, and here…” He said suddenly, rummaging inside his jacket. “Take this. Have a good one!”
He gave me an electronic lighter, then turned around and walked away. The garlic and butter smell dissipated, before he got too far away, I got a pleasant whiff of eucalyptus and oregano. I watched the space between the buildings for another few seconds after he disappeared.
The cigarette was still hanging unlit between my fingers. I looked down at the lighter he had left in my hand. Plain, electronic, and considerably easier to use than mine. The blanket had begun slipping from one shoulder, so I caught it with my elbow and pressed the button.
The cigarette lit on the first try.
“Of course,” I muttered as I took the first drag.
For someone who had apparently only wanted to keep me from freezing, he had left me holding an awful lot of his things.
I took another drag. The cigarette tasted worse than I had expected after wanting one so badly. I barely got halfway through it. Somewhere during the strange little exchange and the cold air, the burning at my nape had dulled enough that I could ignore it again. I touched the spot with two fingers.
I looked down at the red blanket wrapped around me. The irony made me snort. I finished what little I wanted of the cigarette and went back inside.
Backstage was empty when I returned, with only the muffled music slipping through the door. I left Cynthia’s blanket over the back of a chair and stepped onto the floor.
The peacock number had already started.
Five of them moved beneath the amber lights in black striped stockings and deep-blue ruffled skirts, enormous peacock feathers sweeping behind them whenever they turned. Their voices carried easily over the tables as they shifted formation, smiling at one another before directing the same smiles toward the audience.
A lace glove sailed over my head. I didn’t have to look toward the stage to know who had thrown it.
“Of course,” I muttered.
The woman at table six caught it before her husband could. She waved it triumphantly above her head while he laughed and reached into his wallet. Cynthia blew her a kiss from the stage.
The management may have neglected the emergency exit door, but when it came to clients touching or harassing the staff, they were very hands-on. Near the stage, one of the security guys caught a wandering hand before Min had to. The patron received one warning and immediately remembered how chairs worked. I kept walking and returned to the table I had abandoned earlier.
“There you are,” one of our regulars leaned in, talking over the music into my ear. “I thought you abandoned me.”
“And miss you?” I smiled, collecting his empty glass. “Never.”
He smiled like always, pulled out his wallet and tucked a folded bill beneath one of the glasses on my tray. I wiped a ring of condensation from an empty table before setting down the next drinks. Somebody had dropped a feather beneath the neighboring booth, but otherwise the floor had survived the first half of the night remarkably well.
By quarter to two, the last number was over and the music had been turned low enough that we no longer had to shout over it. The remaining patrons took the hint as glasses disappeared from their tables one by one.
Once the front door was locked, Bella-Donna lost most of its glamour quickly.
Someone started sweeping beneath the tables while the rest of us carried glasses back to the bar. By the time I finished wiping down my section, half the girls had already disappeared backstage. I followed them once there was nothing left for me to do.
The dressing room looked considerably less impressive after two in the morning. Wigs sat crooked on their stands. Makeup wipes and cotton pads crowded the vanities. Min was fighting her way out of a stocking while Mary counted her tips in her underwear, and Cynthia had already traded the red set for her velvet jumper.
I changed beside them, peeling the velvet and lace from my legs before pulling on something that actually belonged in December.
“What is this doing on my chair?” Cynthia stood beside it with the red blanket pinched between two fingers. “Should I put it somewhere else?”
“Oh, that’s mine… Well technically it’s not mine,” I corrected myself. “I received it from one of the chefs over at Toscana. I was cold and the guy closing gave it to me.”
“Who?” Min asked.
“I don’t know. He was rather big...”
“Kento…” Min’s head tilted, a smile already pulling at her mouth
“What?” I chuckled. “No, I mean— He was closing up. I was freezing, he had a blanket.”
Mary looked up from counting her tips. “So, which one? There are like three of them from what I remember.”
“No idea,” I shrugged. “Big guy. Dark hair, I think. I could barely see his face…”
“Just be careful,” Cynthia’s smile faded. “The back camera doesn’t reach all the way to Toscana’s door. Do you want this laying here?”
“Leave it there. I have to give it back next time I’m in or I’ll forget. Bye everyone! Get home safe and text the group chat! I’m talking to you Min.”
Min rolled her eyes at me. “Ugh, it was only one time,” she whined. “Could you let it go?”
“Hahaha! Bye! Good night!”
I regretted leaving the blanket behind before I reached the subway.
My winter jacket was considerably more useful than Cynthia’s denim one, but the wind kept finding its way through the neckline anyway. I tucked my chin lower and shoved both hands into my pockets. My fingers knocked against something hard.
I pulled out the electronic lighter. I had forgotten to leave that with the blanket. I turned it over once in my palm before putting it back into my pocket. Apparently, I owed the guy two things now.
By the time I came up from the subway again, I couldn’t feel the tips of my ears. The last walk home did nothing to improve the situation.
Before I could unlock the door myself, the door swung open.
“My baby! I made you soup. Come, come inside!” My lovely mother was still awake, barefoot on the other side, already reaching for my bag.
“Mom, please stop waiting for me,” I sighed as I entered. “You should have already been sleeping.”
“Don’t start again. Come, eat. You need to wake up in a couple of hours. Go to bed immediately!”
She always waited up when I worked late. She pretended otherwise sometimes, but the speed with which the door opened had betrayed her years ago. Tonight, I hadn’t even gotten my key into the lock. Ten minutes later, I sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of soup warming both hands.
“How was work?” she asked while painting her nails the same color Cynthia had been painting hers for the past ten years.
“Fine. Not dead, not packed,” I answered.
“Your nape?”
My spoon slowed as I tried to take another sip of soup. “Fine…” I whispered as I glanced at her. She looked at me biting the insides of her mouth. “Better,” I corrected, waiting for her face to relax.
That satisfied her enough to let me eat. I reached into my jacket for my phone and pulled out the electronic lighter with it. It landed beside my bowl. Mom’s eyes dropped to it.
“That’s not yours,” she reached for the electric arc lighter.
“No,” I took another spoonful.
“Then, whose is it?”
“I don’t know. Some guy,” I continued eating my soup.
I stirred the spoon through the broth, watching a piece of carrot disappear beneath it. Some guy made the whole thing sound stranger than it had felt.
He had seen me freezing, asked before coming anywhere near me, handed over his own blanket and then left before I could even properly thank him. The blanket had been nice. Ridiculously nice, actually, considering he didn’t know me.
“He works next door, I think,” I added.
Mom looked up.
“At Toscana. I went outside for a cigarette and he was locking up,” I nodded toward the lighter in her hand. “He saw I was cold and gave me that. And a blanket.”
“A blanket?” Her voice carried incredulity.
I smiled into my soup. “Yeah. Just took it off his shoulder and handed it to me. It was nice of him.”
“Yeah. Remember to give it back.” She pointed one freshly painted nail at me.
“Obviously,” I mouthed at her.
“Obviously?” Mom repeated. “I lent you my green top once. Where is it?”
“In the closet of the person who looks better in it,” I whispered, already regretting the comeback.
Her mouth dropped open. I laughed before she could start and ducked over my soup when her hand came toward the back of my head.
I hadn’t forgotten to return the top. I liked it very much and had simply decided that persistent ignorance would eventually transfer ownership. Mom finished her nails, still muttering something about raising criminals, while I finished what remained in the bowl.
“What time do you have to get up?”
I glanced at the microwave clock and immediately regretted it. “Don’t ask,” I shook my head. She looked so annoyed on my behalf, I had to rescue my coworker before she let loose of her tongue. “Jay had an emergency,” I added. “I managed to move things around. It’s just one bad night.”
“Mhm.”
I knew that mhm. It meant she had several opinions and was deciding which one would annoy me most.
At seven sharp, I clocked in with four hours of sleep.
I made it all the way to my desk, answered the emails waiting for me and opened yesterday’s analysis without a single person asking why something wasn’t finished yet. After Bella-Donna, the quiet of the Health Centre always felt slightly luxurious. Here, nobody shouted across the room. Nobody needed three drinks at once. Most deadlines were measured in days rather than minutes.
I put my headphones on and disappeared into my work. By the time I finished the first analysis, staying awake had become a more complicated task. Coffee. I saved everything twice and headed toward the cafeteria.
“Kento!”
I knew the voice before I turned around. Alex caught up with me near the elevators, already smiling far too brightly for someone who knew exactly how little I had slept.
“You do look tired. Denise wasn’t exaggerating,” he said as he pressed the elevator button.
“You and mom need to find another foundation for your relationship,” I scolded him.
“She kept me on the phone until you got home,” he bit back a smile as a little color appeared above his collar. “What?” He asked as he saw me stare at him.
“Nothing,” I shrugged. “You guys are just so adorable…”
“Get in the elevator,” he laughed as he pushed me inside by the shoulder. It had been two years and I could still make him blush over my mother.
Considering how they had met, I supposed I deserved some credit. Alex had coordinated my laboratory praxis during my first years at university. On my final day, mom and Cynthia had come to pick me up while I was still discussing my research with him.
Then Alex saw mom. The conversation became considerably less about my research after that. He had given her his card before we left. I had never expected the man supervising my laboratory work to eventually become the person mom called when she was worried about me at two in the morning.
“Coffee?” He asked.
“That is the only reason I’m still speaking to you.”
Romina appeared behind us before we reached the cafeteria, her badge swinging from one hand.
“Coffee again, Kento?” Apparently, my text hadn’t sufficiently warned her what meeting us at the cafeteria involved.
“I would not have to drink more if they made them the way I like it,” I defended myself.
“Mind if I join?” She glanced at the muffins inside the display case from afar.
“Of course,” I said. “Alex is paying.”
“I never said—”
“I think I heard him too,” Romina interrupted him, waving her hand in his face to silence his protests. “Just now, telepathically, he said to me’Yes, Romina. Buy two chocolate muffins if you want’.”
Alex looked between us. “This is why I avoid both of you.”
Romina fell into step beside me as we entered first. I had met her during university lab work too, although unlike Alex, she had remained exactly where she belonged in my life instead of dating my mother.
Even though I sounded pretentious, they both knew the cafeteria coffee never satisfied me. I loved to try different textures and tastes, like mixing orange peels and cardamom into the coffee before pressing the espresso and adding a drop of salt.
We ordered our coffee and took Alex’s usual table beside the window. It wasn’t actually reserved, but nobody had told the rest of the Health Centre that. Romina and I benefited from his reputation shamelessly.
We ordered our coffee and took Alex’s usual table beside the window. It wasn’t actually reserved, but nobody had told the rest of the Health Centre that. Romina and I benefited from his reputation shamelessly.
Alex’s phone buzzed before he finished his coffee. He glanced at the screen and sighed.
“Lab nine.”
“What did they break?” I asked.
“Apparently, I’m about to find out.” He stood, squeezed my shoulder on his way past and disappeared toward the elevators.
I watched him go for a moment.
Alex had a son once. He had died in a car accident years before I met him, while his wife had been driving. Their marriage hadn’t survived what came afterward.
He didn’t speak about it often, and I had learned not to mistake that for forgetting.
I used to wonder whether that loss had anything to do with the way he cared for me. Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to separate the reasons. Whatever had brought us there, he had never made me feel like somebody else’s absence.
“Are you working tomorrow?” Romina asked. She had spent the last few minutes furiously typing into her phone.
“Yeah. I should be done before midnight. Why?”
“Come to a birthday party with me,” she said without looking up from her phone.
“Sure.”
Romina looked up from her phone and shot me a knowing look. She shook her head and finished texting.
“What?” I chuckled, grabbing her spoon from the saucer and tapping it against the porcelain to get her attention.
“Nothing,” she smiled. “I thought you’d at least ask whose.”
“Oh,” I lifted my coffee. “Whose birthday party am I apparently attending?”
“A friend of mine. She doesn’t have many people coming.” She bit into her second chocolate muffin. “I asked what she wanted, and apparently she wants to meet my best friend,” she mumbled as she chewed.
I looked around the cafeteria as a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. I almost laughed before I could speak up. “Is he coming later or what?”
“Fuck off!” She threw her muffin wrapper at me.
I laughed as my phone vibrated with the address. “I’m not showing up empty-handed. What does she like?”
“Chocolate.” She pointed at her dessert.
“Everyone likes chocolate,” I groaned. “Be useful.”
“Buy her the ones with almonds inside,” Romina instructed.
“There we go.”
After some more banter, we had to go back to work. As much as Romina loved doing working time fraud, the analysis couldn’t do itself. The rest of the day was spent in front of the computer. A few terminals open, maybe some graphs on another monitor, and a spreadsheet or two that I was pretending to organize properly.
Nobody was running through the halls with emergencies. As usual, it was me, my headphones, a lot of biological data, and the occasional frustration of realizing a script had stopped working because I’d missed a comma somewhere three hours ago.
