Unplanned: Aurum

I know exactly why I’m here.

That’s the difference between me and every other person who walked through that door tonight. They’re here for the music, the drinks, occasional sex. They’re here because it’s Friday and they’re twenty-something and the city is loud and life is short and why not.

I’m here because six weeks ago my sister came to this place. Aurum, specifically. This room, this light, this bass that finds you in the chest before you’ve even opened the door. Ariana came here on a Saturday in October because she liked to dance and she liked the drinks and she was twenty-one and the city was loud and life was short and why not.

She called me at two in the morning. I almost didn’t pick up.

We’re not exactly close, Ariana and I. Half-sisters — same father, different mothers, different enough that growing up we moved in completely separate orbits. We get along well. We just don’t get each other, not entirely.

She’s younger than me by 2 years and she loves exactly this — the noise, the crowds, the going out, the coming home at three in the morning with her heels in her hand and a story she can’t wait to tell. She lights up in rooms like this one. She was made for them, or made herself for them, I was never sure which.

I, on the other hand, have always found pleasure in other things. Quieter things. Boring things, she’d say, and she would mean it affectionately, mostly. Books, documentaries, puzzles and that specific satisfaction when you find solutions to problems.

She didn’t say much. She didn’t have to. I’ve known her voice my whole life and I knew in the first two seconds that something had been broken that I didn’t know how to fix. I drove to the hospital in seventeen minutes which is eight minutes faster than it should have taken and I sat with her until morning and I held her hand and I didn’t cry because one of us needed to not be crying and she was already doing it for both of us.

The case landed on Detective Robert Friedman’s desk. Forty-two, twenty years on the force, good clearance rate. I read his file. I read the case file. I read everything.

Three victims before Ariana. All in their twenties. All last seen at Aurum.

I went to Chief Jones on a Tuesday morning and I told him I wanted the assignment. I didn’t tell him why. He thinks I’m here because I finished top of my class and I’m good at undercover work, which is true, and because I volunteered, which is also true, and because I have bar experience from two years of university shifts, which is true as well.

He doesn’t know about Ariana.

Nobody knows about Ariana.

That’s how I need it to stay.

I’ve been standing outside for thirty seconds longer than I should.

The dress is the problem.

It’s Ariana’s — obviously, because I don’t own anything like it, because I have never in my life looked at something this short and thought yes, that’s for me. We went through her wardrobe together two days ago, both of us, hangers scraping, Ariana pulling things out and holding them up with the critical eye of someone who takes this very seriously.

She didn’t ask why I needed them. She knows I don’t go out, that clubs and bars and amber-lit rooms full of bodies are not my natural habitat, so she was curious, I could see it, but she didn’t push. She just pulled out dress after dress and evaluated each one with more concentration than I give most case files.

We settled on this one. Black. Fitted. Short in a way that made me immediately pull at the hem when I put it on, which made Ariana laugh.

-Stop doing that, she said. You look beautiful.

-I look like I borrowed someone else’s body.

-You borrowed my dress. Your body is fine.

She smoothed the fabric at my shoulders, stepped back, looked at me the way she looks at things she’s decided are good. Then:

-I hope he’s worth it.

I smiled. Didn’t say anything.

Oh, he’ll get what he deserves. That I can guarantee.

I pull at the hem one more time and push open the door.

The bass finds my sternum before I’ve taken two steps inside. The light is amber and low and the room is already full — bodies at the bar, bodies on the floor, bodies in booths half-hidden in shadow — and for a moment I just stand there and let my eyes adjust and do what they trained me to do.

Quadrant by quadrant. Exits. Faces. Who watches whom.

Then I tug the hem down one more time and go to the bar.

The barman sees me coming. He has one of those faces that’s immediately easy — open, dark hair, a smile that arrives without calculation. He looks like someone’s friendly older brother.

— What can I get you?

— Gin and tonic. Light on the gin.

— Long night ahead?

— Something like that.

He makes it with the ease of someone who’s done it ten thousand times and slides it across and I catch the tag on his shirt while he does: “Lucas”

Within ten minutes we’re talking. The natural way that happens when someone has an easy manner and the music is loud enough to make conversation feel private. He’s been here three years. Likes the job. Remembers faces.

Good quality or red flag, I think. Depending.

— I used to do bar work, I say, casual, turning the glass in my hands. Two years during university. Miss it sometimes, honestly.

— Yeah? He leans on the counter, settling in, the way people do when a conversation gets interesting. What kind of place?

— Cocktail bar mostly. Some floor work when they were short staffed.

— Good tips?

— Good enough.

He nods, and then something shifts in his expression — not suspicion, just the particular look of someone connecting two things at once.

— Actually, he says, we have an opening right now. One of the girls left last week, just like that, didn’t even finish her notice. He shakes his head slightly. We’ve been short ever since. You’d have to talk to the boss but —

He straightens suddenly.

— Oh. He says it under his breath, somewhere between amused and bracing himself. Here we go. He’s coming this way.

— Who?

— Matt. The owner. He nods almost imperceptibly toward something behind me. Don’t turn around yet, he’s —

— Lucas.

The voice comes from just behind my left shoulder. Low, unhurried, the particular tone of someone who doesn’t need to raise their voice to be heard.

Lucas snaps to attention in the specific way people do around certain bosses.

— Table seven has been waiting twenty minutes. Go.

— Right, sorry, on it —

And Lucas is gone. Just like that, mid-sentence, reaching for bottles, disappearing toward the far end of the room, and I’m alone at the bar and the voice is still behind me and I turn around.

Matthew Callahan.

He’s already turning away when I reach out and touch his arm.

It’s brief — just enough contact to stop him — but he goes still in the specific way people go still when they’re not used to being touched without permission. Then he turns back toward me and his eyes are —

The file photos were accurate but they missed things.

The hair is dark blonde, ruffled, eyes are hazel — green underneath, gold at the centres — and right now slightly bloodshot, not drunk, just someone who hasn’t been sleeping well or hasn’t been sleeping at all. The jaw is strong enough to be architectural. His mouth is precisely shaped in a way that seems almost unfair given everything else about him. He’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, two buttons open at the collar, like he came out of a meeting and didn’t quite finish putting himself back together on the way here.

He’s looking at me with an expression I can’t immediately read.

Not angry. But close.

The particular look of someone who was in the middle of something important, or at least something he considered important, which in his world is probably the same thing.

I hold his gaze and I’m thinking: “Why aren’t you sleeping, Matthew Callahan?”

— I heard you have an opening. Bar work. I have experience and I’m looking for something.

He looks at me for a moment. Then, without a word, he pulls out the stool across from me and sits down. Settles into it the way he probably settles into everything — like the furniture was expecting him.

— What kind of experience.

Not a question. An instruction to proceed.

I tell him. Two years during university, bar and floor both, good memory for orders, comfortable with crowds, fast when it’s busy. All true. I watch his face while I talk and his face gives me almost nothing.

But his eyes move.

Slowly, while I’m talking, like he’s only half listening to the words and the other half of him is doing something else entirely — taking inventory, top to bottom, the dress, the hem, back up again, unhurried and completely unbothered about the fact that I can see him doing it. I feel every centimeter of it.

I pull the hem down. Just slightly. Instinctive.

He catches that too.

When I finish talking he’s quiet for a moment.

— Does it bother you? That that’s going to happen.

— What is?

— Someone looking at you like this.

And he does it again. Slower this time. More deliberate. His eyes drop — my throat, my shoulders, then a pause, one beat too long at my neckline — and continue down. I feel every second of it like something physical.

I pull the hem down. Instinct. Without thinking.

The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile. But something.

— It’s going to happen a lot in here, he says. No apology. No anything.

I don’t answer immediately.

— This isn’t a library, he says. Flat, factual, no cruelty in it which is almost worse. It’s a club. How you look, how attentive you are —

A pause.

— How memorable you are. That’s what sells. And in here everything sells.

Silence between us.

— Does it bother you? he says again.

— No, I say.

He waits.

I pull the hem down again without thinking and catch myself doing it.

— Well. Maybe a little.

The corner of his mouth moves again. Not quite a smile. Not quite not one either.

— You start tomorrow, he says.

He stands. Walks away.

I watch him go and pull the hem of the dress down one more time and think:

Arrogant.

Completely and insufferably arrogant.

And those eyes.

Why aren’t you sleeping, Matthew Callahan?