Big Easy Bonanza

man?”
    That made her mad. “I’m the one in charge,” she said. “Now let’s get those bottles unloaded.”
    The man got back in his truck and slammed the door. He started the motor. Then he rolled down the window and said, grinding his gears, “If you’re in charge, you’ve got a lot to learn.”
    “Wait,” Monique cried. She hopped up on the running board and got her face up to a level with his. It wasn’t a pretty sight. She ripped the window frame with both hands, not planning to let him get away without her. “We need that stock. You can’t just drive away.”
    “Like hell I can’t,” he said. “Let go of my truck.”
    “Tell me what the problem is. I don’t understand.”
    He stared at her. “You got to know the deal. You can’t run no bar if you don’t know the deal.”
    “Okay, so explain it to me. What’s the deal?”
    The deal turned out to be very elaborate. Darryl paid the full inflated amount of each invoice by check. The liquor company paid a salary to Jimmy, the Champs bartender. Jimmy kicked back the money to Darryl, in cash. Darryl turned over part of the cash to the boss of the liquor company and kept part for himself. The way it worked out, the wholesaler’s costs were covered, the bar got liquor, everybody’s books balanced, and both bosses pocketed a little cash. And the driver usually delivered an extra case not shown on the invoice. And he deducted two bottles for his trouble.
    “And you give me a gift certificate for a fifty-dollar dinner for my mom and papa’s anniversary every year,” he told her.
    Maybe he made that last one up. Monique would never know.
    “Sounds fine to me,” she said and stuck out her hand. The driver smiled and took it. “How about unloading my whiskey?” she asked.
    “Yes, ma’am. What you need extra today? I got Puerto Rican rum or Taaka vodka.”
    She asked Jimmy about the setup later. “Sure, that’s the way it works,” he said. “I thought you knew about it.”
    “I didn’t know all the details,” she told him.
    “And when I cash the check, I take twenty dollars out as a tip.” His expression radiated sincerity.
    “I may let you up it to forty dollars,” she said. “Are there any other deals you want to fill me in on?”
    And so it went with the purveyors of food, napkins, toilet paper, toothpicks, and peppermints. Monique started to master the finer parts of running a business for the enjoyment of the public.
    She took to sleeping in the office, or on the couch in the lounge. Sometimes Jimmy would lock up while she slept, and she would come awake before dawn, the club strangely empty and silent, wondering where she was. Then she would hear the lake sounds normally muffled by the noises of the crowd—the waves lapping at the rocks, the cool wind from the north, the chimes of rigging ringing against the aluminum masts of the sailboats—and she would remember.
    Then she would go downstairs and walk around in the dark and stand on the spot on the floor where Darryl had bled to death. And she would take a tall glass from the wooden rack inside the bar and fill it half full of vodka and the rest of the way full with cranberry and orange juice mixed, and she would sit on one of the stools and smoke cigarettes by herself, waiting for the sun to come up so that she could know where the water ended and the land began.
    She was waiting like that, sitting behind the bar in the dark and staring over the stacked chairs at a blank picture window just starting to shift from ebony to charcoal gray, when she heard a scratching noise from the direction of the front door. At first she thought it might be a rat. There were a few about, a fact she had learned since she had started sleeping over. She had made the help set out extra traps. But it wasn’t a rat, she realized when she heard the front door swing open with a creak and felt a little gust of fresh air pass around the bar. A napkin in the clear plastic box beside her blew onto the floor.
    She concentrated on the space where the front hallway met the barroom. Her eyes were used to the night, and she watched alertly for movement and shadows. In a few seconds she saw the figure of a man framed by the entranceway. He moved silently in her direction, pausing with each step to listen. Monique reached for the gun under the register. She got it in her left hand and transferred it to her right without leaving the stool. The man must have sensed the movement because he