All the Right Moves(3)
Cassie sighed. “No, but I wouldn’t mind you turning down the volume,” she said, glancing up at the speaker hanging from the wall between the Grateful Dead and Sugarland Express posters.
Good thing she didn’t have a gun hidden under the bar or she’d be tempted to shoot the damn jukebox. She didn’t exactly hate country music, and she didn’t even mind when the tunes got loud. But it was hell trying to study with all that racket.
“Your brother needs to hire another person for times like this.” Lisa eyed the psychology textbook as she dragged a chair under the speaker, then climbed up on it. “You should find someone willing to work odd shifts. He doesn’t know what’s going on around here half the time anyway.”
It wasn’t so much Lisa’s snippy tone but how she’d referred to Tom that tipped off Cassie that the lovebirds had had another fight. There was no doubt it was Tommy’s fault. She loved her brother. She did. But ever since he’d come back from Iraq he’d been tough to deal with, and unfortunately, Lisa suffered the brunt of his slippery moods. Cassie understood his bitterness, everyone did. But Lisa had stuck by him through months of rehab, filling in when Cassie couldn’t. Lisa loved Tommy, but the big dope was so caught up in his past he couldn’t see what was staring him in the face now.
Cassie was going to have a long-overdue talk with him. But first she had to seriously crack the books and take her three final exams. Not just take them, ace the suckers. The job market was too tight for an average grad student to expect to land anything decent. And dear God, she didn’t want to be a bartender her whole life. Or even by the time she hit thirty in two very short years.
In a week exams would be over and she would be able to breathe again.
At least until her final two classes started in September. Once she finished, then just maybe she’d find a real job before she was eligible to collect social security.
“Is that good?” Lisa asked, one hand hovering near the speaker’s volume control, the other flattened to the wall to steady the wobbly chair.
“Perfect.” Cassie wiped her hands on the towel hanging over her shoulder and held the chair until Lisa climbed down. “Thank you. Here’s your pitcher and fresh mugs.” She pushed the tray toward Lisa, blew at the annoying loose curl that had escaped her ponytail and leaned over the bar so she could be heard in the back. “Everyone hang on to your mugs. The dishwasher is broken.”
“I’ll come wash your glasses, you sweet thing.” It was Spider. “Wouldn’t want your pretty little hands to get shriveled up.”
Cassie and Lisa both shook their heads at the raucous laughter coming from his fellow pool players, most of them veteran bikers like Spider. She let him get away with more than most because he was old enough to be her father. In fact he’d ridden with her parents and the Diablo Outlaws for a few years when she was a toddler.
“I imagine you have your own shrinkage to worry about,” she shot back, exchanging grins with Lisa, who picked up her tray and headed for the back.
A chorus of “whoas” couldn’t drown out Spider’s laugh. He was a scary-looking dude with a long shaggy beard and a dozen fading tats trailing up his beefy arms and the side of his neck. But inside he was a teddy bear. She’d heard he hadn’t always been like that. He’d mellowed with age and a short prison sentence, and she was just fine with not knowing the details.
She looked around the room, recognizing every customer but one. That was how it usually worked at the Gold Strike, ever since Tommy bought the place and she’d started bartending here two years ago. A few unfamiliar strays came in throughout the week, some stayed and became regulars, the rest she never saw again.
What she liked best was the diverse mix of military vets, aging bikers, university students and staff from the nearby hospital who frequented the bar. They were a friendly lot, though they didn’t all know each other by name. Occasionally a few airmen from Nellis stopped in, and if it happened that college women were hanging around that day, she was likely to see the same guys again.
But the Gold Strike wasn’t close enough to the base to attract many active servicemen. At one time the place had been a hard-core biker bar on the outskirts of Las Vegas. When the growing popularity of the city meant residential and business areas kept spreading farther and farther out, the bikers finally said adios. Turned out to be a good deal for Tommy.
“Hey, Cassie.” Pete came from the back and slid onto a stool, leaned forward, swept back a stubborn lock of brown hair and stared at her with serious dark eyes. She knew he was twenty-one but he seemed so young she wanted to card him every time he walked in. “Help me out with something,” he said in a low, nervous voice while casting a cautious look toward the pool tables.