I took another drag on my cigarette and dropped it into my mother's corona bottle. I figured that would be a good way to test how drunk my mother was, see if she would swallow a cigarette butt whole.
My mother's band was up on stage still, my mother and her boyfriend and the rest of her band. It had been a bad set and watching them break down the equipment, I could see that they knew it. It didn't really matter, the sound system was loud and scratchy and everyone had kept drinking and smoking and shouting so I doubt the manager minded. There had even been a little dancing.
The bartender checked me out again and offered me a drink "on the house."
"Water," I smirked, brushing back my straight, dark brown hair and pocketing a couple of matchbooks when her back was turned.
Then my mother was next to me, taking a long swallow of her drink before spitting it all over the counter.
I couldn't help the wicked chuckle that escaped my lips. My mother looked at me in shock.
"Go help load up the truck," My mother said, voice hoarse from singing. She was moving damp hair back from her face. Her hot pink lipstick was rubbed off the inside of her lips but still clung to the edges of her mouth, smudged a little. She looked tired.
I slid off the barstool and leaped up onto the stage in one easy move. My mother's boyfriend glared at me as I started to pick up the stuff randomly, so I stuck to what was my mother's. His eyes were a little red and puffy. "Hey Artemis, do ya got any money on you?"
I shrugged and took out a five-dollar bill. I had more, and he probably knew it—I'd come straight from Joe's Pizza Emporium. Delivering pizza and other pizza-themed foods might pay crap, but it still paid better than being in a band.
He took the money and ambled off to the bar, probably to get some whiskey to go.
I picked up my mother's stuff and started hauling it through the crowd. People didn't even try to get out of my way. The crisp autumn air outside the bar was a welcome relief, even stinking as it was with rust and exhaust fumes and the garbage. The city always smelled like garbage to me.
It only took me a few minutes to get the truck loaded up. I went back inside, intent on getting my mother in the truck before someone stole the equipment. You couldn't leave anything in a car in Freefall. The last time my mother's car had been broken into, they'd done it for a secondhand pair of shoes and a bag of dog treats.
The man checking IDs at the door took a long look at me this time but didn't say anything. It was late anyway, almost last call. My mother was still at the bar, smoking a cigarette and drinking something stronger than beer. Her boyfriend was talking to a woman with long, white hair. The woman looked out of place in the bar, too well dressed or something, but my mother's boyfriend had an arm slung over the woman's shoulder. I caught a flash of the woman's eyes. Light purple, reflecting in the dark bar. I was surprised.
But then again, I saw strange things sometimes. I'd learned to get used to them.
"Truck's loaded," I told my mother.
She nodded, barely listening. "Can I have a cigarette, Artie?"
I looked for a pack in my satchel and not finding one then fished around in my backpack and found it there and took out two, handing one to my mother and lighting the other.
My mother bent close, the smell of vodka and beer and sweat as familiar as any perfume to me. "Cigarette kiss," my mother said in that sweet way that was embarrassing and touching at the same time, touching the tip of her cigarette to the red tip of mine and breathing in deeply. A couple sucks and it flared to life.
"Ready?" My mother's boyfriend asked, and I almost jumped. It wasn't that I hadn't known he was there; it was the tone of his voice. It sounded more sleazy than his usual stoner tone. And definitely not his normal jackhole voice. Not at all.
My mother didn't seem to notice anything. She swallowed what was left of her drink. "Yeah."
A quick second later, my mother's boyfriend lifted his arm as though he were going to slap my mother in the back of her head. I reacted without thinking, punching him. It was only his drunkenness that made my punch enough to knock him off balance. Then I saw the knife as it fell to the floor.
My mother's boyfriend's face was completely empty of all emotion. His eyes were wide and his pupils dilated.
Yank, the band's keyboard player, grabbed my mother's boyfriend's arm. He had just enough time to backhand Yank in the face before other patrons tackled him and somebody called the cops.
By the time the police got there, my mother's boyfriend couldn't remember anything. He was mad as a hornet, though, cursing at my mother at the top of his lungs. The police drove me and my mother to my mother's boyfriends apartment and waited while I packed our clothes and stuff into plastic garbage bags. My mother was on the phone, trying to find a place for us to crash.
"Artie," My mother said finally, "we're going to have to go to Grandma's."
"Did you call her?" I asked, stacking my Beatles vinyl albums into an empty crate. We hadn't so much as visited once in the four years that we had been gone from Rustic. My mother rarely even spoke to her mother on the holidays before giving the phone to me.
"Yup. Just woke her up." I couldn't remember the last time my mother had sounded quite so upset. "It'll be a while. You can visit that friend of yours."
"Selinda," I said. I hoped that was who my mother meant. I hoped my mother wasn't teasing me about that imaginary friend BS again. If I had to hear another story about me and my cute imaginary friends...
"The one you call from the payphone by the library. Get me another cigarette, okay, Artie?" My mother tossed a bunch of CDs into the crate.
I picked up a pleather jacket of my mother's boyfriends I'd always wanted and lit a cigarette for my mother off the stove burner. No sense in wasting matches.
