Pacifier

🥀Camille🌼

The Amber Lounge was so called because the stained glass cieling was shades of golden, marmalade, all sunset hues.
In the evening the glass caught the candlelight and the whole room took on a superluminary honey glow.

It harboured a slow, sticky kind of allure, a maze of spiraling staircases and shadowy corners, girls who drifted like elusive daydreams. Twinkling vixens the temptations who lured in the lonely travellers, the suits up from London who favoured the finery of the Amber Lounge over the sleezy, red lit windows of the Seven Sirens with its sweat on the walls, women who cast snakepit shadows on the walls.

I didnt venture to this side of town all that often anymore, my fascination with the women who worked for my mother had faded at early age and growing up in the bar downstairs with feathers around my neck, having the pants bored off me by faded grey suits who worked in the City, watching my mother teach her girls all the charms and tricks of the traid had left me glancing over my shoulder at my brother, his friends and their guns. The scars they came home with. I'd known I wouldn't grow to fill my mothers shoes and yet somehow, here I was, leaning up against the bar in the Amber Lounge, checking up on all the girls who'd followed Megan and Ben out of the Seven Sirens the night before.

Here I was rubbing shoulders with Meghan, here to talk business, to give her instructions.

"What happened?" I asked quietly, stirring my little finger around my glass though there was nothing to mix, just whiskey and ice. Smokey and sharp. Megs bit back a small smile, almost lit up on my question, almost gleeful I'd had to ask.

"You mean he didn't tell you?"

"I was busy," i said, glancing over at the girl behind the bar, she was one of ours, someone I could trust for now.
It was getting hard to know exactly who I could trust these days, even on my own ground.

"Oh," somehow her smile split a

"They're all going to work for us?" i raised my brow at Megs in disbelief, watched her smile around the rim of her whiskey, girlish and twirling her hair around her little finger.

"Great isn't it," her smile gleamed, she was gleaming, proud of herself, maybe relieved to have done well. Probably making the mistake of thinking this would buy back Vans trust.

"Yeah," i said expression blank, all water off a ducks back, "Its not important, but you know me..."

"You and your morbid curiosity," she licked her lips, watched me watching the girls, the sordid display on offer that evening.

The lights were down low, the little darlings all dancing, slow and seductive.

"It was classic Van Mccann, the theatrics were spectacular, the violence was oh," she held her hand to her forhead as if to swoon, her sarcasm dripping, "unbelievable," i smirked, "and the killing, just sublime darling just sublime..."

"Who did he kill?"

"Freddie Lewis, coupla bigshot north london types, one slimey..."

"Theyre all slimey bastards Megs..." i said dryly, as I scanned the room and watched these new girls faux fawning over men twice their age and a couple of luckier lads who looked too young to be in an establishment such as this.
"Are they clean?"

"I wouldn't let them work if they weren't..." she held her chin high, sort of snooty, sort of offended I'd even ask. I licked my lips, shook my head ever so slightly.

"I know," i shrugged, "Teach them to act though Megs," I said watching one girl in particular, a girl I'd known quite well once upon a time.

When we'd both been at the same school and we'd both mixed in the same sort of circles, skiving and smoking behind the bikesheds, making lewd exchanges with the lads in the older years.