Snippet #2776891

Izzie snorted. “Of course,” she answered in Spanish as she raised a hand to flag down a waiter for her check. “How could I forget the time-honored tradition of bassist-talk? Well, just let me know when you’re done. I’ll be outside.” She paid off her tab and headed for the door. She caught a glimpse of Ted in the crowd as folks began to get up and mill around—it wasn’t hard to notice a white guy decked out in business casual on a Baltimore evening—and they made eye contact for just a second.

She raised an eyebrow, as if to say, the coincidences truly never cease, do they? Otherwise, though, she offered only a raised hand in greeting before she turned away and continued for the door, phone in hand.

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Just like that, Valentina’s moment of potential heroism came and went—or rather, it was snatched up from right under her nose. She heard the man’s voice—“Hey, let her go!”—but she pointedly refused to look up and identify Ada’s savior. She forced herself to tune out their voices, too, as she stared into the bottle in her hands, peering down the neck at its contents. This stuff was supposed to make you feel better, wasn’t it? Hell, she couldn’t think of any other reason to drink it—least of all the taste.

Like medicine, she supposed. It wasn’t supposed to taste good, but if you stomached enough of it, it wouldn’t matter.

So she drank it like medicine. She closed her eyes, tipped her head back, and drank, and drank, and drank, until the flow of liquid down her throat had subsided and left behind only a dull, rank aftertaste. She set the empty bottle down beside the first, and pressed her hands against the surface of the bar, staring down at the lacquered wood between them. How long did it take for this stuff to work? For that matter, how many would she need to drink before it started to work? Was it already working, or was she just imagining the fuzzy feeling at the edges of her perception?

She wiped the back of her hand across her lips, and glanced up at the bartender. She caught his eye as he turned away from another patron, and wordlessly lifted one of the empty bottles in one hand. With the other, she raised a single finger. He gave her an odd look, but a moment later, a third bottle was sitting uncapped in front of her. She appraised it silently, and then knocked it back as well.

By then, Ada had wandered off—Valentina finally consented to look up from the bar, saw her chatting away with that guy from the band they were splitting the studio with. She felt something churn in her stomach, though she wasn’t sure if it was irritation at being dragged out to a bar only to be left alone, or the consequences of downing three beers in about as many minutes, and directed her gaze squarely back to the bar. When she looked back up, the bartender was standing in front of her, something like concern on his face.

“Everything okay?”

“Oh, I’m super,” she shot back in a monotone. He raised an eyebrow, as if she had imparted some unspoken information through her answer.

“You might want to slow down,” he cautioned, with the tone of somebody who was used to having his advice ignored. “Three beers is a lot for a first-time drinker.”

“Ha,” Valentina droned. “I’m afraid you’ve—misapprehended me, pal. Three beers is my pre-bar routine. That’s my warmup. You’re talking to a pro here.” She pretended not to notice the mingled skepticism and exasperation in his eyes as he shrugged and turned away, leaving her with an odd feeling of something like victory. She grinned, baring teeth at his retreating back, as if she were a predator taunting a defeated challenger.

Without thinking, she glanced back over at Ada, still shooting the breeze with that… one guy. Her smile vanished, but the inexplicable feeling of triumph didn’t. She could salvage things. She was still in the lead. In the lead of… something. That part didn’t matter very much. She turned back to the bar and snapped her fingers at the bartender repeatedly. The sound was drowned out completely by the hubbub of the bar, but he eventually turned of his own accord and saw her trying to catch his attention. Looking rather wary, he approached.

“Get me a glass of your finest alcohol,” she demanded.

“… our finest alcohol,” he repeated, with something between amusement and bemusement.

“Yeah. Like, the Maserati of booze.” She paused, trying to remember just how much money she had in her bank account, and added, “On second thought, make that the BMW of booze. Just get me something that’ll impress without putting me in debt, okay?” She waved him off, drumming her fingertips against the surface of the bar, searing with a nervous, exultant energy.

He returned with a shapely little glass of what looked like exactly one sip’s worth of bronze-colored liquid. She frowned as he set it down in front of her. “One Balvenie Doublewood,” he said, looking like he still couldn’t quite tell if he ought to be entertained or concerned. “The, ah, BMW of booze.”

She lowered her face until it was level with the bar, peering dubiously at the glass and its modest contents. “Is… there supposed to be more?” she ventured from that vantage point. She concluded from his expression there was not. She straightened up and glanced back over at Ada’s little corner of the bar, waiting for the ideal opportunity—waiting for a break in her conversation with that… one guy.

The moment she saw it, she seized it. She cruised straight for the drummer, tapped her on the shoulder, and held up the glass, her other hand at her side mussing about with the fabric of her skirt. “Hi,” she said, feeling strangely light on her feet. “Buy you a drink? I mean, I already did. If you don’t want it, I can find somebody else to give it to.” There was a bizarre note of pugnacity to her usual monotone, as if the words were a dare—maybe to Ada, maybe to herself.