She dexterously snapped open a lighter and ignited his cigarette before disappearing into the crowd.
He was too dumbstruck to say thank you. He reached for another sip of his beer, trying to follow the woman through the crowd with his gaze. The place seemed to have swelled with women in the short time since their arrival. The music was louder too. And damn it, his beer was cold, and not just against the flesh of his palm and fingers. He could feel the chill rise through the back of his hand, up past his wrist, to—
He gasped, dropping the glass as the reflex overtook him. He leapt away from his seat as the glass hit the bar with a loudthunk, spilling beer as it rolled away. The bartender nimbly caught it and put it aside, its secondthunkof the evening buried under a barrage of agitated German as she tried to mop up the mess that now dripped onto Callum’s bar stool.
“Entschuldigung, entshuld…”he began, but trailed off as the damp cloth shrank to his skin. The bartender, Anne, and her date were all staring at him.
“Here,” Anne said, snapping out of her disbelief long enough to hand the bartender a coin for her trouble, then waving Callum somewhere behind the dark corner to which he’d been banished.
Callum didn’t wait for his audience to lose interest, disappearing into a small bathroom to survey the damage. He might have been wearing grey, but bloody hell! Anyone, even in a darkened club, could see the beer stain. It had even messed up his trousers.
He stripped off the damp shirt, folded it to where the stain began, wet it, and did his best to scrub it clean. Maybe he could get the smell out, and if he kept his jacket on at… No, the Eldorado was off the table now, not that he was in the mood.
He jumped as the door opened behind him, and a tall young man in brown trousers and a white string vest he definitely hadn’t seen in the bar sidled up to the toilet beside him. Maybe he worked in the kitchen. Did the place have a kitchen?
“Hallo,” the stranger said with a smile before unbuttoning his—
“He…hello.” Callum looked away, suddenly aware he was staring.
As he emptied his bladder, the stranger took a good long look at Callum, who tried to smile when the man said something in German that sounded like a compliment. The man’s gaze didn’t move.
“Danke,” Callum answered. He was still holding his shirt. “Oh! Umm…Wasser?Und Bier, actually.”
“Ah.” The stranger zipped up his trousers.
Callum stepped aside to let the man wash his hands. He frowned as the stranger then took the stained shirt and slipped it on himself.
“Ist richtig?” The man smiled, buttoning it up to the base of his chest, displaying himself proudly. Not only did it look good, it fit perfectly, which made no sense as the man had to have been a clear three inches taller than Callum. And the stain was nowhere to be seen.
Callum stared in amazement. “Yes, it… it’srichtig.”
“Ah, English.” The stranger removed the shirt and tucked it into Callum’s trousers. He then cupped a hand over Callum’s groin, right where the beer had spilled. Callum opened his mouth to protest, only to have the German close his own mouth over it. He stroked Callum’s chest, then the muscles of Callum’s shoulders before letting go. “Gut aus…for English.”
With a final wink, he was gone, leaving Callum to wonder what ‘gut aus’ meant. The sooner he could afford a German teacher, the better. But his pants were dry. He stepped back and looked down at them, then up to the mirror, then at his pants again. He couldn’t be that drunk on a few sips of beer. The pants had been soiled, and now, they looked as good as new. He untucked the shirt from his trousers and opened it up. It was as clean and dry as it had been when he’d pulled it from his suitcase, only now it was less wrinkled. He put it around his back. It fit. He’d seen a man half a foot taller than him with a slimmer build put it on and it had fit the bastard perfectly. Now, it fit him again?
What the bloody hell were they putting in the drinks at this place?
He steadied himself against the sink, tucking the shirt in and checking his hair. He could still taste the man’s cigarettes on his lips. Or were they his own? That woman… that woman in the mask had lit his cigarette, right before he dropped the glass.
To hell with it. He straightened his belt and returned to the club, trying to relax into the haze of smoke and the lively tunes of the piano, once more being played by a man. In fact, the place was full of men. The bar was the same, as were the dimly lit tables and chairs where now decidedly un-sapphic patrons huddled in twos and threes. The man who’d kissed him in the bathroom had a long arm wrapped around the shoulders of some other bloke as they talked with a third. More men dotted the dance floor in pairs, where at last, he saw a couple of… No, no, those weren’t women. Had he come out the wrong door?
“Drink?”
Callum turned to the gruff voice to his left, where a burly man with a thick moustache had replaced the woman behind the bar. He nodded, not sure what he’d get in return for the pfennigs he fished from his pocket, or that it mattered.
His drink landed on the bar with a sharp thump. He pushed his coins toward the bartender, who stared at them with confusion, then left them there. Callum ignored yet another strange example of ‘German service,’ instead taking in the room once more. They were all around his age, if not younger. Most looked to be barely twenty. Strange. Such a pen of chickens usually lured the predatory stares and fat wallets of at least a few older gentlemen. More often than not, at least some of the boys were happy to oblige them.
“Schön Abend?”
He turned toward the smooth voice that had come from his right. The man it belonged to had a long scar that ran from the right side of his jaw up to his pronounced cheekbones. His blue eyes were bright and intelligent, and his light hair curled in a natural way that softened the angles of his face. Callum silently cursed himself for noticing the scar before anything else. Confused as he was, hisAbendhad certainly taken a turn of theschönkind.
“Wie gehts?”
“Uh,ja,” Callum stammered. “Ja, ja, wie gehts. I mean, I’m well. Good. Yes...Ja.”
“Ah,” the man answered, nodding with another smile. He stroked the back of Callum’s hand with a soft finger and walked away. The international fairy’s code for ‘here ends our capacity for verbal dialogue.’
Callum wondered if it was possible to drown himself in a mug of beer. Where was Anne? Where were the lesbians? Whether this was his crowd or not, he’d embarrassed himself enough for one night.
