I pull it up, work in the elastic, let two pieces fall on either side at the angle that keeps them out of my way without looking like I gave up. Check the result. Functional with just enough shape that the coworkers won't wonder if I'm ill.
Good enough.
The bar floor hits me with its full force the moment I push through the kitchen door.
Clancy's main section is larger than Hannigan's—longer bar, more floor space, a back area that the private party has apparently colonized with the expansive confidence of men who booked it and have decided to maximize the square footage. The game overhead is something with a ball and significant stakes, judging by the response whenever anything happens, and the crowd is?—
Dense. And loud. And predominantly Alpha, which the scent makes impossible to miss even with the standard suppressors that venues like this run through their ventilation.
My two coworkers for the evening appear from the service corridor with the expressions of people who have been waiting for reinforcements and are now experiencing the specific relief of someone who has spotted them on the horizon.
The first is Priya—mid-twenties, Beta, quick and competent with the kind of floor awareness that comes from working crowded rooms for years. The second is Jamie, who I recognize from a crossover shift months ago: young Alpha, genuinely lovely, perpetually apologetic about his own size because he keeps accidentally blocking people in tight spaces.
"They're a lot," Priya says, by way of both greeting and briefing.
"They're Alpha," Jamie says. "And drunk. And the game is close. It's been—" He makes a gesture that summarizes a great deal without specifying any of it.
"Rude?" I ask.
"Demanding," Priya says. "Entitled. Using words that assume we've failed them rather than that they ordered something different from what they expected."
"The classic."
"They keep asking for things that aren't on the menu as if that's our fault."
"What are they asking for?"
Priya lists them: a proper Penicillin—scotch, lemon, honey, ginger—which requires the right scotch and a decent ginger syrup and is absolutely achievable; a Naked and Famous, which is equal parts mezcal, Aperol, yellow Chartreuse, and fresh lime juice, which requires checking the back bar for Chartreuse; and something called a Paper Plane variation that one of the party members described as 'what the good bars do with it' without specifying what that actually meant.
"Check the back for yellow Chartreuse and Aperol," I say. "If we have both, we can do the Naked and Famous. The Penicillin is straightforward if the ginger syrup is fresh—don't use the bottle from the rail, there should be a proper syrup somewhere. The Paper Plane: equal parts bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, lemon juice. If we don't have Nonino, Montenegro works. Go."
Priya looks at me for one second with the specific expression of someone recalibrating expectations upward. Then she goes.
Jamie says, "How do you just know all of that?"
"Three years of bar work and the kind of memory that retains cocktail recipes and absolutely nothing useful." I pull on the bar apron from the hook by the counter. "Also Elvin sent me a bar inventory list last week to ask my opinion on stock, which I thought was unnecessary and now understand was preparation for this exact moment."
I am going to have to say something genuinely complimentary to Elvin at some point and I'm going to resent it.
Jamie laughs—a startled, genuine sound—and I push through the service gap to the bar.
The back section of Clancy's comes into view from the bar side and the private party is—exactly what Danny described,which is to say: a collection of men who are accustomed to better and are not quiet about the gap between their expectations and their current situation. Expensive clothing worn with the carelessness of people who don't think about what things cost. The easy, loud camaraderie of a group who've been together long enough that their dynamic has its own language. Several conversations at full volume. A few masks still hanging from jacket pockets or abandoned on the table, which means?—
Masquerade attendees.
They were at the Lucky Clover Society event last night.
Which is—interesting. And irrelevant. I'm here to make them drinks, not to investigate their social calendar.
I set up my station with the efficiency of someone who has done this in unfamiliar bars before: survey what's available, arrange by frequency of use, locate the ice situation, check the citrus prep. The citrus is not great—pre-cut and drying at the edges, which is the kind of thing that takes thirty seconds to fix and which I fix.
The first order comes in before I've finished.
"Penicillin. Three of them."
The man who says it is at the bar end, leaning with the ease of someone who occupies space without negotiating for it. He's got the physical quality of certain Alphas at rest—substantial, settled, the kind of presence that doesn't announce itself because it doesn't need to. His scent, even across the bar, is distinctive: bourbon and orange peel, a sugared smoke quality underneath, warm and easy and entirely at odds with the demanding energy of the request.
Blond. Blue eyes. Freckles across a nose that suggests he spends real time outdoors rather than decoratively. He's looking at me with the frank, appraising attention of someone who is deciding whether I'm going to solve his problem or become another one.
