Everyone is up at the ass crack of dawn, already celebrating the win from last night. Someone produces three bottles of whiskey from a supply closet that Leone pretends doesn't exist. The kitchen fills up by noon with soldiers who are louder than they've been in weeks. Carmelo sits at the counter and eats a sandwich and looks at the celebration with no interest in joining.
Claudio and Charlotte appear briefly, long enough for Claudio to accept a glass of whiskey from a soldier who looked terrified to offer it, and for Charlotte to steal a cookie from the tray she baked yesterday. Emilio is still sleeping and I figured he deserves to rest, so here I am, wandering through the crowd alone.
I drift through the celebration feeling restless. The Kreiss operation is over. The immediate threat is gone, and I'm standing in a kitchen full of armed men drinking whiskey at noon wondering what the fuck I do now.
I don't belong here… not the way they do. I'm not a soldier, not an analyst, not a wife or a girlfriend or even accepted into the family. I'm just the bartender who heard a conversation and got lucky and gave intel that turned out to be important, and now the intel is used up and the mission it served is complete and I'm standing in the middle of the aftermath with an empty purpose and a bottle cap in my pocket.
Time to find the bar. All mafias have one, just gotta look.
It's on the ground floor, past the kitchen, through a corridor I've walked a dozen times without ever trying the door at the end because I assumed it was locked. It's not locked. The handle turns and the door opens and behind it is a room that hits me with nostalgia because despite it all, I really didn’t mind bartending.
It's a bar. A real one. Not big, maybe twenty feet by fifteen, with a counter along the back wall and shelves behind it and stoolsthat are dusty but sturdy and a mirror that needs cleaning. There are bottles on the shelves, most of them half empty, all of them dusty, the kind of collection that happens when men buy good liquor and then forget about it because drinking alone in a dusty room isn't anyone's idea of a good time.
I stand in the doorway, and I look at this room and I see it. Not what it is but what it could be. Clean shelves, stocked bottles, the stools wiped down, the counter polished, music from somewhere, people sitting at the bar talking shit while someone pours their drinks and listens to their problems and makes them feel like the world outside doesn't exist.
I could do that. I know how to do that. It's the only thing I've ever been good at besides throwing lamps and having questionable taste in men.
So, I start cleaning.
I don't ask permission. I don't find Leone and request authorization, I just go to the kitchen, grab cleaning supplies, come back, and start wiping down the counter. The dust comes off in thick gray sheets. Under it the wood is dark and warm and solid, the kind of counter that was built to last and has been waiting for someone to give a shit about it.
I clean the shelves. I organize the bottles by type, whiskey here, vodka there, the gin that nobody's touched in what looks like years going in the back because gin is a cry for help and I don't serve cries for help, I serve hope in the form of liquid courage. I find glasses in a cabinet under the counter, wash them, line themup. I wipe the mirror until it's clear and the room doubles in the reflection and suddenly the space feels bigger and warmer and like somewhere you'd actually want to sit.
It takes me three hours. By the time I'm done the bar is clean and stocked and glowing in the afternoon light and my hands smell like lemon cleaner and my back hurts and I feel better than I've felt since I walked into this compound.
I hear footsteps behind me and turn to find Alexandra in the doorway. She's holding her laptop against her chest the way she always does, her armor and her weapon, and she's looking at the bar with surprise.
"I didn't know this room was here," she says.
"Nobody did. That's the problem."
She walks in slowly and sits on one of the stools and sets her laptop on the counter and looks around. "You did all this?"
"Three hours, some Windex, and a lot of swearing."
"It's beautiful." She runs her hand along the counter. "Charlotte would love this."
"Everyone's going to love this. They all need it." I pull a bottle of whiskey from the shelf, one of the good ones, the Macallan that some idiot left to gather dust for God knows how long. I pour two glasses and set one in front of Alexandra.
She looks at the glass, then at me. "It's two in the afternoon."
"We just dismantled a trafficking pipeline, and Emilio took out the big bad pedo-wolf. I think day-drinking is medically prescribed."
She picks up the glass and drinks as I drink mine. “So, you and Emilio, huh?” She winks and downs her drink, tapping it on the counter as I smile and refill it.
"Ugh, yes, but don’t tell him that. From what I gather, we're all idiots who fell for men with guns," I say.
Alexandra laughs. "Pretty much."
"Gigi would have opinions about that."
"Gigi sounds like she would have opinions about everything."
"She did. Very fucking loud ones. Often unsolicited. Mostly correct." I pour us each another inch. "To Gigi… and to the idiots who love the men with guns."
Alexandra lifts her glass and clinks it against mine. We drink it down in one gulp.
This bar is mine now. Not because anyone gave it to me, but because I found it and cleaned it and claimed it the way I've claimed every good thing in my life, by showing up and doing the work before anyone could tell me no.
