After Hours

Whimsy

The light up sign advertising The Earnest had been on the fritz for as long as anyone visiting the old building had known. You expected the sputtering neon to finally give up every time you saw it, yet in the six months that you’d been living across from it, it had somehow clung on to its last vestiges of life. Sometimes it seemed that the gaps between its sparking glow grew longer, and it was irregular enough that in these longer delays there was the hope that it would finally just die, but with a soft, high pitched buzz it would inevitably spurt back to life.

The rest of the bar's exterior was almost as run down as its inconstantly flickering sign. The glass walled entrance was scratched in numerous places. Usually this was just a line, but off to the side of the doorway you could find a crudely etched “FUCK” where either one of the local homeless or possibly a drunk college student had found the time and privacy to make a slightly more complicated defacement. Even where it wasn’t marked, the glass was translucent at best, as years of dust and tape residue mottled the storefront. At least tonight the entrance was empty. Small time heroin dealers sometimes used the space to sling their product in the early morning hours after it was closed, since its sign made it uniquely identifiable and the street lights still provided enough muted white light to make it easy to see what they were handling.

The small parking lot to the side of the building was protected by one sign lying about security cameras and a second sign lying about a tow truck company responsible for kidnapping any unidentified vehicles left there overnight. You weren't sure what the point to that second sign was, really. Oliver would obviously much rather let a patron leave their car there and Uber home rather than have them drive drunk, and you were pretty sure that no one that wasn't going to The Earnest was going to want to park there at all. You never felt unsafe walking around at night, but most anyone that didn't live in the area.was probably going to find it a little sketchy. The fact that glass from broken car windows could be found in the gutter from time to time helped justify these suspicions. Tonight, though, the parking lot hosted more vehicles than you were used to seeing there this late. In addition to Oliver's dust coated, twelve year old Lincoln Navigator, there were two sensible looking sedans, one soccer-mom minivan, and a Yamaha motorcycle that had stopped being manufactured in 1991. It strode that awkward line of being old enough to be an antique, but still looked too modern to have that old-bike aesthetic. Given the numerous visible scratches and dents on its chassis, it looked to be valued more for being cheap than a collector's item.

While the door was closed, it had been left unlocked.The inside of The Earnest was very different than it looked during its usual business hours. The lights over the tables had been shut off, leaving the front half of the main room almost entirely unlit. The bar area itself was much brighter, however, with the usual low lamps being supplemented by the bright ceiling lights that were typically left off when the place was still serving its usual customers. The high shelves still had their library of liquors, though the broad selection of whiskeys that were part of The Earnest's appeal looked a little less elegant with the stark, industrial lighting. The register was left open, its contents having likely long since been locked away in the safe tucked in the back room. 

Just because the bar was closed didn't mean that it was empty. Most of the bar's current occupants gathered around a pair of adjacent booths at the corner of the room closest to the bar itself, where Oliver was mixing a pair of Manhattans. Speed was usually just as important as precision, but he took his time with his pours for these drinks to avoid spilling on the recently wiped bartop. He wasn't serving customers now, after all, and you were pretty sure that none of the smattering of people that you would be meeting tonight would complain about the speed of the service. He turned towards you only for a moment when you entered his bar, but after giving his usual silent nod of acknowledgement, returned his attention to the cocktails.

There were only eight people here in total so far, and that counted yourself and Oliver. The only one in a chair was an olive skinned, flat-faced man in a maroon-and-black racing suit. While the bulk of the suit was made of dyed leather, it had extra padding made out of some sort of plastic polymer around the elbows and shoulders that gave him an almost armored look. Its thick material in part made up for its close fit, but still gave a clear outline of a large, athletic physique, with broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms. He had turned the chair around such that its back was to the table that it had been pulled from and leaned back against it, slouching down so that his head rested on its top rail and his legs spread wide as he stared vacantly at the ceiling, listening to whatever was playing through his earbuds. It was hard to place his age. You figured he could be anywhere from his late 20s to early 40s. The creases near the edges of his eyes that could be age-lines might just as well be the result of too many late nights and early mornings, and his close-cut beard and hair were both still solid and dark. With his head tilted back, you could see a scar leaving a gap in his beard a few inches long near his jaw, and the curled signs of cauliflower ear along the outer edge of the one facing you. He had a helmet set on the table next to him with a maroon and black pattern similar to that of his suit and a plain, mostly-empty looking black backpack lying next to it.

Sitting atop the table itself at the opposite corner from him was a vaguely familiar looking Asian girl that, if The Earnest were still open, you would have definitely asked for ID before letting into the bar at all. It wasn't just that she was small, though she certainly was. It was hard to tell exactly how tall she was while she was perched atop the table with one leg dangling over the side, but you would guess that she wouldn't even reach five feet in her boots. She just looked childish, with twiggy arms and legs and an impractical outfit that you figured a teenager might find cool. The whole getup was black, loud, and erratic, like she had looked up 'Goth clothing' on Etsy and started buying pieces at random. Its whole assemblage of fishnets, hanging fabric, and unnecessary belts and buckles didn't seem to fit together and wound up looking downright uncomfortable. The only practical looking portion of it was her jacket which, while black like the rest of her ensemble, looked more or less normal and was approvably covered in pockets. She could have passed for either a student that had come home ‘early’ from a rave or an enthusiastic fan of some band you've never heard of, but even ignoring her haphazard outfit, you got the impression that the skinny little goth wasn’t entirely in the moment. She also had earbuds in, as content to ignore the leather armored biker as he was to ignore everyone in the room, but unlike the still and silent man, she was singing along under her breath and tapping the heel of her boot into the table's leg in time to her music. You could pick up a few words here and there, but more of it was incoherent as she hum-mumbled through as much as she actually sang aloud. 

Past their table and occupying a booth to himself was a sallow, middle-aged blond man in a loose Caltech hoodie. His large, thick-rimmed glasses were visibly smudged, but he didn't seem to be bothered by their state. His attention was fixated on the steel padlock in his hands and the bits of metal that he was working inside of it. Laid out in a neat little row in front of him was a small array of very recognizable tools - two tension wrenches and a collection of four metal picks. Off to his right were six open locks, which were splayed out in no particular arrangement outside of the space that he was using to work. He, too, seemed content to ignore the bar and conversation around him, distracting himself with solving the little mechanical puzzles in front of him. As you watched, the lock in his hand gave a click and popped open, at which point he placed it to join the other 'solved' locks off to his side before reaching into his bag and pulling out a closed Stanley padlock. He put his tension wrench and pick down, and you saw as he did that the picks on the table were nearly equidistant once the one that he had been using was placed into the one wider gap. He eyed the grooves at the base of the lock, and then picked the same two narrow instruments back up again. Apparently this one was close enough in size to the one that he just opened to merit using the same tools.

The other three were all sharing a booth and a conversation so mundane that you hoped that it was being carried out in code or something, but as it carried on, you gathered that it was genuine. They really were just talking about their pets.

"... and while Hypnos will eat just about anything that he can get away with, Eris will whine like the spoiled baby that she is if I so much as try out a new brand!"
The speaker was smiling, even as she complained, and as the man nestled into the opposite side of the booth responded, she maintained her light, easy smile as if it were the most natural expression in the world for her to wear. She was a slightly plump looking woman with frizzy, bright red hair that was barely contained by her loose braid. Her face was slightly tanned, slightly pink, and absolutely covered with freckles. Her long, pastel flower patterned dress would probably have been a bit thin on its own for the hour, but she supplemented it with a simple forest-green shawl. Her eyes flicked over to you as you entered the bar and her smile widened a bit further before she turned her attention back to the conversation. 

"Yeah, Saggy can be like that sometimes. Christy usually just has me get whatever brand is cheapest, and that's usually okay, but sometimes Saggy just doesn't like it and I just feel so bad for the little guy. He always eats it eventually, I guess, but he just looks so sad."
With his body facing away from the entrance, you could see only the profile of the man's face as he speaks. He was a dark skinned Japanese man with a fashionable looking haircut that was probably a few weeks old and an even layer of scruff over his wide, round face. He wasn't exactly fat, but with his stocky build and broad face, he looked like he should be. His voice was low, and kept soft enough to barely carry through the bar, but even quiet as it was, it was tinged with a warmth that was difficult to define but which you recognized in tone. While the redhead across from him might have more colors in her outfit, his bright purple Sacramento Kings t-shirt still seemed louder, as the woman's dress somehow struck you as more natural in its aesthetic. While her colors came together to look like a garden, his just looked like a splash of brightness in an otherwise muted space.

"Saggy always looks sad."
While you hadn't been paying enough attention to the trio to understand exactly what they'd been saying until this most recent exchange, this was the first time that you heard the voice of the third member of their conversation. While the other two managed to stand out in different ways, in part from the coloration of their clothes, she didn't stand out at all. Instead, she seemed to almost blend into the corner in which she'd sat, her dull grey sweater and black hair blending into the wood and slate decor of the Earnest. Her face was harshly angled, like it had been pinched together at its base, with an already narrow shape angling in towards a sharp chin. She had a small voice, but sounded certain when she spoke, like she was declaring a fact rather than offering her opinion.

"Yeah, he might look that way until you get more used to him, but mostly he's just droopy. You can definitely tell he's happy to see people. I always see it when I get home, and he's pretty energetic whenever he gets to follow something." It seemed that even in rebuffing the somewhat awkward interjection from the narrow woman, the man's voice was soft and welcoming, even if the subject of the conversation didn't strike you as interesting. While you weren't sure what sort of animals the smiling redhead was referring to, it sounded like his was a dog. You'd never gotten along with dogs.

The music had been turned off a little after midnight when the bar had closed. Like the lighting, this greatly changed the ambiance with the soft murmur of conversation, the clinking of a spoon against the glass as Oliver mixed the drinks, and the almost imperceptible scratching of the lockpick all remaining discernible rather than merging into the white noise of the bar.

Welp, time to start dealing cards.