Music thrummed in the old brick building where the bar was located, the faded sign over the heavy steel door saying "Lowe's" in half-lit neon letters that were bright red, at least the ones that were lit. There was no bouncer at this bar, it was just the heavy steel door, and men standing outside smoking the cigarettes that they were debarred from smoking inside, wrapped in jean jackets and worn work coats, not the suited clientele that would be at one of the bars north of the red light district.
They took a moment to look over the woman that was approaching the door, assessing her figure and her face, and ignoring her after that second assessment. She was wearing a burgundy colored handkerchief skirt over fishnet floral patterned tights, knee high boots with buckles down the side of them, a gray top that showed off an inch of skin at her stomach and dipped low in the front, and a leather jacket. None of it was considered respectable, but all together, very little flesh was visible.
Her long hair was bound on the back of her head in a messy bun with an elastic, the top of it a warm chestnut, but underneath it was obviously dyed an aqua blue, and it was hard to miss. Her honey colored eyes sat behind rectangular, tortoiseshell glasses, her only makeup some mascara and lip gloss. She might have been considered pretty, in a natural, girl next door way if she lost the hair color and the clothes, and the asymmetrical earrings dangling from her ears, one a moon, the other a sun. They were the only jewelry she was wearing.
She almost had enough to be pretty. Slender nose, pointed chin, her mouth was a little crooked, but that was forgivable. What really detracted from it all was the scarring on the left side of her face. It crossed like a T over her cheekbone, one running across the bone, the other perpendicular from it, down the curve of her cheek. It was not fresh, the scar tissue was not pink with new cells, but pale and a bit sunken, and impossible to miss or cover with makeup.
Laurel Reinhart had learned to ignore the looks and stares, the double takes, wearing the scar like armor. It meant she could dress the way she wanted and nobody would say a word to her at work as long as it was not too provocative, and it kept people on their toes when she came to the door, her ID badge around her neck. Most people expected a social worker to be a man or a woman in a suit with smooth lines and neatly kept hair. Laurel knew her own looks threw people off, and most of the time, kept her from being thrown out immediately.
She had a bag over her right shoulder, and a brown paper envelope clutched in her left hand, and she climbed the two steps to the bar and pulled open the heavy door with her right hand. As she got the door open, the music changed, a jukebox responsible for the abrupt change in sound. It was not every day that one heard Combichrist right after Neil Diamond. Walking inside, she ignored looks and peered around the bar, trying to spot the person she was looking for.
There were a few mismatched tables with what someone might have called a chair if they were being kind, considering the ones with padding were losing stuffing from ten holes at a time, and the ones which were mostly wood all had wobbly legs or arms of some kind. The long bar ran the left side of the tavern, and had a mirror behind it as most bars did, graduated shelving with bottles of booze on it sitting in front of the reflective surface. Between the shelves was the cash register, and a sign over it taped to the glass stating that the place was cash or credit card only.
To the right, beyond the line of tables that were only in a line because chaos said so, was a pool table with two men around it actually playing and a few others watching. There were two dart boards in use, and then the electronic jukebox on the wall. The music was giving her a slight headache, but it was easy to ignore. Mostly because she saw the person she was looking for over at the pool table, holding a pool cue in one hand and chewing on a toothpick.
Laurel approached the pool table, seeing the same thing she saw in a lot of expressions. The combination of disgust at her face and the amusement of still undressing her with her eyes. It did not bother her. None of them would guess she was wearing Hello Kitty panties. Instead, she concentrated on the young man who was probably barely twenty, five years younger than her, with tattoos all along his arms, and a t-shirt claiming that his c**k was bigger than everyone else's. He grinned when he saw her, until he saw her cheek then, took the toothpick from his mouth.
"What can I do for you, honey?"
"Paul Clark?"
"That's me? What, it my birthday?"
"Not that I know of," Laurel said, handing him the envelope.
He took it, opening it up, "What's this?"
"Consider yourself served. Have a nice day," she replied, turning to go, the hood connected to the inside of her leather jacket against her back as she moved to walk away.
His hand grabbed her upper arm hard, and she turned back, not surprised to see him seething. Very few people liked to get served papers, especially ones that were going to send them to court and they were in the wrong. He practically slapped her in the face with the envelope, he shook it so close to her.
"What the ******** is this?"
"You're being order to appear in court. I'm pretty sure you're being sued over child support payments that you haven't been making to Marilee."
"******** b***h," he spat, and it was unclear if he meant Laurel or his girlfriend, Marilee. "I ain't payin' her s**t."
"I suppose that's for the court to decide," Laurel said, pulling her arm away.
She went to leave again and felt that hand on her arm again, this time pulling her backward until her hip hit the pool table, and Paul and his friends were hovering around her like a hawk. He was pointing the envelope holding the court summons at her, like it was a brand and not a brown envelope
"Wait a ******** minute. I know you. You're that social worker b***h who came to the apartment. The one who told her to throw me out."
"That's me," she said, lifting her eyebrow. "And I'd suggest getting your hands off a government employee. Cops tend to take that s**t seriously, Paul."
"******** you, whore. You put your nose in my business the last time. You need a lesson, goddamn Marilee needs a lesson."
Laurel felt the fear welling up inside her, and she would have pulled her phone out of her bag and called the police if she would have had the time. But his fist hit her jaw, a horribly familiar feeling of knuckles against bone. But she had taken punches from the best, and this only sent her reeling against the table, her jaw aching. It was bruised, not broken, and she frowned, because at least her one rule had been reached. He attacked her first. Now it was okay.
"Heh, didn't like that, did you, c**t?" he spat, bobbing from side to side as if he were trying to figure out if she was going to fight back or not. "I'm feelin' nice though. You apologize, make this all disappear, and you can walk out of here."
"I can't do that. And I don't want to," Laurel said, rubbing her jaw. "But if you apologize, you and your buddies can walk out of here."
Paul laughed, and was readying his fist for another punch, when she tapped into the power she had discovered inside after a strange encounter a few months ago. She pulled one of the chairs across the room with her mind, and it slammed into Paul, sending him to the floor as it broke apart over his body. Laurel turned around and stopped a pool cue just before it would have come down on her head, and with a flick of her left hand, it and the man holding it went flying across the room to slam into the bar. The remaining guys around the pool table eyed her warily as Paul tried to sit up.
"Don't just ******** stand there!" he shouted, blood on his lips.
"Walk away. Right now," Laurel countered. "Believe me, it's the better deal."
Two of them did. The other two came toward her, and she shoved the pool table to the right, hard enough to knock the air out of one of them and pin him between the wall and the pool table. The other swung his cue at her, and she dodged it, backing up until he ran past her. Hand outstretched, a bottle of booze from behind the bar, a cheap one because she was considerate, came flying into her hand and she brought it down on the back of his head hard enough to break the glass. It dropped him to the ground.
Paul was getting on his feet, and he had a knife in his hand. He came running for her, startled as the knife froze in midair and would not move no matter how hard he tried to pull on it. He refused to let it go, so when she had it move up and toward his face, he was fighting to make it stop. Laurel put the tip of it in his left nostril, and pressed it so tightly against the skin that a slender stream of blood began slipping down his upper lip.
"In the future, please be more polite to the people trying to help your ex-girlfriend try to rebuild her life. And I'll see you in court, Mr. Clark."
"Uh huh, okay," he said, still trying to keep the knife from just slicing through his nostril.
Laurel realized the entire bar had stopped to look at her, and she reached up, pulling her hood over her head as she rushed out the front door, boots thumping on the bare linoleum floor that was easy to clean puke and blood off of. The knife dropped back into Paul's hand as soon as she was out the door, and he dropped to his a** right there, wiping his upper lip with the back of his hand, not really sure what went on.
She was shaking as she walked down the steps and headed back the way she came, ready to get onto the subway. It always felt wrong, using that power, but she had made herself the promise that she would never use it against someone unless they attacked her first. And Paul Clark was certainly in that category.
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