The Spiral (Chapter 1)

The Smoking Barrel was at low ebb. To late for the after-work crowd, and too early for the late-night rabble-rousers. Scattered men, single and in groups, kept the background noise low. Sal, the bartender, was idly refilling the little undercounter dishwasher in preparation for a full night of yelling, spills, and fights. Lunette wondered why every bar like this had a bartender named Sal. It almost seemed prerequisite to being a true 'rough place'. If you named a kid Sal, what sort of future did they have ahead of them?

She glanced down at her drink. No matter how many she was exposed to, no matter how hard she tried to get used to it, no matter how often she reminded herself that the ingredients determined the color of the spirit, she thought that whiskey looked like piss, and nothing was going to change her mind. She hated whiskey, especially the Old Fashioned that she was often forced to drink with her consort for the evening. She watched the ice cubes spin lazily in the dark, tobacco-stained liquid, and supressed a shudder. It was going to be one of those nights.

Another glance down her decolletage confirmed that this wasn't going to be an easy one. She could picture herself in her mind, because she knew what he wanted. Cleaned up, she would probably be quite the glamorous looker, but she could see the little telltale signs that showed what he truly wanted. The dress was cut too low, the hem was cut too high, the makeup was applied too thick, and the figure... even cosmetic surgery would be hard-pressed to get an hourglass like that out of a born-and-bred American girl. She could feel the outer slopes of her burgeoning chest brush against her biceps as she tried to adjust her dress, to no avail. Rico's hand was there a moment later, pushing it back up.

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"What did I tell you, missy? Huh? Leave it up. The fuck's the good of a body like that if you gonna hide it on me, eh?"

She sighed. "You can hardly say I'm hiding jack shit in this dress," she said softly, French accent coming through her attempts to sound appropriately Italian for the man. "Red crinoline with black trim? Who is zis girl, a fucking lingerie model?"

Rico's arm spasmed, and she flinched, which immediately drew a chuckle from Rico. "That's hardly proper language to be coming out of such a pretty mouth, is it? I know you don't bruise right, so you had better try to stay on my good side, and my good side says you ain't drinking your damn drink, ok?"

She took a deep breath, and part of her withdrew into herself, fled from the night that stretched ahead of her. She picked up the glass, and sipped it, the well-practiced smile plastered onto her lips. Insincerity didn't play through when the men wanted her to look like this... she was insincere from head to toe. They got off