1
Each night started with the flip of a switch. Hey Joe’s neon OPEN sign flickered and hummed to life. Lola’s watch read 5:59 P.M., but time had no place on the Sunset Strip. Johnny wiped down the wraparound bar with the efficiency of someone who did it more often than he brushed his own teeth.
“Opening at goddamn six o’clock,” Quartz said, shuffling in. “You ever heard some people like to drink their lunch?”
“But if we opened earlier, you wouldn’t get to say that every night,” Lola said.
Quartz’s whiskey on the rocks already sat in front of his regular stool. “Bad enough you’re going to cut me off in eight hours. When’s Mitch going to wake up and open his bar at a decent hour?”
“Don’t think he’ll be getting to that,” Johnny muttered. “Your tab’s hit its max, Quartz. Need you to pay that tonight.”
“But if I did, you’d never get to say that.”
“I’m serious.” Johnny kept the whiskey bottle in his hand, ready to refill Quartz’s glass. “You see anybody walking through the door? This isn’t back in the day. Look around.”
Quartz made a point of twisting on his seat. “Looks like the same old trough I’ve been drinking out of since ’67.”
“The point is, you want a bar to come to every night, need to help keep us in business.”
Lola shook her head quickly at Johnny.
“What?” Johnny asked, leaving the bottle on the bar to serve another customer. “They’ll find out at some point.”
Lola ducked under the hatch and came up behind the bar. “Don’t listen to him,” she said to Quartz, taking Johnny’s rag and picking up where he left off.
Quartz put the rest of his drink back with a jerk of his head. “Never do. Figured out years ago that your boyfriend’s ponytail holder is cutting off the circulation to his brain.”
“He gets crabby when business is slow,” Lola said. “Mitch’s been breathing down his neck about bad sales.”
Two more regulars came in and took their seats next to Quartz. Lola served them and stood back as they grumbled about their wives, bosses, and neighbors. At least, those were the typical topics. She wasn’t actually listening because she was watching Johnny at the opposite end of the bar. For the third night in a row, he checked the bulbs on a string of busted Christmas lights that’d been up for nine months.
“Why don’t you just buy new lights?” Lola asked.
“Because these ones are fine, babe. There’s only one broken bulb. I just need to find it.” The lights were even smaller in his sizeable hands. He raised his brows at her. “You going to trade me in for a newer model the day you figure out my one flaw?”
Lola smiled. “After nine years, you must keep it pretty well hidden, whatever it is.” Before she’d even finished the sentence, a car engine revved out front. And then another. An ear-splitting racket nearly shook the building.
Quartz swiveled around on his barstool. “They trying to wake the dead?” he yelled.
“Nah. Just get some attention,” Johnny said. “Ignore them.”
Fumes seeped through the open door, clouding the room. Lola spent five or more nights a week at Hey Joe, the place she considered her second home. The staff and the patrons were her family. So when a lone beer drinker in the corner booth glared at her, she felt responsible for putting a stop to the commotion.
It was dark out. People roamed down the Strip’s si
dewalk. An electric-blue Subaru was parallel parked out front. The owner, who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, honked at her.
“We’ve got customers inside,” she called over the noise. “Take it somewhere else.”
He hit the gas again. Behind him sat a black Nissan with red rims and a matching spoiler. The driver turned his music up so loud the sidewalk vibrated.
Lola went to the curb. With a rag from her apron pocket, she waved away exhaust fumes. It took one well-placed, swift kick of her Converse to put a dent in the Subaru’s fender. “I said—”
The driver gaped. “What the—?”
“Get the fuck lost!”
He jumped out and came around the hood toward her. Lola braced herself for an argument, but he stopped mid-step and looked up.
“You heard the lady,” Johnny said from behind her. “Don’t make me call your mommy.”
“Look what she did to my car.” The kid pointed at the dent. “That’s a brand-new paint job.”
“She’s done worse to men twice your size,” Johnny said. Some people by the door snickered.
“But—”
“Look, kid,” Johnny said. “Something you should know about this little stretch of the Strip—we don’t call the cops. We handle our own business.”
The boy flipped them off with both hands but returned to his car.
Johnny squeezed Lola’s shoulders. “Can’t go around kicking people’s cars, babe.”
She glanced back at him. “He started it.”
Even with affection in his brown, gold-flecked eyes, the look he gave her was louder than any words.
“Aw, come on,” Lola said. “I’m not the one who threatened to handle him.”
“Why do you say it like that?” He tucked a loose strand of his long hair behind his ear and half smiled. “Think I can’t take a couple punks?”