I did not stay at the bar that night after I met with Leo and those men but I told someone, Bimbo, the floor supervisor who had proven to be the most dependable and mindful member of the staff, that something had come up, and if she did not mind working the shift. She agreed without question.
I walked back home in the cold because no bus was willing to stop and pick up passengers, my hands were in my jacket pocket, and my jaw clenched. I was angry, that I know, but I wasn't sure about what I was angry about.
According to Leonid, I had passed..made it through whatever it was they were testing. Despite the insufficiency of the emotions of the three other men, they acknowledged it too.
I had been reliable, very honest. I had held myself together, observed, and reported everything I saw and heard about that man who was sizing me up like he was going to do something crazy to me if I had continued maintaining eye contact with him. I had done all of that and apparently, none of it was even real. That was the part that did not sit right, not the test. I try not to be naive, I knew that trust in this world needed to be extensively measured before it is extended, especially to somebody like me, and I had lived enough of my life around people whom I trusted carelessly and deeply suffered from it but what I can't get over is the feeling that I had doing something genuine with all my attention, my composure, my honesty but it was being constructed into something that could mar me. It made me feel like I was something caged in a glass to be observed.
I had been used before, for the longest time, more than I can possibly remember and I don't enjoy going back to that cycle or feeling like it.
On a Saturday, a week later, Leonid came to the bar.
He came alone, he never comes alone. He came at 11 p. m. , which was the bar's peak business hour, and he sat on a booth, directly in front of my working desk. The three scary men who were supposed to be monitoring beings were nowhere to be found, either.
This was the first time he had come here since that little party he made me do and the bar got renovated. He did not summon me or even order anything. He just sat there in a black jacket. I walked over with a glass of water and placed it on his table and walked off because I was busy, he did not ask for anything and I was not feeling particularly generous.
I looked back and he sipped the water.
I managed and kept my interactions with every other person to a minimum. He just watched me work and in about thirty-five minutes, he left the booth and took a seat in front of my working desk, it felt crazy because people did not actually know that the man owns this place, they would think it was just a very handsome, random man, maybe trying to complain about something wrong with the bar and the way we render our services, because that is all people do when they get a hold of my busy time at the bar.
"You're doing well," Leonid said.
I was going to give him the silent treatment but I answered him anyway, "Is that a question or a statement?"
He paused for some seconds, "I don't have to explain myself."
"Yeah," I said back at him without looking up from the inventory sheets I was working on.
"Mak," the way he said my name, there was something about the way he said my name so I looked up at him.
He was looking back at me too, with those brown eyes that had a little bit red in them, with an expression like he was trying to find his words and I patiently waited. I don't know why.
He looked uncertain and it was a little vulnerable and I know he does not like what he was doing.
"I never would have told you" he said. "As I said, I do not have to."
I just stared at him, silent.
"You knowing would make the test worthless"
"I understand" I said nonchalantly.
"So why are you like this?"
"Like what?"
"You know what the hell I mean"
"You not knowing why I am upset is the problem itself…, please sir, I have to work at the job that is so flimsy and casual to you but can be taken from me because you and your minions might be bored" I tried to act like I was walking away.
"If you move an inch from where you stand, this bar would not exist anymore" Leonid says.
I rolled my eyes, stayed back, and pretended like I had more than inventory to document at that time.
"Why are you here alone?" I asked him.
"What do you mean?" He asked.
"I mean, you are always with business partners or bodyguards, you never come here alone" I said.
He just let out a smirk and said " I will have my regular, please". I headed to the bar counter and got what he liked, "Do you want to go to your booth, or one of the private rooms inside"
He looked at me devilishly and said, " you want me in one of your rooms" and I quirked out by saying, " no, not my rooms, room..the bar's..I don't leave here" but he laughed loudly at what I said, I loved it and said, when he noticed I felt embarrassed, " here is fine, I'm leaving soon anyway."
The bar was so loud at this moment. Music. Laughter. Cheers. The chaos of a well-run bar on a Saturday night.
"I choose you," he said then in the midst of the chaos but I heard him sound and clear.
"Not as a pawn or something else, I want you to understand that"
"Why?" I asked.
He did not answer that question but chugged down his whiskey, looking at people in the opposite direction.
"I have to go back to working" I said.
"You should" he said.
I then walked over to the end of the bar to supervise.
I did not move away from that end of the bar for the next hour, and he stayed on that seat in front of my desk until close, and we did not have any conversation that could have been called significant for the rest of the night. But twice, when the floor quieted enough, he asked me something small when I stopped to drop something on my desk, once about a staff member he had noticed, another about something I had mentioned about a supplier and both times I answered and both times he listened with that apt quality of attention that I was beginning to understand he reserved for very few things.
When the last of the staff had gone and I was locking the back cabinets, I heard his voice.
"Goodnight, Mak," he said.
"Goodnight," I said, without turning around, because I felt awkward, by the time I had summoned the courage to look back, I saw his car drive away.