[pirate witch]: 524.Novels.NaNoWriMo 2007 chapter 8

They went to several bars in rapid succession, and Livia stuck close to David the whole time. She wasn’t exactly scared, she told herself repeatedly, she was being cautious. The cat calls and whistles that reached her ears made her jump sometimes, and the shady men by the corners of buildings unnerved her, but no matter what happened, she refused to ask her informant to help her out.

Inside each smokey, smelly bar Livia glared coldly at everyone who came up to her, slurring their speech in her face. David had made it quite clear that he didn’t want her to be near him when he was talking to the people that he called his “buddies.” Livia had gotten the feeling quite early on that he wasn’t really friends with any of these people. This suspicion was nearly confirmed the third time that she saw him slip folded cash into his back pocket and push something into the fist of the person he was shaking hands with.

“Hey, hon,” a woman with too much makeup grabbed Livia’s shoulder to haul herself upright. 

“Um, hello,” Livia said. She pushed the woman’s hand off of her jacket. “Can I help you?”

The woman pointed to a very drunk man who was singing Elvis loudly and badly. “That lump is my husband,” she said angrily, “and he’s humiliating me. Be a doll and tell him to get down. He’ll listen to a pretty thing like you,”

Livia backed up slightly and said, “Thanks, but I’ll let you two work out your issues on your own, if you don’t mind,”

She shrugged her shoulders and examined one of her long and purple lacquered finger nails. Her husband got down off the bar and swaggered over to her. Behind him there was a loud chorus of laughter, and Livia saw David fighting his way through the crowd of drunkards to her side.

“Let’s get out of here, eh what?” he asked, sounding quite jovial. A man called out a name that Livia didn’t recognize, but David turned around when he heard it.

“Not tonight, I’m afraid!” he called to a man who was holding up a pack of cards, “I’ve got to go meet a friend somewhere else,”

They left the bar and walked along the sidewalk. David was humming to himself and doing a shuffling sort of dance as he walked. Livia walked behind him with loud steps, trying to warn the pimps to keep away, that she was in a bad mood. Strangely enough, she actually wasn’t in such a foul mood as she thought she would. 

The next place that David entered was not quite as dismal as the first. It was a bar, yes, but there was a more awake atmosphere here. People laughed more, and there was a karaoke contest going on. David pushed his way to her from the crowd. 

“Find yourself a table or something,” he said to her, “I’m going to have some fun!” With this, he went to the DJ, where a black haired man was lighting a cigarette and pointing to the stage with an ink stained finger. 

Livia sat down at an empty table near the small stage and took off her coat. She put her hat and scarf down on the table to save it for herself and went to the bar. The poor woman behind the counter was very busy with all of the orders being shouted at her, so she handed Livia an extra dry martini on the rocks with a twist without asking for any identification. Livia payed for it quickly and returned to her table. 

There was a young couple making out in her chair, and she was forced to clear her throat very loudly several times before getting their attention. The guy laughed throatily but didn’t get up until the girl on his lap hauled him to his feet. They stumbled away, laughing, and Livia sat down feeling slightly disgusted. Her coat was crumpled on the floor and she picked it up and threw it onto the chair beside her.

She had only taken a single sip of her extra dry martini on the rocks with a twist when she heard some commotion from the stage. Peering through the crowd that had started to gather, she saw David and the man who had been talking to the DJ before hand waving to the crowd. They had climbed onto the stage and were apparently going to do a song for the audience that was clapping for them.

David smiled at Livia and his friend put his cigarette out in an ashtray that was on a nearby table and then the music began. The two of them did not only sing, they went absolutely crazy! The bartenders slowed down their work in order to watch the pair of men dancing around like lunatics, singing their hearts out into microphones that didn’t seem as though they could quite handle the awesomeness that they were subject to. The song was being acted out superbly and Livia completely forgot about her drink as she watched, laughing freely until tears streamed down her face.

When the song was over the crowd went absolutely wild. They all wanted an immediate encore, but the energy that was dedicated to the performance seemed to have exhausted the entertainers, and they bowed offstage. Livia lost sight of David for a few moments, but saw him for a few seconds speaking very quickly to his friend, who had lit up a second cigarette and was smoking it as though he had been denied smokes for a very long time. David put his hands up in what was possibly exasperation and his friend pressed his palms to his temples as though he had a splitting headache.

A few moments later, he slid into the chair that Livia’s coat and hat weren’t in without much of an explanation. She stared at him for a few moments while he took a final, deep drag of his cigarette and crushed it into submission on the otherwise empty ashtray.

“Hi,” Livia said to him tentatively, not being able to think of anything more useful to say.

“Hi,” he said, matching her tone. There was a second or two of silence, where he eyed her half finished extra dry martini on the rocks with a twist. The ice had mostly melted in the time that the song had been sung. “Is that yours?” he asked.

“It is. Who are you?”

“I’m Daniel Mathers,” he said and without another word picked up the martini glass and emptied it without even flinching, olives and all. When he put the glass back down, he raised his dark eyebrows at Livia, who had a slightly shocked expression plastered over her face. “Thanks,” he said with a nod.

“You’re welcome, I guess, Daniel,” Livia made note of his name on the coaster with a stub of crayon that she had found kicking about on the floor of the first bar she had gone into. There were a lot of names that started with D lately, and it was starting to sound less and less like a coincidence. 

They didn’t speak much more after that. Livia sat silently watching the few others who had decided to embarrass themselves by singing karaoke, and Daniel smoked another cigarette. Wren came to the table with three beers, which they drank during the next two songs. 

“Let’s go Nei...Daniel,” David said after the third song, and the two of them made their way back to the stage to the cheers of the crowd. They sang the reprise to “Agony,” which caused everyone in the bar to erupt into fits of hysterics. Livia clapped along with them, and when David explained to the crowd that he wasn’t, as had been previously declared, the prince of the stage, he was the absolute King Of Karaoke, she raised the rum and coke that some guy had bought her in a salute.

Everyone had abandoned the games of pool and billiards that they had been playing before to watch as a competition was declared. The person who could do the best rendition of the song Help! would win the title of King of Karaoke. Livia assumed that David and Daniel would have to share the crown, because the two of them exuded the same amount of energy while dancing and singing like psychopaths. The competition began with a man who was so dreadful that he left the stage after the first verse.  The crowd was still in good spirits when the second person got up to sing, and he did very well. Some of the contestants looked a little daunted, but when David got up to sing he destroyed that competition. 

After several more people were embarrassed or applauded, the second round began. Livia had asked the elderly couple beside her to not allow her to get anymore drinks. The bar hadn’t quite begun to spin around her quite yet, but the singers weren’t exactly staying in one place, and she couldn’t always control herself when buzzed. 

The competitors were narrowed down to two people, David and a blond guy who looked as though he were taking the competition a bit too seriously for his own good. They were both excellent singers, and their fan bases were cheering them on, even if they weren’t quite sure of their champions name or gender.

It was a battle of mythic proportions. Each mighty general was a veteran, that much was for sure. Each of them knew the world of Karaoke very well, and when the blond began to sing and dance, the audience was duly impressed. They didn’t applaud when he was done however, since his opponent still had to show off his skills, and one misplaced clap could possibly change the outcome.

No one was disappointed by David, who topped his competitor without any question what so ever. He sang. He danced. He sang and danced. He did some sort of trick with the microphone that didn’t seem to be anatomically correct, but was impressive none the less. Eleanor Rigby could not have sounded quite as amazing when Paul McCartney himself sang it. The blond left the stage the moment David finished to cheers from the crowd that were heard from outside the bar. People filtered in from the streets to find out what all the commotion was to see David taking bow after bow to shouted offers of drinks and drugs and free sex.

Next to Livia, Daniel was drinking a whisky rather sullenly, but she could see through the glass that he was trying very hard to suppress a smile that looked as though it didn’t quite belong on his face. David came back to the table with beer on his shirt and slapped his friend on the back, hard. The force of this energetic greeting caused Daniel to spit his Jack Daniels back into the glass, which was both unpleasant and slightly hysterical. 

“Ha!” said David, catching his breath with a wheezing noise and chuckling, “Told you I was the King of Karaoke! And who didn’t believe me, eh?” He laughed again and seemed to pose a bit in his chair, turning his face so that the onlookers could get a good look at how the lights showed off his angular cheekbones. Livia looked along with the rest and noted that yes, he did have very nice cheekbones. 

Daniel looked forlornly into his whisky glass and made a sad little noise that turned into a whistle. “Yes, you are amazing,” he told David, “and made of all that is wonderful. But look, now you’ve got to get me a new drink, this one’s got backwash in it,”

Livia wondered why it mattered, since drinking the whisky without backwash was essentially the same thing as drinking the whisky with the backwash as long as it was your saliva that was in it and not someone else’s.  David arranged a solemn look on his flushed face and addressed Daniel as though he were speaking to a younger cousin.

“My boy,” he said, “you are not enjoying yourself nearly enough. This is your party! Stop choking and be happy!” 

Daniel looked at David for a few seconds and then he turned to stare at Livia. His dark eyes smiled along with the rest of his face as he spoke, but there was an ounce of something that Livia couldn’t quite figure out in them. She put this out of her mind, though, when he said, “Fine. But you know what I want? I want this lovely lady of yours to get up there and sing. I bet she has...hmmm...a charming alto voice. Am I right, Livia?”

Her mind raced. She did have an alto voice, but she wasn’t quite sure if it was what anyone would call charming. Her father always liked listening to her sing, but after such an energetic display of talent she felt as though her act wouldn’t impress the crowd nearly as much as the Beatles had. She looked at David and attempted to gage from his facial expression if this was a good idea or not. He was smiling expectantly at her.

Since it was Daniel’s party, and even though she didn’t know the occasion, Livia decided to sing. She smiled at Daniel and said, “Yes, you’re right. And since this is your party, I will sing for you.” After making it clear through her inflection and expression that she would be singing for Daniel and Daniel only she walked up to the DJ with only a quick glance at David to see how he had reacted. His smile had only widened, which gave her a boost of confidence, and her flounce became more of a practiced strut as she strode onto the stage.

“Now, Ladies and Gentlemen,” the DJ announced, “a very special act. Miss Livia is going to perform for us...All That Jazz from the musical Chicago.” The music began a few seconds later and Livia shut her eyes as she listened to it. Chicago was something she was very familiar with, as she had been a backup dancer in it once when the show had come to her city and was in need of a dancer to fill in the spot of one of their hung over extras. The days previous to that show had been full of the soundtrack and the movie, so she had memorized every note from the piano and every step of Velma Kelly. 

All the practice that she put in payed off, for she remembered the steps as though she had done them yesterday. It didn’t matter that she was wearing tight jeans and a form fitting shirt, her body moved as comfortably as it did when wrapped in a leotard. The singing had been slightly more of a concern to Livia. She had taken lessons when she was younger, and had sung in talent shows a few times, but she had less faith in her voice than in her body. 

A very deep breath coursed through her body as she began to dance, and one look at the table where two strangers sat, two stranger who she had put all of her faith into, galvanized her into motion. The song welled up inside of her and as she moved like a marionette, a ballerina, and a jazz maid all at once. The song did not only sound like a number from a musical, it sounded like cigarette smoke, liquor in foggy bottles, corsets, pomade, and secrets. The performance took over Livia, and when she finally bowed to the crowd, she was confused about their silence. 

It took a few moments of stunned silence before the first person began to clap. It was, she noticed, David with Daniel as a close second. The hall was filled with applause after the two of them started, and Livia blew a kiss to everyone as a whole as she descended the stairs, flushed but extremely proud of herself. Most of the girls were giving a standing ovation, and most of the men clapped very hard with their legs crossed. She laughed freely, both with amusement and with relief. As she wedged herself between the two guys and ordered a large glass of water with a lemon slice in it, the bar seemed to get a bit brighter, the people a little friendlier, and the two people she didn’t know a bit more handsome as she sipped the water with what was definitely not a single slice of lemon in it.

Daniel laughed and said to David, “She showed you who’s Queen of Karaoke, eh boy? Not so cocky now!” before collapsing into laughter.

David shook his head in defeat and knelt on the floor, offering up his crown. “I beg of you, my lady, take this as a token of my undeniable inability to compare to such a radiant being of talent as yourself,” he said dramatically.

She took it with a noble air and placed it on top of her sweaty and askew curls slow, waving to the cheerfully drunk and wildly appreciative crowd. It rested there quite snugly, as though it was meant for her head the whole time, and the sight of herself in a martini shaker made Livia grin. She hadn’t had this fun out for a very long time, and she breathed in the scent of beer and sweat as though she had never breathed before.