Bloody Valentine by Melissa de la Cruz
For my readers.
You guys are the best.
Loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.
—Rainer Maria Rilke,
“Letters to a Young Poet”
Love is a battlefield.
—Pat Benatar
J U S T A N O T H E R N I G H T
I N S U C K C I T Y *
New York
November
*with apologies to Nick Flynn
ONE
The Holiday Cocktail Lounge
It was always Christmas down at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village; the twinkling lights were left hanging up on the crossbeams year-round, just like the silver tinsel looped around the edge of the counter and the cheerful tree in the back, its ornaments glittering in the dim light. The Holiday, as the regulars called it, was a New York institution. The bar had been a speakeasy during Prohibition, and counted as its patrons the poet W. H. Auden, who lived next door, and Trotsky, who bunked across the street.
No one could put a finger on why the bar had lasted so long. Its resilient popularity was an anomaly in a town where velvet-rope emporiums serving thousand-dollar champagne bottles had become the norm. Maybe it was the custom-made cocktails—the bartender always seemed to know what you wanted to drink—or maybe it was the cozy, quiet feel of the place that murmured a welcome to every weary patron that walked through its doors. Or maybe it was the way the Rolling Stones sounded from the ancient jukebox, all heart and yearning. Time did not just stop at the Holiday, it came to a standstill, frozen in amber as thick and viscous as the home-brewed whiskey it served.
Interestingly enough, not once in its long life had it ever been raided, its swell of underage patrons never rounded up in paddy wagons and hauled off to the local precinct. While its neighbors routinely lost permits and licenses, the Holiday thrived and survived, serving its core clientele: the young and hip, the old and tired, hardened city journalists from the warring tabloids, and droves of tourists looking for an “authentic” New York experience.
It was late November, and in a few weeks the Holiday’s year-round frippery would soon be relevant again. During the Christmas season the owners of the establishment liked to add new trimmings—a lush green wreath nailed to the door, colorful hooked rugs featuring Santa and his elves, an elegant menorah by the window.
When Oliver Hazard-Perry walked in at half past five that afternoon, the place was packed. Oliver had been coming to the bar ever since he procured his first fake ID at fourteen. He turned up his collar and shuffled in, past the regular crew of men with long faces and low voices, who sipped their drinks as slowly as they nursed their failures.
Oliver took the very last seat at the counter, away from the exuberant college kids who’d had an early start and were already fumbling at darts. The Holiday held no attraction for the legions of fresh-faced hedge-funders eager to show off their black American Express cards. (In any event, the Holiday only took cash.) The Holiday was a port in the storm for those seeking shelter, for no matter what happened outside its doors—bankruptcy, apocalypse, collapse—one could find comfort and solace with a drink at its bar.
It was exactly what kept Oliver coming back. Just being at the Holiday made him feel better somehow.
“The usual?” the bartender asked.
Oliver nodded, grateful and a bit flattered to have been recognized. It had never happened before, but then, up until a week ago, he had never visited with much regularity. The bartender slid over a tumbler of the Holiday’s famous whiskey. Oliver slammed back the shot, then another and another. Drinking whiskey reminded him of how Schuyler once told him whiskey was the nearest to the taste of his blood. Like salt and fire. His sadness was something he picked at, like the scabs on his neck. He liked to scratch them until they bled, to see how much worse he could make them feel. He really should stop drinking whiskey. It reminded him too much of her. But then, everything in the goddamn city reminded him of her.