Emily: Sex and Sensibility Read Free

Nothing like ending the night with a tour of the USA and then, mercifully she was finished until next Thursday.
    The entry door swung open. Three already lit middle-aged guys entered the Tune-In on a gust of cold, damp wind.
    Wonderful.
    It was raining. That meant the always late bus would show up even later by the time she headed home. Bad enough to travel at two in the morning, but now she’d have to stand on the corner waiting for who knew how long.
    Emily’s jaw tightened as she played a glitzy intro to “Chicago.”
    This was not a good night. None were, not really, but this was stacking up to be bad. The rain. The cold. The fact that not one person had put so much as a dime into the open tip jar she kept on top of the piano. The twenty singles that were already inside it were hers, bait money for people to add a bill or two.
    Fat chance.
    Not good, no, and she knew that her rapidly deteriorating attitude wasn’t helping, but—
    “Hey, baby, how you doin’?”
    Emily looked up. She saw a stained shirt hanging over a huge belly, and above it, a hand clutching a bottle of beer.
    “I’m fine,” she said brightly.
“I got somethin’ I wanna hear. Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk.”
    “This is my last set, sir. I don’t take requests during my last set.”
    Gus, her boss, was at her end of the bar polishing glasses with a towel that gave new meaning to the color “gray.” He looked at her, eyebrows raised. Emily shrugged and kept playing. Yes, she’d made up the rule on the spot. So what?
    “Your last what?”
    “My last set. Of tunes. And I’m not accepting request.”
    “Thass your job. To play what people wanna hear.”
    He was right. It was. The correct response to make was Yes, of course, I’ll play that next…
    “I told you, this is my last set. No requests.”
    “Gus?” the drunk said with indignation. “You hear this?”
    Gus put down the glass and the towel and folded his arms over his chest.
    “Play what the man wants,” he said in a hard voice. “That’s what I pay you to do.”
    He was right. Absolutely right.
    “Thass right. Gus pays you to play what I wanna hear.”
    The drunk grinned. Leered. Pointed his bottle of beer at her for emphasis.
    That was when it all went bad.
    Maybe somebody jostled his arm. Maybe he was a little unsteady on his feet.
    The bottle tilted.
    Ice-cold beer poured over Emily’s head and straight down the neckline of her dress, her silk dress, one of the few still-decent things in her closet, stuff she wore only for work.
    Gasping, she shot to her feet.
    “You,” she sputtered, “you—you stupid jerk—”
    The drunk laughed. Gus shrugged, as if what had happened was the kind of thing she’d just have to put up with.
    Later, Emily suspected it was that shrug that put things over the top.
    She grabbed the bottle from the drunk’s hand. From the weight of it, it was still half-full Good, she thought, and before the idiot had time to stop her, she jammed the neck of the bottle into that big belly, tilted it so that it was pointed down under his belt and into his pants and had the joy of hearing his laughter turn into an almost girlish shriek.
    The shriek drew everybody’s attention. People turned, stared, saw the stain spreading over the drunk’s trousers and laughed.
    Unfortunately, Gus wasn’t laughing. His face had turned purple. He raised his hand and pointed his finger at Emily.
    “OUT!”
    The crowd went silent. Emily’s heart leaped into her throat.
    “Listen,” she said quickly, “I didn’t mean—”
    “Take that ‘I’m too good for this place’ act of yours and get your ass out the door!”
    She stood a little straighter. “If you’d let me explain—”
    Gus marched around the side of the bar and stood in front of her. He was big and bald; he stank of sweat and beer. Close up, the finger he pointed at her was the size of a cigar.
    “You got a problem understanding English?”
    “No. I mean, of course not. I’m just trying to tell you