The Bell in the Fog by Lev AC Rosen EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author:Lev AC Rosen
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Mysteries
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2.7 MB
- Price: Free
There’s a crowd at the bar when I get inside, but I hang back, alone, and
watch. There’s a bucket swinging in my hand, rusted tin, filled with pinkish
water, and my hands are dyed red. They match the walls of the Ruby,
though it’s so packed tonight, you can barely see the diamond wallpaper
through the crowd. A constant hum of people talking over one another fills
the room, pierced by a loud laugh here and there, like the church organ
shrieking over the choir.
A few people stare at me—I don’t know if it’s the bucket or just
knowing who I am, but they don’t say anything. They look away, quick,
back at a friend, or the stage, where the band plays “It’s No Sin,” the female
impersonator’s voice struggling to be heard.
People are dancing anyway, hands clasped, bodies close, men with men,
women with women, some men with women, even. I haven’t seen a mixed
gay bar since the war, when women needed men to escort them in. All
colors of people, too. Elsie has really gotten word out that the Ruby is the
most welcoming queer bar in San Francisco.
Except maybe for me. News has trickled out about me, too—the gay PI
with the office above the Ruby—but with it so has my past, and no one at a
gay bar wants to get too close to a cop, even if he was kicked off the force
for being caught in one. Especially not when he’s holding a bucket of what
looks like blood.
I push my way through the people who won’t look at me, trying to be
delicate, making sure the bucket doesn’t spill, and walk over to the bar.
Gene is pouring out drinks with steady hands that were trained for the
scalpel before someone sent photos of him and a beau to his medical
school. He looks gorgeous in the light. He glows. I know I should probably
try talking to him more. But our kiss was months ago, and I was broken and
bloody and glad to be alive. Since then, whenever I’ve gotten up the nerve
to talk to him, he’s smiled and laughed, same as he has with any other
customer.
He looks down at the bucket I’m holding, and frowns.
“Need the sink?” he asks.
“If that’s all right. I’m afraid I’ll spill it if I try to bring it upstairs.”
He moves to the left, making space for me, and I squeeze in next to him.
Our shoulders touch and for a moment I think of asking him to dance, what
that would be like, being out on the floor with him, shoulder to shoulder,
arms around his waist. Like I belonged, I think. Like I was home.
I pour the red water out, and it sloshes loudly into the sink.
“That’s not blood, is it?” a patron asks, watching. He’s drunk enough to
talk to me.
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