She was a looker all right--fine coat, double breasted button-down pink blouse with black trim and with a knee length skirt that hugged her bottom-- and it was a bottom that deserved to be caressed. Long dark hair, fair skin, green eyes emphasized with perfect make up and lipstick the color of an oriental ruby. She was tall and firm on five inch heels and her jewelry looked like the real thing. Her purse might have cost as much at my car. And no one could stop looking.
Normally the girls at Ruby's would have swarmed over her, only she was a little
too
much. We get pretty girls in Ruby's; usually baby dykes cruising for a good time or a new experience for their diaries. We get a couple who crave the thrill, who come because they want a hard spanking and an even harder fuck from a dyke who knows her business. But this one, well, she intimidated everyone just a little, she didn't look scared, didn't look put out, didn't look like she was on a cruise and out for adventure. She just looked, took a seat at the bar and ordered a glass of white wine.
You see, Ruby's has a reputation. It's one of the oldest dyke bars in the flats, down by the river where in the old days the women who worked the mills would come for a glass of whiskey and a hook up. It was probably nicer back then too, because the girls at the mills made serious jack-- and they spent it. These days it was down to a bunch of regulars who couldn't forget tradition; a few locals and the hookers who came in when they got sick of their johns and their pimps and wanted a pussy to eat because that at least helped them feel. The dykes in the day were said to be rough, but today some were rougher. Switchblades had come out once or twice when I'd been there. This woman did
not
belong.
But I belonged. Ruby's was where I went to flirt and forget. My name is Dani, short for Danielle which is what my Mom and Dad named me when they had high hopes that I'd grow up to marry a doctor. Instead, I married an artist in a secret ceremony because it wasn't legal back then. Carolyn and I were married in the back of a gay bar by a Dudeist priest right in front of my family and our friends. Carolyn's family wouldn't come, not for a woman. Not for me. She was my everything until that day in Afghanistan when my world ended with a big bang and her shattered Humvee flipping over in mid air. I was soon edited out of her life. I had to watch her buried from a distance, watch as the mother who'd thrown her out like she was garbage accepted her flag. While I--who'd shared her life and bed for years-- was shut out of the service. I watched as they were acknowledged while I was ignored. They wouldn't even let me serve as a pallbearer.
And that's why I was sitting in the corner with my shirt mostly undone with Shirley feeling up my tits. Shirley was an extra curvy ginger femme with a double dose of freckles, a friendly smile and a taste for being fucked--which is what she was forever trying to entice me into. Sometimes she succeeded because the bad stuff went away when she was ass up taking Big Girl deep.
Truth was, at Ruby's I had choices. I'm pretty for a butch, always was, not like a model pretty or that girl on "The L-factor", but then I don't dress like a model either. My hair is short like a boy's; I wear a little eye makeup but that's it; and I rarely dress like a girl. I wear women's pants because they fit and highlight my ass, but one thing I'm not is girly. That day I was wearing a striped suit, with a man's white shirt tucked into my pants and unbuttoned to my navel (thanks Shirley). No Bra, suspenders and heavy work shoes. And it works for me. Yeah, I had my choices, but I'd chosen seven years ago, and the fact that Carolyn was dead didn't undo that decision in the least. I still wanted to choose her. I wished I'd died with her on that dusty road, blown straight to Heaven.
"Looks like prey, Dani", said Red Brandi, a red-headed leather girl with a taste for pain. I'd indulged her once and she, like Shirley, wanted more. "Maybe I should go over there and see what she wants."
"Leave her alone, Red," I said and got up to forestall her. See, Red Brandi likes dishing out pain even more than she liked taking it. I knew Brandi kept a blade down those black leather boots. I knew she might use it. Not that she'd use it on me though; we'd fought once and she'd ended up face down in the toilet. Which, strangely enough, had turned her on. Thankfully, Brandi doesn't hold grudges, and she's smart enough not to mess with me. So I headed across the room, nodded at Ruby and held up two fingers and with a glance Ruby knew what I meant. She's a smart girl Ruby, older than my mother, tougher too, but really like a Mama to most of us so long as you don't cross her.
I sat down on the stool next to Picture Perfect Girl, who was her phone talking to someone and not looking too happy about it. "Fine, Eric, be that way!" she said and in a rich English accent, the high toned one you expect from the residents of Downton Abbey rather than the plainer cockney of the staff. Her voice was rich and deep, and it touched something in me. Maybe it was my schoolgirl crush on Emma Peel, but it was something,
She
was something.
"Having a bad night," I asked, quietly, picking up the scotch that Ruby plunked down in front of me and pushing the other to her.
"I've had better." She looked back at me with narrowed eyes-- a little bit suspicious, not that I'd have blamed her, Her eyes swept up and down me and I couldn't tell if she saw the bulge Big Girl made in my trousers, because there usually a reaction when someone does see. Especially a femme. "So why did you of all people decide to sit down next to me?"
"I thought maybe I'd tell you where you are. You're in the Flats, and this isn't the best part of town. A woman like you could find herself in a spot of trouble."
"So you're my savior, eh? A strange woman in an unfamiliar town in an unfamiliar country and you thought to rescue me
strictly
out of the kindness of your heart." Her voice had an edge to it, an anger and challenge that you didn't get from many around here.
"No, I just thought I'd tell you the score, because you are are in an unfamiliar bar in an strange town and an even stranger country. I'd thought I'd tell you the redhead in leather who is smiling at you keeps a knife in her right boot and she isn't the only one. Bobbie over there," --- I pointed at platinum blonde with tits by Intel--- "is a hooker and she'll try and get you to her pimp who goes by the name of Gentleman Jim. He'll want to put you on the streets with her and he isn't averse to carving his girls so long as it won't affect their curb appeal. You
are
a stranger in a strange town."
She stopped for a moment and looked at me as if considering. And then she took a slow, but long, sip of the scotch I'd pushed her way. "So why don't they mess with you?"
"Because I've kicked enough asses to earn respect."
"So you're tough." Her eyes were on me, green, and her cheekbones were perfect. She was pretty and it was affecting me, which was dangerous.
"I've been around long enough to know the minute you start thinking you're tough is the moment when you meet somebody tougher."
"Well spoken," she said, lifting her glass. "What is this?"
"Macallan's. Ruby keeps a bottle or two for me."
"It tasted like good scotch. Better than I'd have expected in here." She took another sip and set her glass on the bar. I raised two fingers and Ruby came and refilled us both.
"I discovered real scotch when I was in the Army."
"A soldier then."
"Used to be."
"And you got out."
"I figured two tours in Afghanistan was enough."
