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“I’ll take a Sex on The Beach. Leave out the umbrella, thanks.”
“Old Fashioned on the rocks, please.”
Last Carlos checked, Sex on The Beaches weren’t amber or in a short glass.
Last Ada checked, Old Fashioneds didn’t look like a sunset. They also didn’t have umbrellas casting little shadows over said boozy sunset, did they?
A little sigh came from the man’s right. “So much for drinking to forget.”
There it was. Right in front of some woman in a red dress was a tall glass, filled with a swirling menagerie of reds and oranges, cherries lounging against the rim… Beneath an umbrella. A red and white pattern alternating in stagnant triangles. Of course. Of fucking course.
Carlos wasn’t even lightly buzzed, and off his tongue ran before his head could catch up.
“Real funny,” he scoffed, his fluffy, featherlike hair accenting the shaking of his head. “Real fucking funny.”
Silky, obsidian-esque hair swung in his direction. Ada nearly spoke up in her defense, but the glass in front of the man next to her took the words away; an orange slice and cherry dressing up the ice that bathed in a short glass filled with amber liquor. She almost wanted to laugh. Almost. The most she could toss out was a sardonic, breathy huff as defensiveness melted into begrudging concurrence.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” she agreed, sliding the cocktail in front of her over to its rightful owner–who quietly reciprocated with her own drink. The silence between the two was clumsy and loud enough to drown out the most wasted person in the bar, but it was Carlos who took the metaphorical knife and sliced it.
“A drink like that tells me you’re either running from something or need the courage to run after something. Care to enlighten the guy who so generously handed it over?”
As soon as Ada’s glossy, spiced brandy lips pulled away from her glass, she snorted. Taking a peek at Carlos’ glass, she fired back, “And a drink like yours tells me you’ve got some glory days you’re trying to hold on to.”
When her eyes flicked up and traipsed over the man’s features, she added, “Though, a tall drink of water like you… Maybe it’s a beautiful woman. Care to enlighten one who doesn’t drink like a college girl?”
A few choice words made Carlos do a double-take, his once cool and casual demeanor crumbling into something lukewarm and awkward as he plucked the umbrella from his highball glass. “Hey,” he started, stumbling like the drunkard he wished he was into an ungraceful chuckle. “I prefer the term ‘dashing,’ or ‘debonair’ maybe. Ladies first.”
A wave of amusement swished across Ada’s face as her eyes floated between Carlos and his drink. The joke really wrote itself, though she didn’t know the man enough to snatch his dignity away with it; so she settled for a sly, knowing grin.
Between the idle, mindless spinning of the umbrella between his thumb and pointer finger, he caught on and rolled his eyes–his own playful grin in tow. “Touche, but it seems like you always know what to say. What kind of gentleman would I be to cramp your style?”
Ada found herself counting the amount of times that toothpick parasol spun back and forth, red and white meshing together in a disorienting spinning pattern. Her impulses and slight eye-strain got the better of her, and she leaned forward and picked it free from Carlos’ pinching grasp. “Maybe one who’s stalling?”
“Right,” the so-called gentleman relented. He was quick to wash the bitter taste in his mouth away with his so-called ‘college girl’ way of drinking.”I can’t say my story of playing hero eight years ago and losing is the story you’re looking for.”
With a sad, ironic smile, he was quick to add, “Though, I guess there is a beautiful woman in it. One that wasn’t like anybody else.”
It wasn’t hard for Ada to catch the crestfallen undertone in his voice and eyes, and she knew better than to discredit it with her usual silver tongue. So she reserved it, silently encouraging him to continue.
After another, longer, much-needed drink, Carlos took a breath and began to speak.
“No fire and brimstone, but it was hell enough for me–even had the monsters to match,” he paused, and those deep brown eyes of his made a beeline for the umbrella between Ada’s fingertips just as the words fell from his lips. “Went from normal military stuff to something bigger than anyone ever thought. Lost nearly everyone around me, and I would’ve died too if it weren’t for this woman, this… Supercop.”
It was like a switch flipped between the two of them, dispirited, faintly-nostalgic half-smiles flickering on each of their faces. Both thought of the color blue; but Carlos imagined it in the form of a tank top with a necklace hanging down in its direction, while Ada pictured it splattered with blood and God-knows-what, the purity of the white ‘R.P.D.’ acronym holding on for dear life. How fitting.
The silence between them hung like a fog with no end in sight–at least, until the young woman took hold of it and shooed it away.
“‘Playing hero,’” she repeated slowly, her words padding away from her mouth like a wary cat, “‘military stuff.’ You must have a lot of blood on your hands, then.”
Carlos bristled, his fingertips pressing a little tighter against his glass. His eyes took a break from the staring contest with the umbrella, fixing themselves on Ada’s eyes with a faint whisper of a steely glare. “The blood on my hands wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary.”
And… Back down to the umbrella they went. “Can’t say the same for everyone else. Made the few lives I did save all the more important.”
Ada’s eyes followed Carlos’, a sense of silent understanding dawned on her–though she wasn’t sure if he noticed it too, but she didn’t have long to meddle with the idea.
“What about you?”
Leaning back in her seat, Ada limply tossed the umbrella to the side, beginning to carefully spin her drinking glass in a similar fashion.
She sidestepped his question. “Quite the moral compass you’ve got. It’s… Familiar. Reminds me of someone.”
Carlos was quick to pull the eyebrow that raised back down, though his intrigue remained. “Yeah? Care to share with the class?”
“Just some predictable pup,” she answered with a faint smile, following the revolutions of her short glass with her eyes. “One with the same steadfast heroism. No matter what, he didn’t budge, even when everything started to fall down around him; or when those he thought he knew were the complete opposite. He never changed. Just thought he did. Something tells me you’re not too far off.”
‘Maybe in more ways than one, ’ she wanted to say, but held the words back.
Carlos exhaled sharply through his nose with a somber smile. “I guess we both lost something we were fond of.”
Ada didn’t answer, but her soft, broken smile did all the talking she needed to do.
Carlos kept to himself, eyes darting between the paper parasol and the woman who tossed it aside. There was a twinge of scrutiny in them, following every little detail on her face like a road map. It didn’t take long before he reached the right set of words.
“Seems like you’ve got a good hold on yourself though, despite whatever that guy makes you feel. You hide it pretty well, almost like it’s gone away. How’d you get there?”
Though it wasn’t apparent, the young woman was thoughtful as she sat in her seat, a bent arm limply draping over it while one leg crossed over the other.
“I got lucky,” she said through a sigh, her eyes and hand wandering back to the umbrella as she turned the design on top toward herself. “There’s always… Something that keeps us not too far away, somehow. Even if that something is…Plaguing us, it’s still something. You hold onto it, but don’t think about it too much. You’ll start seeing signs everywhere and become blind to what’s important.”
Carlos turned in his swiveling seat, trying to look her in the eyes. He didn’t get far.
“And… What is it that’s important to you?”
For once, Ada Wong had nothing to say. No smart quip, no dry humor, not even a vague answer sprinkled with innuendo. Just… Nothing; and that was fine with her. With a sly, almost feline smirk–one that made her dark eyes flicker with mischief–she slowly stood up from her seat, heels touching the wooden floor with a thick click.
As she pulled her hand away from the bar, the small, fragile umbrella swept onto the floor. Her reaction was instantaneous. She placed her heel over it, and pressed down, enough to squish and flatten it like the butt of a cigarette–a mere remnant of something baneful that used to be.
Carlos watched Ada as she stepped on the umbrella, looking puzzled with thick, furrowed brows as she started to walk away. “What, you just going to leave it there on the floor like that?”
Ada stopped in her tracks, turning back to meet Carlos with a now enigmatic grin. “I think it’s right where it needs to be. Don’t you?”
The young man let her words settle and marinate in his head, before something akin to realization and camaraderie took over. He must’ve been quiet for longer than he thought, as Ada’s teasing words snapped him out of whatever thought-provoked trance he was in.
“Don’t think too hard, handsome,” she quipped out of reflex. Moments later, she stiffened, almost hating how the phrase felt both foreign and familiar all at once; familiar in the sense of the words themselves, but foreign in their target.
“Right,” she recovered, quick to turn and call over her shoulder. “Good night–”
She stopped just as she was about to call him something, but she had no idea what that something was. She didn’t have a name to put to the debonair young man with dashing features. Good thing Carlos was feeling perceptive that evening, thanks in part to 1) the alcohol, and 2) the newfound, unspoken kinship between him and the woman standing a foot or so away.
“Carlos,” he filled in, eyes somehow firm and gentle at the same time.
After a second of their eyes aligning, Ada responded in kind and with a singular nod. “Ada.”
As the urge to say anything began to ebb and flow into a–for once–comfortable silence, Ada took it as a cue to make her exit, turning back around and leisurely click-clacking her way toward the bar’s entrance. She only spared Carlos one more glance before disappearing through the door.
So much for drinking to forget. Umbrellas have a funny little way of casting shadows, don't they?