Joanna’s Bite: My Night with the Undead_(1)

It was just after 11 P.M. when I finally hung up the phone. The queue for Tier 1 had closed over an hour ago, and they had called clear at 10:15. I was stuck on a call, however. I do over-the-phone technical support. I used to do actual repairs on phones and tablets. Now I just work on the software. The customer I had just finished with, she had a particularly nasty bit of malware on her computer that would not go quietly into the night. I’m supposed to be off at 9:30, but in our line of work, calls will go over your work schedule. You can have up to twenty hours of overtime per week.

It was my Friday. Technically, it was Wednesday, but my days off are Thursday and Friday. The plan had been to meet up with Minnie at the Outpost, a bar dedicated to our servicemen and women. Minnie’s cousin had set up his karaoke machine there and I was supposed to meet her, her husband, and our friend Joanna there.

We all worked at the same place, though today had been Minnie’s day off, and Joanna had clocked out at 9:30, like she was supposed to. Joanna was a night owl, like me; she loved nights. She didn’t get up before 10 A.M. she often said. Which was kind of not true, since our training classes for this job had started at 6 A.M.

That was where we had met, Joanna and I. That was where we met Minnie, too. Minnie was also known by her Indian name, Minnie “Moose” Bushytail. Full-blooded Comanche Indian. Built like a steel-reinforced concrete shithouse. Could drink more beer in a single glass than most people could in a whole evening, and still be sober enough to drive Daytona 500 and finish 4th or better.

Joanna, on the other hand, was a bit more delicate in her build. She was a curvy girl, and kinda weird. The good kind of weird. She always wore her hair in a rather peculiar way. She had a ponytail of sorts, held up with hair pins, while the back of the ponytail was made into dreadlocks that mixed her dark hair with streaks of blonde. If you’ve ever seen Lulu from Final Fantasy X, then you kind of have an idea what it looks like.

She also had bangs that covered about half of her face. She wore glasses, so in our training class she was always blowing strands of it out of her hair. And she almost always wore dark clothing and colored lipstick of some type, usually a color she called “death blue.” I thought it was kind of adorable. And she wasn’t too much older than I was; only by about five months or so.

Anyway, Joanna had peaced out long ago, and it was now my turn. I logged off and clocked out. I was exhausted, and though I had made plans, I debated calling them off to go home. As I left the building, I switched my phone back on; for security reasons, phones were supposed to be switched off on the call floor. The moment it booted back up, I got a text from Joanna

“U coming?” it asked me. After a brief argument with myself, I text back: “OMW; c u soon.”

I was soon in the car and driving down the highway towards El Reno, a twelve minute drive in the opposite direction of home. When I got to the Outpost, the doorman didn’t ask for my I.D. He remembered me from last time. Instead, he just motioned me in with a nod of his head.

The last time I was here, I’d told a couple rowdy college students to shove off. They had been making trouble all night, and had actually followed Moose, Joanna, and myself from another bar we had been at earlier. They were both hitting on Joanna quite hard, and I had run interference. I was good at that. Not a particularly good wingman, but I’m good at interference for my lady friends. I’m either “boyfriend,” “big brother,” or “gay friend.”

“Gay friend” was my favorite. I’m 100% straight, but comfortable enough with my sexuality that I can fake being gay well enough that it makes fuckboys like the ones who tried to hit on Joanna that night very uncomfortable and leery. That night, however, I did not do “gay friend.” At Joanna’s request, I played “boyfriend.”

At the first bar we were at, they had been friendly and played a few games of pool with us. They had started getting flirty with Joanna, who kept swerving both of them. We eventually left, but they followed us to the Outpost, and continued their game there. This time, I made a point of holding her hand out in the open where they couldn’t miss it, and gave her a few forehead kisses. They caught the hint at first, but every beer they took in made them louder and more brazen.

I later on took Joanna to the bar to get refills of our drinks when one of the guys cut between us and tried to slip his hand into Joanna’s backside, nearly ripping her jeans in the process, he was so rough.

“Whoa!” she screamed. “Not cool!”

“What’s your problem, dickhead?” I screamed at him. He turned to face me, and almost knocked me out with his whisky breath. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember the look on his face when Moose tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I think it’s time for your last call.” His expression went from, “who the hell do you think you are?” to “I’m fucked” in point-oh-shit seconds. He turned to face Moose, and craned his neck to look up… and up… and up.

I grabbed his buddy and said, “You both need to go. Now.” They left.

“Sign the book,” the doorman said. I signed my name in the book like I always did, and went back to Moose’s spot in the game room, which consisted of a single billiards table and an electronic dart board. Moose was seated at the head of the long table, her customary pitcher of tap beer sitting in front of her, with what was perhaps the single largest crazy straw I had ever seen sticking out of it. It was about five times wider than a normal straw, and it looped and spiraled around itself as if it were trying to tie itself in a knot. Moose had told us stories about this rather legendary straw before, about how it held a special place above the alcohol behind the bar because of her equally legendary status at the Outpost. But this was the first time I had seen it, however. It certainly looked like it had some stories to tell.

Joanna was seated next to her, a mix of vodka and Sprite gripped firmly in her hands, the nails of which were painted jet black. As for myself, Moose had taken it upon herself to have a Bud Lime waiting for me. It had clearly been sitting there for a moment, because it was no longer frosty from being fresh out of the fridge, but the bottle was unopened so it was still cool-ish. That would work for me.

I took the bottle in my hands and positioned my fingers on the cap. Years ago, I had stayed with my step-brother for the summer and he had taught me this trick to uncap a beer bottle by “snapping” the cap off. He made it look super easy; I only managed to slice my thumb open the first time I tried. I was fifteen. Now, ten years later, I was a professional at it. I snapped the cap in Joanna’s direction, and missed. It hit the wall behind her, but she still reflexively ducked, then gave me probably the sweetest “go to Hell” look I’ve ever received. I downed the beer pretty quickly, mainly because I wanted to move onto the next one, preferably a cold one.

At first, there was really no indication that this night was going to be different from any other night. We told stores about our customers, particularly the stupid ones or the ones who were pissed off for no reason other than it was a day ending in “y.” Shortly after, we started karaoke in the main lounge. I sang a few songs. Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Black Sabbath, and Johnny Cash were a few of my go-tos. Joanna, though she would never admit it, could do a pretty good imitation of Florence + The Machine. But it was Moose who always brought down the house with The Eagles’s Hotel California. Every week, she would sing that song and every week, she would nail it.

Looking back, however, a few things stuck out as… different about Joanna. For starters, she was normally a very timid person, even when she was drunk. She’d always been somewhat shy and reserved around myself and our coworkers. When she sang karaoke, as good as she was at singing, she was always very stiff, hardly ever moving at all. That night, however, she was very animated and flirty.

Once we had a round or two of karaoke under our belts, Joanna and I would retreat to the game room where we would take turns at throwing darts. “The Queen of Darts” was a title that my mother bad proudly held in her youth, and it was something that had been passed onto me, as I could throw fast and accurate.