Backstage was empty when I returned, with only the muffled music slipping through the door. I left Cynthia’s blanket over the back of a chair and stepped onto the floor.

The peacock number had already started.

Five of them moved beneath the amber lights in black striped stockings and deep-blue ruffled skirts, enormous peacock feathers sweeping behind them whenever they turned. Their voices carried easily over the tables as they shifted formation, smiling at one another before directing the same smiles toward the audience.

A lace glove sailed over my head. I didn’t have to look toward the stage to know who had thrown it.

“Of course,” I muttered.

The woman at table six caught it before her husband could. She waved it triumphantly above her head while he laughed and reached into his wallet. Cynthia blew her a kiss from the stage. 

The management may have neglected the emergency exit door, but when it came to clients touching or harassing the staff, they were very hands-on. Near the stage, one of the security guys caught a wandering hand before Min had to. The patron received one warning and immediately remembered how chairs worked. I kept walking and returned to the table I had abandoned earlier. 

“There you are,” one of our regulars leaned in, talking over the music into my ear. “I thought you abandoned me.”

“And miss you?” I smiled, collecting his empty glass. “Never.”

He smiled like always, pulled out his wallet and tucked a folded bill beneath one of the glasses on my tray. I wiped a ring of condensation from an empty table before setting down the next drinks. Somebody had dropped a feather beneath the neighboring booth, but otherwise the floor had survived the first half of the night remarkably well. 

By quarter to two, the last number was over and the music had been turned low enough that we no longer had to shout over it. The remaining patrons took the hint as glasses disappeared from their tables one by one.

Once the front door was locked, Bella-Donna lost most of its glamour quickly.

Someone started sweeping beneath the tables while the rest of us carried glasses back to the bar. By the time I finished wiping down my section, half the girls had already disappeared backstage. I followed them once there was nothing left for me to do.

The dressing room looked considerably less impressive after two in the morning. Wigs sat crooked on their stands. Makeup wipes and cotton pads crowded the vanities. Min was fighting her way out of a stocking while Mary counted her tips in her underwear, and Cynthia had already traded the red set for her velvet jumper.

I changed beside them, peeling the velvet and lace from my legs before pulling on something that actually belonged in December.

“What is this doing on my chair?” Cynthia stood beside it with the red blanket pinched between two fingers. “Should I put it somewhere else?” 

“Oh, that’s mine… Well technically it’s not mine,” I corrected myself. “I received it from one of the chefs over at Toscana. I was cold and the guy closing gave it to me.”

“Who?” Min asked.

“I don’t know. He was rather big...”

“Kento…” Min’s head tilted, a smile already pulling at her mouth 

“What?” I chuckled. “No, I mean– He was closing up. I was freezing, he had a blanket.”

Mary looked up from counting her tips. “So, which one? There are like three of them from what I remember.”

“No idea,” I shrugged. “Big guy. Dark hair, I think. I could barely see his face…”

“Just be careful,” Cynthia’s smile faded. “The back camera doesn’t reach all the way to Toscana’s door. Do you want this laying here?”

“Leave it there. I have to give it back next time I'm in or I’ll forget. Bye everyone! Get home safe and text the group chat! I’m talking to you Min.”

Min rolled her eyes at me. “Ugh, it was only one time,” she whined. “Could you let it go?”

“Hahaha! Bye! Good night!”

I regretted leaving the blanket behind before I reached the subway.

My winter jacket was considerably more useful than Cynthia's denim one, but the wind kept finding its way through the neckline anyway. I tucked my chin lower and shoved both hands into my pockets. My fingers knocked against something hard.

I pulled out the electronic lighter. I had forgotten to leave that with the blanket. I turned it over once in my palm before putting it back into my pocket. Apparently, I owed the guy two things now.

By the time I came up from the subway again, I couldn't feel the tips of my ears. The last walk home did nothing to improve the situation.

Before I could unlock the door myself, the door swung open. 

“My baby! I made you soup. Come, come inside!” My lovely mother was still awake, barefoot on the other side, already reaching for my bag. 

“Mom, please stop waiting for me,” I sighed as I entered. “You should have already been sleeping.”

“Don’t start again. Come, eat. You need to wake up in a couple of hours. Go to bed immediately!”

She always waited up when I worked late. She pretended otherwise sometimes, but the speed with which the door opened had betrayed her years ago. Tonight, I hadn’t even gotten my key into the lock. Ten minutes later, I sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of soup warming both hands.

“How was work?” she asked while painting her nails the same color Cynthia had been painting hers for the past ten years. 

“Fine. Not dead, not packed,” I answered.

“Your nape?”

My spoon slowed as I tried to take another sip of soup. “Fine…” I whispered as I glanced at her. She looked at me biting the insides of her mouth. “Better,” I corrected, waiting for her face to relax.

That satisfied her enough to let me eat. I reached into my jacket for my phone and pulled out the electronic lighter with it. It landed beside my bowl. Mom’s eyes dropped to it.

“That’s not yours,” she reached for the electric arc lighter.

“No,” I took another spoonful.

“Then, whose is it?” 

“I don’t know. Some guy,” I continued eating my soup.  

I stirred the spoon through the broth, watching a piece of carrot disappear beneath it. Some guy made the whole thing sound stranger than it had felt.

He had seen me freezing, asked before coming anywhere near me, handed over his own blanket and then left before I could even properly thank him. The blanket had been nice. Ridiculously nice, actually, considering he didn’t know me.

“He works next door, I think,” I added.

Mom looked up.

“At Toscana. I went outside for a cigarette and he was locking up,” I nodded toward the lighter in her hand. “He saw I was cold and gave me that. And a blanket.”

“A blanket?” Her voice carried incredulity. 

I smiled into my soup. “Yeah. Just took it off his shoulder and handed it to me. It was nice of him.”

“Yeah. Remember to give it back.” She pointed one freshly painted nail at me. 

“Obviously,” I mouthed at her.

“Obviously?” Mom repeated. “I lent you my green top once. Where is it?”

“In the closet of the person who looks better in it,” I whispered, already regretting the comeback. 

Her mouth dropped open. I laughed before she could start and ducked over my soup when her hand came toward the back of my head.

I hadn’t forgotten to return the top. I liked it very much and had simply decided that persistent ignorance would eventually transfer ownership. Mom finished her nails, still muttering something about raising criminals, while I finished what remained in the bowl.

“What time do you have to get up?” 

I glanced at the microwave clock and immediately regretted it. “Don't ask,” I shook my head. She looked so annoyed on my behalf, I had to rescue my coworker before she let loose of her tongue. “Jay had an emergency,” I added. “I managed to move things around. It’s just one bad night.”

“Mhm.”

I knew that mhm. It meant she had several opinions and was deciding which one would annoy me most.

At nine sharp, I clocked in with four and a half hours of sleep.

I made it all the way to my desk, answered the emails waiting for me and opened yesterday's analysis without a single person asking why something wasn’t finished yet. After Bella-Donna, the quiet of the Health Centre always felt slightly luxurious. Here, nobody shouted across the room. Nobody needed three drinks at once. Most deadlines were measured in days rather than minutes.

I put my headphones on and disappeared into my work. By the time I finished the first analysis, staying awake had become a more complicated task. Coffee. I saved everything twice and headed toward the cafeteria.

“Kento!”

I knew the voice before I turned around. Alex caught up with me near the elevators, already smiling far too brightly for someone who knew exactly how little I had slept.

“You do look tired. Denise wasn’t exaggerating,” he said as he pressed the elevator button.

“You and mom need to find another foundation for your relationship,” I scolded him.

“She kept me on the phone until you got home,” he bit back a smile as a little color appeared above his collar. “What?” He asked as he saw me stare at him.

“Nothing,” I shrugged. “You guys are just so adorable…”

“Get in the elevator,” he laughed as he pushed me inside by the shoulder. It had been two years and I could still make him blush over my mother.

Considering how they had met, I supposed I deserved some credit. Alex had coordinated my laboratory praxis during my first years at university. On my final day, mom and Cynthia had come to pick me up while I was still discussing my research with him.

Then Alex saw mom. The conversation became considerably less about my research after that. He had given her his card before we left. I had never expected the man supervising my laboratory work to eventually become the person mom called when she was worried about me at two in the morning.

“Coffee?” He asked.

“That is the only reason I’m still speaking to you.”

Romina appeared behind us before we reached the cafeteria, her badge swinging from one hand.

“Coffee again, Kento?” Apparently, my text hadn't sufficiently warned her what meeting us at the cafeteria involved.

“I would not have to drink more if they made them the way I like it,” I defended myself.

“Mind if I join?” She glanced at the muffins inside the display case from afar.

“Of course,” I said. “Alex is paying.”

“I never said–”

“I think I heard him too,” Romina interrupted him, waving her hand in his face to silence his protests. “Just now, telepathically, he said to me ‘Yes, Romina. Buy two chocolate muffins if you want’.”

Alex looked between us. “This is why I avoid both of you.”

Romina fell into step beside me as we entered first. I had met her during university lab work too, although unlike Alex, she had remained exactly where she belonged in my life instead of dating my mother.

Even though I sounded pretentious, they both knew the cafeteria coffee never satisfied me. I loved to try different textures and tastes, like mixing orange peels and cardamom into the coffee before pressing the espresso and adding a drop of salt. 

We ordered our coffee and took Alex’s usual table beside the window. It wasn’t actually reserved, but nobody had told the rest of the Health Centre that. Romina and I benefited from his reputation shamelessly. 

Alex's phone buzzed before he finished his coffee. He glanced at the screen and sighed.

“Lab nine.”

“What did they break?” I asked.

“Apparently, I'm about to find out.” He stood, squeezed my shoulder on his way past and disappeared toward the elevators.

I watched him go for a moment.

Alex had a son once. He had died in a car accident years before I met him, while his wife had been driving. Their marriage hadn't survived what came afterward.

He didn't speak about it often, and I had learned not to mistake that for forgetting.

I used to wonder whether that loss had anything to do with the way he cared for me. Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to separate the reasons. Whatever had brought us there, he had never made me feel like somebody else's absence.

“Are you working tomorrow?” Romina asked. She had spent the last few minutes furiously typing into her phone.

“Yeah. I should be done before midnight. Why?” 

“Come to a birthday party with me,” she said without looking up from her phone. 

“Sure.”

Romina looked up from her phone and shot me a knowing look. She shook her head and finished texting.

“What?” I chuckled, grabbing her spoon from the saucer and tapping it against the porcelain to get her attention. 

“Nothing,” she smiled. “I thought you’d at least ask whose.”

“Oh,” I lifted my coffee. “Whose birthday party am I apparently attending?”

“A friend of mine. She doesn’t have many people coming.” She bit into her second chocolate muffin. “I asked what she wanted, and apparently she wants to meet my best friend,” she mumbled as she chewed.

I looked around the cafeteria as a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. I almost laughed before I could speak up. “Is he coming later too or what?”

“Fuck off!” She threw her muffin wrapper at me.

I laughed as my phone vibrated with the address. “I'm not showing up empty-handed. What does she like?”

“Chocolate.” She pointed at her dessert.

“Everyone likes chocolate,” I groaned. “Be useful.”

“Buy her the ones with almonds inside,” Romina instructed.

“There we go.”

After some more banter, we had to go back to work. As much as Romina loved doing working time fraud, the analysis couldn’t do itself. The rest of the day was spent in front of the computer. A few terminals open, maybe some graphs on another monitor, and a spreadsheet or two that I was pretending to organize properly. 

Nobody was running through the halls with emergencies. As usual, it was me, my headphones, a lot of biological data, and the occasional frustration of realizing a script had stopped working because I'd missed a comma somewhere three hours ago.