The title sorta sucks, but what the hey. This is my other story for fiction-writing class. Oh, it's not all in past perfect, just those first two lines. The rest is in past.

Spotted Cat Blues

Jane had begged, bribed, tried to reason, and eventually threatened to hold her breath until Charles agreed.

Her brother had laughed and said, “Resorting to the debate tactics of a five-year-old won't convince me to take you to a bar.” But he said yes anyway.

Friday evening, the sky still gray with the light of a just-set sun, found Jane striding up Frenchman Street in her classiest jeans and blouse, doing her damnedest not to skip in excitement. Bar fronts glowed with colored lights and peeling-paint doors all birthday party bright. Music seeped into the street, upbeat jazz and something Caribbean and deep, volume and melody undulating as she and Charles walked past open doorways. Even the smell was right, beer and cigarettes, what she'd expected, yes. But also the warmth of wood and bricks and the thick green smell of the plants poking out of every alley and crack in the walls. So utterly, wonderfully real.

She spun around once, arms spread, and told him, “You're the best brother in the world!”
“Is that why you invade my apartment every weekend?” he said.

“No, that's because my roommate at the dorm snores like an asthmatic hippopotamus,” she said.

She grabbed hold of Charles's big hand and swung it before remembering herself and shoving her thumbs in her belt loops. She was cool, she was calm, she was a grown-up.

When she looked into Charles's face, he laughed at her, mouth spreading in the crooked smile they'd both inherited from their father. She scowled at him for a full five seconds before she lost the battle against the twitch of her own lips and smiled back. Then she turned her smile on the street, her street, and strode ahead.

Charles could have caught up with her, could have overtaken her. He had the legs of a six-foot-tall man. She had the legs of a five-foot-three woman. In heels. Instead, Charles stayed a few feet behind her. She could hear him laughing.

“Jane,” Charles said, “You don't know where you're going.”

“Forward,” she said.

“Well, yes,” Charles said. “But you passed the bar about a block ago.”

She spun on him, hands on hips, and puffed out her chest as best she could. She poked him in the chest with a freshly-painted fingernail. “You let me!” she said.

Charles shrugged, grabbed her hand away from his chest, and said, “Come on.” She worked her hand free from his and slipped her thumbs back in her belt loops. She walked a half-step behind Charles, trying to follow without looking like she was following.

The bar, when they reached it, was painted black, but the dark wood outside only made the windows glow all the brighter. Two huge windows divided up into squares of glass the size of origami paper reminded Jane of a Mondrian painting, all bold lines and rectangles. When she craned her neck and looked up past the piece of wood with “The Spotted Cat” painted on it and past the address above the door to where the sign would be hung if this were a corner store, she saw wide panes of glass backed by hanging Christmas lights, the kind people hung from their eaves to look like icicles. Above that, brown doors interrupted the flow of the weather board and opened onto a distinct lack of balcony. It was delightfully absurd.

Charles tugged her elbow. “Does it meet with your approval?” he said.

“Yes.”

So they went in.

The cigarette smoke was thicker inside, and the lighting was darker. More Christmas lights framed the menu over the bar, exotic-sounding drinks painted in loopy letters on a blackboard. There were no prices.

Charles ordered a beer and pulled one of the tall skinny chairs out for Jane. She perched, briefly, but couldn't see anything past the thick cedar post that sprouted from the middle of the floor like a weed from concrete, so she hopped down and moved to a chair closer to the front of the bar. Charles leaned on the post behind her.

She eyed his beer. “I thought you said I'd get one of those,” she said.

“Yes, one,” Charles said. “Wait until the show starts.”

Jane tried to arch an eyebrow at Charles, but she could feel from the pull in her forehead that it didn't work. She turned in her chair, crossed her legs, and surveyed the small raised area by the window where a man in a dress shirt was tuning an upright bass, sending deep plunks of sound into the room. It sounded like something that should be accompanied by a beatnik reading poetry.

Actually, when she took a good look at the other patrons, she realized most of them were well into their forties and fifties. She shot Charles with her best glare. “There isn't going to be poetry, is there?” she said.

Charles's hefty eyebrows shot up together and it was good to know she wasn't the only one who couldn't manage the one-eyebrow thing. “Poetry? No. No poetry,” he said.

“Good,” she said. She returned to her inspection of the performance area. She refused to call a tiny two-foot platform a “stage.” There were wooden chairs. And a clarinet. A tuba gleamed like cold honey under the single spotlight. And there, on a high stool like hers, sat an accordion. An accordion. Like Weird Al was going to stroll in fresh out of Canada and treat them all to a live performance of “Like a Surgeon.”

Jane glared at Charles again, but he wasn't looking at her; he was looking at the back of a woman carrying a broom through a door behind the bar. Jane tugged his arm as the door swung shut behind the woman. “Hey, Charlie,” she said, returning his scowl at the name with a sugary-sweet smile. “Have I heard of this band?”

“No, Janey,” he said. “Because you're an uncultured Philistine who listens to all the wrong radio stations.”

“Am I going to like them?” she said.

Charles shrugged. “I will,” he said.

Another man joined the bassist by the window and started twanging at a banjo she hadn't noticed. She opened her mouth to say something scathing—a banjo! seriously—when the man skittered off into something incredibly complex and fast, like quantum physics set to music. She didn't realize she'd left her mouth open until she caught Charles smirking at her. She shut her mouth and glared. The lights dimmed. The other musicians took their places. And Charles handed her a beer.

She opened her mouth again, this time to demand to know what he'd just given her, because it sure as hell wasn't the same as the burnt-cookie-colored stuff he was drinking, but he put a finger over his lips and pointed at the band.

The music crested sharp, fast, and wild, like Fiddler on the Roof in surround sound, stripped of everything mainstream. It was jazzy and twisty, with the clarinet taking little detours every which way. Klezmer. Charles had brought her to listen to Klezmer, and if it weren't so damn mesmerizing she'd tear him apart for ever entertaining the notion she might like his weird-ass music.

By the time the first song—was it still a song if no one actually sang?--tapered off into a few low notes from the upright bass, Charles had a goofy smile on his face like Jane hadn't seen since they were kids. He took a sip of his beer and she elbowed him just in time to make him spill some on his shirt. She waved her own bottle at him. “What's this?” she said.

“Beer,” he said.

“It's not what you got.”

“No it's not,” Charles said. “Because I'm older and worldlier than you.”

Jane sniffed her drink. “It smells like the inside of a bakery,” she said.

“I thought you were supposed to be the smart one,” Charles said. “It's called yeast.”

Jane sipped from her bottle and made a face. Yeast indeed. “You got me the bad stuff to discourage me from drinking, didn't you?” she said.

Charles rolled his eyes, took a long swallow from his bottle, and smacked his lips. “Yep,” he said.

“Let me try yours.” Jane realized later that Charles handed the bottle over far too easily. She took an overconfident gulp and nearly choked on the thick, too thick, old-bread-yeast-pumpernickel taste, like her drink squared, condensed, exponentially more beer-like and who the hell liked this stuff anyway?

Jane drew her eyebrows together and gave Charles the look their mother called “the hairy eyeball,” but he was too busy leaning all his weight against the cedar post and laughing until his eyes watered to notice. “Your nose looks like it's trying to crawl into your hairline,” he said.

She gave him his beer back and took another wary sip of her own, which didn't seem nearly as bad by comparison. The next song had started up at some point while she was choking on that pumpernickel crap Charles tricked her into drinking, but it was a slow song, and didn't pull her in the way the first had.

She let her eyes roam over the other patrons again, eager to see if anyone who didn't remember the days of flower power and Volkswagens had managed to stumble in, but the median age held at a strong fifty-two, if she had to give a rough estimate, and the wildest action in town appeared to be a graying woman in severe make-up dancing with an older man in a fedora and—honest to God—spats.

The third song turned fast again, the lanky clarinetist twisting like a snake as he spiraled those rich notes into the air. More people took to dancing in the cleared floor between tables and band, and another man in a fedora took women by the hand out on the sidewalk and tried to foxtrot them into the bar. He succeeded more than once.

Jane bounced in her seat, tapped her foot, and searched for a suitable dance partner. She would not ask Charles. Senior Prom had been bad enough, but she was a woman now and could damn well get a dance partner without resorting to her brother.

She watched the man in spats spin and dip his partner. As she watched, the woman in the severe make-up accepted a peck on the cheek from the man and returned to her seat and her martini. Her favorite dancers out of action, she returned her attention to the clarinetist, tall and skinny and delectable. She was taken by surprise when the man in spats grabbed her hand, kissed it with a flourish, and said, “May I have the honor of this dance?”

Jane felt her face heat and hoped it was dark enough the man couldn't see. She handed her still-half-full bottle to Charles and hopped down from her chair. “The honor is mine,” she said.

Charles raised a beer in salute. “Have her back by midnight,” he said.

The man in spats introduced himself as Morgan Ainsworth and insisted Jane call him Morgan. They traded basic swing steps, and Jane let Morgan spin her. She wished she'd worn a skirt to get the full effect. She'd have to make Charles bring her back.

“You can dance,” Morgan said when Jane responded easily to the slight touches that let her know when to step back or to the side.

“Yeah,” she said. She didn't volunteer the information that she could dance because her high school P.E. program had been outdated and sexist.

“It is a dying art,” Morgan said and spun her into a quick dip.

“Pity,” Jane said.

“So, the gentleman back there is you brother?”

Jane straightened her back and sifted for the best answer. “He didn't want to come alone,” she said. She raised a shoulder in a negligent half-shrug to indicate a worldly, blasé attitude.

Morgan slid the hand resting just under her shoulder blade down a little. “You are a most considerate sister,” he said.

“I try.”

The song faded out and was replaced by something lazy and rich, and Jane let Morgan lead them into a slow drag. They talked while they danced. Jane rattled off about her studies, carefully not mentioning that she was still in her first semester, and Morgan expressed a surprising degree of feminist sentiment, of which Jane approved.

Held closer and swaying with Morgan, Jane was able to pick up his scent. She'd expected the tang of sweat and Gold Bond her grandfather had led her to associate with age, but Morgan just smelled like smoke and ironing starch and a bit of too-sharp cologne. The combination wasn't particularly pleasant, but it didn't make Jane want to hold her breath either.

“I like your tie,” Jane said. Morgan wore a tie, and a vest under his suit jacket. Because he was all shades of dapper.

“I am flattered,” Morgan said. “You are a woman with fine taste.” He shifted his hand on her hip.

As they turned and the bar came into view, Jane sought out Charles to shoot him a smile, let him know he'd done wonderfully well and she might just forgive him for the crappy beer incident after all, but when she spotted him he was focusing that crooked smile of his on the woman from earlier who, now that Jane could see her face, had eyebrows as impressive as Charles's. The thought flitted past that if they had a child, he'd look like a Muppet, and she giggled.

Morgan asked what was humorous and when she told him it was just a stray though, he turned them and found what she had been looking at. “Ah,” he said. “It appears your brother does not need to worry about being alone after all.” His hands shifted again, a little bit further around her.

The slow song, it turned out, was merely a breather to get everyone ready for the wild fiddle-ride that followed. It was Dueling Banjos on speed with a decidedly Eastern European flair. Morgan pulled Jane into a new dance, tight as a tango, feet flying fast. He was a little too close, but when Jane tried to put space between them, he tightened his grip around the small of her back.

“You're holding me a little tight,” Jane said, keeping a smile on so she wouldn't make Morgan feel uncomfortable.

“Surely you've danced a Balboa before?” Morgan said.

“Not this close,” Jane said.

“Then you haven't danced it right.”

Jane was cool. She was adult. She could dance. But when she felt—dear God she couldn't be feeling what she thought she was feeling against her inner thigh. He was old. Old people didn't get, didn't have...She couldn't even finish the thought. “I don't want to dance it right,” she said.

“Nonsense,” Morgan said. He pressed them tighter so she could feel the button of his vest pocket pressing against her breast and smell the peppermints on his breath. “This is how the Balboa is danced.”

“Then I don't want to dance,” Jane said, trying to squirm free of the arm now clamped across her lower back. To her horror, the movement made the thing poking into her thigh poke harder. She searched out Charles again, tried to catch his eye so he would come extricate her from this mess like a good big brother, make an excuse about having to leave early or such, but he was still laughing with the woman with the Muppet eyebrows and oh, but she would eviscerate him when they got out of here.

“Come now, you wanted to dance,” Morgan said. He ground himself on her and she wanted to throw up.

Charles was a bust, but surely there were bouncers. Every bar had bouncers. Somebody had to notice the lecherous old man humping her leg like a fucking dog. But apparently she'd done a good job of not causing a scene, because everyone in the bar was either watching the band, or chatting, or flirting with Muppets.

She cursed herself when she realized she was still moving her feet in response to Morgan's lead: forward, forward, right, right, back, back. She could stop. She should stop. He'd have to let her go if she stopped. But then it wouldn't just be one person catching on, wouldn't be someone stepping in to handle an old man behaving inappropriately. No, it would be Jane causing the scene, Jane behaving inappropriately. And the whole bar would see it. They were in the middle of the dance floor, at the edges of the only serious lighting in the whole bar.

She pressed her lips together, drew her brows down, and said, as firm and low as she could muster, “I thought you were a gentleman, Mr. Ainsworth.”

“A lady doesn't tease,” Morgan said. He was breathing harsh, hot blasts of peppermint against Jane's face. His upper lip shone with sweat.

The hot bar of his arm left her back so quickly the cool air that replaced it startled her. She had been pressing to get away, but with nothing to press against, she stumbled back, tripping more over her heels before catching herself on the door frame. In front of the whole damn bar. She flushed, but no one was looking at her.

They were looking at Morgan, who also stumbled, hand pressed to the neatly folded handkerchief in his left vest pocket, face pale and sheened with sweat, thin lips round like a fish's as he hitched in short, shallow breaths. He backed into the bar and then slid down it to sit at the floor. His trousers bunched oddly in his lap so Jane could see what she'd felt and she was pretty sure she'd start hyperventilating herself in a minute or two if the evening didn't straighten the fuck up.

The room kind of swam, the sporadic lighting floating like jellyfish in her vision, and when she focused on the bar, Charles was gone, and the bartender was on the phone, shouting the address at someone in a voice higher pitched than Jane would have associated with a beard of that size. One of the band members had Morgan laid flat on the floor and was pressing his lips to his mouth. Jane wanted to say, “Don't. You don't know what he'll do,” but then the man locked his arms and started pumping Morgan's chest.

Charles was at her elbow suddenly. She didn't even see him cross the room; he was just there. And he looked at her with those stupid eyebrows like a puppy dog, all worried, all, “Jane are you okay?”

She started crying right then and there and screw being a grown-up if this is what grown-ups did on the weekends.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” said Charles.

“You'd better be,” said Jane.

“I never should have brought you here.”

“And you were flirting with your Muppet girlfriend while he … while he ...” Jane decided she was maybe a little bit hysterical, but Charles caught the important part anyway.

“What did he do?” Charles said.

Jane pointed, pointed at where Morgan's trousers were still bunched up even though he was unconscious, maybe dead. Jesus, she didn't think that was even possible.

Charles's hand on her elbow tightened and then she was being hugged and hushed and told, “Shh, we'll go home now.”

Charles led her out the door, and for once she let him, clung to him even as he murmured apologies and insisted nothing ever happened at the Spotted Cat, not on Klezmer night when all the patrons were older than the bar, and he was so, so sorry. Jane half-listened to him and thought it was probably ten kinds of wrong to leave the bar the way they were. What if someone needed to ask questions. But then, she didn't particularly want to answer any questions, and she was underage and that could get Charles in trouble, so she wrapped his big hand around her smaller one and let him take her home.