Five Stars

Posted on Thu 2nd Jul, 2020 @ 6:35am by Yuliette Marayan Dr.
Edited on on Fri 24th Jul, 2020 @ 6:48am

1,095 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Brown Sector: The Zodiac
Timeline: MD11

She sat quietly with a simple sandwich. She’d slid into the back of a booth and kept as minimal a profile as possible. The waiter set two shot glasses on the table.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t order—” The waiter had moved on. “—this.”

Yuliette looked at the little glasses and recognized the sluggish settling motion of the almost black fluid. Her father always took kanar.

Figuring she could clear it up the next time the waiter came around, Yuliette went on eating.

But when the waiter passed again, before Yuliette could raise her voice, he used one hand to set down two *more* shots of kanar.

She heard some snickering and looked over at the bar. Two Bajoran guys were congratulating themselves for their prank. One of them slipped an extra tip to the waiter. Which was swell for him, since he’d lost Yuliette’s gratuity over the stunt.

Yuliette turned back to look at her food. She didn’t want the rest of the sandwich, and she didn’t want to be here. Was getting up and leaving just going to invite more behavior like this? Should she alert the management? What was there she could even say? Kanar wasn’t even on the drink menu. Someone had to have split open a bottle just for an insult.

A new figure sat down across from her and she looked up, startled. He was like her, in so much as he was half Cardassian. But also Bajoran, by his nose bridge. He had greasy black hair, oddly swooping sideburns, and he wore a vest over bajoran silk shirtings that had seen a lot of wear for something so fine.

“How is this fair? No one ever buys me a drink, and here you are with four. I suppose when you’re as lovely as you are, you grow accustomed to this sort of attention.” He took up one of the shot glasses and, after he held it up in the direction of the bar, knocked it back. Shaking his head with the burn of the sludge, he gave the empty glass a nod of approval. “Oh yes. This *is* good. You can really taste the bone cask. When they age it with wood or glass it never really is quite the same. My dear, aren’t you going to avail yourself?”

“No, I don’t want to. I don’t think they meant it as a compliment.”

“Then I shall make myself useful here.” He picked up another shot glass. “Javir Bonaventura, at your service.” He took this shot straight back as he had the first. “But that’s rather pretentious. Please, call me Bo.”

She said nothing nor called him anything.

“Or I could just talk for the both of us. You look like you’ve had quite a day, so I won’t mind the extra effort of carrying both ends of the conversation. You haven’t been here long,” he intuited. “And if you could leave, you would have already. We both know why.”

“Why are you here?”

“Oh, well, I was born here. I’ve as much right as anybody. And that’s as good a reason as any. I’ll outlast them and spit on their caskets. It’s something to strive for.”

“No, I mean, here, at this table.”

He chuckled. “Oh, I like you. I knew the moment I saw you. It’s in your eyes, the spitfire. Yet you’re hiding, but not so good at hiding that you’re hiding. I can help you with that.”

“I just don’t like confrontations.”

“But, my dear, confrontations are where all of the very best of things spring out of. It’s where mettles are shaken up and tested. Where others lose their heads and you keep yours. If you’re keen to what people are really after, even losing can be coming out on top.” He picked up the third shot glass and held it high towards the bar, his eyes wide with a challenge. “To Cardassia!” He toasted. “Motherland!” He put that shot back right quick as well. Because Kanar was an acquired taste and you had to hold your nose to get it past your tongue.

The two Bajorans stood from their barstools and let the Cardassians perceive their full height and breadth. Yuliette shrank.

“Toast the next one to your bastard father,” one said.

“Oh no, you see, that’s not how the lineage works. My father, so far as I know, was born quite in wedlock. It’s my own bastard condition I presume you are referring to.” He raised the fourth shot glass and toasted, loud and proud: “To Bonaventura!”

As Bo prepared to put this last shot down the hatch, one of the Bajorans knocked the drink out of his grip with a back hand and then grabbed him by his fancy vest. The kanar went flying into Yuliette’s shirt and lap and she sprung up with a surprised shout, both of her hands slapping the table and making everything on its surface jump emphatically.

“Stop it!”

Things got oddly quiet in the room then. The Bajoran looked around and exchanged glances with his cohort.

“He ain’t even worth it.”

Bo’s collar was released. One of the Bajorans left directly, and the other took a circuitous route to the bar to finish his drink and pay the bill before clearing out a minute later. He and Bo traced each other’s eyelines the whole time.

Yuliette stood, serving Bo with a miffed look as she tried to wipe kanar stains from her clothing. An impossible task.

“Allow me to—”

“You're not allowed.” She stated, slapping the napkin onto the table. She saw the three empty glasses and the one still spending it’s last kinetic energy spinning lazily on the floor. Bo knew how to take the abuse. Would she have to learn to act like Bo? Calling them out for it? His approach didn’t seem to make anyone like him more.

She went to the counter to pay her bill. She left no tip, but wrote a complaint about the waiter and the rude patrons in the establishment. When she was done writing she looked one last time at Bo and then left.

Bo never took his eyes from her and never stopped grinning, even while he saw the manager approaching to ask him to leave, no doubt. “Free drinks and pretty company,” He said for his own review. “Five stars.”

 

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