The girls from the club haven’t got anything planned for this weekend; Leah is a little glum, but not overly. There will be other weekends. I don’t have to hurry.

She’d started pre-emptively studying the mixed-drinks booklet, whenever she could do so unobserved. Most of the recipes were basic enough, two or three ingredients in equal portions, with or without ice, with or without garnish. Some were more ridiculous and looked like they would take real training to learn.

How do the layers not mix? Is that what that weird strainer spoon thing is for? Is that how they make the striped drinks?

Michel’s help has been invaluable, in regards to learning about the drinks. He’d been supportive as soon as he’d heard about her training.

“Though it sorta sucks,” he’d added. When Leah had looked at him, hurt, he’d hurried to clarify. “I mean, it means there might be some nights I’m not working with you. I’ve gotten used to having you here. We’ve got that connection, you know? Pass me the thingy.”

Leah had passed him the nozzle cleaner, and he’d beamed at her.

“See? Connection. I didn’t even have to specify.”

He’d offered no other comment since then, other than to occasionally narrate what he was doing while he made a particular drink or other; he would call Leah over, and then describe the process for adding a crust of salt or sugar to the rim of a glass, or of shaking a drink without spilling, or of pouring multiple shots quickly and without making a mess. Customers seemed to not mind, or to find it endearing. Some even congratulated her on her promotion.

All in all, Leah is feeling quite welcomed in this new existence.

It helps that her shoulders are starting to have noticeable muscle – a fact which had been difficult for her to see, since the change was gradual, but which Gloria had pointed out to her the day before, giving them an impressed squeeze with both hands. Leah had managed to say ‘thank you’ without blushing or stammering.

The club is busy, this Friday, and more so than other Fridays have been. Michel is too busy serving to do any of his little instructional bits for her, and Leah’s too busy cleaning and running supplies to be able to listen if he did.

“Eighties night,” he explains with a shrug, after a boisterous crowd of people had passed the bar to pick up their drinks, swamping him for five minutes. “People go ape-shit over eighties night.”

“What’s eighties night?” Leah asks. Sounds a bit like religious observance, but eighty is a number, not a deity or a star form. Or – maybe it is a star form? I haven’t seen the night sky clearly enough since I got here to be able to check for familiar shapes.

“This,” Michel says with a sour face. “Straight people think they like eighties music, but they don’t get it. They can sing along to ‘Electric Barbarella,’ but they don’t really feel it in their soul.”

Leah hums a bit as she helps him clean. Feeling it in your soul…some sort of special event for everyone…music reserved for this night only…people singing along to the special music…yep, religious observance. “Now, remembering that I’m not from here and I don’t share your cultural touchstones,” Leah begins, and Michel snickers. “Can you – as a not-straight person – explain eighties music to me?”

Michel gasps and holds his chest, looking at her. “Seriously? Okay wait, do you want the meme answer or the real answer? Because – salut, je peux vous servir quelque chose?” A customer comes up to the counter and the conversation stops; Leah returns to her cleaning.

A hectic hour later, during a lull, they resume their conversation. “So eighties music,” Michel says, tucking his cleaning rag into his apron pocket. “I’ve had time to think, and I’m ready.”

The boss snorts behind them, laughing. “Oh no please, continue. I want to hear the opinion of someone who wasn’t even born yet when this music came out.”

“Okay so,” Michel claps his hands together, and Leah stands to attention, listening. “Eighties music: politically, the world was in a shit place; conservatives in power everywhere, all the peaceful revolutions of the sixties had sort of petered out, and angry revolutions were starting to take their place. Technologically: people were starting to realise that industrialisation was killing the whole planet, and the people in charge were unwilling to save it, leading to more protests and a sort of sense of impending doom. Also, portable music players started to be invented, so you could listen to music while on the move. Culturally: the punk movement was in full swing, and the goths, so you had a lot of people who were angry and sad and didn’t hide it inside. The gay movement was really picking up in North America, lots of clubs and drag bars and pride parades and such. At the intersection of this, was the fact that a lot of men were suddenly dressing really slutty, all the time. Now: combine all these together – ” The boss by this time has collapsed against the rear shelves, gasping for breath through laughter but nodding along, “ – and what you get is a population of young people who have a lot of strong negative emotions, have no filter against showing the world how they feel, and are using music as a way of projecting those emotions everywhere they go – literally projecting, through walkmans and boom-boxes and stuff like that. So eighties music was this decade of really horny, really angry, really sad, and yet also really happy music, that was meant to be played as loud as you could manage.”

Leah nods sagely at the end of this, and applauds. “Beautifully done. Wonderful.”

The boss recovers from laughing. “Not bad. You’re sort of blurring the edges of the seventies and nineties into the whole thing as well, but it doesn’t undermine the point.”

“Oh I’m blurring the edges of the eighties and the nineties? Who was it who put a Céline Dion song on tonight’s playlist?”

“Hey now.” The boss holds up a warning hand. “I will not accept any bad-mouthing of Céline in this establishment.”

“I’m not bad-mouthing, I’m just pointing out that she’s not very eighties.”

“Have you never heard of Eurovision? Do you just know Céline from Titanic and that’s it?”

“Which one is Céline?” Leah asks.

The boss acts affronted, and Michel laughs. “The only French woman singer on this playlist,” Michel says.

Leah runs back through the songs she’s heard so far. “Is she the one who sounds like someone is shaking her by the shoulders whenever she hits a high note?”

Michel cackles. “No, no,” he waves a finger, grinning ear-to-ear. “I think you mean she’s the one who sounds like someone is punching her chest every time she hits a high note.”

“That could be it too,” Leah says with a shrug, then pulls back as she sees the boss shaking his head bitterly and glaring at the two of them.

“Inacceptable. Absolument inacceptable. Retournez au travail, vous deux.”

Michel laughs and turns back to the bar. Leah continues cleaning, getting ready to start the pre-closing tasks.

I’ll never be fully caught-up on the happenings of this world, she reflects, shuffling boxes of beer around to get to a blocked shelf. I think it’s the whole ‘global’ thing that Mary was talking about. People can get real-time updates on every event, all over the world. I’m still not entirely sure how big the world is, here. Or even just Quebec. I don’t know how many kilometres the Gulf is, exactly. I know Meredith used to talk about borders and distances and stuff, but my mind always wandered when she did.

A little twang of pain as she thinks of her teammates. Gods, if they could see me now. I think they’d be impressed. Well, scandalised, but impressed.

I think Meredith would like this place. I don’t think I could convince her to join me, but it might be nice to have someone I could talk to without having to censor every other word. Heh, what a change. Didn’t I want to leave because I was tired of lying? Now I’ve just been lying more and more…and in much more ridiculous and entertaining ways, but also more serious ways…

Leah slows down, an odd feeling in her head. She puts down the box of beer before she drops it, frowning in thought. Something is tugging at her attention.

The school shooting…the Plains of Abraham…World Wars…learning to skateboard with my older cousin…casting my first vote in an election…snowball fights in the schoolyard…the BLM protests…graduating high school…sneaking out to the bleachers to kiss my science tutor…my uncles getting into an argument about separatism…the first time I landed a back flip…catching frogs in the creek bed…watching clouds from the high-summer hayfields…the quarantine years…getting drunk for the first time at a barn party…Brexit…the American coup…signing my apartment lease…

What’s going on?

Leah opens her eyes. Her head aches, and she had at some point fallen to her knees. The images flutter away as quickly as they’d arrived, jumbling together and then fading entirely.

“Leah?” someone calls from the staircase leading up to the main floor. “Is there no more mop-soap left? We’re due for another order soon, but there should be one more box left, right at the back somewhere.”

She stands up on shaky legs. “Yeah, I see it,” she says, reaching for the cardboard box.

“Peut-tu remplir la chose toi-même? Il y a un petit rush en haut…”

“Pas’d’problème,” she says, then freezes.

“Merci,” the boss says, heading back up. The footsteps on the stairs stop, and he doubles back down, pushing open the door to the stock room. “You really are a quick learner, eh?”

Leah stares at the white box in her hands. The French writing blurs and fades into nonsense letters, and she turns to the boss with a shrug. “So it would seem.”

He gives her a thumbs-up and returns to the bar. Leah looks at the box carefully, then goes to refill the mop-fill station.

*

At the end of the night she waits around, saying goodbye to all the girls, even giving a quick ‘bonne soirée’ to all the French girls

“Ah, tu apprends le français finalement?” one of them says, a bright-blue-eyed girl, barely reaching up to Leah’s nose when she’s not in her heels. “Le trouves-tu plus ou moins facile que l’arabe?”

“Elle ne parle pas arabe, Christine,” another girl says censoriously. “Arrêtes de stéréotyper des gens.”

“Mais elle vient de l’Afrique?” the first girl says in confusion, running to catch up to her friend.

“Et c’est quelle espèce de question stupide, ça? Le français c’est bin plus similaire à l’anglais que l’arabe.”

Leah watches them go, not following but learning to appreciate the sound of the language. They speak it far back in the throat, but it doesn’t sound garbled or phlegm-y. It’s quite nice, actually. I look forward to being able to talk like that.

“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout?” Gloria says, twisting her hair up into a ponytail.

“Life,” Leah says with a warm grin. “Who I am in the world. Where I’m going. How long I’m gonna be here.”

“Well so long as you’re talking about old age, and not immigrating somewhere else,” Gloria says, with a suddenly concerned look.

“Oh God no, I’m not talking about moving away,” Leah says. “I mean just…I feel really grateful to be here, and yet sort of overwhelmed.”

“Was Morocco so bad?”

“It’s not Morocco…it’s so much more complicated than that.” Leah sighs and turns to her with a smile. “So no girls’ night this weekend?”

Gloria shrugs. “There’s only so much wine and crying I can stand before it gets old. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll want one in maybe another week, but for now some downtime is good.”

“Oh mood.” Leah laughs a bit. “So you’ve got nothing on for tomorrow?”

Gloria stops, with her hand twisted around the elastic holding up her hair. “Oh?”

“Oh?”

“No, don’t let me stop you.” She beams and continues putting up her hair, her eyes crinkling around the sharp black line of eyeliner from her stage makeup for the night.

“Because if you’ve got nothing on, I do still owe you for those burgers. I don’t know what sort of food you usually like, but I could try to make something palatable…”

“Oh we’re skipping right over the ‘go out to a restaurant’ part and jumping in at the ‘you cook me dinner at home’ part?”

“Well, at your home or mine, whichever, but – ”

“Have you got roommates?”

“No?”

Gloria smirks. “Your place then.”

“Alright. You’re good with lamb?”

“Oh-ho!” Gloria raises an eyebrow and purses her lips. “Really going all-out, aren’t we?”

Leah blushes a tiny bit, uncertainly. “Of course, if you’d rather something cheaper, I can make some nice peasant food dishes…”

Gloria lifts Leah’s chin and tilts her face up. “Spoil me if you will. God knows it took you long enough to act.”

Leah tries to form an intelligent response. “Great. Tomorrow?” she manages.

“Tomorrow night? What time?”

“Uh…s…seven?”

“Seven’s good,” Gloria grins and lets go of Leah’s face. “Should I bring a red or a white? Or mead?”

“What?”

“Well if you’re making me supper, I’ll bring the drinks. I’ll find a bottle of that mead, it was nice. Would probably pair nicely with red meat, too.”

Leah nods distractedly. “Yeah. Yeah it would.”

Gloria’s cheeks are too coated with foundation to show any blush that might be there, but Leah thinks she can feel the warmth radiating from them even so. “Tomorrow at seven, then!”

Leah eventually remembers to breathe.