FicWad

The Opinions of Others Part 4 – Joe Corelli

Joe Corelli stood in the entrance of the small stairwell which led up to his office, his large figure almost filling the wooden frame of the door. He was holding a large bunch of flowers in the way that someone else might hold onto the rotting carcass of a long dead animal and, to a casual observer, he might have appeared comical. The staff, and even the customers who glanced his way however, made a point of not making eye contact, the way in which he had flung wide the door moments before had been indication enough that he was not in one of his better moods.

An unsettled hush filled the busy bar area as Joe’s dark eyes scoured the room, looking for one person in particular. One person who was noticeably, if unsurprisingly, absent from her position behind the bar.

‘Josie,’ he barked at a young waitress who jumped at the sound of her name, ‘did you pass on the message to Valentine?’

‘Err, yes Mr Corelli, of course.’

‘Then where the hell is she?’

‘Err,’ Josie looked nervously around the bar area as if hoping that Mai would appear suddenly from under a table, ‘I’m not sure. Would you like me to go and find her?’

‘Yeah, you do that and whilst you’re at it you can tell her that if she’s not in my office in one minute she can find herself a new job,’ he turned on his heel and stomped loudly up the stairs carelessly bashing the bunch of flowers against the banister as he did so.

He walked into his office and slammed the door. Then, after a moment’s thought, he opened the door again hoping that the sound of high heels on bare wooden stairs would allow him enough of a warning to be able to affect the required level of anger at her behaviour.

Getting flowers sent to the bloody bar, who the hell did she think he was, a sodding florist? He slammed the flowers down on his desk causing a small flurry of delicate petals to rise into the air. He knew full well that it wasn’t one of the customers, none of them would be so stupid as to get flowers delivered - plus, they really weren’t that type of clientele.

Joe looked again at the small attached envelope and the fact that it hadn’t been properly sealed, just tucked into itself so that it would take no effort at all to take a quick look at the card and then put it back without anyone being any the wiser. It was something he’d been wanting to do for the last ten minutes and partly explained his irritation and impatience. Someone had sent flowers to Mai Valentine along with a small box that made an intriguing rattling noise, and Joe was itching to know who it was.
He walked over to the small window which overlooked the alleyway to the back of the building and began tapping irritably on the frame. Not for the first time he contemplated whether he had made the right decision in hiring her. Sure she was sassy, fun and good with the customers but she was also very difficult to control, had her own interesting opinions on what constituted as hard work, and came with enough emotional baggage to keep the JFK luggage handlers occupied for a week.

Which, of course, was the crux of the matter.

She’d turned up at his office some months ago now to ask for a job. No, that wasn’t right, Joe recalled with a slight smile, she’d turned up to tell him that he was going to give her a job, the fact that he was fully staffed had not caused her a moment’s hesitation as she’d proceeded to tell him why giving her a job would be such a wise move on his part. She’d almost made it sound like she was doing him a favour.

It was the type of ballsey behaviour that he was well accustomed to by now but, at the time he’d been rather taken aback and he remembered feeling torn between being impressed or being annoyed.

She had talked at him for about ten minutes before he was finally able to fully impress upon her that he had no job for her to do even though, he had been forced to admit, her qualifications and experience meant that she was almost certainly capable of doing any job at the bar – including his own.

He had walked to the door, explaining as he did so that he would keep her details and would call her if anything came up. He even offered to put her name forward to some of the other bar owners in the vicinity although, even then, he had doubted that they would have thanked him for unleashing her upon them.

It was when he had stood, holding open the door, waiting for her to get up out of the chair she had made herself so at home in, that he had realised that something wasn’t quite right.

Instead of the bright and cocky smile she’d worn all through the ‘interview’ the woman was now frowning. At first he had thought she was angry and he’d felt a wave of irritation thinking that he had been more than generous to her considering the fact that she had turned up uninvited, but then, as they continued to stare at one another, he had realised that it was something different. She wasn’t angry, she was worried.

It was then that she had started to really talk. The confident swagger left her completely as she seemed to almost physically shrink down into the chair that she was sitting in. In a voice that had changed abruptly from the chirpy, flirtatious tone she’d been using only moments before she had told him about her last proper job. A job where she had been successful (the blank honesty of the statement had contrasted with the boastful nature of her previous talk) and had made good money but where she had been forced to leave in a hurry. She had told him about the broken contract and some money she’d taken; money that was rightfully hers but which her previous boss wanted back. She told him about the places she’d worked in over the previous few months and how it always seemed to be the way that her past inevitably caught up to her and when people found out who she was they didn’t want anything to do with her.

‘Who are you?’ Joe had asked then, intrigued, despite himself, by her story. ‘And, without wanting to be too blunt, what has this got to do with me?’

‘I’m Mai Valentine,’ she had stated simply.

‘Yes, but – ‘

‘I am – was – a top ranking player in the world of Duel Monsters. Until recently I worked under the stage name of Madam Butterfly duelling for the Icarus Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.’

Joe had sat up, surprised by the sudden inclusion of a place he knew all too well. ‘The Icarus?’

‘Yes.’

‘So the guy you screwed over – or who thinks you screwed him over –‘

‘Was Frances Corelli – your brother.’

That had been the clincher of course. The two Corelli brothers had long been locked into a bitter rivalry due to the fact that Frances – or Frank to most people – had managed to gain total control of the family’s Icarus hotel chain, gradually marginalising Joe’s role almost from existence. Or, as Joe would put it ‘The thieving son of a bitch scammed me out of my inheritance’. Not that Joe would often talk about it. In fact, before Mai’s appearance on the scene, Joe had managed not to speak or even hear his brother’s name for a number of years. It was therefore out of a combined sense of responsibility towards Mai but mostly a deep desire to piss off his older sibling that Joe had consented to give Mai the job at his bar.

Even now the thought of it made him smile but, when he heard the tell tale sound of someone walking up the stairs, he quickly changed his expression to one of stern anger as he turned to face the door.

He needn’t have bothered. As Mai strode into the room, without bothering to knock or even hesitate at the door’s entrance, she just grinned at him, seemingly completely oblivious to his mood.

‘Hey hon, Josie said you wanted to see me?’ she threw herself down in the chair across from his desk and stretched out into its worn leather, looking completely at home.

‘Yeah, twenty minutes ago,’ he snapped. ‘It’s not on Mai, you need to treat me with a bit more respect. I’m doing you a big favour letting you work here, remember?’

Mai sat up straight and raised her eyebrow at him and Joe could tell that any number of retorts were going through her mind. In the end, however, she just smiled slightly and relaxed back into her seat.
‘Whatever,’ she said dismissively, ‘don’t you want to know what I’ve been doing?’

‘What you’ve been doing is not the point. When I call a member of my staff to my office I expect them to come straight away, not wait half an hour.’

‘Half an hour now? Huh, doesn’t time fly when you’re talking to Joshua Lambert,’ she said breezily, picking at her nails and studiously not looking at him.

Joe looked at Mai in surprise. ‘Josh Lambert? I didn’t know he was back in town?’

‘Back in town and with another of his obscenely big bonuses busting through the seams of his back pocket. The guy is clutching a new book which he tells me is ‘guaranteed’ to give him the edge in any up and coming poker game…’ Mai spared Joe a brief look, clearly feeling very pleased with herself. ‘He told me that he had been approached by Sam Vinci about a game tomorrow night at The Red House – ‘

‘Vinci?! That poaching little –‘

‘But now he’s heard about the big game we’re holding here tomorrow night with yours truly playing – obviously – then he said he’d cancel Vinci and come here instead.’

Joe grinned from ear to ear, all feelings of irritation towards Mai immediately forgotten. Joshua Lambert was a high flying businessman who felt he had a gift for playing poker – despite all the evidence to the contrary. He was arrogant and very self absorbed but his big city bonuses and consistent willingness to bring them to the playing table meant that he was always welcome in Joe’s bar.

‘Excellent – shouldn’t be too hard to set up a game for tomorrow. As soon as everyone hears he’s back in town they’ll be queuing up to join the table.’

‘I’m forgiven then?’ Mai said with a knowing smirk on her face.

‘Huh? Oh, yeah, you should have said that’s what you were doing – I would have understood.’

‘Mmm. So, why did you want my company so badly anyway?’

‘Oh, right, yeah, these flowers came for you,’ Joe reached across the desk and picked up the flowers trying to ignore the leaves and petals that showered around him as he passed them over to Mai.

‘Wow, what the hell happened to these? It looks like you’ve been trying to feed them through your paper shredder,’ she said as she took hold of the wilting bouquet and took the small card from the packaging.

‘Yeah, um, they were delivered like that – I had a word with the delivery boy.’

Mai carefully laid the flowers back on the desk and opened the small envelope, smiling as she read the message.

Joe looked at her expectantly but, when it became obvious she wasn’t about to share the contents with him, he reached back across the desk to the small package. He held it for a moment, waiting for Mai to look up but, despite the message being quite short, it seemed to have fully engrossed her. He looked down at the small box in his hands and surreptitiously lifted a corner.

‘Jesus!’ Joe jumped backwards, letting the box fall from his hands back onto the desk. The lid fell clear to reveal a small dead bird inside.

‘Christ almighty Mai. Who have you pissed off this time?’

‘Serves you right for being nosey,’ Mai said calmly even as she picked up the box and looked at it curiously.

‘What does the card say?’

She handed it to him and he read aloud, ‘”I’ve found you”?’ he looked up at Mai, his expression incredulous. ‘And you’re not worried by this?!’

She was reaching into the small box where she could see a second small card tucked away down the side.

‘Mai,’ Joe’s voice was suddenly serious, ‘you don’t think that my brother – ‘

‘No,’ Mai smiled warmly at his concern, ‘it’s not his style is it. Anyway, the card’s signed.’

Joe relaxed slightly and looked again at the card noticing the small scribble in the bottom right corner. ‘”S.K.”? You realise that probably stands for Psycho Killer.’

‘Joe, that would be PK.’

‘Not if his spelling is as bad as his gift choice,’ Joe muttered before setting aside the card and looking towards Mai. ‘What does the other card say? “I’ll kill you in your sleep”?’

Mai laughed and handed him the second card.

‘”The flowers are from me, the bird is courtesy of Nomi.” Nomi?’

‘It’s Japanese,’ Mai explained taking the card back off him and looking at it with an expression of fondness, ‘roughly translated it’s ‘flea’.’

Joe looked at her blankly for a moment before the realisation came over him. ‘Flea? That mangy cat?’

‘Yep.’

‘So you managed to offload it on someone then?’

‘Yep.’

‘No wonder they’re sending you threatening notes,’ Joe shook his head in disgust.

It was just after one in the morning when Mai stepped out of the darkened bar and into the light drizzle of the cool evening air.

Shivering slightly she pulled her purple denim jacket more tightly around her and rubbed her hands together for warmth. She had made the decision to leave the flowers, or the battered remains of them, in Joe’s office. It seemed a shame but Joe had already promised her replacements, supposedly to thank her for her good work regarding Josh Lambert but more likely, Mai felt, to make up for the guilt he felt for having mutilated them in the first place. She didn’t for one minute buy the idea that Seto would have ordered a substandard delivery driver and anyway, Mai could always tell when Joe was lying – a useful tool when she regularly played him at poker.

The bird had been given an unceremonious burial in the large trash can in the alleyway behind the bar. She doubted if even the most romantic and sentimental of women would have kept that as a keepsake. The two cards though were tucked safely into her inner jacket pocket alongside the pack of cards she carried with her as a matter of habit. It was ridiculous that such small rectangles of card with so little writing on them could make her feel so good but just their presence was making her feel slightly giggly and, not for the first time, she found that she had to remind herself that she wasn’t a lovesick schoolgirl.

Jamming her hands into the confines of her tight black jeans she lowered her head and was about to begin the tedious walk home when she heard the sound of a car door open and, a moment later the sound of a familiar voice calling her name.

She looked up to see a man climbing out of a sleek black car. The man was tall and slim; statuesque in his posture. In the dim light of the streetlamp she could just make out that he was smiling and, before she could stop herself, she smiled in return.

He really has found me, she thought contentedly as she began walking slowly across the road. Took him long enough!