When the bar’s owner arrived at 11:30 the next morning, she found Ranma sitting on the sidewalk waiting for her. She’d already been there for nearly a half an hour; there was too much riding on a good first impression for Ranma, and there was no chance she was going to be late. Besides, she didn’t have much else to do anyway.
The elder woman laughed, reaching toward the glass door with her key in hand. “You’re early. Don’t worry, we’ll train that out of you.” She wore a black leather jacket, her salt-and-pepper hair cascading just past the shoulders of it. She really was pretty, especially given her age. Ranma understood how she had been so successful in the entertainment business. The door sprung open with a click. “C’mon in. There’s a spot in the back where you can leave your bag.”
Ranma picked her backpack up from the stoop and pushed through the blue saloon door separating the bar area from the kitchen and back rooms. The back of the house was broken up into several small rooms. To her right, a closed door proclaimed itself to be the management office. To her left, there was a locked closet with a glass door. Ranma could see hundreds, maybe thousands, of liquor bottles inside. This must be their stock area, she thought. The walls were lined with posters for bands and bar products, with the occasional note for the staff.
Moving down the hallway, she found a passage on her right leading to a narrow staircase up to the second floor. Beyond that, a small industrial kitchen expanded in both directions. The back wall was equipped with a commercial cooktop and oven, two microwaves, and a bank of deep fryers behind a stainless steel prep counter lined with dry ingredients. A walk-in refrigerator with a large steel door dominated the wall to the right. The place was spotless. As she wandered back toward the front of the house, she found a little alcove to her right with a few coats hanging in it and a broom and mop leaning against the wall. Doffing her backpack with a groan and propping it precariously in the cramped little space, she cracked her neck loudly as she walked back to the front.
“Hey there, kiddo! You ready to get started?” The bar’s owner waved to Ranma from the center of the room, where she was refilling a napkin dispenser on one of the large round tables.
Ranma nodded eagerly, putting on a bright smile. If I’m gonna have to do this, I’m gonna do everything I can to be good at it. I can’t afford to screw this up. “Yes, ma’am! Where do you want me?”
The middle-aged woman in the black leather jacket gave Ranma an easy smile of reassurance. She could see the nervousness in her new employee’s face, however much the kid might have been trying to hide it. “Alright! Over in those metal bins there on the bar, you’ll find a bunch of lemons and limes. We need to get those cut into quarters, and then the oranges there into thinner slices. You think you can handle that?”
Ranma picked up a long, slender knife from the bar, spinning it in her fingers with a dexterity only a lifelong martial artist could muster. “I guess I can take a crack at it.”
The woman shook her head and laughed. “Alright, smartass, I get the point. Let me know when you’re done; I’ll be in the kitchen getting the prep table set.” With one foot through the double doors, she stopped. “Shit, I almost forgot! My name’s Hana. Sorry about that, Ranko.”
Ranma looked up from her fruit without her hands stopping their slicing motion. “No problem. Pleased to meet you, Hana. And hey, thanks again for this.”
In less than ten minutes, Ranma had cleared the lemons and was halfway through the limes when the front door swung open with a bang and three women walked in. The first, a tallish, slender girl in her late twenties in a crimson, long-sleeved silk button down shirt and a black flared skirt, pulled off her sunglasses. Her blonde hair framed her face in a sort of bob cut that reminded Ranma a little of Nabiki. “Whoa, hey, we got a new girl!”
The second to enter was a shorter, stubbier girl in a pair of jeans and a black corset top, her shoulder-length hair braided into two pigtails and dyed a shade of electric blue that made Ranma think of the cotton candy at the Nerima fair. She looked to be the youngest of the three, though probably still four or five years Ranma’s senior. “Hey hey! Welcome aboard!”
Finally, a brunette in an orange minidress peeked out from behind the pair. She was wearing just a little too much makeup, and from the looks of it, putting it on it took the time she would have otherwise spent brushing her hair. “Mama, you here?”
The elder stateswoman of the bar popped out of the kitchen, now wearing a black vinyl dishwasher’s apron over her white tee shirt and having removed her leather jacket. “Morning, girls. Say hello to Ranko. She’ll be joining us today. Take it easy on her, huh?”
The brunette giggled. “Oh, like you did for us?”
Hana cracked a smile, scoffing slightly. “That was different. You needed a kick in the butt once in a while.”
The brunette, who looked to be in her mid-to-late twenties, made her way through the gap between the main and service bars and gave Hana a tight hug. “You know that’s right.” She turned to face Ranma with a welcoming smile. “Hey there, Ranko. I’m Izumi. Good to meet ya.” She opened a dishwasher mounted under the bar, beginning to stack clean highball glasses on the countertop.
The girl with the blue pigtails waved nervously, still standing near the doorway. “Hiya! I’m Mei.” Ranma gave her a polite smile as she bifurcated the final lime in the bin.
The blonde took a seat at the bar, looking Ranma over analytically. “Yui.” Ranma meekly turned her cheek, trying in vain to hide her black and purple eye from the girl’s examination. She extended her right hand over the bar, and Ranma wiped the fruit juice from her hands with a nearby bar towel before accepting it with her left. As she did, Yui didn’t shake her hand as much as she glanced over the raised scar jutting across Ranma’s left wrist, letting her eyes linger just long enough to hope Ranma didn’t notice her looking.
“It’s good to meet all of you. I know I’m new here, but I’ll do whatever I can to help. Just point me at whatever needs done!” Ranma did her best to smile. Yui nodded with a thin smile of her own, but her furrowed brow and pursed lips gave Ranma a moment’s pause. Is she upset about something? Did I do something wrong already?
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Mei closed the distance to the bar, smiling meekly at Ranma. “Hey, can I show you something real quick?” She extended her hand, palm up and fingers open. Nodding in understanding, Ranma flipped the knife around so that the blade was in her hand and the handle stuck out, pressing it carefully into Mei’s palm.
The cerulean-haired girl picked up an orange. “You’re doing the slices like this, which is great and all,” she said, shaving a few thin slices of fruit onto the bar. “But, if you want them to come out really pretty, try this.” She pushed the knife through the flesh of the orange again, this time rotating her wrist ever so slightly as the blade passed through it. What fell from the orange this time was not a flat slice, but a wavy, almost spiral piece of art. Mei set the knife on the bar, the handle facing Ranma. “You wanna try, Ranko?”
Ranma copied her movements perfectly - years of analyzing the moves of opposing martial artists not totally going to waste - and finished the orange with six more spirals. “How’s that?”
Mei made a show of performing a little golf clap, giggling brightly. “Look at that, girls! She’s a natural!”
While Izumi finished her pyramid of highballs and changed focus to martini glasses, Yui and Hana were huddled together in the back by the pool table. Ranma couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from their body language, she could tell that she was the subject of their conversation. It made her nervous, but she tried not to focus on it, accepting more pointers and a second pair of hands from Mei to finish the bin of garnishes for the evening’s service.
The fruit-cutting work finished, Mei slipped behind the bar, starting to pick up and inspect each bottle of liquor displayed on the shelves mounted to the mirrored back wall. If a bottle was more than half empty, she noted it on a small pad of paper she’d pulled from a drawer.
Yui and Hana walked over together, taking seats next to each other on barstools on the patrons’ side of the bar. Hana spoke first. “Okay. Obviously, we’re going to need to rearrange what everybody’s doing now that Ranko has joined us. Yui, you’re bartending, of course. Izumi, we’re going to have you on table service, with Mei running the service bar. Ranko, you’re going to do what we call bar backing tonight. Have you heard of it?”
Ranma shook her head. She’d barely even set foot in a bar before yesterday, usually only when she needed a place to duck in and use the bathroom.
“OK, “ Hana began. “It sounds simple, but it’s really not. Basically, when the place gets busy, Yui is going to be slammed three and four people deep back there. At the service bar, where Mei is, people don’t order their own drinks; she’ll be making whatever the people at the tables order through Izzi. Both of them are going to need to make drinks as fast as they can. As the bar back, your job is to make sure they don’t run out of anything they need. They won’t have time to cut more fruit, wash glasses, get ice, any of that, so they’re going to be counting on you to keep them supplied so they don’t have to slow down. They’ll let you know when they need something, but keep an eye out and try to be proactive if you can. Eventually, we’ll try you out on other jobs - I know you said you’ve waited tables before - but this is the quickest way to get you exposed to all the moving parts around here.”
Ranma nodded in understanding. “I’ll do my best,” she replied in as chipper a tone as she could manage.
The sound of a doorbell came from the back room. “That must be the grocery delivery guy,” Yui announced. “I’ll take care of it.” She disappeared back behind the blue saloon door as Mei pushed through it in the opposite direction with a large armload of full liquor bottles.
As Mei began to restock the wells behind the bar, Ranma saw that several more bottles had been pulled out from the locked storage room but not carried in and rushed to gather them, bringing them to Mei with a widening smile. I hate to admit it, but so far, this is actually kind of… fun?
A loud clatter came from the back room, followed by Yui’s frustrated voice. “Aggh! Son of a…” She burst into the area behind the bar, a mop in her hand, and Ranma cringed. The sound she heard could only have been Yui struggling to get the mop out from behind the massive backpack she’d left in the alcove. She whistled loudly as she emerged from the back. “Oi, Izzi! Can you get the floors? I’m running way behind.” Tossing the mop, Yui turned back into the narrow back area and made her way toward Hana’s office. Izumi caught the mop in mid-air and set about wetting it from a sink behind the service bar. Ranma watched the steaming water pour from the faucet in terror, silently praying her thanks that it hadn’t been her that Yui had asked.
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The rest of the afternoon was filled with instruction about cash registers and liquor names and ice machines. The girls were all fun and seemed to enjoy working together, and there were no shortage of giggles between them. Ranma blushed periodically at the realization that she’d participated in more than a few herself. At long last, the first customers began to trickle in. Ranma stood at the entrance to the back room as if she were a soccer goalkeeper, her eyes flashing constantly between all of her various areas of responsibility. Not a single glass had left the stack yet - there was no way it could be empty - but Ranma was determined to excel in whatever role she’d been assigned. Her growling stomach reminded her that her life all but depended on it.
With what must have been shocking agility in her coworkers’ eyes, Ranma darted in and out of their workspaces with ease, somehow managing to keep everything topped off despite never getting in the way of the older girls. Mei noticed the only thing she was a little slow on was washing the glasses; for some reason, she seemed to be doing everything in her power to avoid putting her hands in a sink full of warm water. Oh well, everybody’s squeamish about something, she thought to herself.
While the stage in the corner went unused, the sound system in the bar never stopped. They played a variety of pop and rock songs on an almost jukebox-like rotation, and Ranma found that the high-energy beat lent an extra spring to her step. She was glad for it, because once the rush had gotten started, it had been relentless. Ranma had only taken one break in the first few hours, and only because Hana had offered her something to eat. The way Yui looked at her as she devoured the pizza she was given made Ranma entirely self-conscious. She guessed it probably wasn’t ladylike to eat at that speed, and winced with regret at the realization that it might have been seen as impolite, but she hadn’t eaten in two days and didn’t remember the last time she’d actually been full.
At one point, Izumi went on a short break and entrusted Ranma with a few of her tables. By the time she’d returned, the patrons had finished and Ranma had already cleared the tables for the next guests. While Mei and Izumi didn’t miss an opportunity to offer her encouragement or advice, it seemed that every time Ranma looked up, Yui’s eyes were on her. She didn’t know what to make of the head bartender, or why she seemed so intent on Ranma’s every move, but it really worried her. She didn’t seem upset or anything, just intently focused on her new coworker for reasons Ranma couldn’t fathom. Ranma made it a point to smile brightly at her every time she caught her looking, in the hopes of disarming whatever might be building in her head.
Hana, meanwhile, was barely seen behind the bar. She spent most of the evening in the front of the house, welcoming guests and ensuring their needs were met. Between her frequent check-ins with Ranma to ensure she had no questions and was doing alright, she helped Izumi clear tables when she could, and carried the occasional drink when her hands were full. For the most part, she remained hands-off to see how her crew handled a Saturday night with a full complement of staff.
So far, she was fairly impressed.