Chapter Seven: Under the Microscope at the Club

As it turns out, Janae insisted she tail me to the wild party lands of Pasadena after the shoot wrapped up. She drove in a brand-new model SUV with dulled windows. I didn’t even know tinted windows were legal in Cali, but there was one right in front of my eyes. I dared not try to shake her, afraid that she would dive out of her vehicle and tackle me. She could do it, too; she was built like a tank.

At her prompting, I pulled over into a nightclub of sorts. Some kind of neon-inflected dance place.

The SUV parked opposite my sleek spot. Janae hoisted herself out of the driver’s seat, feet sailing through the air.

“Where’s Yuki?” I asked.

“Miss Yuki is being escorted home by a B-team,” Janae said all matter-of-factly. “My shift is over. There are up to three teams ensuring the principal’s well-being from the moment she touches down on this continent to the moment she leaves. I’m just the head of team A.”

That was more information than I’d expected to receive. So Janae wasn’t a single super-bodyguard. She worked a shift like anyone else.

“Ah, well, I kind of assumed you stayed in that big fancy mansion,” I admitted.

“There’s a whole wing reserved for the security team during the night shift,” Janae said.

I looked at the building we’d parked in. Its sign beckoned in fancy neon, quite a contrast with the boring suburbs at the edge of the foothills.

“Kind of surprised the HOA allows this,” I muttered.

“Go on in,” Janae said with a gruff tone.

“Okay, okay,” I said, hands up.

+++

I was frog-marched into a surprisingly busy club. Janae was right behind me, still in her tight and functional suit. She unsubtly nudged me towards a booth.

“Hello, is this your first time here?” a bubbly waitress asked. “It’s couples night.”

“We’re not a couple,” said both Janae and me simultaneously, with annoyance on her part and befuddlement on mine.

The waitress subtly slipped us two menus and the couple's joint drink menu, then slunk off.

As it turned out, this was more of a Dave and Buster’s type of affair. There was a restaurant and an adjacent party-type dance floor situation. Despite the clubgoing atmosphere, most people were here for the restaurant.

“Go ahead and order,” Janae said, not even looking at the menu.

“Uh… how about some cheese sticks?” I asked.

Janae frowned skeptically. “Order a drink.”

“Oh. Right.” I ordered something alcoholic when the waitress saw fit to return.

“A Dirty Shirley?” Janae raised an eyebrow.

I made a noncommittal gesture. “I seldom drink.”

For her part, the bodyguard ordered a fancy-sounding brandy, high proof.

Awkward silence ensued. Why had Janae dragged me out here? She couldn’t arrest me. And drinks weren’t the kind of thing you’d treat a potential criminal to anyway.

“I’ve got my eye on you,” Janae said just before the drinks arrived.

I stealthily put in a separate thing of cheese sticks on my tab. A long day of food delivery could make anyone hungry.

“You’ve delivered to Miss Yuki at least three times now.” Janae took a massive swig, then gasped as she slammed the drink back on the table. “Months of burner accounts, wasted. How did you find out that Miyu was a celebrity client?”

“I mean, that first delivery was to a mansion,” I said with a shrug. “That wasn’t too hard to figure out.”

Janae took another, more measured sip as she acknowledged my answer.

“And you picked up our second order, just like that?” she asked.

There weren’t very many delivery drivers scoping out the airport, specifically. It was entirely within the realm of possibility that I would have happened upon multiple orders from the mysterious J-pop starlet by pure happenstance. I didn’t mention that I had access to an elaborate series of filters to snipe their orders right out of the digital ether.

Janae ordered another drink or two as the night wore on. I continued to sip on the Dirty Shirley. I didn’t even like this kind of drink, but heard about it in a book, once. Questions grew more… pointed. Questions about my daily habits. How often it was I got a repeat order—basically never, really.

“I am not either homeless,” I protested. “I’m… nomadic. Have a P.O. box and everything. Just pop around different places seasonally. Rolled into town a few months ago.”

Janae was by now halfway through drink number three.

“Mmmm. I’m relatively new to town, too,” she said.

“Oh?” I arched my eyebrow. “Let me guess: Texas? No, Oklahoma.”

“Impressive,” Janae said.

She didn’t use much in the way of regional slang. But there were a few tells in her drawl. For a city the size of LA, it was common to hear accents from all over. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard anyone with the stereotypical valley girl type accent since I started delivery driving.

“Well, then, mister delivery driver.” Janae disposed of all table manners and leaned over with her elbows on the table. “Where are you from, then?”

“Uh, many different places? Spent most of last summer and fall near Seattle. Spring and summer were spent in New England, and then winter was spent in Florida. Went up to Alaska once.”

The club section of this establishment started playing some pop ditty from a recent movie. It was oddly distracting and out of place. That’s a song reserved for AMVs and TikTok edits, not the dance floor. You put that song away, random DJ.

There was no DJ to complain to, alas. The whole playlist was probably contained on somebody’s phone hooked up in the kitchen. Maybe they were even just streaming directly from YouTube.

“They’ve been filming you too, y’know?” Janae blurted out suddenly.

“Oh? Who?”

“That director, one with the French name, don’ remember,” she slurred the longer she kept up a full sentence. “He’s been filming the interactions where Miss Yuki picks up her orders from you.”

I sat up in my seat, surprised. “Is that so?”

Janae only nodded, then made for her drink again.

“Gimme another!” she said to the nearest waiter.

“Maybe that’s not the best idea,” I suggested.

Despite coming in here to interrogate me, I realized, Janae herself was actually in a perfect position to slip up and answer some questions herself.

“Sooo, about you and Yuki,” I probed.

“What about who and what?” Janae asked.

“It’s just that there’s a small but dedicated sect on the internet that assumes you make out all the time.”

“Pshaw~” Janae said. “The internet will put two people together who only ever stood two feet from each other. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Guess not,” I said, taking one last sip of the Dirty Shirley.

I wanted to double back to ask about why the director guy was filming my interactions with Yuki, but Janae hopped out of the booth before I could do so.

“C’mon and dance, delivery boy,” said the bodyguard.

I pointed ineffectually at my chest. “Wha? Me?”

“Who else?” Janae slurred. “Shut up and dance, or I’ll have you blacklisted from the set.”