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Once you've been in the bar business as long as Aggie has, there ain't much that takes you by surprise anymore. She's heard enough poor pickup lines and seen enough drunk and disorderlies to last any woman the rest of her life.
But there's good in it, too. Like getting to meet all kinds of folks, from the ones just stopping in for some refreshments on their way to somewhere else all the way up to her regulars who probably ate dinner from her kitchen more often than they did their own.
And though Aggie appreciated all her customers, there were a special few that she called her favorites.
Not the least of which were the two young mutant lovebirds who’d decided to do their courting in her bar.
Remy and Rogue were in no way her most frequent regulars; she'd usually only see them once, maybe twice a month. But on those rare nights that they'd come in, what a sight they were.
They always sat in the corner booth, voices low while they talked, in a world all their own. Every so often, they'd even dance some while the jukebox spun a tune. And once or twice, Aggie had even seen them feeding each other dessert.
Those two were so sweet on each other, it'd give you a toothache just to look at ‘em.
They were strange, though, too. Aggie had known Remy for a while now, but it had taken some time before she'd gotten used to seeing him. In the early days of knowing him, he'd spooked her more than once, blowing in quieter than the wind, only for Aggie to turn around and find him seated at the bar, watching her with those eyes of his that she's certain never missed much.
And Rogue, no matter what day or month of the year, any time Remy brought her in, she'd be covered head to toe, and always wearing gloves. He'd told her that the girl was a mutant, too, and Aggie figured it must've had something to do with her skin.
But despite their idiosyncrasies, Aggie enjoyed seeing them, and on the best nights, when the place was quiet and nobody else was sitting at the bar, Remy would bring Rogue up so they could sit on the stools there and keep Aggie company.
And it was on one of those special nights that Aggie had realized just how much Remy loved Rogue.
Now, she had teased him about it on numerous occasions, but she'd always figured on it being more of a crush, nothing serious. But that night, while she'd been showing Rogue how to play Cat’s Cradle with an old piece of packing twine off some liquor boxes, she'd just happened to glance over at Remy. And he was looking at Rogue, while her fingers and gloves were all twisted up with twine, like she had hung the moon and stars.
Writ so openly on his face, it’d made her ache, made her miss when someone had looked at her like that. And reminded her of when she'd been a fool and tried to chase love from a man that was already full of it for somebody else.
And even though most times it'd be both of them, on occasion, only Remy would walk through the door. Sometimes, it'd be just like it was when she'd first met him, and they'd have a grand ol’ time laughing and telling stories.
But other times, he'd take a seat at the bar and tell her not to stop pouring him drinks until he couldn't stand on his own two feet anymore.
Those were the bad nights. And the last time that she had seen him had been one of the worst.
Aggie had cut him off eventually, worried that he'd wrap himself around a tree on his way back home.
She’d grabbed his glass and swapped it for a plate of french fries. “Here. Eat these and sober up some ‘fore you head home.”
Remy had ignored the plate of fries and dropped his head to the bar with a heavy thunk. “Don't wanna go home,” he'd muttered against the bartop.
Now, Aggie loved the man, really, she did, considered him one of her closest friends even, but sometimes the mopey heartsick teenager routine every time he and Rogue had a spat could get old. And that night, her patience had run thin, and she'd said, a little harsher than was necessary, “Well, you ain't sleeping here tonight.”
“Don't wanna go home,” he'd repeated before he'd sat up and looked at her. “There a snake in my house, Aggie, and ain't nobody got the stones to do what needs to be done,” he'd said quietly, his eyes and voice strangely clear despite the liquor.
Aggie had heard Remy say plenty of cryptic shit before, and she'd always put it down to his growing up with one foot in the swamp and all that voodoo magic, so she hadn't even been fazed.
He'd set those strange, sorrowful eyes on her and continued, “And he's got my Rogue charmed, hypnotized her like he some kind of king cobra. I'm losing her, and I don't know what to do.”
Aggie had considered a moment before she'd answered, “Well, I don't know much about cobras, but I figure a snake's a snake. You ever see yourself one of them cottonmouths we got back home?”
Remy had frowned. “A water snake? Oui. They crawling all over the swamp.”
“Saw my first one when I was just a girl. Found him in the backyard. Figure, it was middle of a drought, poor thing was just thirsty. But I was young and scared and I went and got my mama. Now, you think I'm a hard woman? Ha! She was tougher than old cowhide leather, that woman, God rest her soul. And she was pissed that I interrupted her for a snake of all things. And you know what she said to me?”
Remy had shaken his head.
“My mama handed me a shovel and said, 'It's about time you learned to cut the heads off your own damn snakes.’”
He'd sat there quiet a moment, and then he'd asked, “Did you?”
“Hell yeah, I did.” Aggie had leaned on her hands on the edge of the bar then. “So you say nobody else is willing to take care of it? Well. Maybe it's time you got the shovel, Remy.”
And he’d nodded slowly while he'd let that sink in.
Aggie had gone back to cleaning behind the bar, and she'd mostly finished by the time Remy had stood up to leave. He'd set some money on the bartop and then said quietly, “Thanks, Aggie.”
“‘Course, hon. The drinks’ll cost you, but the advice always comes free,” she'd said with a smile that Remy didn't return.
And Aggie had watched him walk out the door, in his black leather motorcycle jacket and strange boots and still in a mood.
Funny.
You never know when the last time’s gonna be that you'll get to see somebody.
If she had known that'd been their last, maybe she would've changed that little story about the snake. Told him how it had turned her stomach, watching that poor headless snake writhing on the ground. Or maybe told him what she'd learned only the day after, when she had found one of the neighborhood cats dead, one leg ballooned so big it looked like it might pop:
Even if you cut off a snake's head, it still has the venom to bite.
***
So tonight, on a slow, quiet night like tonight while Aggie’s trying to catch up on doing inventory during the downtime, when Rogue walks in all by her lonesome, dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt and a black leather motorcycle jacket that’s all too familiar, Aggie already knows something’s wrong.
‘Cause Rogue never came alone.
The girl comes to take a seat at the bar, and Aggie goes up to her.
“Remy meeting you here tonight?” she asks, trying to keep her voice chipper.
But when Rogue sets her eyes on her, dirty, cried-out eyes, eyes that’ve seen too much in a face that’s too young, Aggie knows then there ain’t a point in trying to be chipper.
She sucks in a breath. “He ain’t coming… is he?”
Rogue slowly shakes her head.
Well. Once you've been in the bar business as long as Aggie has, there ain't much that takes you by surprise anymore. Don’t mean you don’t hear shit that still breaks your fucking heart.
But she ain’t surprised in the least. Some folks, you could just tell Death dogged their steps, living too fast, living too hard. And all those times Remy had come in with strange bruises or cuts, even an inexplicable limp once, but always still that wise-cracking grin despite the shiners?
No. Aggie wasn’t surprised one bit.
She looks around at the place then. Mostly empty, but it don’t feel right discussing this at the bar like some trivial matter, like it’s just the score for the latest ballgame.
So she walks over to the front door, Rogue’s eyes on her while she flips the sign to “Closed.” Aggie turns then to address the rest of her patrons.
“I’m closing early tonight, folks. Finish what you got now, and then show yourselves out.” And she hates the way she can feel her voice threaten to break in the middle of it.
Nobody complains, thank God, nobody says a word, and Aggie returns to stand by Rogue at the bar.
“Come on. Me and you can talk in the back,” she says, reaching to take Rogue’s arm.
But the girl jerks away from her, and Aggie curses herself for forgetting. Her skin. Something’s wrong with her skin.
Rogue stands slowly, doesn’t say anything, just follows Aggie silently to her office.
Aggie pushes the door open and goes to shove papers and folders out of the chair so Rogue can sit. She slides some junk over on her desk so she can seat herself on the edge, and she looks around at her cramped office. Ain’t much, but seemed better suited for this conversation than the open bar.
The first time Remy had seen it, he’d called it her “petite war room,” and then joked that he could touch two opposite walls at the same time. He couldn’t, but the image of him standing in the middle of her office with his arms stretched wide, fingers reaching, won’t leave her at the moment.
She shakes her head and looks back at Rogue. She’s sitting quietly in the chair, staring at her gloved hands in her lap.
Aggie clears her throat, cycles through all the one-word questions in her head before settling on what she hopes is the safest one. “When?” she asks softly.
And at first, Rogue doesn’t answer, doesn’t react in any way, and she thinks that maybe the girl didn’t come to talk, she just needed somewhere to be, but then she croaks, in a voice that’s the roughest facsimile of her usual one, “Couple days ago.” And it ain’t just tears or grief that’s made it rough, sounds like fire and ash, like smoke inhalation of the worst kind.
See, Aggie had been thinking that Remy had finally done himself in on that stupid bike of his, just another careless roadside cross to litter the side of the highway, but she’s beginning to realize that whatever happened, it’s so much worse.
Rogue looks up at her then. “You hear about Genosha?” she asks hoarsely.
Oh, God... Dear God, no... “Enough.”
“We was there.”
And Aggie just closes her eyes while she brings a hand up to her mouth to stifle a sob.
In her 40-odd years, Aggie had seen a lot. Growing up in Memphis during the ‘60s, she’d seen the folks doused with firemen’s hoses or attacked with dogs, had seen the riots, had seen the city burn. She knew what fire looked like on the horizon.
But seeing Genosha on the tiny screen of the television she kept behind the bar… She’d cut it off. And anybody that’d asked to have it turned on, she’d told them it was broken. And the few whispers she’d heard at the bar, about who deserved what in this dirty, rotten world…
Ain’t nobody deserved that. Human or mutant.
Aggie takes her hand away from her mouth. “Rogue… I am so sorry,” she whispers, afraid if she speaks any louder her voice will fail her.
Rogue gives her a small, watery smile. “Me, too,” she whispers back, closer to her normal voice at the lower volume.
Aggie wants to comfort her, but even barring the girl’s skin condition, there ain’t comfort in this world for what she’s feeling. So they just sit in silence for a while in Aggie’s too-small office, hurting.
Eventually, Rogue shifts in the chair. “Funeral’s tomorrow,” she says quietly.
Aggie nods. “Here, or back home?”
And Rogue actually smiles a little. “Home. He always hated the cold.” She shakes her head. “Used to say, ‘Can take the man outta the swamp, but can’t take the swamp outta the man.’”
Aggie chuckles softly. He'd said the same thing to her once, when she'd asked him if he missed it, the way she missed Memphis some days.
Rogue hesitates a moment before she says then, “I… I ain't going.”
“Never go to ‘em myself,” Aggie says in sympathy. “Funerals are for the living anyway. Whatever's left of Remy in this world, it ain't in that box.”
It's hard for her to even think of him lying in a box, still. Remy LeBeau was never still. He'd sit at the bar fidgeting with his bottle or glass, or just tapping his fingers on the bartop, but he was always moving. To think of him, snuffed out like a candle blown…
Ain't right, that.
Rogue stares at the wall while she says, “I held him, after he… I felt the warmth fade from him, and I tried to keep him warm. He was so cold, and he always hated to be cold…”
She looks like she wants to say something further, so Aggie just sits, gives her the quiet and the space to get her words together.
“And I… We fought, right before. And I'm afraid, Aggie,” Rogue takes a deep, shuddery breath, “I'm afraid he died thinking I didn't care about him.”
Aggie sits back. Crosses her arms over her chest. “Did you love him?”
“Yes,” she says, like a confession.
“Did you ever tell him?”
And Rogue looks away. “No.”
Aggie laughs then, even as she feels the tears prickle at the corners of her eyes. “God damn you two.”
Rogue seems startled by her reaction, and Aggie sobers some.
“He ever tell you about me and him?” And when Rogue shakes her head, Aggie continues, “Figures. 'Gentlemen don't kiss and tell,’ I can already hear him saying it.”
She looks at Rogue. “Well, I kissed him. Twice. Would've done more to him if he'd been willing, but that stupid, fool-headed, good-for-nothing scoundrel of a man was so in love with you, he could hardly think straight. Was always in here moping to me about it, but he never could find it in himself to tell you.”
Rogue smiles wistfully. “He did, once. Long time ago. Kissed me, too, but it wasn't the right time, I guess, ‘cause neither one of us ever spoke about it again.”
Aggie chuckles. “He was a damn good kisser, I'll give him that much. Even if he never could put his money where his mouth was at. So to speak.”
Rogue nods, and she seems to get lost in her own thoughts for a moment.
Aggie smiles sadly and says, “Hey, Remy ever tell you about my Johnny?”
Rogue looks at her again and shakes her head.
“My ever-loving husband, Johnny.” She scoffs. “Or so I thought, till he left me for another woman a few years ago. To this day I wonder if I'd been more this or less that, if he'd still be here. That kind of thinking’s the fastest way to drive a woman crazy.” She gives Rogue a hard look. “A close second? Wondering what the dead do or do not know. Won't change a damn thing either way, hon. Dead still dead, and us left living just gotta keep on living.”
Rogue nods again and then stands to leave. She goes to the door before stopping, her hand on the handle. “Thanks, Aggie. For listening. You always been a good friend to us. Thought you'd wanna know, that's all.”
“I appreciate that, hon.” And as Rogue gets the door open, Aggie adds, “Worst part about somebody being gone is the quiet they leave behind. Nothing can prepare you for it. So when home gets a little too quiet, know that I always got a seat for you here, all right?”
“I’ll remember that.” Rogue gives her a small smile before she goes finally.
Aggie’s left sitting on the desk in her office and she scoffs to herself. Funny. In the span of about an hour, felt like the world got just a little bit colder tonight. Little less fair, little more cruel.
She stands and goes back out to the open bar area. It’s deserted, everybody cleared out like she’d asked them to, and she thinks maybe she should throw a customer appreciation party for them.
Before she loses any more of them.
Aggie goes behind the bar and gets out a clean glass that she sets on the bartop. She fetches her finest whiskey from the highest shelf and pours herself a shot.
She holds it up. “To Remy, you stupid, goddamn fool. She loved you, too.”
Tossing it back, Aggie tries to convince herself the world’s still got good in it. She thinks about Genosha, burning on her little television. It’s hard tonight, still believing in good.
She looks around the place and decides to leave her cleaning for tomorrow. She’s got a good, long cry waiting for her at home tonight.
Aggie grabs her coat and keys, turns the lights out and locks the door behind her, and walks down the porch steps to where her car’s parked in the gravel lot.
But before she gets in, she leans on the roof and looks up at the sign hanging over her bar.
Johnny’s.
And she thinks maybe it was just about time she finally changed the name of the place to her own.