Sins and Secrets

[Ria Graziano]

(( Outback, very early morning January 27th. ))

It’d only been a week and a half since one Ria Graziano, half of two newly-minted managers of the famed Outback, had assumed her duties and she was still struggling with the shift in consciousness and planning. Much of the sport’s actual business came at night and one of her self-assigned tasks was to clear the area of debris and mess after the building had hosted fighting for the evening. Of course, that necessitated very late nights twice a week and, obviously, required a major adjustment to her personal schedule.

So, too, was the consideration of people staying late (as she saw her first week when she’d been on the way home). It didn’t make sense to tidy up when people were still there, after all. What all this meant was she needed to learn to allow herself a nap in the earlier part of the evening, and tonight had been a test run of such a thing. Stop by at the onset of regulation, make sure everything was calm (as much as it could be), then disappear for a little siesta before heading back to complete her rounds.

One of the first things she’d done was sync the building’s cameras to an app on her phone so she could see with greater certainty when the place had emptied for the night. Only then, after the last patron had exited, did she strike for the Outback and stride inside.

A low hum of approval rumbled in her chest as she surveyed the Outback, finding it entirely devoid of people and relatively clean to boot. Chairs scraped back from tables needed to be tucked in and the surfaces themselves didn’t require much more than a casual pass of the wet rag she’d procured from behind the bar. That was the easy work. Far harder was the task of cleaning the mats and surfaces of the rings, slimy with sweat and bodily fluids from a busy evening’s fighting.

Admittedly, though, she didn’t mind the labor.

There was a certain nostalgia, she idly mused, in being not only back at the Outback but also working at it again. It’d been well more than a decade - almost two, in fact - since it’d been a regular part of her (or any Graziano’s, really) life. Perhaps that was why, in the end, she agreed to take the job. The pay was nice but like the Arena had been the home for the rest of the family, this had been hers. Decorated and titled more than she ever could be in the Duel of Swords, this was her sport.

At least until most of them retired and settled into the daily life of children and extracurriculars and minivans… and family dinners until they got too busy and all the pizza from Tony’s place. Everyone but My had slowly stopped coming around the duels that had made them famous and moderately wealthy, and had cemented their bonds as family. Sometimes they tried to come back…. Usually when they had to for some reason or other, but they did try. In the end, though, only Myria had stuck it out and stayed in the sports. Only Myria had been left to take the mantle her older siblings had handed - the Wrecking Crew.

And Myria had been bitter as all hell that they’d abandoned her to it.

No doubt too Ria’s own accidental mismanagement of family funds had exacerbated the problems, but in the end it was her everlasting excuses that’d given My enough ammunition to remove her own sister-in-law from Wrecking Crew Enterprises. They’d eventually patched it up and life had resumed its quiet track for all of them, Ria once more softly in the fold and carefully managed by her quasi-handler Jason. Her appearances in public had become fewer and far between and he simply hadn’t been necessary anymore.

Until now.

The dark-haired woman carved tracks through her shoulder-length waves with the fingers of one hand as she took herself to the bar and then behind it. The job obviously meant a return to the public eye - to mass scrutiny, no less. Hands moved carefully over the bottles, shuffling and replacing them, ensuring the bar would be fully stocked for Sunday, when they’d be open next. Gin, bourbon, and a million specialty wines passed under her touch with no cause for concern; beers and meads and ciders in bottles proved of little interest.

The half-full container of vodka, however…

The first (no doubt of many) press conference had been stressful; not only was it her reemergence to ‘public figure’ status but it also offered to be a minefield of dark revelations from her not-so-distant past. Intrepid, probing reporters might challenge the wisdom of her appointment based on any number of sins. How much confidence could she inspire as the bookkeeper in the Outback if it came to light just how badly she’d sunk the family before? Or the shame of her alcoholism. Or the… no, she wouldn’t go there. She wouldn’t even think of them, of the reason that she’d sunk so deep into the bottle for so many years. Or of how she thought she’d recovered and could have a beer once in a while… until 12 hours and one cluster of a bender later she’d realized that she should never touch another drink again. This new chance could so easily come crashing down if the wrong people knew.

She didn’t realize she’d poured the shot until the full glass was raised halfway to her lips. With a pained, frightened yelp, she slammed the thing down onto the bartop, sloshing half of the alcohol onto the wood. “Nonono,” she mumbled, shaking her head violently, the hand that held the drink close to her chest as if scalded by the clear liquid. “Shitshitshit.”

Finally she swiped a rag from the sink and cleaned her mess, flinging the remaining vodka down the sink before washing both glass and bar. She almost broke the bottle in her haste to replace it alongside its brethren. “Damnit,” Ria continued to swear, raking fingers through her hair again haphazardly. Her other hand drew out her phone and she jabbed it with a thumb, quickly dialing a number.

One of the perks of the machine that was WRCE was that they could and did handle problems quietly; Ria’s little drinking problem was no different. She’d never attended public therapy or been sent to rehab; all of her programs were through discreet and private sponsors. That was who she called now.

“Yo. I need help; I gotta problem.” Hurrying away from the bar, the new manager almost ran out the double doors in her haste to get away from what she’d almost done.