"Good," she said. Her voice was rough. "I don't have a protocol for letting someone."
"We're going to be terrible at it."
"Probably." She wiped under one eye with her thumb, fast, the way you wipe a mark before anyone notices. I noticed. "Get out of the truck and come inside."
I pulled the keys and got out.
She was already on the sidewalk, digging through her bag for the bar keys. I came around the front of the truck. Her eyes came up to me standing on the curb in the suit I hated, on a street that smelled of stale beer and the river and the tail end of the biggest party in the country. She shook her head.
"You look ridiculous in that tie," she said.
"You told me I cleaned up."
"I was being generous. All you're missing is the badge and the earpiece."
"I was a fed."
"Exactly my point." She unlocked the door, pushed it open, and the smell of Proof rolled out: bourbon and wood and the ghost of last week's crowd. She looked back at me in the doorway. "You coming in or are you going to stand on the sidewalk and let me do this alone too?"
I followed her inside.
The bar was dark and cool and still. She didn't hit the overheads. The light from the street came through the front windows and caught the bottles on the back wall, amber andgold. The stools were up on the counter, the floor was swept, and the place held the particular stillness of a room that knew how to wait.
Jenna set her bag on the end of the bar and walked behind the rail and pulled down two glasses and a bottle of Blanton's without asking. She poured two fingers in each, slid one across the wood to me, and stood on her side of the bar the way she'd stood the first night I'd walked into this room.
"For the record," she said, "if you ever try to give me that speech again, I'll throw you through the window."
"You said that about the couch."
"The couch threat stands. This is a separate threat. I'm expanding the program."
I picked up the glass. The bourbon went down warm and smooth and tasted how her bar smelled. I stood on the wrong side of the counter in a suit I was going to burn the first chance I got and looked at the woman across from me and felt the last wall come down. Not with a crash. Just a settling, a building giving in when it stops holding itself up and lets the foundation take the weight.
"So," she said. "What happens now?"
"I have no idea."
"First honest thing you've said all morning."
"Second." I took a sip. "The first one was in the truck."
She looked at me across her bar in the Thursday morning quiet. Her mouth did the thing it did — the slow curve that started at one corner and built until it hit her eyes. I stood there in the light from the windows and let it hit me and didn't flinch.
"Okay," she said. "We'll figure it out."
She picked up her glass and I picked up mine and neither of us had a script. The sun came through the windows of her bar and landed on the wood between us, warm and ordinary.We drank bourbon at eleven in the morning and let the quiet be enough.
Epilogue
Jenna
THE COURTYARD WAS HALFfull on a Thursday, which three months ago would have been a good night and now was just a Thursday.
I wiped down the rail and watched Huck pull two Sazeracs for the couple at table four. He'd been doing them his way lately — a heavier absinthe rinse, a longer stir — and I hadn't said anything because they were selling and because the day I micromanaged Huck's Sazeracs was the day he walked out, and replacing a bartender who could pour four drinks at once and intimidate a room without speaking was not a project I needed.
The Mardi Gras decorations had come down in early March. I'd stripped the last of the beads off the courtyard fence myself, filled two garbage bags, and felt the bar settle back into its real shape: exposed brick, Edison lights, the stage in the corner, the bourbon wall glowing under the warm lights. Proof in its off-season was quieter and I loved it differently. The tourist tidewent out and the regulars came back and the register slowed to a rhythm I could breathe inside.
I checked my phone. Eight-forty. He'd said nine, which meant nine-fifteen, because Dane Gatlin had never been early for anything that wasn't a threat.
