Chapter thirteen
Pratt
Igot home just after eleven. The parking garage was quiet, with the car's engine ticking low before I turned it off. My footsteps echoed off the concrete.
Martin greeted me in the lobby. "Solid road trip."
"It works."
Inside my condo, nothing had changed.
The temperature was where I'd set it, a cool sixty-two. The counter was clear. In the corner, the lamp was still on. It was the one Sully helped me assemble while he read the instructions aloud in a documentary narrator's voice.
I'd always left lamps on timers before. This one I left on.
I set my bag down and hung my coat in the closet. Taking a glass from the cabinet, I filled it with water and drank it down.
Through the wall, I heard music. It was Fleetwood Mac, Sully's solo soundtrack.
I'd gone through three albums on the road:Rumoursin Columbus,Tango in the Nighton the flight out of St. Louis, andthe self-titled one late in Minneapolis when I couldn't sleep and didn't want the TV on.
"The Chain" moved into its second verse.
I knocked on Sully's door.
He was there in a flannel shirt, sleeves pushed up to the elbow. His hair was longer than when I'd left, long enough that it had started to curl where it met his collar.
He stepped into me before I could say anything, wrapping me in a hug. I kissed him. His lips and tongue were exactly as I remembered.
"Well, hi," he said.
"Ten days. Over."
He pulled back and looked at me, a full read.
I'd spent parts of the trip trying to reconstruct how his smile arrived. The left side came first, and then the right. I hadn't gotten it right, but there it was.
"Come in," he said and stepped to the side.
I stopped a few feet inside, the door swinging shut behind me. Fleetwood Mac continued to play.
Sully was already moving toward the kitchen. He had coffee ready and handed me a mug without asking.
I joined him on the couch, sitting close.
"Okay, so yesterday," he said, turning toward me, one knee up on the cushion. "Table of eight. It was eight people who clearly knew each other; all ordered separately in no logical sequence, and then they were annoyed when the food didn't come out at the same time. Like the kitchen has a psychic link to their social dynamic."
"Did you tell them that?"
"I told them the kitchen works in courses, not friendships, and somehow that satisfied everyone." He took a sip. "Nora thinks I have a gift. I think I have a very high tolerance for the chaos that people generate."
He moved into the next story without pausing.
"Speaking of Nora, she invented a new cocktail two weeks ago. On the fly, for a customer who kept saying she wanted something that tasted like a vacation but also an apology." He gestured with his mug. "Nora made it, and the woman loved it. Asks what it's called. Nora looks her dead in the eye and saysThe Nora. Named it after herself. Right there."
"Is it on the menu?"
"It's on the menu. Tomasz tried to push back, and Nora said,Tomasz, the customer named it,and he accepted that because what are you going to do?" He laughed. "We've sold three a night ever since."
