"I did."
"Come in?" Sully asked.
"I can't at the moment. I haven't eaten. Practice was lighter than usual, so I didn't stop anywhere on the way home."
"Sure." He straightened off the frame. "I'll be around."
"Later, maybe."
"Yeah." The smile came back, just slightly slower than before. "Later."
***
Sully knocked at seven, and when I opened the door, he was already talking.
"— so I went to Min's on Randolph, and Min asked where you were, which means you've made an impression. That means the next time you have to compliment a dish because she is tracking you now."
He came past me holding up a bag, with his coat half off one shoulder. He set the bag on the counter before I'd closed the door.
"Drunken noodles," he said, pulling containers out and lining them along the counter. "Green curry, because you said you liked it. Pad see ew, because I like it. Love those thick noodles. Spring rolls because they had the good ones today, and I couldn't skip that."
"That's a lot of food."
"That's a lot of food for one person. Normal for two. You're an athlete. I factor in that you eat like you're training for something, and you are."
He opened the first container and handed me chopsticks. I retrieved forks from the drawer.
"Plate?" I asked.
"Sure, but let's go to the living room. We can use the coffee table as the dining table."
Sully was already gathering containers two at a time, one in each hand, heading for the living room. "I had a regular last year who spent a semester in Kyoto and came back convinced that eating off a low table is the only civilized way to do it. He called it the Japanese way. Said Americans eat too high. I told him most of the Japanese people I know own chairs, and he said I was missing the point."
"What was the point?"
"Never established. He tipped well, though, so I let him have it."
He set the containers down in a rough arc across the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the rug. I followed with the spring rolls and the last of the curry and lowered myself to the floor on the other side.
"See," he said, opening the drunken noodles. "Civilized."
"So Tomasz hired someone new. It's a kid named Devon. He's confident. Maybe too confident. He was making a mojito for a four-top, and the mint and sugar were wrong. He poured the rum like it was free."
Sully shook his head. "Nora was at the other end. She saw it and said nothing. She just walked the full length of the bar and took the shaker out of his hand mid-pour. She fixed the whole drink without looking at him, handed it back, and walked away."
"Did she say anything after?"
"Not a word. That's the Nora method. She corrects you, and that’s the end of it. You don’t argue with her."
He slurped down a noodle. I was halfway through a spring roll before he picked up again.
"Then around nine, this guy comes in. Mid-sixties at least, alone, sits at the bar. Asks me in a serious tone if we have a drink named after his ex-wife."
"A drink named after his ex-wife?"
"That's what he asked. I asked him what her name was. I thought maybe he married somebody named Margarita or Mary. He said, 'Doesn't matter, just make it complicated and expensive.'"
I laughed. "What did you make him?"
