***
Carver's at four-forty on a Saturday ran at half-volume. The ice machine cycled audibly in the back corner. I heard a pan set down hard through the swinging kitchen door, and then someone laughed at the start of a story.
Tomasz had already tuned the TVs above the bar to an Ironhawks pre-game show with the sound off. A man at the rail had begun the long, slow project of nursing a club soda.
I tied my apron and went straight to work.
Nora was on the floor side of the service rail, working through credit slips with a pencil tucked behind her ear, doing math in pen. She didn't look up when I passed her. "You got some sleep."
"I did."
"That's dangerous."
"Unprecedented, even."
Nora capped her pen and set it down. "Sullivan."
"Don't."
She tasted her coffee and made a face. "You haven't told him."
"Not yet."
She nodded slowly.
"He needs to know."
"I've got a shift to run."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the one I've got."
She held my eye for a beat longer. "You're managing him."
I'd built three rebuttals to her first sentence on the way to work. None of them survived face to face, and I had absolutely nothing for the last charge.
By six, the room was nearly full. By six-thirty, Nora was behind the bar with me on the second well, and we'd dropped into the silent two-person choreography we ran in a busy room.
I reached for the gin when her hand was already on it. She asked for tonic, and I'd already poured it for her. We hadn't said a word in twenty minutes when she spoke at the soda gun, voice pitched low for me alone.
"If he comes in tomorrow and asks me why you were at my place, I'm not lying for you."
"I'm not asking you to."
"You will be, if you don't go home and tell him."
"I know. That's why I will."
Above me, the bar TVs were ready for puck drop. Three guys sat at a desk above the ice, the rink lit behind them. A clock counted down in the corner.
I built a Manhattan and focused on the bar.
Tomasz turned the sound up at puck drop. Loud enough to hear at the bar but not carry out into the room.
A reporter from a local TV station had set up near the door with a cameraman and a handheld light, working the room for pre-game color. Carver's wasn't a random choice. It had tipped over sometime in the last couple of months to be the bar where Ironhawks players turned up.
Heath and Kieran appeared at least once a week, and Varga was around whenever he wanted to be seen. Other players rotated in frequently. On a Saturday night with the team at home, the reporter wouldn't run out of material. I watched her walk a mic over to the four-top nearest the door. The light came on. A guy in a home jersey leaned in to say something he began rehearsing when he saw the TV crew.
