CHAPTER TWELVE
The Rusty Spur was the kind of bar that had earned its name. It was a long, low-ceilinged room. The wood of the bar had been worn smooth by ten thousand elbows. The lighting was amber and merciful. Someone had strung a line of Edison bulbs along the back wall at some point and never taken them down. Freddie liked the place for the same reason he liked most things: it did not ask anything of him.
He'd arrived with Oliver at half past seven, when the crowd was already thick enough with men from the Purple Heart Ranch that the noise level had shifted from general bar murmur to something with more texture; the sound of men who had known each other in difficult circumstances finding out whether they could know each other in easy ones. Mostly, Freddie had found, they could. There was something about shared difficulty that either ruined a friendship or made it weatherproof. The men from the Ranch tended toward the latter.
He knew most of them by face now, several by name. He exchanged a nod with Kowalski, who'd been three months behind him in the program, and a brief handshake with Marcus Webb, who had the kind of easy authority that made peopleautomatically make room for him without knowing why. Freddie had had commanders like that. He'd never been one himself. He was too constitutionally resistant to being the person everyone looked at.
He and Oliver found stools at the end of the bar, away from the loudest of the energy. Freddie ordered a dark ale. Oliver got whatever was on draft. For a while, they just sat. This was one of the things Freddie genuinely liked about Oliver Hartley: the man could occupy silence without feeling obligated to fill it. But Oliver's quiet had a predictable time limit.
"How's everything going?" Oliver asked.
"Fine."
Oliver nodded. He turned his glass on the bar, a slow quarter-rotation. "How's business?"
"Cart's doing well," Freddie added. "Profit margins are up from last month."
"That's good."
Freddie drank.
The bar moved around them. Someone at the pool table made a shot, and there was a brief, cheerful argument about whether it counted. The Edison bulbs caught in the glass shelving behind the bar doubled and tripled. Somewhere a song started that Freddie half-recognized.
"How's it going with Wren?"
Freddie did not choke. He came very close. He managed to redirect the impulse into a controlled swallow and then set his glass down with more precision than was strictly necessary.
"The market committee," he said carefully, "is going well."
"I meant personally."
Oliver looked at him. Oliver had a way of looking at people that communicated, without any particular expression, that he was not fooled by the answer and was not going to pretend hewas. It was, Freddie had decided, probably an asset in veterinary practice. Animals couldn't redirect with technicalities.
"Nothing's going on," Freddie said. "If that's what you're asking."
"I'm not asking if something's goingon. I'm askinghowit's going." Oliver turned his glass again. "You look at her like you're trying to memorize something. Like you're trying to drink her in before the drink is gone. But Wren strikes me as the kind of woman who sticks around."
The slide guitar swelled and settled. Someone laughed at the pool table. Freddie kept his eyes on the row of bottles behind the bar and said nothing, because what he might have said was that memorize was the wrong word, that he'd already memorized her—he'd had seven weeks and considerable proximity and a very good memory—and that the problem was not retention but transmission.
"She's easy on the eyes," he said.
"She is," Oliver agreed pleasantly. "She's also funny and sharp, and she remembers every book recommendation anyone's ever made to her and follows up on them. She's good at making you feel like your opinion matters."
"Yes." This came out flatter than he'd intended.
"I thought you thought she was interested in me," Oliver said. Not a question. He'd apparently been paying attention to things Freddie hadn't realized he'd broadcast.
"I thought—" He stopped. He picked up his mug. "You visit the shop. She seemed—I don't know. Attentive."
"I like Wren. She's great. But she's—" He considered. "She's friendship material, yeah? She's not a good-time girl, she's a long-time girl."
Freddie looked at him.
Oliver shrugged, easy and uncomplicated. "I'm looking for Ms. Right Now. Wren is looking for something that lasts. Those are different searches." He set his glass down. "Besides."
He let it sit there. Freddie waited.
"You haven't moved the cart," Oliver said.
