Near the kitchen window, the tattooed cook was arguing cheerfully with someone about a sauce. A woman with natural hair and a septum piercing was photographing a plate of food with the focused intensity of a professional, which I assumed meant she was the Mia I’d heard so much about.
The cook had to be Rod.
And then there was Benji, always Benji, moving through the bar like he was the current and everyone else was the water, shaping the flow of the room without anyone realizing. He hadn’t seen me yet. He was too deep in it to notice a quiet man in the corner nursing a whiskey and watching.
I didn’t read the book I’d brought (yes, I brought a book because, fuck it, Ialwaysbrought a book). It stayed in my jacket pocket, untouched, for two hours.
Instead, I watched.
At some point, the cook appeared beside me with two plates and a plastic basket. He was older and solid, with kind eyes.
“Rod,” he said, setting the plate down. He’d brought brisket sliders with some kind of sauce that smelled like it had been developed over years of careful experimentation. “You’re Peter?”
“I am.”
He sat on the stool next to mine, and we ate in silence for a while. I appreciated that more than he probably knew. Rod didn’t seem to need conversation to be comfortable in someone’s company. He just sat there, steady and present, watching the bar with the same quiet attention I was giving it.
“He’s better since you,” Rod said eventually.
I looked at him. “What? Who? What do you mean?”
“You let him be quiet.” Rod took a bite of his own slider and chewed thoughtfully. His accent was Colombian or Brazilian—no, Argentinian. I was close. I could feel it. “People don’t do that for him. They want the show. They expect the show. He gives them the show because he thinks that’s all he is, but you don’t seem like a man who wants a show.”
“I’m really not.”
“I know.” Rod stood and collected the plates. “Enjoy the whiskey.”
He went back to the kitchen without another word. I sat with what he’d said and tried to figure out what to do with it. His observation implied things about my relationship with Benji that didn’t apply. There was no relationship. No friendship. No nothing but two men and a thousand animals sharing a roof.
I wasn’t letting Benji be anything.
I was simply existing in my own apartment, maintaining my own routine, and if Benji got quieter when I was around, that was his business and not something I’d caused or intended or wanted to think about.
I thought about it anyway.
For the rest of the night.
At closing time, the crowd thinned, the music lowered, and the bar took on the intimate, exhausted warmth of a place that had done its job and was winding down.
Benji was wiping the counter with slow, methodical strokes.
Jacks was stacking chairs.
Finn was doing something with the register.
The whole scene had the quality of a family cleaning up after a holiday dinner.
Then Benji looked up and saw me. It was a miracle he hadn’t noticed me in the hours since I’d arrived, but the crowd had kept him busy.
His hands stopped on the counter.
Then his face went through a rapid sequence of expressions. I was fairly sure one was surprise, followed by confusion and something that might have been embarrassment.
Then a smile.
But this wasn’t his performance smile, not the one I’d been watching him deploy all night, bright and calibrated and aimed like a spotlight.
This was smaller and less certain.
