“Hm.” He drinks his coffee. This is Walt expressing a complete opinion.
I go behind the bar and start the morning inventory. Walt stays where he is at the far end, his usual position.
After a few minutes, he says, without a discernible inflection, “Been thinking about the deed.”
I look up. “The deed.”
“My name’s on it. Been on it for twenty-six years.” He turns his coffee mug in a slow circle. “I’m sixty-eight. The bar runs itself at this point, which is to say, you run it and I watch you run it and occasionally I say something about the Grim Dark order.You pay me a percentage of revenue until we’re square. The bar makes enough. We can do it formal when the time is right.” A pause. “A male who’s just passing through doesn’t need to own anything.”
I’m still.
“A male who’s staying,” Walt says, “needs something to stay for.”
He finishes his coffee, sets the mug in the rack, and picks up the delivery manifest again. The subject is closed in the way Walt closes subjects, not ended, just returned to wherever it lives until the other person is ready for it.
I finish the inventory.
I don’t say anything because I don’t have anything to say that is ready to be said. But I file what he said in the place where I put true things. I work the bar through the afternoon with the melody turning over in the back of my head.
Grulk arrives at 6:15, which is forty-five minutes before the doors open, because Grulk does not experience the concept of closing time or opening time or any time that differs from Grulk time. I hear him before I see him, the distinctive carrying volume of a HammerFall orc who has decided to share his current interior state with the surrounding zip code.
“Kragen.” He drops onto a stool. “I heard a rumor.”
“You hear a lot of things,” I say. I put the Grim Dark in front of him, and he wraps a hand around the glass without looking at it.
“About you,” he says. “And a certain instrument maker.” His expression is one I have seen before. It is the expression of a male who has information and considers that information to be a gift he is now presenting to you. “I heard you went to dinner.”
I wipe down the bar. “Where did you hear that?”
“Delia. Or someone who knows Delia. The precise chain is not important.” He waves a hand. “What is important is that I am very happy about this.” He says this with the volume and sincerity of a male announcing something at a civic event. “I have been hopeful, Kragen. I told you. I said: this one. I knew.”
“You knew nothing,” I say. “You guessed.”
“Iknew.” He is immovable on this point, as he is on all points. “How did it go? Tell me about the dinner. Tell me everything.”
“The chicken-fried steak was exceptional.”
“And after the chicken-fried steak.”
“The pie was also good.”
Grulk stares at me. “Kragen.”
“The crust in particular. Flakey.”
“Grulk.”
“—and what it says about her that she said yes—”
“Grulk.”
He stops. Looks at me. I look at him.
“It went well,” I say.
His face opens, wide, warm, unrestrained. Like Grulk. “Good,” he says. “Good.” He lifts his glass. “To the perfect gift and its obligations. And to chicken-fried steak.”
“Don’t,” I say.
