Page 139 of Spiced!

“WHY IS IT ALWAYS ABOUT THE CATTLE?” Finn shouted to the room.

“Everything,” Erik said, “is about the cattle.”

When Tyler finally left to change into shorts and a Lightning T-shirt, repeatedly promising Skyler he’d never wear FIVE HOLE again, the evening settled into something quieter.

Jacks poured.

Benji mixed.

Peter read.

Erik and Dante found each other’s orbit again, the two of them in the corner in what appeared to be a genuine conversation conducted at a volume the rest of the room couldn’t hear.

Mark was still in his booth with only a drink and the room around him, which was the bar and the family and five years of both. He looked, for the first time in a long time, like a man who wasn’t calculating anything—or necessarily mourning anything either.

At some point, the crowd thinned naturally in the way gatherings did when they’d given everything they had and were ready to let the night close. Skyler and Jacks left first, with Jacks hugging everyone individually, including Mofongo. Tyler donned his trench coat and followed, the coat hem still too short, but thankfully no longer hiding only a Speedo. Erik left last of the hockey contingent, pausing at the door to exchange something with Dante that involved no more than four words and appeared to satisfy both of them completely.

With the Lightning boys gone, the room quieted considerably.

Benji did his closing routine behind the bar, the methodical end-of-night inventory he ran the same way every time, even in the wake of a private event. The room had whittled itself down to the Barbacks core with Finn and Chase at one table, Mark in his corner booth, and Dante at the door. Rod leaned through the pass-through, watching the evening end. Adrian sat beside me, close, the way he had all night.

Mark stood slowly, picked up his empty glass, and walked it to the bar.

He passed the door on the way back.

Dante looked up from his book.

They stood there for a moment. It wasn’t long or dramatic, just two people at the end of a night in a bar. Except that tonight, something about the space felt different, the way a room felt different after something important had happened in it even if you couldn’t name what it was.

Mark said something.

Dante said something back.

Mark nodded once, then went back to his booth to get his jacket.

Dante watched him for a few seconds before returning to his book.

Benji, behind the bar, had gone still.

Finally, he reached into his apron pocket and produced the napkin and added one thing to it, then folded it and returned it to his pocket.

“New note?” Adrian asked.

Benji looked up and hesitated, considering for a moment, then he said something that stuck with me long after the evening ended.

“I don’t think I’m writing parts of my own story anymore. I think . . . I think my napkin may be the beginning of someone else’s.”

Chapter 38

Adrian

The week after the anniversary party was the best week I could remember having, which, for a man who had spent twenty years braced for the other shoe, was its own kind of vertigo.

We texted like teenagers. Brendan sent me a photo of Puck asleep inside a tissue box with only his tail visible, captioned, “He lives here now. I’ve accepted it.” I sent back the laughing face and a photo of a tray of quesitos. He sent one back an hour later of an empty spot on his counter where, he claimed, a quesito had briefly existed before “a crime occurred.” I accused Puck. He said Puck had an alibi. I said Puck always had an alibi; that was what made him dangerous.

None of it was hollow. That was the part I kept turning over in the good way, the way you press your tongue to a tooth that used to hurt and marvel that it doesn’t. For most of my life, easy had been a thing I manufactured, a performance I ran so that no one would look too closely and decide the real me was more than they’d signed up for.

We weren’t that. We were just easy.