Page 77 of Spiced!

Does it have a name, your good week?

“Abuela.”

“I’m only asking. When you were small, you got this exact voice about a boy in your class named Héctor, and then you did not speak to me for a month when I mentioned it. I have learned. I am being—” She searched for the English, found it, and deployed it like a blade. “—chill.”

“You are the least chill woman in the Western Hemisphere.”

“Bring him Sunday,” she said, and hung up, because she had gotten what she called for, before I had said a single thing, which was the whole trick of her, the thing that had frightened teachers and boyfriends and one very unlucky census taker back in the nineties.

Saturday arrived with the tornadic pressure of a system that had been building all week. I stepped through the back of Barbacks at four-fifteen with my pastry boxes, my Fanta, and the awareness, pleasant and unhurried, that Brendan would be in his booth later.

Yes, I was probably thinking too much, but it made me smile.

Benji was at the well. He looked up when I set the boxes down.

“You’re doing it again,” he said.

“I’m setting down pastry boxes.”

“You’re smiling at the pastry boxes.”

“The bread was good today.”

“Oh, no. This is more than your ‘the bread was good’ smile,” he said. “I know that smile. That one says, ‘The bread was good but something else happened, too.’ Out with it. What happened?”

I opened the Fanta.

“Benji,” I said. “You’re reading too much—”

“I’m observing professionally,” he said, and went back to his bottles. “It’s what bartenders do.”

Ignoring Benji’s annoying accuracy, I began my stretching and my surface check and my pre-shift routine. The bar filled the way it always did, which was gradually and then completely. The regular Saturday crowd claimed their spots with the ease of people who knew where they belonged.

Dennis sat on his stool. The observation committee had their usual table. Jacks was behind the bar looking impossibly earnest about a glass he was polishing, bless him.

At some point before my set, I went to the pass-through to check on the pastry situation and caught a fragment of conversation from the corner booth. Finn was leaning on the edge of Mark’s table, one hand flat on the surface, the other holding his clipboard. Mark was looking at his laptop screen. Mark’s lips were moving, but no sound escaped, which meant he was counting something.

I wasn’t trying to hear them. The bar simply wasn’t loud yet, and they weren’t being quiet.

“. . . five years in November,” Finn said. “We should do something.”

Mark’s lips stopped moving. He glanced up. Something passed across his face that I might’ve missed if I hadn’t been standing very still with a box of empanadas in my hands.

“November?” Mark asked.

“November.” Finn nodded.

Mark stared up at Finn for a moment longer, then returned his attention to his screen. His lips started moving again. Finn pushed off the table and walked back toward the office.

I stood at the pass-through for another second, then went to find Benji, because Benji needed to hear about this immediately. Bar gossip was always meant to be shared.

“Did you know we had an anniversary coming up?” I whispered, appearing at his elbow.

Benji flashed me his most shit-eating grin. “Aw, I didn’t know we were married. You’re so sweet.”

“Idiot.” I groaned, earning an even wider smile. “The bar’s anniversary.”

Benji shrugged. “I know.”