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I was always good at telling myself things.

I was still feeling off about it an hour later when Dante came in for his shift, an hour early as always, tea and a book in hand. It was a different book. I noticed because, well, I’d started noticing. This one was slimmer than the Turgenev, a hardcover novel cloaked in green cloth. I found myself down at his end refilling a well that didn’t need refilling, which was the adult version of passing a note in class.

“New one?” I asked.

He turned it so I could see another name assembled from spare consonants. “Lermontov.”

“That a person or a sound effect?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. He was getting used to me, I thought. His wall still stood, but it had started leaving the little door unlatched.

“A person. A Hero of Our Time.”

“Big claim for a title.”

“It’s ironic, like most Russian literature.” He set it down, thumb holding the page, which was more than he’d have given me a month ago. “The hero’s not much of one. He’s a man who feels everything and lets himself act on none of it. Keeps everyone at arm’s length, tells himself it’s strength. He ruins the few good things that come near him, on purpose, because ruining them himself hurts less than watching them leave.”

I stared at him.

He stared at his book.

“Sounds exhausting,” I said.

“It is. He’s exhausting.” Something passed over his face, there and gone, and he picked the book back up. “People like that usually are.”

“He fix it? By the end?”

“I’m not there yet, but I doubt it.” Dante turned a page. “That’s rather the point of him.”

I stood there with a business card in my pocket and a strange, warm ache under it, feeling as though I’d just been told a story that had my name in it somewhere—and his, too—and not being able to find where. Then Benji came out of the back hollering about a keg count, and the moment drifted away like water over a stone.

The keg count was wrong, which meant twenty minutes of Benji and me in the walk-in, which is where he chose to attack, because Benji usually timed his ambushes for enclosed spaces.

“So,” he said, to a stack of Modelo. “You seeing anybody yet?”

“No.”

“Going back out?”

“Haven’t decided.”

“You should go back out.” He counted kegs with one hand and pointed at me with the other. “Not Fuse again. God rest Fuse. There’s another place, one Finn mentioned a while back. I think it’s more your speed. The crowd’s older, guys who own furniture and might—and I know this is a stretch—ask your name.”

“People who own furniture?”

“It’s a demographic, Mark. Work with me here. You’re a furniture-owning man. You have a truck for moving furniture. You probably have a Home Depot card like a good lesbian.” He straightened, delighted with himself. “The bar’s called The Anchor. It’s a grown-up bar. Nobody there is going to squeeze your arm. Probably. I make no promises. Statistically, you should have better odds.”

“The Anchor,” I repeated, more to myself than to Benji.

“Tuesday. Go. Barbacks is dead and won’t need you. Plus, that’s the big night at Anchor. Don’t ask me why. It just is. Wear the good shirt, the blue one that brings out your eyes. Talk to a man about his mortgage or whatever old people find sexy.” He hoisted a keg like the matter was settled. “And this time, if you strike out, call somebody who isn’t asleep. You’ve got a whole phone full of people who love you.”

That caught me off guard, Benji’s sincerity, the depth in his eyes. I didn’t—couldn’t—look at anything in particular.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“You’ll do it,” Benji said, “and you’ll tell me everything. It’s going to be great.”

We stepped out of the walk-in, and I said, without thinking, right there in front of everybody, “Might try a new place Tuesday. The Anchor. Benji’s orders.”