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After a minute Billy Bob figures out that Italian shoes don’t drop food, and he goes around the table to Tav, who is on the bench at the end with his knees up around the tabletop. Tav’s left hand drifts down below the table.

“Tav,” Merek says.

“What.”

“Put it back.”

Tav brings his hand up and puts a piece of short rib back on his plate.

“It was small,” he says.

“He had surgery for eating a corncob. He’s not having short ribs.”

“It didn’t have a bone in it.”

“Tav.”

Billy Bob gives up and lies down across Tav’s foot. Tav’s foot is about the size of Billy Bob. Tav leaves it there and goes back to eating with his other hand, like nothing happened.

“What’s for dessert?” I ask.

“Lemon tart,” Lenart says. “From Ken’s.”

“He didn’t make it,” William says. “He stood in the bakery for twenty minutes deciding.”

“Eighteen.”

“I was in the car. I timed it.”

Lenart turns his wine glass a quarter turn and doesn’t argue, which means William’s right.

I sit there with my ice packs and watch them. I’ve seen them in Lenart’s office, and in the Club at two in the morning, and on the loading dock while Odette held an oxygen mask over my face. I’ve never seen them like this, passing the potatoes, giving each other a hard time over a tart. Merek keeps getting up to refill things. William, who I’ve seen go a whole shift without saying ten words, is telling Tav about a member who tried to bring a goat through the loading dock in 1998.

“What happened to the goat?” I ask.

“Nothing,” William says. “The goat was a member.”

Lenart waits until Merek has cleared the plates.

“Since we’re all here,” he says, “I’ve been thinking about logistics.”

Merek sits back down. “No.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You said logistics. You’re about to put Trouble on a calendar.”

“I was going to suggest a shared calendar for all of us. Five people, a Club that’s open five nights a week, Tara’s shifts, Tav’s deliveries. It would help.”

“Is it color-coded?” Merek says.

Lenart doesn’t answer right away.

“Color is useful,” he says.

“Delivery days are Tuesday and Thursday,” Tav says. “I’m no good to anybody on those anyway. You can put that down.”

“He already made it,” William says. “I’m on it. I’m gray.”