I. The regular was drunk again. He sat at table four with his arm draped over the back of the chair the way he always did—expansive, entitled, the kind of body language that said this space belonged to him whether anyone invited him or not. Grace watched him from behind the bar and calculated the options. She could ask him to move his arm. She could pour him a glass of water and hope it worked. She could do what she always did, which was wait until he got tired of sitting alone and moved on. He caught her looking. "You gonna pour me another, sweetheart?" "Last one was twenty minutes ago," Grace said. "Your tab's already at twelve dollars." "Twelve dollars. That's nothing." He laughed, and it was a wet sound. "You know what I think? I think you keep me here on purpose. So I'll tip you better." Grace picked up the rag she had been wearing smooth with use and started wiping a section of the bar that was already clean. "I think you're confused about how this works." He leaned forward. His breath smelled like cheap whiskey and decisions he wouldn't remember making by morning. "I think you're cute and I think you're lonely and I think—if you'd just stop being so goddamned cold about everything—we could have some fun." Grace set the rag down. She looked at him the way you look at a machine you've decided not to bother fixing. "You know what I think? I think you come in here every Thursday because you're lonely too. And I think you touch the back of chairs because you want someone to stop you. Nobody's stopping you, Dave. So enjoy the chair." He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Then he drank the rest of his whiskey, dropped a five on the table, and left. Grace picked up the five dollars and put it in the tip jar. It was already full. It was always full on nights like this—full of quarters and crumpled bills and the small change of people who needed something they couldn't name. Faith texted her at 11:47: grandma sleeping. you ok? Grace typed back: yeah. u? yeah. left door unlocked like u said. Grace looked around the nearly empty bar. Dave was gone. The piano player had packed up and left ten minutes ago. The night was hers. coming home soon, she texted. Grace had been a bartender before this. Not really a bartender—a server who knew how to mix a martini if asked. But the work was the same: you stood behind something, you handed people liquid, you pretended their conversations about themselves weren't exhausting. This bar was called The Red Herring. It was named ironically, because there was nothing red about the interior and nothing about the drinks was particularly cunning. It was on South State Street in Chicago, a neighborhood that had once been a working-class neighborhood and was now a neighborhood that was somewhere between working-class and forgotten. The rent was cheap. The coffee was bad. The jazz on the weekends was good. Grace worked Fridays and Saturdays. Sundays she did freelance copywriting for companies whose names she couldn't remember. Mondays through Thursdays she slept, sometimes, when the shift had gone late. Sometimes she didn't. Rye started on a Thursday in March. He walked in at ten, which was technically before the bar opened, and asked if they needed help. "We don't," Grace said. "Yeah," he said. "I figured." He stood there, hands in his pockets, looking around the empty room the way people look at hotels when they're thinking about moving. Grace almost asked him to leave, but something made her hold back. Maybe it was the fact that he looked genuinely lost, in the specific way people look when they've lost something abstract—like direction, or reason, or the ability to pretend they have either. "I make cocktails," he said. "That's nice. We're short-staffed next month. Maybe apply then." He nodded, like he understood. Like he'd heard this exact conversation before, or was hearing it for the first time and it didn't surprise him. He left. He came back the next Thursday. And the next. Always at ten. Always asking the same question in slightly different ways. Always leaving when she told him to. On the third Thursday, she gave up. "Look, if you're going to keep showing up, you might as well make yourself useful. There's glasses in the back that need washing." He found the back room. Found the sink. Found the stack of glasses. And started washing them. Grace watched him from the doorway. His hands were careful. Not fussy—just careful, the way someone's hands are when they're doing something for the first time and know it and don't want to mess it up. "Where'd you learn to do that?" she asked. "Learn to what?" "Wash glasses like they're made of something more expensive than they are." He thought about this. "I didn't learn. I just... pay attention." She didn't know what to say to that, so she went back to the front and kept polishing the already-polished bar. He introduced himself as Rye. Not Dominic. Not anything with a last name. Just Rye.

Author Note & Copyright: