Chapter 4 Sully
Chapter four
Sully
Pratt came to me.
The guy at the far end of the rail needed another drink and hadn't figured it out yet. I poured while he was reading something on his phone, set it where his hand would find it, and moved on.
My job wasn't the pouring or the glass. It was the knowing.
Carver's on a Thursday ran hot. The after-work crowd came in still wearing their lanyards. A table in the back had been celebrating something for going on forty minutes, the volume climbing steadily.
Nora appeared at the bar's service end, already reaching for a bottle. "Table nine wants to reopen the tab."
"After you ran the card?"
"After I ran the card."
"Tell them—"
"I told them you'd be nicer about it."
"Smart."
She took the bottle and was gone.
I was building something for a couple in the middle. "What is this?" the woman asked.
"Something for staying," I said.
Her partner opened his mouth. I moved before he could ask me to justify it.
The ticket machine spat out an order. I read it and had it done before Tomasz got back from the walk-in with garnishes. He looked at the full glass and looked at me.
"I had a window," I said.
He picked it up and carried it to the floor without editorializing.
The corner stool opened up. The occupant changed two or three times a night, filled by patrons who wanted to watch the room without the room watching back.
A few minutes later the door opened, and I knew without looking up who it was.
I finished a pour, capped a bottle, and ran a card. When I came down the bar, he'd already settled, coat folded and both hands flat on the surface.
"Didn't know you came solo," I said.
"Goalies don't run in packs."
I pulled a glass, two fingers of Elijah Craig, and set it in front of him.
"Bourbon."
He looked at the glass and at me. "I'll trust the bartender."
I nodded once and moved back up the bar. I grabbed a shaker and put myself back in the room. Almost.
The guy three seats down said something I didn’t catch the first time. I asked him to repeat it, a rare request from me.
A ticket came through for a smoked Old Fashioned, no garnish. I built it on muscle memory, already moving to the next when the guy two seats down leaned in.
“Hey, that was supposed to be rye.”
He was right. I’d read him as bourbon when he sat. Missed the correction when he changed his mind.
“Yeah,” I said, taking it back before he could touch it. “That’s on me.”
I dumped it, rebuilt clean, and slid the fresh glass into place without breaking pace anywhere else on the bar.
He took a sip, nodded once, and went back to his conversation as if it had never happened. I moved on.
When I came back down the rail, Pratt was watching me. Tracking.
Our eyes met, and he didn't look away.
Twenty minutes later, company arrived. Heath and Kieran settled in beside Pratt.
I came down when the tickets gave me cover. "Heath. Kieran."
Heath's face brightened immediately. "Yeah."
"Guys from the condo a few days back."
"That would be us."
I made educated guesses and set a glass down for each of them. Heath looked at his skeptically. Kieran just drank.
"You guys have a regular?" I asked.
"Northbound," Kieran said.
I knew the place well. It had a big tank with a big fish. The free-pour situation had gotten me into trouble twice, once intentionally. "Good fish," I said. "Aggressive bartender."
Heath laughed, short, real, surprised.
"So, what brings you here?"
"He mentioned the place," Heath said.
I looked at Pratt. He was staring at the bar.
"Just the place?" I asked Heath.
"Only the place." He smiled. It had an agenda.
I looked at Pratt one more time. "Good call on your part." I went to handle two customers trying to flag me down.
Halfway down the rail, a guy in a quarter-zip stood.
"Oh, holy—" He yanked his phone out of his pocket. "Is that—hey, that's—"
Two people beside him turned to look.
I was out from behind the bar and in the sightline before he finished. It wasn't confrontational, but he couldn't ignore me.
"Hey. Another round, or are you closing out?"
He blinked. "I was just—those guys—"
"Sure." I steered him back onto his stool and came around behind the bar. Pushed a napkin in front of him. "What were you drinking?"
"I know who that is," he said.
"Yeah, probably." I picked up his glass. "Same again?"
"I just want to—"
"Here's the thing." I dropped the volume, making the conversation solely between us. "They're going to remember tonight as the night they had a couple of drinks without anyone making it a thing. You could be the best part of that." I let the alternative sit without spelling it out.
He looked at his glass.
"What are you drinking?" I asked.
"Scotch. Neat."
"Good." I turned and poured it. The room resettled. I set the scotch down. He picked it up, and we were done.
Nora had seen the whole thing and raised her coffee cup two inches in my direction before she went back to the floor. I turned from the quarter-zip guy, and Pratt was already looking at me.
Heath said something beside him. He didn't answer.
I moved to their end of the bar and crouched, reaching for a bottle on a low shelf.
"Okay, quick thing," I said. "Table in the back wants a drink named after their friend's worst quality. Leading candidate is 'emotionally unavailable.'"
"Brutal," Heath said.
"Too easy," I said, coming back up. "I'm going for fun, not a therapy bill."
"What are the other options?" Kieran asked.
"Chronic overthinker. Which—" I looked around. "Might be too accurate for comfort."
Heath pointed at Kieran and nodded.
I tipped my head toward Pratt. "I'm getting a third category over here."
"You don't have enough data," he said.
"I've got more than you've given me."
Heath watched us.
Pratt looked at me. I pushed another glass in his direction.
"The drink is called The Control Group," I said. "Nothing in it you didn't approve in advance. Clean glass. No garnish because the garnish is decorative and you've got no patience for decorative. Tastes like it knew where it was going the whole time."
Heath laughed, head dropping and shoulders following. I had a half-second to notice it was a genuinely good laugh before the bar needed me elsewhere.
Pratt looked at his glass. He adjusted it a fraction of an inch toward the center, aligning it with the edge of the bar.
"You want to try it? Or do you need the full ingredient list first?"
"I'm already drinking it," he said.
Neither of us moved for a second. The bar kept going around us.
I grabbed the shaker—back table personality-trait drink—and came back on a check pass. "Another round?" I asked.
"Sure," Heath said.
Pratt's glass was most of the way down. I poured another without asking.
He looked at the glass. "That wasn't a yes."
"It wasn't a no, either."
A beat.
"That's how you do it," he said.
"I have an excellent record. You're my most stable section all night," I told them. "Don't go anywhere."
Heath lifted his glass. "We try."
I pushed back into the room. My shift unfolded with parallel attention for the next hour. Tickets stacked, and I worked through them. Part of my attention kept returning to the same place.
Heath talked. Kieran occasionally said things back, and Pratt mostly watched. He drank every so often and then set his glass back down. He wasn't in a hurry about anything.
I moved behind them on a restock run, turning sideways until my hand came down on Pratt's shoulder for balance. It was incidental contact that happened twenty times a shift in a busy bar, but this was Pratt.
I kept moving, retrieved the bottle, and turned back. He didn't move. He let the contact happen and end.
While I was busy building three drinks off tickets, they left clean. There was no announcement. Heath settled the tab and added a generous tip. They all stood at the door, wearing their coats.
"Good bar," Heath said.
"Come back. The fish won't miss you."
He grinned at that. Kieran buttoned his coat. He looked at me, then at Pratt, who was adjusting his collar one-handed, then back at me. He said nothing.
I was at the far end, and he turned toward the door with the other two, unhurried. I watched them the full length of the room and out.
I moved a glass about to go over the edge. The last call was quiet. The room had thinned to its holdouts. I wiped the bar in long passes and let myself stop moving for as long as it took to breathe out completely.
Nora joined me at the service end in her coat. Already cashed out. Done.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"How bad is what?"
"On a scale, one to you-already-know-his-schedule."
"I have a brand to maintain," I said. "This is still within acceptable limits. Goodnight, Nora."
"I'm leaving. I just want to know if I should worry."
"You shouldn't worry."
She studied me for a moment. "The guy at the far end," she said.
"What about him?"
"He watched you the way people watch something fragile that they want to carry without breaking it." She pulled her coat closed. "That's all I'm saying. Goodnight, Sullivan."
She pushed through the service door. I heard her say something brief to Tomasz in the back.
I walked home.
Chicago after two was the city in its work clothes, cabs running and a bus grinding through the intersection north of me. Less frantic than daytime, but not empty.
My left hand found the CharlieCard in my pocket. Orange stripe, Boston T, the kind that cost three dollars at any station in the city and worked until you stopped needing it.
I had no idea what the balance was. I'd never checked. I'd moved to Chicago before I used up the balance.
I thought about the bar. Heath's laugh took up space without apologizing for it. The corner stool sat empty for the last rounds, shaped by someone's absence.
My building appeared on my left. In the fourth-floor hallway were the same two doors, with the same plates at eye level. I'd walked into the wrong one twice. I stood in front of the right one now, with the key in my hand.
Nora's comment stayed with me. He watched you the way people watch something fragile that they want to carry without breaking it. I didn't know where to put that.
Bryan would have laughed.
Sul, he would have said—nobody else ever called me Sul—you are completely cooked on this guy. And I would have said I'm not cooked on anything and he would have given me the look, the one that meant I have known you since we were nine years old, and I know exactly what cooked looks like on you.
I unlocked my door and went inside. Everything was where I'd left it. The printer was in its box in the corner, and two plants waited on the sill, doing their best.
I dropped my keys on the counter and didn't put music on.
That was a tell. The music was always first. Walk in, hit play, and give the condo a pulse—even at 2:30 am. I'd done it every night for two years without thinking about it.
I stood in the kitchen and let the quiet be what it was.
My fingertips could still feel his shoulder, the density. They remembered him absorbing the contact without comment.
I took the CharlieCard out and set it on the counter. I looked at it. Then I picked it back up and slid it into my pocket.
I went to bed and lay in the dark without putting anything on, listening to the silence on the other side of the wall.