Chapter 20 Sully
Chapter twenty
Sully
Islept deeply, oblivious to the world around me. One arm tucked under me had fallen asleep at the elbow. I'd tangled one foot in the sheets and mashed my face into the pillow, leaving creases on my face.
The clock said four minutes past eight. I read it twice. I'd gone to bed shortly after midnight. That came out to eight hours. I hadn't slept that long in months.
When I rolled over and checked my phone, I saw three notifications. None were from Pratt. One was a weather alert, and another was a spam call. The third was Tomasz asking if I could grab limes on my way in because the produce order had been short.
I considered sending a message to Pratt. It could say, "Morning," or "Hey," or I could deliver a throwaway joke. In the end, I decided not to send anything and focus on getting my day started.
I lay in bed another minute, relishing horizontal time with nothing specific to do. My mouth tasted like sleep.
Eventually, I sat up. I showered with the water hotter than necessary and walked past my speakers on the way to the kitchen without turning any music on.
After a late breakfast, I settled on the couch and watched a movie. I couldn't remember the last time I sat still enough to do that.
I arrived at Carver's at eleven am. Inside, Tomasz had stacked milk crates against one wall. The dishwasher was running.
Nora was on the floor with a clipboard, doing inventory. She looked up when the door closed behind me.
"You're not on until two."
"I know."
"Are you sick?"
"No."
She made a small mark on a chart.
"Did you bring Tomasz's limes?"
"Yes, picked them up on the way."
She made another mark and turned toward the back. I heard her firing the espresso machine in the kitchen.
I hung my coat on a hook just inside the back door and got to work.
An hour before opening, I pulled clean rocks glasses off the rack above the dishwasher and walked them out front in stacks of four. The taps remained capped from closing last night. The TVs above the bar were dark, and two floors up, somebody was running a vacuum.
I'd finished the glasses and started on the speed rail when Nora came back with two espressos. She handed the white mug to me and held onto the one with the dog on it that one of her cousins had brought her from a thrift store in Pilsen.
She leaned on her elbows opposite me.
"You gonna tell me, or do I have to guess?"
"Short or long version?"
"Short, please. It's early."
I set down the inventory tape.
"I went over."
"I knew that. You left here in a rush."
"And I said most of it. I told him about Bryan and the two weeks I didn't call him back." I straightened. "It wasn't pretty, but I said it—all of it."
Nora didn't ask for details. She'd heard almost all of them in her apartment in Wicker Park, and she'd never asked me to retell any of it.
"And he said?"
"He said —" I stopped. The exact line was right there in my mouth, and I wasn't sure I wanted to put it out in the open.
She waited.
"He said he's never had a best friend."
I expected something back, thinking Nora would have some sort of reaction. I watched her face.
She picked up her espresso, drank half of it in one pull, and set the mug down.
"Good," she said.
"Good?"
"Yeah."
"Nora."
"You stayed long enough for it to land. You gave him more than a story." She picked her espresso back up. "That's a good thing, and there's a second thing."
"There's always a second thing."
I pulled the cap off the gin bottle in the well, checked the pour spout, and capped it again.
"Hit me," I said.
"Now you let him decide what he's going to do with it."
"That's not really —"
"That's exactly what it is," she said.
"How?"
"You don't get to manage his response." She went back to her clipboard, pen in hand.
"You don't get to call later in the day to make sure he's okay with it.
It's not fair to show up at his condo with food if the only reason is to see what he's doing with it.
You don't get to text him a photo of a dog at the end of his block to remind him you exist. He gets to decide what he does with it. That's the deal."
"I wasn't going to do any of that."
She looked up. "You were going to do at least two of those by dinner."
I opened my mouth, shut it, and then opened it again. "The dog thing was highly specific."
"I've watched you for two years."
"So, that's it?" I asked. "That's all I get?"
"You came in three hours early for that. I'd say you got your money's worth."
She picked up her clipboard, flipped to the next page, and walked back toward the wells without waiting for a response.
Tomasz came through with the lemons I'd grabbed on the way in.
They were piled in the prep bin to my left, cold from the walk-in, the rinds beaded with condensation.
I rolled the first one under my palm to break the membranes.
I trimmed the ends and sliced into halves, quarters, and eighths. The wedges fell away cleanly.
Nora wasn't wrong about the dog. There was a beagle tied up most weekends outside a cafe on State, in a plaid coat in winter, and it would have made an excellent low-stakes excuse to send a photo.
Pratt's line came back. It had been coming back all morning, in the gaps between everything else.
I've never had a best friend.
I'd said it under my breath as I rolled out of bed, and it had sounded different in my voice than it had in his. In Pratt's, it was a blunt fact. In mine, it sounded like a door opening on an empty room.
"What?"
Tomasz was behind me with the second crate of limes, edging past with his shoulder turned.
"Nothing," I said
"You said something."
"Talking to a lemon."
He grunted and kept moving.
Pratt had not tried to fix me. He didn't try to say he'd been there.
He had not said I get it or I understand or any of the small lies people offered when they wanted to be useful and didn't know how.
Pratt waited me out, and when he finally said something, the sentence he chose was a difficult one.
We'd only been open an hour when Heath and Kieran walked in. Heath's face did its thing upon recognition, turning the glow up to high. Kieran, half a step behind him, scanned the room once and then took a seat on a stool at the bar.
"Hey, hey," Heath said, sliding onto a stool. "You're working."
"I am. What're you guys doing out?"
"Morning skate ended, and Varga wrangled the rookies for pizza. We escaped," said Heath.
I pulled two glasses off the rack. Heath was a bourbon guy by night and a beer guy by day. I had to think about Kieran for half a second. He had a Manhattan the first time he came in. On the second, it was whatever I'd put in front of him.
I built him a Paloma and slid it across.
He looked at it and looked at me.
"How'd you know?"
"Lucky guess."
"Educated guess," Heath said, reaching for his beer. "Don't try to figure it out, Kier. I gave up a month ago."
Three weeks ago, I would have leaned into the moment. I would have asked Heath how the team had taken the Nashville loss and let him tell me. It would be an excuse for gathering information about Pratt. I would have been good at making it look natural.
"Expecting a good day today?" Heath asked.
"There's always hope."
He grinned. "Fair."
A guy down the rail flagged me with a twenty, and I went to him.
It was two beers, an easy ticket and back in forty seconds.
When I came back, Heath was telling Kieran a story about somebody named Pickle and a hotel pillow.
Kieran listened with the half-attention of a man who had heard every Pickle story Heath had but was willing to let this one happen again.
Heath wound down the Pickle story, took another sip, and looked at me.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, Heath."
Heath threw back a mouthful of beer. "You look tired."
"I worked a double two days ago. Devon's grandmother's cat."
"I have no idea what that means."
"Neither does Devon's grandmother. There's no cat. He wanted the night off."
Heath laughed. "Why'd you cover?"
"Money never hurts."
Kieran picked up his Paloma. He took a sip, set it back down on the coaster, and aligned the glass with the corner of the coaster without appearing to notice he was doing it.
"This is good," he said.
"Thanks."
"What'd you put in it?"
"Tequila, fresh grapefruit, lime, and a splash of soda. I would have added salt on the rim if you wanted it. You didn't."
He nodded
Heath leaned both forearms on the rail while I started cutting more limes.
“We were going to ask Pratt to come with,” he said, and the floor of the conversation tilted a quarter inch. “But he got waylaid by reporters after morning skate.”
One of the TVs over the bar cut from a muted highlights loop to a practice clip. A title slid in under it—IRONHAWKS STAR GOALTENDER, brOCK PRATT.
Pratt stood in front of a locker room backdrop, hair still damp, wearing a t-shirt darkened through at the collar.
“Brock, what are you focusing on heading into this next stretch?”
He didn’t look past the reporter.
“Execution,” he said. “We’re managing the details.”
Another voice, off-camera. “Anything you’re adjusting personally?”
“I prepare with the team.”
That was it.
The clip cut before the next question finished, back to a panel talking over the transition as if the interview hadn’t mattered.
I was holding a lime in my hand. I'd squeezed it too hard, and juice had run across my fingers.
"Tell him I said hey when you see him next," I said to Heath and Kieran. "If you see him before I do."
Heath looked at me. He blinked, just once, and then sipped his beer. "Yeah, I will."
The conversation continued to other topics. Heath talked about a new shawarma place near the practice facility. Kieran asked me where I'd learned to bartend. I gave him the short version—desperate to move out of Boston, and I made it as far as Providence.
A ticket printed. I turned to handle it.
When I came back, Heath asked, "How late do you work tonight?"
"I'm out at ten."
"Some night if you're free, you should come with us for laser tag."
"Laser tag?"
Heath nodded. "Pratt is a beast."
They pulled on their coats. Heath leaned across the rail and tapped knuckles. "Take care of yourself, Sully."
"You guys too."
Nora was at the service end with a tray of glasses, watching me. She'd been watching me for the last ten minutes.
By eight, the bar was full, and I was running on autopilot, turning the night into one continuous sequence of small, competent gestures.
Pours. Reads. Tickets in and out. A guy at the rail tried to argue me into making him something off-menu for his anniversary.
I got him into a Sazerac without letting him know it was on the menu the whole time.
At ten, I said goodnight to Nora. "You walking?" she asked.
"I'm walking."
"It's cold."
"I'll live."
Outside, I walked north with my hands in my coat pockets and my collar up. The eight blocks went fast.
The lobby was empty. A new doorman was in Martin's place. He was a weekend guy, and we nodded at each other as I passed.
On the way to my place, I saw a thin strip of light under Pratt's door. Thinking about Nora's suggestions, I walked past it.
I put my key in my lock and let myself in. I didn't turn on the overhead light, reaching instead for the lamp by the couch.
My coat landed on the back of a chair. I left my boots by the door and went down the hall to the closet.
I had to return to the kitchen for the chair, and this time I carried it to avoid any new scrapes. The closet smelled like a closet, slight cedar scent from the little bag Mom suggested I use to protect my one wool coat.
I stepped up onto the chair.
The box was where I'd put it, flush against the back wall behind the printer. I had to reach over the printer to get my fingertips on the cardboard. I worked it forward an inch at a time.
When I had it in both hands, I climbed down and set it on the kitchen table.
I carried the chair back and sat in it as I looked at the box.
Rumours was on top. Underneath was the self-titled album, the one Bryan bought at the yard-sale. Half of the original price sticker was still stuck to the top right corner.
I lifted it out two-handed by the edges. I set it on the table.
I closed the flaps of the box and pushed it to the far end of the table.
The album never matched Rumours. That was the undisputed masterpiece in Bryan's eyes, but there was charm in the self-titled grooves. It was a band settling into themselves, the first recording after Lindsey and Stevie joined, according to him.
I was the last person alive who knew about the yard sale purchase, unless Bryan shared it with Cath. It was possible, but she would have likely dismissed it as peripheral information.
I sat with my hand flat on the cover. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were featured there with John McVie using an illusion to appear to have extra-short legs. Bryan laughed every time he looked at it.
I picked up the album and stood. Shoes weren't needed. I crossed my condo to the door, eased it open, and stepped into the hall in sock feet, carrying the album in both hands.
The strip of light was still on under Pratt's door.
I walked up to his door. Bending at the knees, I set the album down on the doormat, centering it without thinking. I stepped back and stood there for a second.
I didn't knock and didn't wait for anything to happen on the other side. I went back to my condo and closed the door behind me.
I brushed my teeth and checked my phone just before climbing into bed. There were no messages, and I didn't bother with turning on music or a podcast to lull me to sleep.
I lay there in the quiet and let the world be quiet around me.
Nothing happened.
The following morning, I woke at six. I got up and made coffee. After my first sip, I went to the door.
Cracking it open as quietly as I could, I looked down at Pratt's doormat. The album was gone.
The hallway was empty, and his door was closed. There was nothing on the mat where the album had been. It was just gone.
I closed the door and went back to my coffee.
Sitting at the table with both hands wrapped around my mug, I didn't pick up my phone. The coffee was enough.
Seeing that the album was gone was enough.
Whatever Pratt was going to do with it, he was going to do.