Chapter 2 #2
I drive back to the bar in the early afternoon.
The parking lot has four motorcycles and an Audi that's nicer than anything else in a two-mile radius.
The garage bays are open today — the mechanic from yesterday is under a bike, and there's a pickup truck waiting on the lift in the next bay.
I assume the truck isn't one of theirs. So they do take outside work.
I revise my mental note from yesterday: not purely a clubhouse.
There's a real business here, just a quiet one.
The kind that runs on reputation and word of mouth in a place where everybody knows everybody.
I park, grab my laptop bag, and walk in.
It's brighter than yesterday. Someone's opened the windows.
The pastry guy is behind the counter with a tray of something that smells like brown sugar and butter.
The one with the books from yesterday is perched on a stool beside him, eating one with his eyes closed in apparent ecstasy.
They're joined at the hip, these two — the human and the pastry guy, some kind of unit I haven't figured out yet.
"He came back," the pastry guy says. Not to me. To the room.
"Afternoon," I say. "IPA, please. And the nachos."
The pastry guy pours the IPA without comment.
Doesn't offer food from his tray. Still no other customers.
Two PM on a Wednesday in a bar with good food and decent beer, and it's just me and them.
Either this place survives on something other than bar and garage revenue, or they're all independently wealthy.
Given the garage and the five acres, I'm betting on the former.
The book guy watches this exchange with an expression I can't quite parse. Amused, maybe, but weighing something behind it.
"I'm Toby," the book guy says. "We didn't really meet yesterday."
"Nicholas. Nico's fine."
"Nico." He says it like he's trying it on. "You always work from bars?"
"When I'm on the road. Offices are depressing and hotel lobbies are worse."
"Fair." He tilts his head. "So you're just going to sit here? Even though Knox said no?"
"I'm finishing my assessment. Different thing."
"Assessing what? Whether we'll change our minds?"
"Whether your property makes commercial sense for my company. So far, it doesn't." I pick up my IPA. "Which is a different kind of problem."
Toby blinks. He wasn't expecting honesty. Neither was the pastry guy, who stops wiping the counter and looks at me directly for the first time today.
"What do you mean, it doesn't make sense?" the pastry guy asks.
"Your location is commercially unviable for the kind of development Coldwell does. Low traffic, no infrastructure pipeline, wrong zoning density. On paper, this property isn't worth the acquisition cost."
"Then why are you here?" the pastry guy says.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Silence. Toby and the pastry guy exchange a look — the kind of look that means they'll be talking about this later, privately, at length.
I take my IPA to yesterday's booth. Same seat.
Same angle. Open my laptop. The nachos arrive a few minutes later — the kid from behind the bar brings them, the young shifter with the eager eyes.
He sets them down without a word but lingers for half a second, like he wants to say something and decides against it.
The mechanic comes in from the garage, sees me, and stops. Looks at the pastry guy.
"He came back," the pastry guy says again. It's becoming a refrain.
The mechanic looks at me the way he looked at me yesterday. Then he takes something from the pastry tray, takes a coffee, and goes back to the garage without a word.
The quiet one is already in his corner. Same book, same absolute stillness. He doesn't acknowledge me. I don't acknowledge him. We have an understanding already, which is efficient.
The one with the spreadsheet comes down the stairs from what I assume are apartments above the bar. Jeans and a henley, hair still damp. He looks different than yesterday. Less guarded.
He sees me in the booth and stops. Not startled — more like recalculating.
"You're back."
"I'm back."
"Same booth."
"It has good Wi-Fi."
He almost smiles. Barely a thing — a twitch at the corner of his mouth, gone before it lands.
He pours himself something from behind the bar — not coffee, some kind of tea — and settles onto a stool with a laptop of his own.
We work in parallel silence for twenty minutes. Him on his spreadsheet. Me on mine.
It's oddly comfortable.
I open a new tab on my spreadsheet and label it LANGFORD - WHY THIS PROPERTY.
I'm going to figure out what Coldwell actually wants with five acres of commercially unviable land owned by shifters who aren't selling.
Three days. That's what I told Daniel.
I look around the bar from my booth — my booth already — at the quiet hum of people working around me.
The pastry guy who didn't offer me anything from his tray and was right not to.
The book guy who introduced himself anyway.
The mechanic who looked through me. The quiet one who didn't need to look at all.
The kid who brought my nachos without being asked.
And the one with the spreadsheet, on his stool, working his own numbers, occasionally glancing my way with an expression I can't quite read.
Three days might not be enough.