Chapter 10
HAIR OF THE DOG
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Hannah said when I entered the bar the next day. “Because you’d have to be dragged, for sure. Certainly the cat couldn’t make you do anything unless it was your idea.”
“Good afternoon to you, too.”
She smiled. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” I swallowed and met her eyes. “Thank you.”
She winked, then shook what looked like a seasoning packet. “Wanna learn how to make a Bloody Mary? Rook is in dire need of one.”
Rook raised a lone palm from where they lay face down on the bar top. They were clearly hungover as all hell.
“Yikes,” I said sympathetically. “Rough night, Rook? Too much line dancing?”
They merely groaned in response.
Hannah and I mixed Bloody Marys for Rook and a few other patrons who trickled in.
Then I went about my chores as diligently as possible, scooping the litter box, sweeping the hallway, and breaking down boxes from the morning’s delivery.
When I couldn’t find anything else to clean, I walked along the walls and straightened each and every picture on the wood paneling.
“Any idea when Hatch will be in?” I asked eventually.
Hannah looked up from her personal laptop. She was taking advantage of the afternoon lull by catching up on wedding tasks from Baker’s color-coordinated spreadsheet. “Not sure. Why?”
I shrugged. “Just wondering.”
The truth was I’d been thinking about Hatch all day, picturing the rage on his face when he’d caught me holding his photo of Uncle George. I kept hearing Hannah’s voice in my head: You don’t know what it cost him. Her voice was followed by Aubrey’s: You can’t see past your own nose, Scrooge.
What was it about Hatch that I wasn’t letting myself see?
The hours went on. Hannah got bored and popped an old VHS tape into the box TV, and we watched Steel Magnolias as patrons filtered in and out. Every time the door opened, I braced myself to encounter Hatch—but he never showed up.
Midas stomped in just before the evening rush, gracing us with a bad mood because he’d slipped off his bike. Hannah fetched the first aid kit and dotted antibiotic cream on his knee while Midas whined and cursed at her.
“You are an evil, pain-inflicting daughter of darkness!” he squealed.
“You’re welcome, sweetie,” Hannah replied, slapping a My Little Pony bandage over his torn skin.
Much later, after Hannah had clocked out and it was only Midas and me behind the bar, I got tired of waiting for Hatch and decided to pick Midas’s brain about the matter. Maybe hearing his perspective would shed more light on the parts of Hatch and Uncle George that I didn’t understand.
“Can I ask you something?” I muttered during a lull. “Did you know George well?”
Midas’s hands slipped on the oranges he was peeling, but he pretended they hadn’t. “I wouldn’t say well. Not like Hannah and Hatch knew him.” He paused. “But yeah, I knew him.”
“What was he like?”
Midas frowned. “I thought he was your uncle.”
“He was. But I didn’t know him in this context.”
Midas allowed that to settle. He became pensive in a way I hadn’t seen before, his hands intent on the orange peeler.
“He was cool,” he said finally. “I only knew him for a year or so, but I liked him.”
I waited, hoping for more.
“I’d heard stories about him, you know, like he was this big persona who thought his shit didn’t stink, so I kinda went into this job thinking I wouldn’t like him.
But he surprised me. He genuinely wanted to know me.
He was like that with everybody, really.
Wanting to know their stories, their situations.
He really loved RuPaw. He used to bring her little Ziploc baggies of chicken bits he’d cooked at home. ”
I glanced at RuPaw, who was curled up in Edge’s lap while he graded papers in the corner. Had she curled up with Uncle George like that? Did she miss him?
“He wasn’t always good with trans stuff,” Midas went on, popping discarded peels into the trash can.
“Like he’d ask ignorant questions or forget to use inclusive language.
But he’d always listen when I pointed it out.
He tried to get better. He liked to learn.
” He paused, then tapped the trans flag pin on his collar.
“He, uh. He bought me this pin on a trip to Boston last year. Said he was in a bookstore and thought of me.” Midas swallowed.
“I haven’t stopped wearing it since he died. ”
I gave him a moment. His body had gone very still, his palms spread over the counter as if to steady himself.
“It seems like you and Hannah have kept things going so seamlessly,” I said softly. “It’s hard for me to picture where Uncle George fit in here.”
“Oh, definitely not. Losing him was like losing our compass. If we make it look easy, it’s because we’re trying to hold it together for Hatch. He acts like he’s covered in armor, but he’s not.”
I heard the protectiveness in his tone. “You care about him.”
“We need him. George might have been the beating heart of this place, but Hatch is the brains, the backbone. The Cricket would fall apart without him.”
“What do you think about him selling this place?” I asked tentatively.
Midas shrugged. “He needs to do what’s best for him.”
“But what about you? Where would you go?”
“Eh, I’ll land on my feet. I always do.” He rinsed his hands and looked sideways at me. “Why all the questions?”
I sighed. “I don’t think I’ve given Hatch a fair shake.”
Midas shrugged. “To be fair, he hasn’t given you one, either.”
“I just … I thought I understood what Uncle George wanted me to do here. I thought he saw himself in me and wanted me to keep this place going. Keep the legacy going. But then Hatch is, like, completely uninterested in that.”
Midas’s brow furrowed. “What makes you say that?”
“He basically told me. Last weekend, when I met him. And it’s not like I see him engaging much when he’s here. He stays holed up in his office the whole time. It’s hard to believe he cares.”
“First of all.” Midas held up a finger, and I could see that I’d pissed him off.
“You’ve been here for, like, a week. And it’s the week following his husband’s funeral.
I mean partner. Ex-partner. Whatever, you know what I mean.
His person.” Midas gave me a hard look. “So you don’t get to make that judgment. ”
I swallowed and forced myself to meet his gaze. You can’t see past your own nose, Scrooge. “Okay. You’re right.”
“And you don’t see a lot of the invisible work Hatch does. Payroll, taxes, liquor licenses, health codes, vendor relationships … the list never ends. And then there’s all the stuff with this shitty old building: plumbing, internet, electric, even the garden out back—”
“Electric,” I said, seizing on the word.
“Yeah, I just said that.”
“No, I know, I…” An idea was forming in my brain, a simple thing I could do as a gesture of goodwill toward Hatch. “Midas, you’re brilliant.”
He blinked, clearly confused by the conversational whiplash. “I mean, yeah,” he conceded. “I’m not just a handsome face. Anyway, let’s talk about something else. Lecturing people exhausts me. I don’t know how Hannah gets off on this stuff.”
“Okay. How’d you get into bike racing?”
Midas’s eyes lit up, and he chatted away until the moment we locked the doors.
It wasn’t until Monday that I finally saw Hatch.
“Good morning,” I said in my sunniest voice, greeting him the moment he stomped through the door.
Hatch narrowed his eyes. “It’s two P.M.”
“Right. Right. I just meant … hi. It’s nice to see you.”
He grunted and shoved past me, barking a quick hello at Hannah before he shut himself away in his office.
“Fuck,” I said under my breath.
“It was a good try,” Hannah said sympathetically. “Give him an hour, then try again.”
I shook my head. “No, I need do this now.” I marched after Hatch, drew to a stop in front of his door, and took a deep breath. Then I knocked.
“What?” he yelled.
I knocked again.
“Jesus Christ, come in already!”
I opened the door carefully. “Sorry, I just didn’t want to barge in—”
“Oh, suddenly you care about privacy?” he asked cuttingly. He leaned back in his chair and swiveled to face me. “What is it you want, Wade?”
I took another deep breath and steeled myself. “I owe you an apology.”
Silence.
“I shouldn’t have gone through your … things,” I went on. “It was disrespectful, and it wasn’t my place, and I’m sorry.”
Hatch stared at me, his chest moving slowly up and down, his piercing blue eyes going right through me.
“And also … I called the electrician. About their overdue visit. Three times, actually. I didn’t get anyone, but I left messages, and I’ll try again when—”
“You didn’t call your grandfather?” Hatch interrupted. He didn’t sound angry, but somehow the question felt like a test.
I chewed my lip. “I don’t exactly … like my grandfather. And I don’t trust him.”
Hatch folded his hands over his stomach. He regarded me thoughtfully. “Something you and I have in common. And something George and I disagreed on. He always saw the best in people.”
I nodded. “I, um … I’ll keep calling.”
Hatch gave me a curt nod of his own. “You do that, Wade.” He paused. “And, uh. Whatever you’re doing to make the staff and patrons like you … well … keep it up.”
I tried in vain to tamp down my smile as I went back to work.
The week settled into its usual rhythm. We ordered more decorations for the upcoming Pride party and Midas fixed the office printer while Hannah tested a potential Bacardi cocktail.
When Hatch arrived each day, he grunted hello and asked about inventory, but otherwise he left us alone.
I considered it a win that he occasionally looked in my direction without his eyes popping.
“We had a dunk tank for Pride last year,” Midas told me.
“George’s idea. He kept going on about how everybody would have so much fun, but I think he had the most fun.
He refused to go in himself but kept throwing every time Hatch or me was in there.
It was literally the only time I’ve seen his quarterback skills. ”
“He wouldn’t let me sit up there,” Hannah said with a roll of her eyes. “Kept saying it was rude to ‘dunk a lady.’”
“You weren’t exactly pushing him on that,” Midas pointed out.
“Well, my hair looked good that day.”
“So did mine.”
“Yeah, but mine looked better.”
“Shut up and go work on your wedding invitations before I tell Baker you’ve been slacking.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Of course I would.”
Baker had been frequenting the Cricket more often lately.
Hannah claimed it was because they had so much wedding coordination to do, but I suspected she was just trying to show emotional support for Hannah and Hatch in the wake of losing George.
Every time Baker walked in the door, I immediately poured her a Diet Coke with lime over ice, which I’d learned was her preferred drink.
Hannah noticed and told me I was an incorrigible little suck-up who was angling for an older woman.
“Yeah, yeah, she gets it, Louisa, stop mooning over her,” Hannah griped as I handed over Baker’s drink one afternoon.
I met Baker’s eyes over the top of Hannah’s head. “For the record, I’m not into you,” I said matter-of-factly. “No offense.”
Baker took this in stride. “I know,” she said, rolling her eyes like Hannah was a particularly unruly pet that we shared custody of. “Hannah thinks everyone has a thing for me.”
“Well, yeah,” Hannah said emphatically, brushing a strand of hair from Baker’s eyes. “Have you seen you?”
Baker patted Hannah’s knee and went back to focusing on the list in front of her. “Okay, what about Nathan?”
Hannah grimaced. “I love your brother, but he doesn’t have the same gravitas as George.”
“Rude,” Baker said flippantly, but she crossed Nathan’s name off her list.
They were talking about a replacement for their wedding officiant.
Hannah seemed rather morose about the whole thing, which was probably why she kept snarking at me; Baker, on the other hand, was businesslike about it.
“We can’t change what happened, honey,” she kept saying, rubbing Hannah’s back. “George would want us to keep going.”
“I know, I know,” Hannah grumbled, rattling the ice cubes in her Coke.
When Hatch entered the room, he greeted Baker with a stiff hug. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked. My back went up, assuming he was referring to me, but then I saw he was focused on Hannah.
“Trying to choose our wedding officiant,” Baker said meaningfully.
A shadow passed over Hatch’s face, but he quickly got hold of himself. “Hmph.”
“Maybe you should do it, Hatch,” Baker said in a lightly teasing voice. She glanced at Hannah, clearly hoping the joke would rouse Hannah from her somber state.
“No chance in hell,” Hatch said. “I’m not donning a penguin suit and giving some cheesy speech.”
Hannah popped up, a spark coming back into her eyes. “A penguin suit? What on earth makes you think we’d have a black-tie wedding?”
“I met Baker’s mother,” Hatch said, jerking a thumb at her. “That woman screams black-tie event.”
“You’re not wrong,” Baker mused.
“We’re going for an outdoor, sundresses-and-chinos kind of vibe,” Hannah went on. “You can wear a fishing shirt for all I care.”
“I’m not doing it,” Hatch said with finality.
“Fine, you grouchy old gremlin,” Hannah said, sinking onto her stool again.
“Hannah,” Baker said, with a tender hand on her neck. There was a sudden no-bullshit ring of you knew this was coming to her tone. “We can keep going through the motions here, but we both know the solution is to ask Kate.”
Hannah groaned. “But she’ll totally know she was second choice! We’d already told her about asking George!”
“Yeah, and she loved that idea.” Baker paused. “And now she knows he’s gone, and I’m sure she would be honored to step up and do this for us.”
Hannah pulled her hands down her face. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”
Baker kissed her temple. “I’ll call her tonight.”
“Ughhhhh,” Hannah whined. “Thank you.”
“You’re a good partner, Baker,” Hatch said unexpectedly.
Baker looked at him, touched. “Thank you, Hatch.”
Hatch seemed to realize everyone was looking at him fondly, because he squirmed and retreated behind the bar top. “I just figure, you know, it takes a special lady to put up with this one.” He jabbed a finger in Hannah’s direction.
“I love you, too, asshole,” Hannah shot back. “Now how ’bout you pour my lady another Diet Coke?”