CHAPTER TWO #2
The club was always different after it closed. The music stopped, the guests left, and everything got quiet. I walked around the building to make sure all the doors were locked. I did this every time we closed, just like I’d done for years. I could do it with my eyes closed if I had to.
Paddy was already in the office when I got there. He sat at the desk with a clipboard and a list of people who were working the next day, crossing out names with a black pen.
“You look busy,” I said.
“I am,” he said, not looking up at me. He informed me that half of the people who worked here part-time swapped shifts again. One bartender had already called out sick for tomorrow. Someone wrote their phone number on a report instead of signing it.
I pulled out a chair and sat. “So it’s a normal weekend.”
“Pretty much.” He writes one more note and then puts the clipboard down. He looks at me now. “What do you need?”
I put my arms on the table. “I want to know about the waitress. The one who started this week.”
“Hmm. Well, if you really want to know, her name is Nora Walsh. She started on Friday. The manager likes her. He says she learns fast, she doesn’t complain, and she works hard.
” Paddy picked up another piece of paper and examined it.
“She works at a café during the day. I don’t know how she does both jobs, but she’s been doing it since she started. ”
I wasn’t surprised that she had two jobs. Boston was a city where people had to work double to pay their bills. Paddy looked at me for a second.
“She’s quiet,” he said. “She comes in, does her job, says thank you, and apologizes a lot. Then she goes home.”
I thought about last night, when she’d apologized for an eternity after she spilled beer on me.
“No boyfriend that anyone knows about,” Paddy continued. “She doesn’t hang around after work. She doesn’t go out with the other servers. She doesn’t cause problems. She’s probably the most boring person in the building.”
“I doubt that,” I said.
Paddy’s eyebrows went up, and he smiled a little. “You doubt she’s boring?”
“I doubt people are paying enough attention to her to know whether she’s boring or not.”
“That’s funny. I’ve worked with you for years,” he said, “but how many times have you asked me about a waitress?”
“I’ve asked about staff before,” I said.
“Not like this.”
He was right. When I asked about someone, it was usually because they’d done something wrong. Nora hadn’t done anything bad. She just kept to herself and apologized a lot.
Paddy looked at me for a moment. “She’s only been in Boston for a year.”
“Only a year? Where was she before that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask because I didn’t need to know.”
It was possible that she’d moved to Boston for a job or school or something, but that didn’t feel right. Why was I interested in this?
“What made you ask about her?” Paddy asked after a while.
“Nothing.”
Paddy looked at me like he wasn’t buying that bullshit. Doubt was written all over his face, but I didn’t bother trying to convince him. I just admitted the simple truth, or at least part of it: Nora had caught my attention. That was all I was willing to admit.
He seemed to think that was ridiculous. In his mind, the only reason she’d stood out to me was because she’d accidentally drenched me with beer.
Maybe he was right. Maybe having a full pitcher emptied onto me was the only way to make sure I noticed someone.
Whatever the reason, she was on my mind now, and that wasn’t changing.
Paddy studied me for a long moment, searching my face for something I had no intention of showing him.
Eventually, he leaned back in his chair and accepted that I wasn’t going to say anything else.
I rose to my feet and pushed the chair back, ready to leave.
Before I could reach the door, Paddy called my name.
I paused with one hand on the handle, already knowing what he was about to ask, so I cut him off before he could speak.
There was nothing for him to be concerned about.
It was only curiosity. At least, that was what I told him.
Whether I believed it myself was another matter entirely.
Paddy didn’t say anything else, but I could feel him looking at me as I walked out of the office.
The conversation with Paddy should have been the end of my curiosity about Nora.
I knew her name, that she worked two jobs, and that she’d only been in Boston for a year.
That was more information than I usually cared to learn about anyone serving drinks in one of our clubs.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered what Nora had been doing before moving to Boston.
It wasn’t like I suspected her of anything.
It was just a habit. Over the years I’d learned that people didn’t usually come out of nowhere.
When parts of their story were missing, there was usually a reason.
Whether that reason was important or not was another matter. I made one phone call that day.
The man who did background checks for me was good at finding information people thought couldn’t be found. I gave him Nora’s name and asked for a routine search. If she had a history, he’d find it. He called back two days later.
“There’s not much here,” he said. “Everything from this year checks out. She has two jobs, a place to live, a driver’s license, and a bank account. Nothing unusual.”
“Before that?”
There was a pause. “That’s the concerning part. There should be more, but there isn’t. It’s like she didn’t exist before Boston.”
After I hung up, I sat looking at my phone for a while.
The report didn’t convince me Nora was hiding something.
It didn’t tell me she wasn’t dangerous, either.
If anything, it left me with questions, and I didn’t like unanswered questions.
The days turned into another week. I told myself I’d done enough, but I was still watching her.
Every night I found myself tracking Nora across the room without thinking about it.
Sometimes it was her face that caught my attention, other times it was her smile or the small crease that appeared between her eyebrows whenever she was concentrating on an order.
I started to notice patterns, like how she always took the route through the crowded floor even if it meant taking longer to get to a table.
More than once I sent one of the security staff to a table before an argument started involving her.
When I stepped in myself, I made sure it looked like I was just doing my job.
Nora never looked at me twice. She thought I was just doing what it took to keep the bar running smoothly.
Maybe that was true, and maybe it wasn’t.
The problem was that I’d stopped asking myself if I was watching the room or watching her.
Because somewhere along the way, those two things had become the same. I couldn’t explain when that happened.
I didn’t care about making excuses anymore. All I knew was that Nora Walsh had many missing pieces, and I wasn’t going to leave them alone until I knew exactly who she was and what happened in her life before she arrived in Boston.