Chapter 8
Rhyme and Rhythm
Gary left the Steele farm with more than he'd arrived with — which, given that he'd shown up with nothing but a bottle of curiosity and a large dog, was saying something.
Lou had walked him to the Jeep and wouldn't hear of him leaving empty-handed.
A couple of bottles of Steele Bourbon appeared from somewhere inside the distillery, the ten-year expression, label hand-applied and slightly crooked in the way of things made by people who care more about what's inside than how it's presented.
Gary accepted them with the understanding that this was not a gift so much as an introduction — Lou's way of letting the product speak for itself before any further conversation was required.
Nancy had handled the food side of the departure with equal thoroughness.
A bag materialized from the kitchen containing enough leftover brisket, burnt ends, and sides to cover Gary's meals for several days and, she made clear, enough additional brisket scraps to keep Marv adequately fed for the better part of a week.
She handed it over with the satisfied expression of a woman who sent everyone home fed regardless of their feelings about it.
Marv, riding back to campus with his nose working overtime at the bag on the back seat, had never looked more at peace with a decision Gary had made.
Gary woke Monday at six with the particular clarity of a man who has spent a weekend accumulating enough living to fill a month and is now ready, genuinely ready, to do something structured with his time.
He lay there for a moment taking stock. The schedule Stu had helped him build was clean and workable — class and graduate assistant hours Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, nine to three, with one online course running alongside.
Tuesdays and Thursdays almost entirely his own.
If he wanted to help Lou at the distillery on those free days, the calendar had room for it.
If he wanted to use them for coursework, same.
The framework felt, for the first time in longer than he could remember, like something he'd chosen rather than something that had happened to him.
He got up, pulled on gym clothes, walked to the athletic complex in the early morning quiet of a campus not yet fully awake, the air still holding some of the night's cooler temperature before the Texas heat reasserted itself.
The workout was efficient and purposeful — not punishing, just enough to metabolize the previous two days, remind his body that Monday was a different kind of day than Sunday.
He was heading back out through the main doors when Sue appeared coming in, gym bag over one shoulder, coffee in hand, looking like someone who had been awake and functional for considerably longer than him.
"Gary." She fell into step beside him on the path. "I heard you had dinner at the Steeles last night."
Gary looked over. "How."
It wasn't entirely a question.
Sue had the expression of a woman deciding how to say something. She settled on directness, which, Gary was learning, was her default. "You remember Sarah."
"Vividly."
"And you remember the divorce party." She paused, letting this assemble itself in his head. "The man whose divorce it was — Brett? The one with the two kids at the Steele table last night?" Another pause. "Sarah called me after you texted her."
Gary stopped walking.
"I didn't say anything," he said, immediately. "I had no idea who he was when I met him."
"I know. She knows." Sue's expression held the specific amusement of a woman watching a situation they find funny but are choosing not to editorialize. "She said, and I'm quoting here, of course this would happen."
Gary laughed despite himself. He made a mental note to text Sarah before class — something brief, something that confirmed he hadn't spent Sunday dinner comparing notes with her ex-husband about anything, because the alternative was that this got complicated before it needed to be.
"Either way," Sue said, resuming her walk toward the entrance, "Saturday. Eight-thirty. The ladies asked about you three times yesterday. I'm not taking no for an answer."
Gary looked at her. "You're seriously talking me into regular Saturday morning line dancing."
"I'm seriously talking you into Saturday morning line dancing," she confirmed. "You're in Texas now. Embrace the culture."
She disappeared through the doors.
Gary stood on the path for a moment, considering the trajectory his weekends were taking, and then walked back to the apartment.
He heard Marv before he got the door open — the specific rustling of a large dog rearranging himself from sleep, the preliminary sounds of a creature becoming aware that the world was operating again and forming opinions about whether to participate.
By the time Gary came through the door, Marv was sitting in the middle of the living room with the expression of a dog who had been awake for several minutes already and wanted credit for it.
"Morning," Gary said.
Marv sighed deeply, which covered both greeting and commentary on the hour.
Gary pulled the Steele leftovers from the fridge and assembled a breakfast that was, by any objective measure, better than anything he'd managed for himself in months — brisket warmed in the skillet alongside whatever sides survived the journey, with the burnt ends reserved as a finishing move that Marv tracked with his entire body from across the kitchen.
Gary ate standing at the counter. Marv ate from his bowl with focused, unhurried intensity, occasionally pausing to confirm that the bowl was going to stay where it was.
He showered, checked his bag, and decided on a quick walk before class. Coffee was clearly necessary, and Café Texas was already on the route.
Bryan had the door propped open and a fresh batch of kolaches in the case by the time they arrived. He looked up, registered Gary, registered Marv, reached for a coffee cup and a piece of wax paper in the same motion.
"Kolache," Bryan said, to Marv specifically, holding the pastry over the counter.
What happened next occupied approximately two seconds and was witnessed by everyone in the café.
Marv lunged forward with the specific explosive enthusiasm of a dog who had spotted something he wanted and had temporarily forgotten that tile floors required traction.
All four paws went out from under him simultaneously in different directions.
The kolache, in the chaos, sailed past his open mouth.
Marv hit the tile floor with a sound that was considerably louder than his size had any right to produce, slid another foot on his momentum, and came to a stop with his chin on the ground and a look of profound, dignified betrayal on his face.
The café erupted.
Full, genuine, wall-to-wall laughter — the kind that rolls through a room before anyone decides to let it.
Bryan was laughing hard enough that he had to step back from the counter.
Two women at a corner table were holding each other's arms. A man by the window who had been reading something looked up, took in the scene, and lost the battle immediately.
Marv did not move for a long moment. He simply remained on the floor, chin down, processing what had happened to him and its implications for his reputation.
Gary crouched beside him, retrieved the kolache from where it had landed, and offered it properly this time, at floor level.
Marv ate it with great solemnity.
Bryan, wiping his eyes, slid the coffee across the counter. "That's on the house," he managed. "Both of you."
Gary dropped Marv at the apartment and walked to his first day of classes with ten minutes to spare, which for Gary was practically early.
Professor John Jenkins, who Gary would be working with all semester, turned out to be a man in his early fifties who had clearly made his peace with exactly where he was in his career — tenure achieved, obligations met, the remaining years of teaching approached with the unhurried satisfaction of a man who liked the work and had stopped needing anything from it beyond that.
He was specific and direct in the classroom without being rigid, the kind of instructor who had taught the material long enough to know which parts were actually important and which parts were scaffolding.
Afterward he stopped Gary on the way out. "You eat pizza?"
Gary confirmed that he did.
"Hanky's," Jenkins said. "Little place just off the west edge of campus — easy to miss, which is part of the point.
Wood-fired oven, simple menu, Hank and his son run it together.
Happy hour most days. They serve until seven or eight depending on when the dough runs out, and when it's gone it's gone.
" He said the last part with the genuine emphasis of a man who had arrived too late once and never made the same mistake twice. "Good place to end a first day."
Gary filed this away and went to check on Marv, who had reestablished himself on the living room floor and received the interruption of Gary's return with the mild inconvenience of a dog disturbed mid-nap.
He made it to Hanky's just after six.
The place was everything Jenkins had described and smaller than he'd pictured — a narrow room with six or seven tables, the wood-fired oven visible through a pass-through at the back, the whole operation clearly running on the specific economy of two people who knew exactly what they were doing and weren't trying to do more than that.
The pizza, when it came, was the kind that made you understand why someone would open a place with eight tables, no reservations, and be fully booked every night regardless.
He was halfway through his second slice and his first beer when Hank, passing by the pass-through, called last call on dough. Gary started gathering himself.
"Gary."
He turned.