Chapter 15
Benji
Dante Pierce walked into Barbacks on a Wednesday afternoon looking like someone had ordered a bouncer from a catalog titled “People You Do Not Want to Mess With,” and then, at the last minute, given him the face of a Renaissance painting.
He was enormous.
Not tall-enormous, though he was tall, maybe six-two, but dense-enormous, built with the kind of broad, layered muscle that suggested either serious gym time or a previous career moving furniture or possibly large boulders.
His skin was a deep, rich black that caught the bar’s warm lighting and made him look like he’d been carved from onyx.
His head was shaved clean, and he wore a black T-shirt that fit him the way a wetsuit fits a Navy SEAL, which is to say, technically correct but with a level of anatomical tension that suggested the garment was aware of its limitations and was coping bravely.
He was also, and I want to be clear about this because it became relevant almost immediately, holding a paperback copy of Anna Karenina.
The book wasn’t tucked in a bag or shoved in a back pocket.
He held it in his massive hand, with a thumb marking his place about two-thirds of the way through, the cover creased and softened with the wear of a book that had been read in coffee shops and on bus rides and in whatever quiet moments a man could carve out of a day.
Mark had been interviewing bouncer candidates for a week, a process that had produced a parade of men who ranged from “probably fine” to “almost certainly has an outstanding warrant.”
Thankfully, Mark’s standards were exacting in a way that made Peter’s whiteboard look casual.
He wanted someone who could handle a confrontation without creating one, who understood that the job was ninety percent presence and ten percent intervention.
Perhaps most importantly, he wanted a man who wouldn’t make the regulars feel like they were entering a nightclub that took itself too seriously.
Mark spotted Dante first as he stepped into the bar.
“Dante Pierce?” Mark said, standing from the corner booth where he’d been interviewing.
“That’s me.” Dante’s voice was a gravely bass that seemed to originate somewhere around his kneecaps and travel upward through several geological layers before reaching the surface.
He extended a hand that could have palmed a basketball—possibly two at once—without trying.
Mark shook it and visibly recalibrated whatever mental image he’d built from the résumé.
“Thanks for coming in. Have a seat.”
I was behind the bar, prepping for the evening shift, close enough to hear the interview if I didn’t make too much noise with the ice scoop.
This was technically eavesdropping, but I considered it quality assurance, since anyone who worked the door at Barbacks would be interacting with my customers.
I had a vested interest in the caliber of that interaction.
“Your résumé says you did security at The Yard in Ybor City for two years,” Mark said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“The Yard closed. New management bought the place and turned it into a vape lounge. I didn’t want to bounce for a vape lounge.”
“That’s fair. Before that, you were at a bookstore?”
“Inkwell Books, over on Howard. I managed the evening events. You know, author readings, open mics, book clubs, those sorts of things, anything to drive traffic into the shop.”
Mark paused.
I could see him doing the same recalculation I was doing, which was trying to reconcile the man sitting across from him with a bookstore events manager. The two data points did not naturally coexist. It was like finding out that a grizzly bear had a side hustle in floral arrangements.
“That’s an unusual combination,” Mark said. “Bookstore and nightclub security.”
“People are people,” Dante said. “Drunk people and book people both need someone to make sure the room stays comfortable. The tools are different, but the job’s the same.
You read the room, you manage the energy, and you step in before things go sideways.
I’d rather do it at a place like this than at a club where nobody cares if things go sideways because sideways is the business model. ”
Mark leaned back in the booth with the expression of a man who had just heard exactly what he wanted to hear and was trying not to show it.
“You’d be working Thursday through Saturday. Thursdays are our adoption event nights, which means animals in the bar. Are you comfortable with cats and dogs?”
“I have a greyhound named Dostoyevsky. Dosty sleeps twenty hours a day and is afraid of plastic bags. We’re very close.”
I dropped the ice scoop.
This man had named his dog Dostoyevsky and was reading Anna Karenina and had managed a bookstore and could also, based on the dimensions of his arms, tear a phone book in half without breaking a sweat.
The combination of these facts was producing a kind of cognitive dissonance that my brain was struggling to resolve.
There might’ve been smoke trickling out of my ears, though I didn’t dare turn toward the mirror to check.
This was a show, and I wasn’t about to miss a single episode.
Dante looked toward the bar.
Our eyes met.
He gave me a nod that was friendly but not performative. It was the nod of a man who was aware of his surroundings at all times and had clocked me eavesdropping and had chosen to let it slide.
I nodded back and went to find Jacks, because Jacks needed to join in the eavesdropping immediately.
“The bouncer candidate is reading Anna Karenina,” I hissed, cornering Jacks in the stockroom.
“Okay.”
“Not on his phone, a physical copy, Jacks. A paperback. From the looks of where his sausage thumb is stuck in the pages, he’s two-thirds of the way through.”
“That’s nice.”
“His dog is named Dostoyevsky, Jacks.”
Jacks set down the case of vodka he’d been carrying and looked at me with his quiet, steady attention that always made me feel like I was being gently X-rayed . . . or Xanaxed.
“Is he good?” Jacks asked.
“He told Mark that bouncing and bookstore management are basically the same job. Jacks, the man used the phrase ‘manage the energy’ with a straight face and it didn’t sound corny.”
“So he’s good.”
“He’s spectacular. Mark is going to hire him. I can see it on his face. Mark is doing the thing where he pretends to still be evaluating, but he’s already made up his mind. I actually think he’s kind of crushing on the guy.”
From the kitchen, came Rod’s voice. “I heard that.”
“You were a great hire, Rod. I’m saying Dante is going to be a great hire, too. This is a compliment to both of you.”
“Who’s Dante?” Rod asked.
“The bouncer. He’s reading Tolstoy. He has a greyhound named Dostoyevsky,” I repeated.
There was a pause from the kitchen, during which I could almost hear Rod processing this information through whatever calm, methodical system governed his interior life.
“I’d like to meet him,” Rod said.
“Of course you would. He’s your soulmate, Rod. You’re both quiet men who do important work and appreciate the finer things. You’re going to be best friends. I can see the whole arc.”
“Please don’t plan my friendships.”
“Too late. The vision is clear. I’m seeing book clubs and Sunday dinners.
I’m seeing two large, thoughtful men sitting in companionable silence while a greyhound named Dostoyevsky and a beagle named Ruthie sleep at their feet.
Though I’d be cautious about letting this grow into anything more than friendship because I think our Dear Leader has a crush, and woe be unto the man who gets between the Soulless Wonder and a crush.
Jacks, have you ever seen Mark crush? Has he ever even dated? Does he know how?”
Jacks was smiling.
He wasn’t commenting or answering, just smiling, because Jacks knew that interrupting me during a tangent only extended the tangent and that the most efficient path to the other side was patience.
Thirty minutes later, Mark hired Dante.
This surprised exactly no one, because Mark’s interview face had shifted from “evaluating” to “calculating start date” approximately ninety seconds into the conversation, and the remaining half hour had been a formality conducted for the sake of professional protocol.
Dante’s first shift would be the following Thursday, which was Paws and Pours night, which meant his introduction to Barbacks would involve drunk customers, adoptable animals, a one-eared pit bull, a hairless cat in a carrier behind the bar, and whatever chaos the universe decided to contribute, because the universe had never once looked at a Paws and Pours event and thought, This could use less chaos.
Dante showed up thirty minutes early for his first shift, which was the first indication that he was going to fit in and possibly blow the curve for the rest of us.
He wore all black, because bouncers wore all black the way priests wore collars.
They were uniforms that communicated purpose before a single word was spoken.
His book was nowhere in sight, replaced by a small earpiece and the focused, scanning attention of a man who had switched from reader mode to professional security guard mode in zero point two seconds flat.
“Dante,” I said, extending a hand across the bar. “Benji. I’m one of the bartenders. I was also the guy pretending not to listen to your interview last week.”
“I know,” he said, shaking my hand with a grip that was firm without being performative. “You’re a terrible spy. You dropped the ice scoop when I mentioned Dostoyevsky.”
“In my defense, you named a greyhound after a Russian novelist. That’s an ice-scoop-dropping revelation.”
“My last dog was named Chekhov. The one before that was Gogol.”
“You have a series of canines?”
“Russian lit is good dog-name territory. They like long vowels, and dogs respond to long vowels.”
“Is that so?”
“I have no idea. I made that up just now, but I really do like Russian literature.”