I had, in fact, added simple syrup to a pint of lager. The customer hadn’t noticed yet, but he would.
“I’m having anunusualday,” I said.
Dante nodded. “Something good, though.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you keep smiling when you think no one’s looking. The smile isn’t the one you use for customers. It’s the other one.”
“I don’t have two smiles.”
“You have about seven. The one you’ve been doing today is the one I’ve only seenoncebefore, at the adoption event, when Peter told that family they could take the mutt home.”
I stared at him.
Dante returned my stare with the implacable calmof a man who read Tolstoy for fun.
“You’re very observant for someone who’s been here three weeks,” I said.
“I read a lot. Reading teaches you to pay attention to what’s on the pageandwhat’s between the lines.” He paused. “The stuff between the lines is usually more interesting.”
Mark came in at 5 p.m., settled into his corner booth with his laptop, and didn’t look up for forty-five minutes. When he finally surfaced to check on the floor, he glanced at me, glanced at the garnish station (reorganized for the fourth time), glanced at the pint glass I’d just overfilled, and said, “What’s wrong with you tonight?”
“Nothing. Seasonal allergies.”
“It’s not allergy season.”
“I have unusual allergies. They’re anti-seasonal. They’re triggered by global warming and alterations in airplane navigation patterns and . . . other environmental factors.”
“You’re distracted.”
“I’m focused. I’mextremelyfocused. I’m focused on multiple things simultaneously, which might create the appearance of distraction but is actually a higher-order cognitive state.”
Mark looked at Jacks.
“Peter kissed him,” Jacks said, because apparentlymy personal life was now a matter of public record, and Jacks had been appointed the official spokesperson.
Mark blinked.
His face did the calculation thing it did when new data entered his field, the rapid internal sorting of information into relevant categories and probable outcomes.
“That explains the simple syrup in the lager,” he said, and went back to his laptop.
How the hell did he know about that? I did that before he’d even come in.
The shift continued.
I made drinks.
I smiled at customers.
I performed the version of myself that the bar required, and the version held together, mostly, except for the moments between moments, the quiet seconds when no one was ordering and no one was watching and my brain, freed of its professional obligations, catapulted me back to the foster room and Peter’s face in the lamplight and the sound he’d made when he pulled back, that quiet “oh” that contained more than any word I’d ever heard him say.
At 9 p.m., Jacks intercepted me during a lull.
“You’re going to wear a hole in that counter,” he said.
I looked down. I’d been wiping the same section of bar for seven minutes, my hand moving in slow circles while my brain operated somewhere near apartment 4B.
