Page 5 of Nash
She comes to my station, looks over my shoulder. Her hand lands on the back of my chair. She studies the compass rose without speaking for long enough that I almost fill the silence, but I don't, which is a miracle of self-restraint that nobody is here to appreciate.
"It's just flash concepts," I say. "For the wall."
"No, it's not."
"It's mostly flash concepts."
"It's a half-sleeve framework." She taps the negative space. "You see the shape in the gap?"
"I didn't plan that."
"I know. That's why it works." She straightens, then lights her cigarette with a match from the box in her apron pocket. The smoke curls upward. "Don't add anything else to it."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were going to bury it in detail until it looked like everything else on the flash wall."
I open my mouth. Close it. She's right, and she knows she's right. That's the whole reason I'm here in the first place.
Frankie saw a sketch I'd done on a cocktail napkin at the clubhouse, looked at it for maybe four seconds, turned to Malachi, and said, "Ruby works at my shop now." Malachi said okay. I said, "Don't I get a say in this?" Frankie said, "No." That was the end of my career in whatever the hell I was doing before, which was mostly bartending and being devastatingly charming for tips.
"Leave it," she says.
I leave it.
I close the sketchpad and slide it into my bag. "I'm dropping those flash binders at the clubhouse. Malachi's got two prospects patching in next month, and they'll need their club ink. East and Darla want to look at designs for the twins after they're born." I grab my bag. "Maggie packed Nash extras too. He didn't touch the first plate."
Frankie exhales smoke. "When?"
"Now. I'll be back before we open."
I could walk to the clubhouse. It's three blocks. But Maggie's plate and the flash binders aren't carrying themselves. So I drive with the windows down, flannel hanging open over my tank top, music loud enough to feel in my sternum.
The lot is almost empty when I pull in. Malachi's bike and Candace's car are pulled up close to the building. Nash's Harley is parked at the far end of the row.
I grab the plate Maggie wrapped in foil and the flash binders from my back seat, balance the plate on top, then hip the car door shut. The main door gives when I push it. Last night's cookout still lives in the air, charcoal and grease layered underfresh coffee. To the right, the pool table sits in the open area, balls racked and untouched. Bar to the left. The half wall separates it all. The building hums with the kind of silence that means everyone's still asleep.
The coffee machine is on, though, and a mug sits beside it, still warm when I brush my knuckles against it. Nash's relationship with that coffee machine is the most consistent evidence of human life in this entire building.
I set Maggie's plate on the counter and carry the flash binders toward the table near the far wall. It's Nash's usual post, the one with a clear sightline to every entrance.
Nash is already there.
He's sliding papers into a folder, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his movements quick and deliberate. Wearing yesterday's clothes. His cut is draped over the chair back. The dark circles under his eyes look like bruises.
I catch the top page for a half-second before it disappears into the folder. A government seal. Formal typography I recognize from a lifetime of watching official mail arrive at the house in oversized envelopes. Then the folder closes and his hand flattens on top of it.
He doesn't look up when I set the binders on the edge of the table, which means he heard me the second the door opened and decided I wasn't a threat. That's either flattering or insulting, and I haven't determined which.
"Maggie sent a plate. I put it on the counter. You should eat it. You look like you haven't slept since the Clinton administration, and the dark circles are doing a whole haunted-Victorian-portrait thing that I'm sure intimidates your enemies but is genuinely concerning to the people who feed you."
His pen stops. He doesn't look up.
I should leave. I should walk back to my car, drive to the shop, and let the man work in peace. But his sleeves are pushed back,and the headband is right there, and I've never been this close to it.
From two feet away, the details sharpen. Red worn to rust. Thin from years against skin. A few strands of dark hair caught in the weave. Darker than his. Longer.
I've wondered. Never asked. He touches it the way other people touch a wedding ring: automatic, unconscious, the gesture of a man thinking about someone who isn't in the room.
