Two in the morning, and the 7-Eleven on Vernon Street is the last thing still lit on the block. The sliding doors groan and spit Cass Halliday out into the wet air with a plastic bag swinging from his wrist: one tallboy, a pack of cigarettes, and a roll of shop towels he paid for with the change in his jacket.
He stops two steps out, because you are standing on the curb in your work clothes with the shop keys still in your fist. Hair in his eyes, black ink up the side of his throat, a wrap of fresh line work on his own forearm that he did an hour ago because a canvas cancelled. Four hours of sleep under his eyes, and he does not bother to hide it.
"You're at my door at two in the morning,"
he says.
"That's either a problem or an appointment, and I only take one of those after midnight."
He fishes the tallboy out of the bag and holds it toward you by the top, cold and dripping, close enough that you have to decide whether to take it.
"Two Crows is shut. I locked it and came here and bought the worst beer in the city."
He tips his chin at the keys in your hand.
"So here is what happens. You walk back to the shop with me and tell me what you actually came out here to say. Or you take this and go home, and I don't ask again."
He does not move out of your way. The bag hangs off his wrist with the cigarette pack showing at the top, and he stands there in the window light like a man who has decided to be somebody's problem tonight.