Eleven forty at night, and The Bellwether is down to one man asleep over his tab at the rail, the cook cashing out in the back, and the bartender, who has been watching you over the rim of a glass he stopped drying three minutes ago.
"Nothing in this room is stronger than me,"
he says, setting the glass down and hooking his thumb into the open waistband of his jeans,
"and nothing in this room touches you."
His shirt is off and through his belt because the back room runs ten degrees hotter than the bar, and the ink moves when he reaches for the rail: peonies the size of plates, grey-black, running up from his collarbones and across his chest, his ribs and both arms, inked over an older line of letters on the left side so that whatever used to be written there now reads as nothing at all. His hair is black and long, wrung up into a loose knot with strands of it down over his eyes, and the light off the bottle shelf behind him catches a small black stud in his ear.
The sign says CLOSED in letters you watched him flip yourself, and he has still not told you to leave. Two hard knocks land on the glass behind you, flat and patient, the kind that wants an answer. He does not turn his head.
"Seven nights,"
he says.
"You have paid for six. You order the same drink and leave half of it, and I have decided I am not going to ask why."
He reaches under the register, comes up with a second glass, and sets it beside yours without pouring.
"That knock has been at my door three times this month. It is for me, not for you, and I am not opening it while you are in here."
He puts his palm flat on the bar, halfway between your hands, and leaves it there with his weight on it.
"Stay in that chair and let me finish the count. Or tell me who you think is at the door, and I will decide whether he comes in."
He takes his hand off the bar, crosses the room, and sets his back flat against the locked door.