Kingfisher(10)

“Hotel.” He swiveled on the stool, trying to find it. Remnants surfaced in the shadows: a huge stone fireplace at the far end of the room, what might be stairs inset to one side of it, the kind that fanned out over the floor, then did a slow curve upward and out of sight.

“We’re trying to get at least part of it back in business. We’ve been trying for years. Soon as you get one leak fixed, another starts, then the wind picks up, slats go flying into the bay, and the windows cloud up. You know how it goes.” He nodded toward the chandelier. “This used to be the old reception hall. Through those doors there along the inner wall was the sitting room, even bigger than this one. The restaurant’s in there now. Kingfisher Grill.”

Pierce glanced behind him, then turned back to his beer, not wanting to know, wanting to make himself clear from the start. “I’m just passing through,” he said. “On my way south. I want to find a job cooking in Severluna.”

“You any good?”

Pierce smiled. “I don’t know. My mother taught me a few things. I’m hoping to learn on the job in a restaurant on the beach. Someplace like my mother’s, simple, fresh, and local, only down where it’s warm, and nobody has to wear socks.”

Tye grunted. He pulled a square of wood and a knife from under the bar, then, as if he had a little orchard down there as well, an orange and a couple of limes. He began to slice them. “We could use a cook. Ella—that’s our mother—she’s been running the kitchen since the Grill opened, and she needs to slow down a little. If you meet anyone down there who wants a job up here. Or if you don’t find the right beach.”

Pierce took another swallow. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He put his glass down, met Tye’s easy expression, whatever was in his eyes hidden behind a blur of light over his lenses. “I could use a room, thanks. Just for the night. I have my stuff in the car. It steered itself into your parking lot when I saw the sign.”

“Fine.” Tye scraped wedges of orange and lime into their condiment dishes, then plucked a lemon from the mysterious garden under the bar. “Fine, then. We’ll see what we can do for you.”

The front door opened, banged shut. The wolf man beside Pierce breathed a sudden exclamation into his glass, then huddled around it, head bowed, shoulders hunched. Brisk footsteps across the floorboards came to an abrupt halt.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Amazing,” the man murmured, “how much weight those two innocent words can carry.”

There was a swift, indrawn breath, held for a moment in which nobody, not even the placid bartender, moved. Then came a gusty, exasperated sigh, and the footsteps marched on, to Pierce’s ears sharp with pointed recrimination. He risked a glance, saw a slight, straight-backed young woman, her dark hair in an impeccable French braid, disappear through the swinging doors between rooms.

The bartender cocked his glasses at the wolf man, who said glumly, “I was supposed to take her mother to lunch. She was in town visiting friends. It was all too much for me. Name’s Teague, by the way,” he added to Pierce. “Merle Teague. That dark wind that just blew through is my beloved offspring Carrie.”

Pierce frowned. “I know your name. I don’t know why.”

“Do I owe you money?”

Pierce shook his head puzzledly. The front door rattled and smacked open, in the same moment that the double doors flew open, and Carrie Teague reappeared, under Pierce’s fascinated gaze, a bit like a bird popping out of a cuckoo clock.

“Ella says Hal’s at the dock,” she announced tersely, and waited in strained, forbearing abeyance, for a response.

The two men who had just entered nodded to Tye and tacked away from the bar. One was young, the other not so, both comely, with gold beards and hair neatly trimmed, lean, lanky bodies that wore their jeans and work shirts with casual elegance. Father and son, Pierce guessed, and felt a sharp, unexpected pang of envy.

“We’ll help him,” the older said, and they followed Carrie back through the swinging doors. Pierce found himself watching their empty flapping, waiting for what would happen next. He turned quickly, picked up his glass again.

“Shouldn’t be long now,” Tye told him, whittling thin curls of lemon peel off the pith. “Ella and Carrie will have those crabs boiled up in no time. Ella makes the sweetest crab cakes you ever ate, and Carrie does a mixed pepper aioli that’s just this side of heaven and that side of everlasting fire.”

Pierce felt his stomach roil again and whine. “Can’t wait,” he breathed, and Tye grinned. He put his knife down, made a few indiscernible passes under the bar, and came up with a bowl of hot, salted popcorn.

More people came in while Pierce ate it. Some disappeared into the restaurant; others lingered at the bar or carried their drinks to the couches and chairs. Tye poured another beer for Pierce without asking; Pierce drank it without caring. The road was untwisting behind him, the gray sky becoming less desolate. Some kind of young minister or priest with a backward collar came in; he and Merle started an amiable argument about what sounded like cannibalism. Smells melted between the swinging doors, floated through the room, disrupting conversations, making people forget what they were saying to stare mutely, expectantly at the doors.

They opened finally. Pierce, hoping for supper at last, turned eagerly. It was Carrie again, dodging swiftly through the crowd toward the bar.