Chapter 4: A Round on Hal

"Don't let him leave," I said.

"Honey, he's not going anywhere. He's buying the nurses shots."

I hung up.

Gannon was watching me from the rail.

"My father's at your bar," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Buying a round at one in the afternoon. For a man who counts the mints."

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

I left him standing on his boat.

It took me fifty minutes to get back to Glendale, and I spent every one of them rehearsing.

The Lamplighter is a long dark room with a pressed tin ceiling and a carpet you shouldn't look at directly.

At one-fifty on a Monday it usually holds four people.

That day it held eleven, and every one of them had a free drink.

Hal sat in the middle of them on my stool, the one at the end of the bar by the register.

Navy suit. Silver hair. Teeth.

He was telling the two nurses about a patient who swallowed a retainer.

They were laughing.

The retired mailman was laughing too.

The guy who only knows sports wasn't laughing, but he was drinking Hal's beer.

"There she is," Hal said. "Our star."

"Get off my stool."

Everybody stopped.

Hal stood up slowly and patted the seat.

"Tilda's mad at me," he told the room. "Family stuff. I married her mother on Saturday."

"We heard," said one of the nurses.

"And I have to say, your girl here has the best set of brackets in the San Fernando Valley. I should know. I put them on."

He reached out and pinched my chin.

I knocked his hand away.

Marva came out of the back office with her reading glasses on their beaded chain and a dish towel over her shoulder.

She looked at Hal, then at me.

"Use my office if you need it," she said.

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