Chapter 4: Day-Old Buns

"I work for the Harbor Grand," I said. "Nights. Floors."

"Sure you do."

"You want to see my badge?"

"I want to see your hands." He nodded at them. "Janitors have bleach burns. You've got calluses from a rifle sling."

I put my hands in my pockets.

"You don't have to answer now," he said. "I'll wait."

"For what?"

"For closing." He held up his coffee. "I'll buy something. It'll look less like stalking."

He bought a morning bun and sat at the window table with the parish men.

He stayed four hours.

The old men told him about the Red Sox and their gallbladders, and he listened to all of it.

Roisin watched him from the counter with the peas on her face.

"He's nice," she said. "I don't trust it."

"Me neither."

"You keep looking at him."

"I'm watching him."

"That's what I said."

At six Roisin went upstairs to lie down, and I flipped the sign to CLOSED.

Cal brought his cup to the counter.

"Day-old buns," I said, and put two on a plate between us. "On the house. Talk."

"I thought you were going to talk."

"You first. You're the one sitting in my sister's shop."

He broke a bun in half and looked at it.

"I was a surface warfare officer for eleven years," he said. "Destroyers, mostly. Two tours off the Horn of Africa."

My face didn't move.

I'm good at that.

"We used to watch private escorts work the Gulf of Aden," he said. "One outfit was better than all the others. Better than us, some days."

"Must have been a long time ago."

"Six years." He took a bite. "They had a commander nobody ever saw. The pirates had a name for her. So did the shipping men."

"Interesting."

"Isn't it."

"Why'd you leave the Navy?"

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