Chapter 4: Dock Coffee

In Pittsburgh, I couldn't sleep, so I went looking for coffee at two in the morning.

The hotel lobby was dark.

The only light in the building came from the loading dock behind the kitchens, where six road cases sat in a row under a work lamp.

Jack was sitting on one of them.

He had a paperback open on his knee and a thermos between his boots.

"You're up," he said, without looking.

"You're reading on a loading dock."

"It's quiet."

I sat on the case beside his.

I had Brendan's gray sweatshirt on again, and the wind off the river found every gap in it.

Jack unscrewed the thermos and poured coffee into the lid.

He handed it over.

"It's terrible," he said. "I make it from the hotel's own filter bags."

I drank.

It was terrible.

It was hot, and I held it in both hands.

"What are you reading?"

He turned the cover so I could see.

It was a thick spy novel with the corners worn white.

"Old habit," he said. "I read on breaks. When I was younger I worked nights in a place where reading was the only thing that kept me awake."

"What kind of place?"

"A hospital," he said. "I was an orderly for a while."

My coffee stopped halfway to my mouth.

"Which one?"

"A few," he said. "Before this job."

He did not say more, and I didn't push.

I looked at the lamp, and then at the river, and thought about Maisie's text.

Two more.

She had found them by midnight.

A morning-radio host in Detroit who tagged Brendan in a stage photo and wrote, "my favorite storyteller."

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