Page 86 of Player For Hire
Since Naomi wasn’t coming up for air without a crowbar these days, I’d rather keep busy, anyway.
Cordelia, one of our waitresses, knocked on the door. She’d get the rest of the dining room ready for our opening in an hour. I unlocked the door and let her in, seeing Danny coming up right behind her. “Hey, guys.”
“No Cal again?”
I shook my head. “He said he’d swing by, but he probably won’t be staying.”
Cordelia whistled. “Man, the new place is taking up a lot of his time. Has he finally told anyone what it’s going to be yet?”
“Nope.” I locked the door again just in case someone came by and tried to come in before we were officially open. “Danny, can you fill the ice bins? I deep cleaned them so they’re empty.”
“You got it.” Danny hurried behind the bar.
“We’re going to end up calling you boss man soon.”
I laughed. “I don’t know about that.”
Cordelia patted my arm. “I bet we will.”
Would that be so bad?
There wasn’t any time to dwell on that as we did the rest of the opening prep. Because Mondays were notoriously slow, we had a trivia night once a month. The usual suspects started arriving soon after the doors opened.
The grill was open, and our part time cook kept baskets of appetizers flowing. From the standard fare of fries, beer pretzels, and mozzarella sticks to our signature crazy potatoes, there was as much food going out as pitchers of beer.
It was a clear night and we had the doors wide open to get a little of the cool night air—mostly because there were a helluva lot of shit talking going on tonight with the groups in for trivia.
The night sped by, and by last call, I was wiped out.
We didn’t stay open very late, and I couldn’t say I was mad about it today. I was happy to find my bed and hopefully, a warm and willing Naomi.
Just as I was letting the small staff out and locking up, Cal’s truck pulled up out front.
He rushed in with a quick grin. “Hey, how tired are you?”
Beat as fuck, but it wasn’t like Cal to ask. “I got some life left in me.”
He nodded to the other side of his truck. “Get in. I want to show you something.”
Surprised by Cal’s offer, I almost forgot to engage the alarm. I jogged back in when it started beeping. Great, that made me look very managerial in front of my boss.
I hurried back to the truck and got in. “What’s up, Cal?”
Cal tipped back his baseball hat. He was dusty as hell and there was a dark teal streak of paint along his forearm. “Want to show you something.”
“Okay. Everything good?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
He glanced over at me. “Guess we’ll see.”
Cryptic as fuck. Cal was hard to read. He was a fair boss, but he definitely wasn’t one to really want to know much about the personal lives of his employees—and vice versa.
He pulled out onto Kensington Boulevard and drove down past the club a few blocks away from the bar. When he turned on to Royal Street, I frowned. I couldn’t say I’d ever been down this way.
There were a handful of empty office buildings in this part of town. It was part of the new builds going on in this part of Kensington Square. He parked in front of a cream-colored building wedged between tall brick office structures in varying stages of rehab.