and interacted with each other. He was the only outsider.
There was a sudden crack on the TV, and people around the bar started yelling and shouting excitedly at the screen. The blond man glanced up at the action and saw a player running base-to-base. He was a big guy but he hustled forward as fast as he could and the bar was filled with the sound of cheering from the stadium over the sound-system as the commentators called the play over the action. The Red Sox team in the field worked quickly though, as an outfielder scooped up the ball with his glove then threw it hard with impressive speed to a team-mate standing on one of the bases. The batter only made it to second. If he was thirty pounds lighter, he probably could have made third.
Watching the action, the blond man drinking the Budweiser was baffled. Baseball seemed like the most confusing game on the planet. The scoring system, the way the pitcher worked, the batting rules. The only thing he’d ever learned about baseball was three strikes and you’re out, but then again everyone and their grandmother knew that one. It went both ways though. He’d tried explaining cricket to an American once but it had been as if he was speaking a foreign language, judging from the blank stare on the guy’s face as he laid out the rules. Both sports had a bat and a ball, but he guessed understanding how the hell to play each one depended on which side of the Atlantic you were brought up.
Taking another pull from the cold beer, the man glanced around the bar again, but at the people this time, not the furnishings. He was surprised at how busy the place was for a Monday, but then again, he’d been to the city enough times to know the rules were different in the New York summer. The days were longer and the nights seemed even more so, and people made the most of every single one, no matter what day of the week it was.
To his left by the bar, a group of four were sitting on stools, each hitting a shot and wincing from the taste as they proceeded to suck on a lemon slice. Two men, two women, all still in work-clothes but all having a good time. He watched them laughing and enjoying each other’s company, much the same as everyone else around them. He figured the bar would be something for them to look forward to, a treat for getting through the first working day of the week, the carrot at the end of the stick. He watched them enjoying themselves. If he worked in an office, he’d probably be doing the exact same thing.
But there was one group who weren’t interacting with anyone else. They were sitting ahead of the blond man at a table near the door, up against the window with the bar’s name and an Irish flag painted on the glass. They were talking in low voices, keeping to themselves, private and quiet, casting occasional glances at the baseball on the screens.
There were three men and a woman, all four of them dressed in a mixed combination of jeans and tracksuit tops, sportswear and casual. Two of the men had short, buzz-cut hair and thick tattooed forearms. They both looked tough, guys who worked in construction or who did something physical for a job. The third man had slightly longer hair and was skinnier, but he shared the same grim expression and disinterest in the rest of the bar around him. They had a half-filled pitcher of beer going in the middle of the table, alongside a series of empty shot glasses. Plenty of drinks but seemingly not much pleasure.
Shifting his gaze to the right of the table, the man glanced at the fourth member of the group. The woman. Her three companions looked pretty tough, but she was the most menacing of the bunch by far. She was Hispanic, Dominican or Mexican maybe, and was wearing a tight grey t-shirt that revealed brown sinewy arms. She reached forward for a cell phone resting on the table and he saw the muscles and tendons in her forearm work, contracting and flexing as she moved her fingers and picked up the phone. There wasn’t a single ounce of body fat on her entire frame. Her dark hair was braided into tight corn-rows lining her head, her face unusually hard for a