Coffee’s free if you’re in costume. You’ll have to present yourself a proper modern lady for anything else, and I’ll have to charge you a proper modern price.”
Dini thought about the folded bills in her skirt pocket. Plenty for her loose expenses. “I’ve earned it.”
Gil reached in for the coffee and took a sip for himself. “Go on, then. I’ll make you one fresh when you come out.”
He handed her a key, and she went behind the bar, through to the employee area to a small room lined with lockers along one wall. Within minutes she had divested herself of the skirt and blouse and pulled on jeans and T-shirt, this one featuring a local band with images of popular sci-fi monsters. She put her walking boots back on because they were of her own choosing and as comfortable as they were cool. She’d probably walked the equivalent of the entire state of Texas in these boots. The rest of the costume, though, got shoved into the depths of her vintage brocade satchel. It was due for a dry cleaning over the weekend, as she didn’t have another tour gig booked for at least a week.
There was only one garment hanging on the brass coatrack in the corner—a grayish-green cardigan that must be Gil’s, though she’d never seen him wear it. Theirs was not a relationship that ever strayed beyond the Menger Bar. He was handsome enough, with a high brow and ready smile. He wore his hair in long, thin braids tied neatly at the nape of his neck. Their first conversation had felt like a meeting of long-lost friends. Three years before—she, newly twenty-one and he seemingly ageless—talked until last call about the Menger Hotel, its famous history, and its two most infamous women: Sallie White and Hedda Krause. He was a font of knowledge and endless stories.
Gil was expertly spooning thick cream over the top of her drink when she emerged. “By the way, one of the guys who took your tour tonight? He’s staying here, and we talked a bit before you set out.”
“Okay.” Dini drew out the syllable, suspicious as she laid her money on the bar.
“I think you’re going to want to meet him.”
“Stop. You know better than to try to fix me up—”
Gil held up his hand in protest. “It’s not a fix-up, I promise. Promise. And I’m not gonna tell you any more, because the best mysteries are the ones you solve yourself, right?”
“Right.” She looked up at Teddy Roosevelt and recalled the faces of her tour group. Four women, six men. Mostly coupled up, but of the two single guys (one cute, one…not), neither seemed heavily invested in her ghoulish tales of San Antonio ghosts. “Well, I don’t recall anybody interesting in my group tonight.”
“That’s because I told him to hang back, listen, and talk to you after. But if the idea makes you uncomfortable, I can kick him out.”
“No.” Dini took a sip of her coffee to counter the unfamiliar buzz of wary anticipation. Never, in all her nights of coming in for coffee after a tour, or coming in for nachos before a tour, or hanging out—alone—on a Saturday night with a book and her cards had Gil ever intimated that he cared about her social life. Then again, something in his voice sounded like this had nothing to do with her social life. “Mind if I hide upstairs until he gets here?”
He scooped up the money. “You are officially a paying customer. Do as you please.”
Breaking with the tradition of playing 1930s swing music, and undoubtedly for her sake alone, the dark room soon flooded with the soft sounds of the seventies. Drink in one hand, her bag in the other, Dini took the narrow staircase up to the second level and settled at the corner table where she took out a small timer—old-fashioned, with grains of sand—and a deck of cards. It was a new deck, the cards slick and stiff. In a fluid motion, she upended the timer and commenced to shuffling, counting under her breath, “One…two…three …” A mere fraction of a second lapsed between the fffttt of the cards arched between her palms and their clack on the table before the next interspersing zzzip. “Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-one—” and the last grain dropped through the glass. She gave the deck a final, frustrated tap against the thick wood of the table.
“Table riffle’s faster,” Gil called from behind the bar.