warm and welcoming. The main space stretched the width of the front, with the L-shaped bar occupying almost a quarter of the place in the corner. There was a door to the back that said private and double-doors perpendicular that said “Party Room.” So she guessed that’s what the back bar walls hugged and why it took up so much space. Not that the place was short of it. A hip high wall separated the corner with the pool tables from the raised area on the other side. It was just seating. On the pool side, the wall had a counter and high stools running along it.
Regular posts jutted out of that to reach the ceiling, but still allowed those in the seating area a view of the games section. There were tables in the other quarter, and a sort of small stage in the furthest corner of that, adjoining the front of the building. Poppy was eating her olives, trying to read the posters on the wall over there when someone slid onto the stool next to hers.
“Sorry, work.” Swallowing the olives, Poppy smiled at Preston who snagged the beer he’d left. “What did I miss?”
“Naught was telling me about the Venture,” she said.
Taking his beer from his lips, a frown creased his brow. “You live in the Venture.”
“I do?”
Preston twisted toward her, resting an elbow on the bar. “Old Al won it in a poker game when Turner was like five… He used to take him out. Val hated it, but what could she do? Her father-in-law was a tough guy to argue with… It was only his cronies and Al would never have let anything happen to him… Anyway, there was a guy, his nemesis, I guess…”
Poppy was so engrossed, she missed Naught joining them until he spoke. “Ricardo,” he said with a triumphant kind of fondness.
“Right,” Preston said, without looking at his friend. “To this day we don’t know how he did it. Turner says he doesn’t remember.”
As he shrugged, Naught added, “Yeah, right.”
“So Old Al comes back with his grandson and declares to the family he just took Ricardo’s building. You’d think it wasn’t much to win. It was a real money pit until they repaired the exterior structure, did all the pointing, made it look real nice.”
“Which was the point,” Naught said, wiping down the bar. “To make something of what Ricardo had left to ruin.”
“See Al’s father worked on the original construction.”
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Right?” Preston asked. “So Old Al did all he could to return it to its former glory… Took a lot of work, the three of them were in there doing it all themselves.”
“Three of them?” she asked.
“Four if you count Ritch,” Naught said.
“Yeah, Turner, his dad and his grandfather, Old Al.”
Poppy had known the building was a labor of love, but learning just how deep that love went was humbling. “That’s an incredible story.”
“Yeah, they worked hard on that place. Turner picked up his first jobs at like ten, off the books, to put every cent he made into that place. Al put everything he had into it as well. Ed was feeding the family, but Val didn’t complain that they never had two nickels to rub together, not when she saw how much her husband and son loved it… She worked in diners, cleaned houses; anything they could put into the Venture, they did it together. Did it right too.”
“Better than any contractor they could’ve paid,” Naught said.
“So what happened?” she asked. “Do they still work on it with him?”
Poppy hadn’t met Turner’s father or his grandfather, but she hadn’t met a lot of the tenants, so it wasn’t impossible for them to have been there and she just hadn’t been introduced.
Except the look Preston and Naught exchanged was solemn enough to dampen her enthusiasm.
When Preston turned to her again, there was a broad, but not entirely genuine, smile on his face. “Poppy, do you know how to play darts?”
“Darts?” she asked, quickly putting down her drink when he took her hand to whirl her off her stool. “No, I don’t think I—”
“Then you’re in for a treat tonight.”
Learning more about Turner whetted her appetite. As Preston talked her through the rules of the game, she couldn’t focus. The building, the Venture, as they called it, meant everything to him and he was allowing her to be a part of it. Maybe only for a short time, but still, it was a privilege that she didn’t want