With my head down and my hands in my pockets to ward off the chill in the air, I meander through the busy streets of Seattle. I don't have any particular destination in mind. I'm just walking. After spending the day with Ted and Brubaker, I guess I wanted some time to myself.
Eventually, I look up and find myself standing in front of the doors of a bar that's very familiar to me. Grady's is a place I've been coming to for quite some time. It's always been a quiet place. A place you can go to have a drink and actual conversation. There's no loud music and the clientele is usually a bit more – staid.
It is definitely not the type of place for hellraisers or hipsters. There are plenty of those around. Grady's is, more or less, a place for professionals. A place where deals are made, and contracts are signed.
It's also a place where Brittany and I spent a lot of our time together.
Maybe somewhere deep down, I knew I was heading here the whole time. That this had been my destination all along and I'd only fooled myself into thinking I was wandering aimlessly. If there's one thing I do well, it's punishing myself.
I check my watch and decide I'm not ready to go back to Port Safira yet, so I might as well go in and have a drink. Perhaps, by sort of reclaiming the spot for myself, I can banish the old ghosts and feel comfortable in some of my old haunts again. I enjoy Seattle and I always have. But ever since everything went sideways with Brittany, I feel like I don’t belong here anymore. Same thing with my office. I don't feel comfortable. And that's something I want to change.
Letting out a long breath, I step up and pull the door open. All the familiar scents of Grady's wash over me as I step through the door and I'm transported back in time.
“Hey, Anderson,” calls Greg. “Long time no see, bud.”
I give him a wave. “Good to see you, Greg.”
Greg is the owner and operator of Grady's. He named the bar to honor his father, which I always thought was nice. Greg is about sixty, a former Marine, and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. Honestly, if he hadn't told me how old he was, I never would have guessed it. He's a big block of a man with wide shoulders, a thick chest, and hands that look big and strong enough to crush your head with. I'm not a small man by any means, but I feel like a scrawny beanpole next to the guy.
I take my jacket off and slide into a booth. Greg is there a moment later with a tumbler of scotch – my usual drink. He smiles at me from beneath his thick, bushy mustache.
“Where ya been, bud?”
I shrug. “Work's keeping me busy these days.”
He nods. “Where's that wife of yours?” he asks. “She comin' later?”
The knot in my stomach constricts painfully and I grit my teeth, trying to keep my anger at bay.
“No, we divorced, actually,” I say.
Greg's face blanches as he looks at me. “Shit, man,” he says. “I didn't know. I'm sorry to hear that.”
I shrug. “It's for the best,” I say and pick up my glass. “As long as I have a good scotch, my health, and my dog, I have everything, right?”
“Damn straight, son. Best attitude you can have,” he claps me on the shoulder. “This one's on me. Next one ya gotta pay for though. I’m not runnin' a charity here.”
He laughs and gives me a wink as he turns and heads back to the bar. I glance up at the flat-screen TVs mounted on the wall, mindlessly staring at the highlights from the college football games. I raise the glass to my lips and take a long swallow, relishing the slight burn of the liquid as it slides down my throat.
I remember having a lot of good times in this bar. Happy times. I remember making deals with clients over drinks. I remember plenty of good times with friends. Hell, I even remember some good times with Brittany in here. There are a lot of good memories in this place. And as I reflect on them, I realize that I can't let her steal those memories away from me. I won't let her.
“Liam Anderson,” a voice says. “As I live and breathe.”
I turn and find myself staring into the face of Damon Moore, one of my company's chief rivals. There's absolutely no love lost between us – which, is the polite and civilized way of saying we hate each other's fucking guts. He's known as a shady businessman who does things the wrong way. He bends rules until they are at the point of breaking but manages to avoid trouble most of the time – mostly because he's a big donor to the political campaigns of the right people. People in power.
A few years back, he won a contract to build some low-income housing. He'd actually beaten me for the contract. And when the project was complete, it became clear why he'd been able to lowball me and win the contract in the first place.
Less than a year after it was completed, the building collapsed, killing fifteen people – including three children. I went to the site myself to check it out and it didn't take me long to realized that he'd used subpar building material. He'd cut every possible corner to maximize his profit. And fifteen people lost their lives because of it.
The official ruling was that the structure had been built on unstable ground – that a recent tremor along a fault line had caused liquefaction beneath the structure. The report said it was an unfortunate, but an unforeseeable event and Damon walked away scot free – no doubt, after greasing all the right palms.
He's a piece of trash whose business practices make the mob look like they're on the up and up. I have absolutely zero respect for the guy.
“Wow,” I say. “Greg is letting anybody in here these days.”
“My money is as good as yours,” he says smoothly. “Greg is a businessman. He's not going to discriminate when somebody has cash in hand.”
“He also doesn't realize that just having you in here lowers his property value and increases the risk for communicable diseases.”
Damon laughs and slides into the booth across from me. I clench my jaw and stare daggers at him.
“Yeah, I'm here for a quiet drink,” I say. “Alone.”
“Yeah, I hear you're spending a lot of time alone these days,” he says. “I guess that's natural, what with the divorce and all.”
“Oh, you read the tabloids,” I say. “And here I didn't think you could read at all. Or did you just look at the pictures?”
He chuckles and takes a sip of his beer. “Always with the witty comeback,” he says, setting his mug down on the table.
“What do you want, Damon?” I ask. “I'm seriously not in the mood for your shit.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “Why is it you despise me so much?” he asks. “I mean, where did you and I go wrong?”
“There's never been a ‘you and I’, Damon.”
“I just don't understand it,” he says. “All I wanted to do was commiserate with you for a moment. To express my sorrow for your divorce and all. I don't know why you're meeting me with such hostility.”
I roll my eyes. “Probably because you're a piece of shit.”
“Well, that's not very nice.”
I shrug. “The truth often isn't,” I say. “You should probably run along now and go pull the wings off flies or whatever it is you do in your spare time because I have a lot of other things I'd like to say that aren't very nice.”
He sighs and takes a long swallow of his beer. Setting the mug back down, he looks at me for a long moment. And when he speaks, what he says surprises me.
“What are you doing in Port Safira?” he asks.
I'm taken aback by his question. I've told very few people where I've moved to. And certainly, nobody that runs in the same circles as this asshole. I have no idea how he knows.
“What's it to you?” I say – mostly because it's all I can think to say.
“Just curious why you'd choose to move there of all places,” he says. “I mean, a man of your wealth could move anywhere. Why a small town like that?”
“Maybe I like the fresh air.”