I wrote the last one from what I had. It stops where I stopped.

The bar was closed three days. I have the three as a number and nothing inside it. Mason gave me the number. Three days is seventy-two cycles of the ice machine for nobody, and a case of lemons gone soft, and the outside light on all night because nobody told it otherwise.

He had set the shelf back himself. The rye was where the gin goes. Two spaces were empty. There was a pale rectangle where the wood had been sanded, and a new mat, and the broken glass was gone. He stood close and asked me to reach for a glass. I reached, set it down, took my hand away. Six times. On the seventh he stepped back far enough for me to open the dishwasher. The rinse aid was empty. He had not known it needed anything. I filled it.

His jaw was fine. He had had worse, he said so.

There was no glass on Chip's square. I had seen that when I saw the rye. It took me three seconds to leave it empty. After that it took nothing.

He had read what I keep. All of it, he said, in the three days. He knew the story had moved rooms, and which night. I said one thing anyway. If he says a bar, it is a bar. Do not give him the hall. He said he had seen where I used to. Once, I said. I don't anymore. He nodded. There was nothing he needed to write down.

The order was due by noon. He had crossed out the rye because there was an unopened bottle under the bar. I held the open one up to the light. Some nights his father has two. I put it back. He sent the order. He read it through first.

When the last of the sun was off the bottles he rolled his sleeves up. He had put out a tall glass for his father's drink. I gave him the short one and said two fingers, two cubes. He said he knew that much. He poured over the line. I put a measure beside the bottle and took the invoices into the office and left the door open the width of a hand.

The corner camera comes into the office too. I had the invoices up instead.

The door, and the stool taking his weight. I did not hear the glass go down. Then his voice, low, to nobody in particular.

"You remember."

"I always do."

Nothing for a while. Long enough for the ice machine to come round once. Then the old man said that was three fingers, and his son said two, and the old man said he had big hands. I know what his eyes do on that. I did not need to see it.

"You know," he said, "I met my wife in this bar."

"Tell me about her," Mason said.

He began at the sister.

The bar was mine. Orders, the money, the door, the invoices. His father was his. At his hour. If he was late, his father would wait. He had waited for him before.

The ice machine man's invoice was on top. I read it.