He enjoyed his work at the Sinclair. Each afternoon the black trousers and starched white shirt with new cuffs and a new collar and the silk brocaded vest limned in black with a paisley motif in dark gold and jade across the back would be on hangers in the small office behind the bar, sent up fresh from laundry, sometimes still warm when he pulled them on. He was a fine hand with the ice pick and small mallet and could continue conversation while his hands worked beneath him to fill a glass with hard shavings from the block of ice. He talked while polishing the silver-topped seltzer bottle behind the bar, making it look as if he was only keeping his hands busy while wiping away the smudged fingerprints so once again the tops of the high-necked bottles threw off perfect reflections from the gaslamps that in this room alone of the hotel had not yet been replaced with electric lights. He was studiously slow with a match for a cigar or cigarette, waiting a long beat clocked from an eye’s corner until he was sure the guest needed such and then was there with his hands cupped around the match as if to fend off some unknown breeze. He would not forget a man’s name even if three or four days separated the first and second meeting but he might run across the same man the second morning on the porch or striding Main Street and would not speak to him, only nodding if the eyes came his way. Understanding that the bar was sanctum sanctorum for some men on their holidays. Understanding that some men needed refuge from the refuge, that some men’s lives were complicated to the point where their families were further impediments. They tipped him well. Even that first summer, in the logbook on the small table next to the front desk where departing guests wrote comments on their stays, his name was mentioned several times. Shown this, he was deprecating. Still, some evenings after the bar had closed he would linger around the front desk before going off in search of Joey. Leafing through the pages of the guestbook, looking for mention of his name. Those blotted scrawled entries revealed his presence, rooted him, placed him in a way his own eyes and heart never could. He hated that he read them.