“Hope you like good beer,” O’Brien said. He moved back from the doorway to let them in, and in doing so allowed them to make him out properly for the first time. As Trix stepped into the pub, Jim held back and sized the man up. Smartly dressed in black trousers and shined shoes, a white shirt and black suede waistcoat, he was a barrel of a man, well over two hundred pounds, but he carried the weight well. He was tall and broad, and even before he’d turned a little to fat, Jim knew that he’d been a powerful presence. Yet there was a lightness about him that quelled any unease Jim might normally feel in the company of such a huge stranger. He moved back like a dancer to let them in, graceful and gentle, and his smile lit up his face. His hair was long and tied in a ponytail, and a scruff of graying stubble softened his features more.
“Jim Banks,” Jim said, extending his hand as he entered. For a second he saw a flicker of something on O’Brien’s face-fear? Discomfort? The smile flexed a little, but it returned just as fresh and welcoming as before. He took Jim’s hand and pumped it twice, firm but not too hard. In that touch, Jim felt the warmth of hope.
“Pleased to meet you, Jim.”
“And you. I hope you can help me.”
“Well, I’ll say to you what I say to anyone coming to my bar seeking more than a drink and a pie and a place to rest their feet. I can only do my best.” He closed the door behind them but did not lock it. Jim thought perhaps this bar was open every hour of every day, but not always for drinks.
O’Brien showed them to a table in the corner. A candle burned in the mouth of an empty wine bottle, spilling hot wax down the green glass, and three recently pulled pints sat before the chairs. Three chairs. The table was large enough to seat six, at least.
“You knew we were coming,” Trix said.
“Not you specifically,” O’Brien said. “Just someone.”
“We know who you are,” Jim said. “And what. And we were sent here by someone like you.”
O’Brien raised his eyebrows. Then he held up a hand and nodded at their chairs. The three of them sat, and the process felt almost ceremonial to Jim, a thought given more gravity by O’Brien’s nimble manner. He placed both hands flat on the table and seated himself comfortably, spine straight, shoulders loose, before picking up his pint and taking a long draft. He smacked his lips and nodded gently. “Nectar of angels,” he said.
“What’s the brew?” Trix asked.
“My own. I’ve a microbrewery in the basement. I call it Old Bastard.”
Jim took his first swig. The taste exploded, the alcohol evident but not overpowering, and he felt the rush of its influence spreading through his body. “Certainly well named. And delicious.”
“A bartending Oracle,” Trix said softly. She was looking at O’Brien with a mix of fascination and wonder.
“Who better to have their fingers on the pulse of a city?” O’Brien said. He took another long drink, swallowing half of his pint in one go, and looking back and forth between them over the edge of the glass. He wiped his mouth and placed the glass gently back on the table.
“So, you’re from elsewhere,” he said. “That much I know, and I’ve known it for the last hour. Kicked out the last of my patrons. Pretended I was closing early, when sometimes I don’t close at all. ’Cause I figured you’d be along. Sometimes…” He looked at the window and sniffed softly.
“You can smell trouble?” Jim asked.
“Is that what you two are, then? Trouble?”
“No,” Trix said, shaking her head.
“No,” Jim confirmed. He placed the envelope on the table, keeping one finger on it. “We’re partly messengers, but mainly…” He felt tears threatening, as the weight of events pressed down on him. Sitting here in this ordinary bar with this extraordinary man, he felt control slipping away. By coming through and beginning his search for Jenny and Holly, he had been taking positive action. But now he was about to place himself in the hands of another once again, and he wasn’t sure quite what he thought about that.
The only person he knew he could trust for sure was Trix.
“We’re looking for Jim’s wife and daughter,” Trix said. “They’ve been pulled through from our own Boston into another. Maybe this one.”
“Yeah,” O’Brien said. He looked back and forth between Jim and Trix, his expression unreadable, eyes twinkling with humor or, perhaps, disbelief. He crossed his arms and sighed heavily, but it was merely the action of a tired man. “And you’re Uniques. The both of you. Friends.”
He knows, Jim thought.
O’Brien looked at Trix, seeming to see deeper than mere flesh and skin. “ Good friends. And that”-he nodded down at the envelope, which Jim had placed facedown on the tabletop-“that’ll be for me.”
“From your counterpart in our Boston,” Jim said.
O’Brien nodded thoughtfully, drinking the rest of his pint and putting down the glass so gently that it made no sound. He stretched and looked around the bar, glanced at his watch, then focused his attention back on Jim and Trix. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “You look tired, both of you. And it’s been a long day for me, too, what with…” He waved one hand, and Jim wondered what wonders O’Brien had performed today, what problems he had solved and lost things he had found. “A couple of hours’ sleep will do wonders for us all, and come sunrise I’ll be better able to help you.”
“You can’t help us now?” Jim asked.
“I could,” O’Brien said. “I could start. But I can’t just”-he clicked his fingers-“out of thin air. I need to talk to you about them. In depth, personally, and a lot of it will be about you as much as them. I need to understand your link to them in order to grab hold of it and pull them in. I need to know them so that I can find them. A name’s nothing to me without knowledge of who that name belongs to, and it might not be so easy for you, tired as you are. Maybe your Oracle’s better at this sort of thing. You understand?”
“Not really,” Jim said.
“I do,” Trix said, smiling, and Jim thought of her story about her grandfather.
“But-”
“A few hours,” O’Brien said. “There’s a room made up on the second floor, bathroom attached. It’s a double, but…” He raised one eyebrow.
“That’s fine,” Trix said, smiling.
“I thought it would be.” O’Brien leaned forward and used one finger to pull the envelope from beneath Jim’s hand. For a second Jim wanted to press down, hold it back, but he was not sure why. Insurance? Fear? Or maybe there was no reason at all. O’Brien dragged the envelope across the table to him-it whispered, like a voice in the dark-turned it over, and looked at the writing on the front without expression.
“You’ll wake us?” Jim asked.
“Sure. You’ll hear me.” O’Brien looked up from the envelope. “And Jim… Don’t worry. We’ll find your family, for sure.”
Jim nodded, unable to talk because the tears were a pressure behind his eyes once again. He and Trix stood, and he realized how right O’Brien had been. He was exhausted. A couple of hours’ sleep would take the edge off his exhaustion, and then tomorrow… tomorrow, he would find his wife and daughter.
“Come on,” Trix said, grabbing Jim’s arm and steering him toward the door O’Brien had pointed out behind the bar.
“Sleep well!” the Oracle called.
As they walked up the curving stairway, Jim heard the sound of paper tearing. And then he heard O’Brien speak again, cursing under his breath. “Oh, you bitch,” Peter O’Brien said, anger and resignation in his voice.
What could Veronica have written? Jim wondered. But silence followed, and Jim continued up toward what he hoped would be a moment’s peace.
The Worst Day Since Yesterday
Trix padded down the corridor of Peter O’Brien’s apartment in her bare feet, exhausted but still alert. Her skin prickled with awareness of her dislocation. In college it had not been that unusual for her and Jenny to end up sleeping on sofas and in guest rooms after parties off-campus or even across town. But she was an adult now, and she could not relax in a stranger’s home. Knowing that the city around her was foreign to her, that she was an intruder here, only made it worse.