But the look is fleeting. I catch it for only a moment before Nathan Templeton wrestles his smile back into place. “Well, hi, hello there.”
I give him a little wave. He waves back.
“I’m learning everybody’s name tonight.” He’s talking too loudly. Maybe he thinks I might be hard of hearing. Or maybe he wants to make sure everyone notices him talking to me. He needn’t worry about the latter. All eyes in the place are on him. “So tell me who you might be.”
I have to type in the first part: “I might be”—then tap my name—“Mirabel.”
He is dumbfounded at first by my Voice but recovers quickly. “You might be, eh?”
I nod.
“Are you one of the famed Mitchell sisters?”
I might look surprised he knows—I am—or he might just be showing off because he laughs too loudly, goes to clap me on the shoulder, changes his mind, and brags, “I keep my ear to the ground, don’t I?”
I don’t know what to do but nod.
“You look too young to be in a place like this, Mirabel,” he says. “Must be clean living.”
Frank watches Nora consider breaking a bottle over the edge of the bar and impaling this guy. He redirects. “So, Nathan, what brings you to town?”
Nora is so angry she’s shaking, but I see her take this question in, see how she wants this answer more, if only just more, than she wants to exsanguinate this man. She finds my eyes and shakes her head: No. No what? It could be anything. Then she finds emptied pint glasses to wash and pretends to turn away. Frank passes behind her and brushes lightly between her shoulder blades as if accidentally. She nods nearly imperceptibly and keeps her eyes on her dirty dishes.
“Many things, many things.” Nathan puts his hands back on Zach’s and Tom’s shoulders. “Among them, I’m here to offer these good men jobs.”
Nora looks up and blinks.
Omar drops his head into his hands.
I remind myself about slow deep breaths.
And no one says a thing.
“All of you, actually.” Nathan swings an arm out wide to take us all in. “If you’re a hard, honest worker—”
“Honest?” Nora chokes, but Nathan keeps right on as if he hasn’t heard her.
“—we’d love to have you on board. We’ve got jobs for all skill levels, all education levels, all”—the pause is infinitesimal—“ability levels.”
“Where?” Frank says breezily, like Nathan has mentioned a really good deal he got on curtains. Later, Monday will wonder why Frank asked when Omar already told everyone. It’s the kind of thing that bugs Monday, but it’s a fair question. He needed to hear Nathan say it? He thought the rest of us needed to hear Nathan say it? He wanted to help Omar out, transfer the earlier ire away from our mayor to where it belonged?
“Maybe he wanted to pretend he didn’t already know and hadn’t already heard,” Mab will guess.
“Why?” Monday will press again.
“Didn’t want to give him the satisfaction,” Mab will posit, “of thinking we’ve just been waiting all these years for their return. Didn’t want him to think he’d just pick up where he left off?”
Whatever the reason Frank asked, Nathan’s answer seems canned. “Well, friend, you may have heard of a little company called Belsum. It’s a new day for us. New plan, new facilities, new name—Belsum Basics—but old stompin’ grounds. We’re renewing the old plant from the inside out, building our operations better than ever, and we wouldn’t dream of doing it without the good people of Bourne. So what do you say? Anyone around here need a good job?”
Nora looks like she’s going to cry. Nora looks like she’s going to scream. Nora looks like she’s going to smash the teeth of Nathan’s lightbulb smile from his mouth. She’s got her hands flat on the bar now, probably to stop them from shaking, but she looks like she’s going to vault over the top, take Nathan in her mouth, and shake him until blood and hair and guts rain down and his neck snaps and she spits his limp body into a broken heap on the bar floor and retreats to her corner to lick the gore off her haunches. Her eyes are on me, and I give her a small smile, a we-will-figure-this-out-too smile, a remember-we-have-each-other smile, an I-believe-in-you smile.
And maybe that’s why or maybe she’s lost her mind, but what Nora does is laugh. She throws back her head and laughs. She throws back her head and holds her belly and wipes her eyes and laughs and laughs and laughs.