” Duke set down his bourbon. He looked at the door, then at Pete, then at the back wall where the old Harrisburg senator’s penant hung crooked above the emergency exit. “Pete,” he said. “Call Sandra Merchant’s number. It’s in your book.” Pete frowned. The social worker. “Yeah,” Duke said. Tell her I need a favor. Lily came out from under the table 17 minutes after Craig left.
She didn’t crawl out gradually, the way a frightened animal might test the air in stages. She came out all at once, a single decisive movement, and sat herself in the chair across from Duke, with the particular dignity of a child who has decided that whatever comes next, she is not going to face it from the floor. She was still pale.
Her hands were folded on the table. She looked at Duke directly, which was not what most adults did when they first sat across from him. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re welcome,” he said. Pete brought her a grilled cheese sandwich without being asked, and a second glass of water, and set them down gently before retreating behind the bar with the tactful quiet of a man who understood some conversations needed space.
Lily ate half the sandwich before she spoke again. “Are you a bad guy?” she asked. “Duke considered this with the seriousness it deserved. Depends on who you ask,” he said. She seemed to accept this as an honest answer. “Craig says bikers are bad guys.” “Craig says a lot of things,” Duke said. She looked at the patch on his cut, which he had moved from the back of the chair to the chair beside him.
“Is that like a club? something like that. Do you have to do bad things to be in it? You have to be loyal, he said. You have to show up for the people in it. You have to handle your problems yourself. He paused. Some guys in it have done bad things. Some haven’t. Same as most places. Lily absorbed this. She ate another triangle of sandwich.
