Alyson pulled her backpack out of the lockers in the back of the store and
stepped out into the twilight. The manager locked the door behind her and
she sighed. She trudged out of the alley behind the store and looked at her
watch. She glanced back at it, disbelieving.  The last bus was 15 minutes
ago.  Again. She grumbled to herself. She'd made the manager promise to get
her out on time and he hadn't even bothered to start helping her until she
had missed the bus.

The orange light of the street lamps made it hard to see more than a couple
hundred feet in front of her.  She walked past the stop and pulled her coat
around her. A man in ragged clothes stepped out from behind the bus shelter
and seemed to reach for her. She walked faster, and he stumbled past her,
seemingly not seeing her.

He fell, an arm and a leg sprawled into the street.

She panicked a little. She considered just leaving and running toward home.
She thought she might recognize the man. She had always tried to ignore the
beggars on the street outside the store. She never had money and felt guilty
whether she gave them change or not. Not that she had money to spare. She
never had spare money. She looked back and saw his bare arms, and wondered
what he was doing without so much as a coat in the chilly November weather.
Then she noticed the pad of gauze pressed against his arm and held on with a
strip of dirty cloth. Heroin.

She couldn't take her eyes off him and tried to figure out what to do. He'd
probably overdosed. She nudged the hand that was dangling into the street
with her toe, and he didn't move. She shuddered. His breathing was shallow,
and how still he was began to scare her.

She tried to remember where she could find a pay phone. She hadn't noticed
any for a long time. She shivered and stared at the man on the sidewalk for
a minute more, then hurried down her road home and kept her eye out for
payphones.

She passed the drugstore, just closing for the night. There was a faint
outline of a long-gone phone box on its walls. Her heart raced and she tried
to look ahead in the orange light of streets after dark, hoping to see the
familiar but dissapearing shape of a phone on the side of one of the
buildings. She didn't see any.

She jogged up the road, huffing as the road went up a hill. She passed a
tailor, a greek cafe, then an italian one, a sandwich shop, a little chinese
pastry shop, a bakery, a coffeeshop. She loved this part of the city because
it was alive early. She realized how silent it was even in the early
evening, how the moment the sun set there was hardly a store open.

She passed a bar, instinctively pushing her shoulders up in her beaten
leather jacket, trying to look as large and tough as she could, always
afraid some man would burst out and see her there. She didn't like feeling
vulnerable. She could hear what sounded like music from inside the bar, and
see neon lights through the slits at the top of the wall that passed for
windows. She saw the same faint outline of a long-gone phone, and sighed.
She walked, trying to look confident as she passed, and started to jog when
she was past the bar's entrance and she was still the only person on the
street. She got a hundred yards away when she realized that the bar would
have a phone.

She jogged back down the hill and stood in front of the door to the bar.
She'd never been in a bar. The town she grew up in was too tiny to have more
than a general store. She was used to having her wits about her, and alcohol
terrified her. The idea of people without their usual senses, slow, stupid
with intoxication. She never felt like she could predict drunk people.

The door was heavy and black metal. The sign on the door read "NO MINORS" in
heavy red letters. She realized she had no idea whether they checked ID at
the door or at the bar. She tentatively reached for the door. She hesitated.
She shrugged her shoulders, trying to convince herself that she didn't need
to look tough to go inside.

The door swung open with a bang and three men in hockey shirts pushed out
and nearly ran her over. They said "Sorry" in unison as they passed. She
felt suddenly self-conscious with her short cropped hair, her well-worn
leather jacket and her patched corduroy pants. She touched her nose ring
self-consciously before she stepped through the now open door.

There weren't many people inside. A couple young asian men at the bar,
laughing and alternately punching each other on the arm. A couple
middle-aged women in a booth by what would be windows if the bar were a
diner. A jukebox was playing music from somewhere in the back.

The bartender looked up from a sink where he was washing glasses. He looked
her up and down, and she touched her nose ring again. She stammered a
little. "Uh. Uh... Can I use the phone?"

She tried to imagine what he'd say. She cringed inside when she imagined
"Sure, sweetie" and then wondered if he'd say no.

"Sure." He handed her a cordless phone and pressed a button on it as he did.
She heard the low moan of a dialtone and relaxed slightly. She panicked a
little as she had never called the emergency number before and wondered if
there was a regular phone number to call for things like this. She hesitated
before the last digit, then took a breath and pressed it. 

She put the phone to her ear and heard a surprisingly reassuring voice on
the other end. "Um, there's a man unconscious outside the bus shelter on
13th and Brook street." she paused a moment "Yes, he's probably homeless.
There was a bandage on his arm." another pause. "No, like you get after you
donate blood. No, he wasn't bleeding." she sighed and looked crestfallen.
The dispatcher's voice seemed less urgent after she'd said the word
homeless. "No, he stumbled toward me, fell, and wasn't responding. I nudged
him with my toe. He's not wearing enough to be out right now. No! Not the
police! He needs an ambulance!" She sighed. "Thank you."

"What was all that about?" the bartender asked. 

"There's a man lying half in the street, a couple blocks away. Over on 13th.
He looked like maybe he overdosed or something. Heroin maybe? I think he had
needle marks on his arm."

"Probably just some junkie."

"I know, I think I've seen him. Maybe one of the panhandlers I see every
morning." She tried not to think how close she'd come to not being able to
pay rent a couple months before, before she'd finally found the job. How
she'd played with the idea of asking for money on the street. Or not having
the money for rent and ending up homeless.

"I .. I just care. He's a person." 

"Let's go take a look." said the bartender. She looked at him, surprised. He
took the phone from her and pressed a button. A moment later, he said "Will?
Yeah? Can you come down for a moment? I'm going to walk up the street with a
young lady and see if I can't help her with something." He hung up and
nodded. He reached under the bar for a jacket and pulled it over himself.
The door in the back of the bar banged open and a thin man stepped in and
pulled off a jacket and shivered a bit. He called to the bartender "I've got
it. Go ahead."

The bartender nodded to him and then to Alyson. He motioned her to the front
door and they walked out. She jumped as he touched her back. "This way?"
"Yeah." she shrugged her jacket again and tried to follow his gait down the
sidewalk. 

They got to the corner of 13th. They could see the sprawled figure in the
bus shelter, still hanging off the curb. A police car pulled down the block
slowly, and got to the still figure just before they did. They looked at the
officer in the car as he peered out his window at the man on the sidewalk.
He fiddled with something in his car for a moment. Then he drove off.

Alyson and the bartender looked at each other, a little puzzled.

"That was strange" she started to say, and laughed a little, nervously, when
the bartender said "That was weird" at the same time. Alyson sighed and sat
down in the bus shelter. The bartender watched the man for a moment, saw a
faint breath, then he nudged him with a foot and got no response and then
sat down next to her. They waited a few minutes. No ambulance came.

The bartender pulled out a cell phone and dialed the emergency number and
put it to his ear. Alyson decided that she liked how casually he could do
it, like he was calling his sister or a high school buddy.

"Yeah. I'm sitting next to a man I found unconscious on the sidewalk." he
paused a moment. "On Brook street, near 13th. By the bus shelter." Another
pause. "Ten minutes. I'll wait." He turned to Alyson and said "Ten minutes.
The ambulance is coming." Moments later they heard sirens, and an ambulance
arrived a moment later. 

The paramedics loaded the man curtly. They had come and gone in the space of
fifteen minutes, and Alyson was surprised at how quickly it was over. She
leaned back against the grimy wall of the bus shelter. She closed her eyes
and breathed a little. The bartender turned to her and watched her for a
moment. She felt the silence and turned her head toward him and opened one
eye. He laughed as she did, and she relaxed. "Thank you." she said at him.

"Of course. Hey. Come get a cup of coffee and get warm."

"I'm only nineteen."

"Hey, it's okay. This time of evening, it's quiet. It's a Thursday, we'll
probably be closed by ten anyway. Besides, if you order alcohol, I'll just
say no." She laughed a little, half nervous and half relieved.

"I missed the bus today. Then the homeless guy stumbled almost into me and
passed out. I worked a double. I didn't really get a lunch break, even.
They're supposed to let us, but the way the business is set up, it's almost
impossible to get one. I'd love that."

They walked back to the bar. The middle aged women were gone, and Will was
behind the bar finishing the pile of glasses. The two young asian men were
putting on jackets. 

"Will! I think this young woman needs a cup of something warm."

"Decaf or regular?" he asked her.

She yawned as she tried to answer, and had to stifle a giggle. "Regular, I
guess. I have to walk home."

Will poured her a cup of coffee. "Anything in that? Sugar? Cream? Irish
cream?"

She looked alarmed for a moment, then said "Just cream, please"

The young men left the bar, and Will followed them with a key, locked the
door and flicked the open sign off. He seemed to relax visibly.

"I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Bill," said the bartender. "And
this is Will. We're both named William, that's about as well as we can do to
be different, I guess."

"I'm Alyson." Alyson sipped her coffee, feeling suddenly very out of place.
"Is it really okay that I'm in here?"

"Yeah, it's fine. We're closed anyway, so this is really more like an
extension of our house now. We live upstairs."

"So tell us about yourself!" Bill said.

"I ... There's not much to tell. I moved here a few months ago. I'm from out
east, in the mountains. No work there unless you're a miner, so I moved
here. I just turned nineteen."

"Any boyfriends?" Bill watched her as he finished "... Girlfriends?"

Alyson felt her face flush as he did. "I. Uh." she stammered "No. I've been
a little lonely since I moved here. I only knew one person here. A friend of
my mother's. Other than my coworkers, I don't talk to people much." She
wondered if everyone read her that easily. She worried what people might do
if they knew that easily. She thought of the news articles she'd read,
someone killed, someone dragged out of a bar and beaten. She shivered.

Bill regarded her for a moment. "Any hobbies?"

"I like to play music. I used to play the guitar a lot. I couldn't bring my
guitar with me when I moved though. It's still at my mother's. Mostly I just
work. It's so hard. I looked for a job for months. They don't pay enough. I
can make it. It's just so hard. I don't have time for anything."

Will nodded agreement from the end of the bar where he was doing paperwork.

"You live far away?" Bill asked. 

"About an hour, since I'm walking."

Bill looked surprised at the distance. "I wish I had my car still. I'd drive
you home if so. Want to stay here? We have an extra room upstairs."

She shook her head. As much as her apartment was cold and lonely, she was
proud that she managed to keep it.

"You sure? It's safe and quiet and warm. It's no trouble. Besides, you look
like you could use a couple friends."

She decided that she liked them. She had a deep distrust of men, bars,
alcohol. Something though made her like them despite her misgivings. The
fact that she was so misanthropic stung, she had never had a solid reason to
mistrust so, though she was wary of bars for good reason. The stories she
heard of some couple dragged out and beaten for loving each other were too
many to count, and she always imagined it was some quiet bar with no
witnesses where it happened. Now she was alone with two strange men twice
her age. She wasn't slight, but either one of them could weigh double what
she did. The fact that she was sizing up two people who had never shown the
slightest inclination to be violent unnerved her. She realized how tired and
paranoid she felt. She pushed aside the fears and shakily said "I.. I guess
that would be nice."

She caught herself thinking of the bar as homey and comforting, and the
thought shook her. Her earlier fear and the unfamiliar environment were
becoming comfortable.  Bill smiled at her, looking cheerier than he had all
night. Will looked up at him and caught the grin. She thought the two of
them looked like they belonged together for a moment, and she shook her
head. They must have worked together for years, she thought.

Will stacked his paperwork neatly and tucked it into a folder. He looked at
Bill and said "I'm done. You coming upstairs?"

Bill glanced at Alyson and she shrugged. "Sure."

They trudged up the stairs in the back of the building, ducking outside and
back in at the top of the stairs as quickly as they could. The temperature
had fallen and they shivered as they entered the apartment above the bar.

They pulled their jackets and Will took Alyson's and put it with theirs on
an oversized and somewhat gaudy coat rack. Bill smiled at her and said
"Well, this is where we live. Living room and kitchen here, Will's room is
at the end of the hall, mine's on the left there. The guest room's on the
right. Bathroom's the other door there."

Bill led her past his room and opened the door to the guest room, and he
realized Alyson wasn't following close behind. She stood just outside his
room and was looking at the rack of guitars on the wall. He smiled at her
and shuffled his feet enough to break her rapture. She shook  her head and
mumbled "Sorry."

She shuffled into the guest bedroom, and sat on the bed. She heard Will's
door shut, and Bill's voice say "Good Night". He poked his head in and said
the same to her. She turned just to see him retreat into his own room and
close the door. She stood up and closed the door, and sat on the bed. She
tried to think over what had happened today, but the exhaustion began to
overwhelm her. She pulled back the covers and tried to decide how much
clothing to leave on. She hadn't spent the night at someone else's house in
a long time, and certainly not in a house with two men ever. 

She opted to leave her shirt on, and to pull her damp jeans off. She dumped
them in a pile by the bed and pulled the sheet over herself. She was asleep
within seconds.

* * *

Alyson woke the next morning and sat bolt upright, in the unfamiliar room.
It was warm, and the bed was too soft. She blinked until she remembered what
had happened, the homeless man overdosed on heroin. Meeting Bill, staying in
the guest bedroom. She took a deep breath and tried to calm down.

She fumbled for her pants and bra, finding them in the heap she'd left by
the bed. She pulled on the rumpled clothes and tried to smooth herself
together. She looked at the time and relaxed as she saw it was still early.
The last thing she wanted was to be late for work, for a job that had taken
her to months and more of her savings than she ever thought possible to
find.

She tried to get her wits about her, and decided that she liked the chilly
little room she called her bedroom. She woke up alert, at least. She
stretched and yawned and tried to figure out what she was going to do this
morning. She started to second-guess Bill, wondering if he had a reason to
help her last night. She took a deep breath and opened the bedroom door.

Will was on the couch, with a book and a cup of tea. Bill was nowhere to be
seen. She passed his bedroom door, which stood open and his bed was neatly
made. She shrugged and tried to find her voice. "Will?" He jumped slightly,
then looked up at her over the top of his book and she could tell he was
smiling, even just seeing his eyes. 

"He's downstairs. Can't get anything done after people start showing up, so
he's probably cleaning."

She smiled, realizing he knew just what she was going to ask. 

"If you go on down, he's probably got some food on. There's a kitchen bigger
than ours, and he likes to make a decent breakfast. I'll be down there in a
little bit. When I finish my tea." He gestured so gently with his teacup
that she laughed at how graceful he was.

She slipped on her jacket and opened the door and was surprised at the
brightness. The clouds had parted for a moment, and she thought she actually
saw dry pavement on the floor below. She closed the door behind her and just
stood in the sun, feeling the warmth on her face. She realized it had been
months since she'd seen full sun and reveled in it. She was still standing
on the landing to the stairs when Will finished his tea and came out behind
her. He was so quiet with the door that she hadn't realized he was standing
there watching her when the sun finally went behind a cloud for a moment and
she shivered. She startled, realizing he was there. He just smiled at her,
and they silently descended together.

Bill was in the kitchen of the bar, and the smell of what he was cooking
overpowered the beer smell that had seemed to cling to the walls the night
before. He grinned as they walked in.  Alyson smiled at how the place looked
with light streaming in the back window. She realized that the building was
set up with a front entrance that was entirely indifferent to the sun, being
a place people mostly hung out in at night, but the one window was
positioned in just such a way that in the middle of winter like now, it
caught every bit of sun there was.

"Grab a plate. It's hot and just ready."

Alyson checked her watch instinctively, but realized she didn't have a
twenty minute bus-ride and a wait in the cold, and it was still early. She
smiled at that idea. When she'd moved in, she'd thought she could find a job
near her apartment. Of course, she'd figured she could get a job that paid
more than a paltry seven dollars, and didn't lose money to taxes on top of
that.

She slid into a seat at the bar, and with the sun coming in the back window,
she thought it felt more like a homey diner than a bar. Will sat down next
to her, and Bill pulled out three plates. He slid fresh asparagus and
toasted english muffins onto the plates, and then lifted a pan full of
delicately cooked eggs, all precise and perfectly done and scooped one into
each half of the english muffins. He caught Alyson's look of surprise at the
presentation and winked at her. He pulled out a small saucepan and spooned a
sauce of chopped onions and lemon and dill on top. The aroma hit her and she
smiled as she felt tears fall from her eyes. 

She felt a year of loneliness fall away and splash in her lap. She bit her
lip, feeling self-conscious in a way she hadn't in years. She sniffled a
little and looked up to see Bill watching her, impassive, but his whole face
having care written on it. She blushed and the tears didn't stop. She saw
Will turn toward her from the corner of her eyes and a hand on her back. 
 
She caught her breath a little but the tears kept falling, splashing on her
hands and the plate. She held onto the edge of the bar and rocked a little.

"It's so stupid. I shouldn't cry. This is the best morning I've had since I
moved here, and I'm crying!" Will pressed his hand on her back a bit more
firmly, and she pulled her feet up onto the bar stool and wrapped her arms
around her legs.

"I don't really even know you two, and you've been nicer to me than anyone
in this entire city." 

She took a deep breath and the tears started to slow. She took a bite of the
food and visibly relaxed. 

"This is so good!"

"Asparagus this time of year's a bit out of season, but the I found a decent
price on it." Bill smiled. Alyson thought he might be puffing out his chest
a little. 

She picked at her plate and after a couple moments, she started eating in
earnest, still crying and smiling.

Her watch chimed softly.

"Time for work. I'm opening today." 

She pulled on her jacket

"Thank you so much!"

She stepped out the front door. Bill locked it behind her, and she sauntered
to work. She almost felt like skipping. She arrived at the back door of the
market just as the manager was opening the door. He looked her up and down
and shrugged. 

She put her backpack into the locker with her coat, donned her apron and
headed out to the cash register.

* * *

Her lunch break came and she bought an apple and a block of cheese and
stepped out of the store into the sunlight. She leaned against the warm
brick wall of the front of the store and devoured her food. The warm rich
taste of the cheese melded with the apple. She thought about the night
before, about the lonely walk and the busses and the homeless man. She
wondered if he'd been treated or just cast out of the hospital when and if
he woke. She hoped he did.

Her manager was glaring at her as she stepped in.  "Two minutes late."
She sighed and stepped back in front of the register and started ringing.

A few minutes later, she thought she saw Bill among the throng of customers
in the store. She tried to watch for him, but if she paused for more than a
moment, she found her manager glaring at her again. She sighed. She wasn't
sure to keep her hopes up, that she'd see him appear and make the day better
like he had the night before. She kept up the frenzied pace, ringing up box
after box of pasta, pound after pound of peppers and tomatos and eggplants.

She was halfway though Bill's cart when she looked up to see whose groceries
she as actually working on and saw his face. He grinned at her broadly and
her face lit up.

"Bill!"

"Hey! I thought I had seen you in here before."

"I've been here most of the last nine months." She felt herself blushing a
little as she tried to keep up the pace while talking. 

"I'd love it if you came over for dinner tonight."

She looked surprised. "Why?" She paid more attention to what was in that
basket. A few cheeses she'd never tried. Fresh tomatoes, basil, onions,
garlic. 

"You still look like you could use a friend. I have an employee working the
evening. I'd love to have you. You're intriguing."

She smiled. "I'd love to. I get off at eight. Is that too late?" 

"That's perfect."

She had never felt a day go by so slowly. Her single break for the shift
came and went, and for the first time, dragged. She fidgeted when there was
a break in the crowd.

She felt relieved when at five to eight, her manager tapped her on the
shoulder. "Go home."

She grabbed her backpack from the locker and practically ran from the store.
She got to the bar fast enough that she was barely damp. The NO MINORS sign
was still forboding, but she reached for the door handle anyway. She paused,
and then realized she could get to the apartment from the back. She dashed
around the building and up the metal stairs.

She knocked on the door, and thought that the noise was too loud in her
excitement. Will opened the door, and behind him, she could see Bill bent
over the counter, covered in flour. She grinned and stepped inside. Will's
infectious smile was aimed right at her, and she felt like laughing.

"It smells so good in here!" Her senses were assaulted with the smells of
basil and garlic and tomato cooking. Something smelled indescribably
different about this apartment than her own cooking smells. She wondered
what the difference was. 

The apartment was warm, and she shed her jacket quickly. Will put on some
gentle guitar music and she thought she saw him swaying to the music.  She
grinned at him while his back was turned. Something about the way Bill and
Will acted made her smile. She thought to herself that if she ever had
roommates, she wanted one like Will or Bill. 

"Toss your jacket anywhere. There's not a free coathook at the moment. Sorry
about that! Pull up a chair!" Bill gestured at the barstools that stood at
the counter between the kitchen and living room.

Alyson took off her jacket and set it aside. And pulled herself up onto the
tall stool. She watched in fascination as Bill chopped something and tossed
it gently into a pot on the stove.  There was a flurry of motion, and there
was a cloud of steam as he drained pasta. His glasses fogged over, but he
kept moving, seemingly uncaring that he couldn't see. He deftly pulled bread
from the broiler, tasted sauce and added a little salt. The smooth,
practiced motion made Alyson smile.

She turned to look for Will, and she caught him looking over the top of his
book again, smiling. "He does that all the time. He spends every free waking
moment in the kitchen. I moved a jar of flour from one shelf to another, and
he spent a good minute groping for it because it had moved." Bill laughed
and pulled three plates from the cupboard. He served with the same practiced
care, bordering on perfection.

"Grab a plate!" Bill carried his to the small table in the livingroom,
already set for three. Will and Alyson nearly bumped into each other trying
to get theirs. Will straightened and let her by. "After you, dear."

Bill went back and pulled a bottle of wine from a rack in the kitchen. He
popped the cork and looked at Will. "Wine?" 

"Yes please."

"Alyson?"

"I'm nineteen!" She fought down a little panic, then realizing she was
panicking, tried to stifle it and think rationally. She took a deep breath
and tried to push the fear aside. Imagining what getting drunk would be
like, every time she thought about losing any ounce of self-control, she
started to panic then tried to stifle it.

She caught Will watching her. His placid eyes never seemed to reveal any
emotion but care and mirth. She struggled for composure. The feeling of
being bare and exposed stung and she couldn't even pull her leather jacket
around herself. 

"You've never had alcohol at all before, have you?"

She tried to find words, but could only shake her head.

"You don't have to. It's safe here, nobody's going to take advantage."

Curiosity. Fear. Her whole year, she had survived by making every decision
deliberately. She counted every penny almost instinctively, planned every
trip on the bus to get the most out of every fare. She'd learned just how
long to spend in the store so that she could get back to her house before
the bus transfer expired making her pay a return fare. Going out the door,
she primed herself to think clearly. She feared missing a bus, she feared
what might happen.

She looked up at Bill, and nodded slowly. "I've never had any. I'll try it?"
She hated how unsure she sounded. She thought for a moment that they looked
like brothers, or cousins.  Bill poured her a glass of wine. She looked at
it hesitantly and let it sit for a moment. She tasted the pasta and relaxed.
Flavors melted in her mouth. For the first time in years, she felt cared
for and completely safe.

"Oh, wow, Bill." she stopped eating for a moment, trying to savor the
moment. She made out rosemary and garlic and oregano, but there were flavors
she couldn't figure out. She shook her head. A lot of things she couldn't
figure out about the last day.

* * *

Bill looked up at the sound of a knock on the door. Will answered it before
he could set down the pan in his hand. Alyson stood in the doorway, leather
jacket and jeans, looking anxious. Will flashed his winning smile at her,
and he watched her relax and smile the same way he had when Will used the
same smile on him. He looked at himself and chuckled a little, covered in
flour and trying to keep an eye on two pots at once while watching his guest
settle in. 

"Toss your jacket anywhere. There's not a free coathook at the moment. Sorry
about that! Pull up a chair!"  He glanced around the apartment, making sure
everything was where it should be. 

Alyson caught his eye. "It smells so good in here!" He smiled at her and
kept cooking. He looked at the card he'd pulled from its box, his
grandmother's scrawl across it in neat lines. He remembered her writing it,
thinking that she was making a card with a recipe for a friend. He'd been
surprised at his birthday that year when he received the little hinged
wooden box full of neat cards. Two hundred recipes, all of his favorites.
Things he had never tried. This one had a little note, written askew across
the margin at the top. He heard his grandmother's voice as he read it. "For
family, a little cinnamon. Makes it special. My friends always ask what the
secret is."

He smiled as he added a pinch of cinnamon to the sauce and stirred it in.
Memories of his family always came with cooking. The happy times especially,
huge piles of food on the long wooden table, and aunts and uncles milling
around. They'd thought that his helping out in the kitchen was cute.

He took a deep breath and turned the pasta out of its pot and drained it. A
couple of deft motions and a little salt, a little olive oil, a tiny dash of
nutmeg scattered across the noodles. He reached for three plates. He
hesitated, trying to decide between plain and fancy. Plain. 

"Grab a plate!" He tried to say it like his grandmother always did. Dinner
at his house had never been formal. There were always too many people to
arrange things any more than that. He took his own plate to his seat and
went back for a bottle of wine. Wine was a habit, now, and owning a bar let
him take a few choice bottles and always have some when he served something
that asked for it. He offered it to Will first. "Wine?"

"Yes, please."

He hesitated. He knew she was nineteen. He shrugged. His first drink of wine
had been at nine, and there had always been wine on the table, every meal of
the day. Everyone drank some.

"Alyson?" She froze. He sighed inwardly. He wondered if his parental urges
were misplaced. She reminded him of his daugher so strongly that it stung
when she'd stumbled in the door of the bar the night before. He'd seen her
and almost rushed out to greet her, catching himself just a moment later,
realizing it wasn't her. "I'm nineteen!" The youth in her voice surprised
him, and he realized that his own daughter would be the same age, too.

Will broke the silence.  "You've never had alcohol at all before, have you?"
Bill watched them for a moment. Will had a way of reading people. He always
seemed to know what people were thinking. Sometimes in painful detail.  

"You don't have to. It's safe here, nobody's going to take advantage." He
always knew what to say.

Bill watched her take a bite. She so obviously liked it. He hadn't had such
an appreciative taster for his cooking lately. He realized that he cared
about her. So many people would have let the man the night before die. He
cringed a little. One more overdose. Maybe too late. He tried not to think
about it and focus on the present.

Bill watched Alyson eat and admired the vigor. He loved how raw she was
sometimes, a few places where her armour wasn't polished. She was tough, he
could tell, and she obviously worked hard. He thought she looked wild, not
just lonely. He wondered how living in the city had rubbed on her. He
wondered which mining town she had lived in. He'd seen them all, he figured.
It felt like another lifetime. He had joined the army right out of high
school. He'd been lucky, lucky to serve during the peaceful years between
wars. He'd spent most of his tour working on cleanup crews in the mine
towns. Hard work, but you didn't get shot at while doing it. He'd been
appreciative of that.

* * *

Alyson looked up at him and reached for her wine glass. Bill reached and
touched her hand, signalling waiting a moment.  He reached for his own glass
and raised it.  Surprised, she hesitated and looked at Will, intently
watching Bill, and looked to Bill. 

"To new friends and new experiences!"

She took a sip of wine, and spluttered a little. She had expected sweet, and
the dry red wine deceived her. She took a breath and tried again, this time
more carefully. Fear coursed through her, and her mother's warnings about
abusive alcoholics and date-rape drugs. She wasn't sure whether to expect it
to be pleasant or not. She decided that she liked how the flavor of the wine
mixed with the sauce. She took another sip. Warmth spread down her throat
and she felt herself relaxing even more. 

"Alright, now that you've come for dinner, you get to tell us a little bit
about yourself." The curiosity in his voice showed plainly.

She tried to decide whether the honesty and ease she felt was caused by the
wine or the friendship, and after a moment decided she didn't care.  "I
don't know what to tell you. I mean, I know you know that I work at the
market down the street. That place is crazy! Wall to wall people from the
time it opens until the time it closes. The only reason they clear out on
time is that the manager locks the door ten minutes before closing and lets
people out one by one."

Will laughed. "I used to go in there and try to be the last one out. It was
a kind of strange social sport. I know what you mean about wall-to-wall. I
spent an hour trying to get to the deli case to place an order once. I would
have given up except that Bill wanted proscuttio and I wasn't going to
dissapoint when dinner hung in the balance."

"But they have the best deli in the entire city. There's a reason that it's
that way. Not many markets manage to turn over that kind of inventory in
that small of a space. I've loved that place since it opened. I knew David,
the first owner. Great guy. Fantastic cook. I think he opened it just so he
had wholesale prices on ingredients. Now he's a chef at a hotel downtown. I
haven't heard from him in years." Bill poured more wine.

"I looked for a job here for months. I moved here in November last year, and
I couldn't find work until February. I must have made a thousand resumes,
and I spent five hours every day filling out applications and dropping them
off." Alyson sighed heavily. "I spent every bit of my savings on rent for
those months. I still haven't put anything else away. I come home every
night exhausted, and at the end of the month, between rent and heat and
food, I'm lucky if I have ten dollars to save." She drank more wine,
deciding that she didn't care for once about keeping control.  She tried to
keep track of how she felt, but the overwhelming feeling of safety and of
finally having found friends in the city made her lose track and just enjoy
the company. She finished the pasta. 

"My parents split up when I was ten. They hadn't been happy in a few years.
I lived with my mother. My father was never the sort who seemed particularly
responsible, so he didn't get any custody. Money was always tight, and the
mines had already been closing down one by one for years. Dad had done a
little mining, but it was never his thing. He tried pottery one year,
farming another. He liked to garden, but anything bigger never paid off. We
always had plenty of zucchini, though."  She laughed at the joke she and her
mother had always shared. They'd said that he should have to pay to get rid
of them. "Mom and I got by okay. I'd come to work with her. I'd work on
schoolwork or whatever project I happened to have going on the floor while
she did her job. She was a cleanup contracts planner for a few years. We
made ends meet but never much more.

"I turned eighteen and I decided to move here. Mom has a friend who lives on
the west side of town, and I stayed at her place until I found the apartment
I'm renting now. I didn't know it would be this hard. There's more jobs here
than there are back home, but only barely. I dreamed of serving coffee, or
maybe finding work at a library. I gave up on those after the first week.
They laughed at me when I applied, no experience, just moving here. They
said they didn't want to train anyone, and when an opening came, they'd just
fill it with someone who had experience." She felt tears brimming and cursed
the wine a little. Normally she'd be able to fight them back. "I finally
found the market here. They hired me on the spot, but it's really hard work.
I don't make enough. It's hard on my body. I'm tired all the time. But I'm
living. I can make it. I'm just lonely all the time." The tears began to
flow down her cheeks, nothing stopping them now.

Bill shook his head, and Will put his hand on her back again, then pulled
her toward him and hugged. Alyson felt the tears slip past her attempts to
stop them and splash onto Will's black turtleneck. Bill hugged her from the
other side. She tried to look up at them and every time she moved, the tears
welled stronger. Her body shook, sobs barely held in. She felt stupid for
opening up so much to two near-strangers. She struggled feebly to sit up, to
stop crying. Part of her wanted to jump up and leave, grab her leather
jacket and run until she couldn't breathe anymore. Run for home, run as much
of the way as she could. She knew she couldn't run the whole way, but she
wanted to try. Her body wouldn't move though, and she managed a sort of
flop before giving in to the tired, lonely and tipsy feeling. She
acquiesced and the tears flowed a little slower. The painful feeling in her
chest began to subside. "So lonely." she sobbed it over and over.

Bill stood up slowly. "I know just what we need." He walked to the
refrigerator and shuffled things about for a moment, then turned around with
a chocolate torte in his hands, the center of the fallen cake filled with
strawberries.

Alyson turned, finally pulling away from Will and looking at what Bill held.
"You didn't have to!" 

"You can't have someone over for a meal, get them crying, and not finish it
out properly.  Besides, it's my grandmother's recipe. You can't say no. And
it's chocolate." 

Alyson couldn't contain the grin. Since she'd found her job, she'd lived on
toast for breakfast and lentil soup for most of her dinners and lunches.
Once a week, she spent a dollar and a half on one of the imported chocolate
bars at the cash register at work, and she would break off a piece each
night. Chocolate was her one indulgence. 

"Chocolate is my one weakness. Alright then."

Bill served a thin slice with an elegant motion, another for Will, and a
third for himself. He pulled a bottle of Brandy out of the cupboard above
the refrigerator and offered it around. "Alyson? Try a little brandy with
it?"

"Oh... why not." She laughed at herself, going from never having tasted
alcohol and being afraid she'd lose control of her life to trying two in a
day and quite possibly getting drunk.

He poured three little glasses, trading out the wine glasses on the table.
Alyson tried to decide whether to try a toast of her own, and found herself
starting to before she'd finished deciding. Some small part of her was
disconcerted about that, but it got shuffled to the side of her mind. 

"To people who actually care."

Both Bill and Will smiled. "Caring!"

They drank, and another round afterward as the worked their way through the
rich chocolate dessert. 


------------------

He wasn't so sure whether to be appreciative of Janet, now his ex-wife.
She'd come from one of those same mountain towns. They all looked alike to
him -- dirty, poor miners, half unemployed now that the mines were shutting
down. She wasn't any different than most of them. They were closed-minded,
hated anything or anyone new. He'd always received animosity from the
miners. 

They'd married just after his tour with the service was over. They'd
planned to settle down somewhere -- anywhere. In hindsight, he realized
how much he had just wanted to be out of there, how much he hated the army.
He took the first path he found once he left. Her family had never liked
him.