The Blue Moth was on Steiner Street, between a bookshop that only sold maps and a tailor who had been retiring for eleven years. It had no sign outside, only a small brass moth above the door, which people either found charming or never found at all.
Inside: a long mahogany bar, eight stools, four tables that seated two comfortably and three if everyone liked each other. A small stage in the corner where a trio played Thursday through Saturday, and on Sundays — tonight, a Sunday — just a record player behind the bar that Vera managed herself, rotating through a box of vinyl she had curated over three years with the seriousness of a person who believed music in a room was not decoration but weather.
It was 11:22 PM. She had sent the other bartender home at eleven. The last table had paid and left twenty minutes ago.
Vera was slicing lemons she didn't strictly need to slice, because she liked having something to do with her hands during the last hour, when the door opened.
She looked up.
He came in the way people come in when they have not decided to come in so much as stopped resisting it — a little uncertain at the threshold, coat still buttoned, eyes adjusting to the low light. He looked at the room. The empty tables. The bar.
He chose the far stool. The one at the end, with the wall on one side and the whole room visible from it. Vera noted this without commenting on it. People who chose corner seats were either very introverted or had recently had a bad day. Sometimes both.
She set down her knife and walked over.