Assumptions by C.E. Pietrowiak

and locked his apartment, dropping the keys in the small
metal box on the wall near the apartment manager's door.
    He stopped at the front of the building and
deposited the envelope into the outgoing slot in the big silver
mailbox he’d passed everyday for nearly five years. His truck was
parked half a block down. The suitcase wheels clunked over the
cracks in the sidewalk, steady and predictable, and Timothy
Stillman allowed simplicity to fill him up.
     

    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: ELEVENSES
     
    Jordyn got off the el and walked a block and
a half to Will’s building. Her breath made cloudy poufs in the air,
somehow out of place in a clear blue morning. She buzzed Will's
apartment. He answered before she could take her finger off the
button.
    “Be right down!" Will popped through the
door. "I'm ready."
    "How long were you waiting there?"
    "Huh?" Will played dumb.
    Jordyn sniffed at his collar. "You’re wearing
cologne." She looked him over. He wore dark blue jeans and black
leather oxfords, recently polished.
    “What?” he said.
    Jordyn smiled and shook her head. "Come with
me. It's not too far." She and Will walked down the street.
    Will followed her to the middle of the block
on the east side of Clark Street. Every storefront was a slightly
different shade of brick, weathered brown or red or beige. Except
one.
    Jordyn stopped in front of a narrow,
wood-paneled façade, painted glossy black. The tall windows were
divided into twelve, the gold painted muntins twinkled in the
bright morning. Gold leaf lettering on the wood sign swinging above
their heads read, “Molly’s Irish Pub and Inn.” The words encircled
a three-pointed knot. The glass in the top half of front door was
gilded “Céad Míle Fáilte."
    Jordyn looked at Will. “Can we go in
there?”
    “Why not? This is the place, right?" He did
not wait for Jordyn to respond. “Come on. I’m freezing out here.”
He lugged the sturdy door open.
    They entered the dark space. The smell of
fresh baked bread and fat sausages welcomed them. Animated
conversations filled the room with the melody of Irish brogue,
clanking plates and busy forks providing the rhythm.
    Deirdre waved them down. "There you are!” she
said and took them both by their elbows. “Let me show you
Molly's.”
    The pitted wood floors gave slightly with a
tactile creak under foot. Deirdre led them past a stage and a long
bar with glasses hanging overhead, past dinged up wood doors set
like tabletops on whiskey barrels and old steamer trunks and deep
booths upholstered to the ceiling in black leather tufted with
brass tacks, past the closed glass doors of a library lined with
bookshelves crammed full of bottles, past a room with one large
dining table and blocky, tall-backed chairs with ochre-colored
velvet seat cushions and illuminated by a rusty iron chandelier
that looked as if it were about to bring the plaster ceiling
crashing down. She led them past the frenzied kitchen, and finally,
at what must have been the very back of the building, she led them
into an empty room with dartboards on one wall and an old bellows
on another.
    Deirdre stood in the middle of the room
smiling and a little out of breath. "So, this is Molly's. We should
find a table up front." She turned on her heel and left the empty
room.
    Jordyn shrugged. Will smiled and they ran to
catch up, following her back to where they had started.
    Deirdre settled into a leather booth across
from the bar, her back to the door. “Here, this'll do.” Will slid
in next to her. Jordyn sat opposite, across the wide table.
    A young woman stood at the bar. Long
wheat-colored hair, held off her round face with a thin purple
headband, reached the middle of her back. Jordyn watched it swish
back and forth as she talked with a scruffy, middle-aged man behind
the bar as he absently dried beer glasses with a flour sack. The
man winked at Jordyn. She turned her attention back to Deirdre and
Will, scootching down in her seat.
    Deirdre looked at the