Page 10 of The Fate Factor

I’m not sure who I think I’m speaking to when I start talking—Her? God? The universe?—but I say it anyway. “Whatever it is I’m supposed to be searching for, please don’t make it too hard to find.”

The only trouble with that, I think as I drift off to sleep, is I’m not sure I’d recognize it if I saw it.

three

Jamie

Ifheavenhadanaddress on earth, it would be in this city, in this repurposed warehouse, at my bar. I push the brim of my hat up and wipe the sweat off of my forehead, grinning like an idiot. Happy hour ended over an hour ago and the crowd hasn’t let up. I’m in the back room, switching the hoses on a keg of Pale Ale as the cover band launches into a Rolling Stones song. I can’t help but bang out a little drum solo on the keg.

A year ago, when I opened the doors to Fortune Brewery, I was lucky to sell twenty pints a day. Tonight, I’ve tapped a keg in the middle of a rush and I’m ecstatic over the inconvenience.

I wipe my hands on my jeans and push back out into the main bar, scoping out the line four deep with hipsters and college kids starting the weekend early. There was a longer-than-I-care-to-admit stretch of years when I spent Thursday through Sunday partying on this same strip of bars. Butthisbar, and the beer we serve, belongs to me. It’s still a little surreal.

I’m working so hard, my T-shirt is stuck to my back when I notice a couple of guys elbowing their way to the front. I recognize one of them from school and have to bite back a groan. I prefer the nights when none of my customers remember me as a sixteen-year-old fuck-up with a barely passing GPA and a first name familiarity with the local cops, but Portland’s not big enough to hide from your past.

“Jameson Bishop,” he shouts, giving the kid in front of him anI know the ownerwink as he cuts the line. He’s drunk, but since he got that buzz buying my beer, I can’t really complain. The two of them sidle up to the bar.

“Call me Jamie,” I say to his friend. I pour a pint for a guy with a buzz cut and a styled mustache, then reach over the bar for a quick handshake.

“Man’s named after a whiskey and finds himself brewing beer,” he says.

“And I find myself doing quite well, thanks.” I know he doesn’t mean anything by it, but having dodged a few jabs about my profession from my family, I never let a comment like that slide. Plus, I’m feeling cocky tonight.

I gesture to the line of eight taps—five more than when I opened—and lift my chin to him. “What can I get you?”

“Gimme that orange one.”

I turn to his friend.

“What do you suggest?”

I shrug like I’m not chomping at the bit to show off my newest recipe. “We’re launching the autumn ale tomorrow night. Dark. Spicy. I could let you have an early taste.”

He gives me finger guns, and I pop open a bottle from the reserve fridge and pour it into a glass so I can keep the label under wraps until the party.

The guy takes a sip and his mouth curves upward. “Boy knows his stuff.”

I bristle a little at “boy.” I can’t help but hear one of my former stepfathers who always referred to me as “Laura’s boy” instead of using my name. As if I were a piece of furniture she brought along to the marriage, one that he had to concede to but would’ve preferred I’d been lost in the move.

I turn another glass under the tap, drawing the perfect amount of head, and slide “that orange one” across the bar.

“This is fantastic, Jamie. Really.”

My face pulls into one of those goofy smiles I get when people like my beer. I have a small team of brewers on staff and most of my beers are collaborations, but this one in particular is all my creation. It’s nutmeg he’s tasting and to say I took a chance combining it with the other flavors would be an understatement. Clearly it worked, and the praise is like a shot of endorphins.

“Jamie!” Em bursts through the door from the back room, her forehead damp beneath the plastic snapback of a backwards Bruins hat. She’s been busting ass beside me all night. “Get the hell out of here.”

I look at the digital clock on the register and,shit, I need to be across town and suited up in thirty minutes. The hockey league I play in on Thursday nights is my one night away from this place. I think it’s Em’s favorite night because in the two years she’s worked for me, first on the brewery floor, now at the taproom, she never lets me leave late. She also never lets an order get missed or a shift go uncovered. That she doesn’t have the official manager title is solely due to the fact that I keep forgetting to order her new business cards.

I glance at the line again. “You sure you can handle it?”

“You sure you meant to say that out loud?”

I laugh, tossing my towel on the bar, and quickly cash myself out. “Give the band a refill when they break.”

Em salutes me, then in case I thought she was going to take an order, flips her hand around to give me the finger.

The rink we play at is over the bridge and into the suburbs. It’s half an hour from downtown but most of the guys are married now with huge houses and manicured lawns out here, so I’m the only one who has a commute.

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