Page 61

PATTERN RECOGNITION

The drive back from Poughkeepsie took four and a half hours with traffic, and by the time Dan let himself into The Wildernest it was already after nine in the evening. The stacked lumber for the bar was just shapes in the dark on the side of the building. He’d eaten his dinner while driving. He crumpled up and tossed the empty takeout bag into the dumpster beside it.

He couldn’t afford to lose another full day. There was still time to get some work done on the floor.

The vintage penny tiles were stacked in shallow trays, a hundred in each package. Each one was the diameter of a coin and slightly irregular, which he especially loved. They were a sign that the tiles were handmade, each one crafted with care. Their age made them feel so much more special. He couldn’t believe his luck when he’d found them at a salvage yard in Somerville, a whole pallet of them hiding behind a stack of reclaimed radiators.

There were equal amounts of black and white tiles, and just enough for the square footage he needed with a few trays to spare. The owner was glad to get rid of them. He’d asked for next to nothing for them. Dan had stood in the salvage yard doing the math in his head and trying not to let his expression give him away.

He’d been working in sections, west wall to east, lying the ground for the area around the bar first. The Greek key border would come last, running the perimeter, but the meander-style field pattern was already six feet in and looking fantastic.

It was painstaking work. Each tile had to be pressed into the adhesive bed with the flat of his thumb, spaced mostly by eye. It was a process that required enough attention to keep him present but not so present that his mind didn’t wander.

Danbury had gone well. Poughkeepsie less so. He had won, of course, but the pot had been much smaller than he’d anticipated. It was a good thing that the tile was so cheap. Last night’s win didn’t even cover the adhesive and grout.

The Chicago event was close enough now that he had to commit and buy a plane ticket. Lucky Duck Trivia’s largest Midwest event could be a game changer for Dan. The pot had grown large enough that it changed the math on everything. Winning that one would mean he could stop treating all these smaller east coast circuit stops like a necessity and start treating them like a choice.

He had been to enough church basements and hotel function rooms in the last few weeks to last him for some time.

He pressed another tile into place. The pattern accumulated gradually. It required patience.

He heard Sara’s knock before she stepped through the door, which was propped open to the summer evening air.

“I thought I heard you burning the midnight oil,” she said, stopping in the doorway. She looked down at the floor appreciatively. “Oh, Dan. Wow.”

“Still a work in progress,” Dan said.

Sara stepped around the section of bare subfloor he hadn’t reached yet and crouched down to look at the completed areas. He watched her take it in. There was something he recognized in her face, a fellow craftsperson’s appreciation of a tedious task done well, no corners cut. He was glad she had knocked.

“What’s the final pattern going to be?”

“Greek key border. Meander in the middle.” He indicated the perimeter with his thumb. “Continuous line. No beginning, no end.”

“No halfway measures for you, huh?” Sara looked at him with admiration. Dan picked up the next tiny tile.

She stayed for twenty minutes, chatting with him while he worked. She told him about her recent date with Roger and relayed a funny problem with the wards on his kitchen garden. It was attracting rather than repelling bunnies, and he’d had to rehome several of them. Lastly, she mentioned a friend of hers she thought he might like.

“Orly is smart and she’s very funny. She’s a weaver. Distantly related to Roger. Maybe the four of us could have dinner some time?” she asked. “Nothing formal,” she added.

“Maybe after Samhain,” Dan said. “I’m not great company at the moment.”

“You’re fine company,” Sara objected.

“The floor isn’t going to lay itself.” Dan frowned.

Sara got the message. She stood, brushing dust from her knees. She looked at him for a moment without saying anything.

“The floor is going to be beautiful when it’s done,” she said. “Don’t keep putting it off forever, though. The floor will wait.” She meant something else and they both knew it, but she left it there.

After she left he sat for a while without moving. The room smelled like tile adhesive, plaster, and possibilities. He especially enjoyed the scent of the possibilities.

He picked up the next tile. Black this time.

The rhythm of it was not unpleasant. Press, space, press; the pattern resolving one piece at a time. He had read once that Greek meander patterns had appeared as early as the Neolithic period, showing up independently across cultures that had absolutely no contact with each other. Something in the repeating line was apparently native to the human mind. He found this interesting, and was sad he had nobody to share it with now. These bits and pieces of facts and stories accumulated in him the way tiles accumulated on a floor, one fact pressed into place after another, the pattern only visible to him.

These thoughts piled on while his hands were occupied, and another kind with them, less pleasant. Repetitive work gave his mind too much time to dwell on past problems, situations he wished he’d handled differently. Regrets and wishes for retribution that he was usually more successful at repressing. He usually kept those feelings tamped down tight, leashed alongside his own primal nature. Those feelings didn’t feel safe to let out. But whenever his mind achieved a flow state, they always managed to break free.

There had been a moment at a tournament in Providence, two and a half years back, when Vance Priest had leaned over and said something snide and offensive about a pretty, young fae contestant in a voice meant to convey locker room camaraderie. Dan no longer remembered the specific words. He only remembered the heat of the anger that had followed. His reaction had been primal and immediate, the kind that came from somewhere beyond his normal reasoning capacity. It made his fingers curl into claws and his canines grow sharper. He remembered the Herculean effort of subduing and redirecting that reaction. He’d sacrificed the win that night. He’d had to force himself to walk away from it, and from Vance’s unprotected throat.