Free The Kingdom of Bones by Stephen Gallagher

too long in the ring, looking forward to success that never came.
    As far as Sayers could see, he’d fit into neither category. Nor into any other that he could imagine.
    “Tom?” he heard, and turned his head. A woman had called his name from behind the bar counter and was looking at him. Her face was instantly familiar, but for a moment he struggled to place it exactly.
    “Lily?” he said, moving over to the counter. “Lily Collins?”
    “Lily Haynes, now,” she said, and held up a hand to show him a well-worn wedding band that looked as if it had passed through a generation or two, if not a pawnshop or three. “How are you, Tom?”
    “Lucky old Albert,” Tom said. “I’m doing fine.”
    Lily Collins. It had been five or six years since he’d last seen her. They both leaned on the bar so that they could converse without too much disturbance of those facing the stage. And then whenever the bar crowd joined in a chorus, they had to pause because it became too difficult to be heard.
    Lily had toured with Sayers’ first company, playing in
A Fight to the Finish
as Hester Chambers, the jilted country-girl sweetheart of Tom’s opponent. She’d entered the theater as a dancer, and back then she’d been slight and slim and could pass for a girl of seventeen despite her dozen or more years in the profession. Albert Haynes was a tumbler in a three-man act, and whenever their engagements coincided, it was obvious to everyone that they were a destined pair. She’d grown more matronly since then. But her eyes still held their sparkle.
    “So you’re off the road now?” Tom said.
    “Albert got the flu,” she said. “It left him deaf in one ear. He could never balance proper after that. He’s all right in himself. But he used to stand on one hand, and now I have to watch him on the stairs.”
    After a pause for a roaring chorus, she told him of how they’d married and put their savings into a pub on Langworthy Road. Albert ran it, and Lily brought in some extra money by working here three nights a week.
    “Come and see us,” she said. “Any time. Don’t worry if we’re busy. We’ll always make time for you, Tom.”
    “I will.”
    “Don’t just say it.”
    “I truly will.”
    She was looking at him strangely. Not so much at him, as into him. Sayers had always found Lily Collins to be one of those women of intuitive honesty, with an uncanny sense of it in others. They make valued friends. But a woman who can always spot when a man’s deceiving himself makes for a discomforting companion.
    “How are you really, Tom?” she said. “Are you happy? Tell me you are.”
    He laid aside all pretense.
    “I believe,” he said, “that in time I will be.”
    “Well,” Lily said, raising her voice to compete with the final chorus from the Glittering Star of Erin, “That’s probably all any of us can ask for. Knowing what will make you happy and feeling you’re on the way to it. Everything else is memories.”
    The end of Nelly Farrell’s act brought a surge of customers to the bar, and with quick good-byes and equally quick promises Lily had to abandon Sayers and return to her work.
    When Medley the Mimic came bouncing on and started with his imitations, Sayers slipped out to the foyer and made his way backstage. By the time he got there, Medley was off again and the Avolo Boys were out trying to repair the damage.
    “Bloody Salford ’eathens,” cursed Medley as he pushed his way past Sayers, raw egg dripping from his jacket. “If it don’t sing or fall on its arse, they don’t want to know.”
    Sayers checked to see that the
Purple Diamond
stage crew would be ready for an early call, and then made his way back to the green room to give the same warning to the cast.
    Most were ready anyway. As he might have guessed, the only one not present was James Caspar.
             
    The dressing rooms were at the side of the building, with high windows overlooking the alley that divided the theater from