I walked into O'Malley’s mid-dispute.
The front room smelled of stale fry oil, draft beer, and damp coats from the mist outside. Over by the dartboards, Marc was halfway out of his chair, a half-eaten dry-rub wing raised in legal protest.
"Eight liters," Marc insisted loudly. "I have broad shoulders, Maya. The volume scales with the frame."
"Eight liters is an equestrian measurement," Maya said, not looking up from her phone. "You are an Asteron mechanical engineer, not a Clydesdale."
"A Clydesdale is ten," Ben said from the end of the table. "Easily twelve if it's well-hydrated."
"Nobody asked for horse estimates," Maya said.
I slid into the booth beside Luke. He didn't make a production out of it; he just shifted his knee four inches to clear space on the vinyl bench and slid a fresh pint glass across the table before his hand went back to his coaster.
"Evening, Claire," Ben said. "Tell Marc his circulatory system is standard."
"Five liters," I said, unzipping my jacket. "Five point five if you've had three glasses of water."
Marc slumped back onto the bench with an aggrieved groan. "I'm surrounded by pedants."
"Round three," the trivia host's voice cracked through the ceiling speakers. "Category: Cartography and Exploration."
"Maya," Ben said immediately. "This is you."
"Shut up so I can hear the prompts," Maya said.
Question seven asked for the Flemish geographer who developed the cylindrical map projection in 1569.
"Mercator," Maya muttered, pencil poised over the slip.
"Wait," Ben said, leaning across the table. "Wasn't that the guy with the compass? Ortelius?"
"Ortelius did the atlas," I said. "Mercator did the projection."
"Ortelius sounds like a guy who drew coasts," Ben argued, frowning into his beer. "Mercator sounds like olive oil."
"It's Mercator," Luke said without looking up from tearing a paper napkin into precise one-inch strips. "Write it down."
Maya wrote it down.
My phone buzzed against the table. I tapped the screen.
Asteron Calendar: Full-System Integration Rehearsal. Thursday, 0900. Bay 3.
I swiped the banner away. Thursday was twelve hours away; the bay was Integration's problem until morning.
The decisive blow came in round five.
"Question five," the host called out. "The deepest known point in the Earth's oceans, located in the Mariana Trench."
"Challenger Deep," Maya said, already writing.
"Hold on," Marc said, squinting toward the ceiling. "Is it Challenger Deep or the Horizon Deep?"
"Horizon Deep is in the Tonga Trench," I told him.
"You sure?" Ben asked, tapping his fingers on the table. "Because Horizon sounds like a trench thing."
"I am entirely sure," I said.
Marc took the pencil out of Maya's fingers. "I'm trusting my gut. Tonga sounds made up for this question."
"Marc, do not write Horizon," Maya warned.
Marc wrote Horizon.
Ten minutes later, the host read the answer key.
"Challenger Deep," the speaker announced.
Maya leveled a flat, murderous stare across the table at Marc. "You owe me twelve dollars for the nachos."
"We're still on the board!" Marc protested, holding his hands up defensively. "We could be tied!"
When the final tally came out, The Structural Deficits had forty-one points. The team of accountants near the bar took first with forty-four. A group of grad students took second with forty-two.
"Third place," the host announced, walking over with a cardboard box. "Congratulations, team. You get the runner-up merchandise."
He dropped three dark-green foam stress balls shaped like shamrocks onto the center of the table.
Marc picked one up, squeezing it until his knuckles went white. "Foam. We lost out on the ten-dollar bar tab for three pieces of packaging material."
"You lost us the tab," Maya corrected, standing up and zipping her parka. "Next week you don't get the pencil."
We spilled out of O'Malley's into the damp parking lot. The air was cold, mist hanging in halos around the sodium streetlights. Maya was still detailing the exact geographical coordinates of the Tonga Trench to Ben, who was nodding with theatrical solemnity.
Ahead of us, Marc tried to juggle all three green shamrocks with one hand.
He managed two passes before the third foam ball bounced off his wrist, hit the wet asphalt, and rolled cleanly under the chassis of a parked Honda Civic.
Marc stared at the empty space under the bumper. "Leave it. It belongs to the street now."
Beside me, Luke had his hands deep in his jacket pockets, his collar turned up against the wind. He caught my eye, his mouth twitching at the corner as Marc gave the Honda's tire a mournful kick.
"Third place," Luke said quietly.