NevermoreRed

The first belongs to her father. Who called her ‘bug’ and took her to school every morning even though he had, more often than not, just finished up a nightshift. Who is the reason she became a doctor and the reason she will never give up. Who held her hand and let her whisper her secrets. Who kissed skinned knees better and taught her how to be brave.

The second is addressed to the motley crew of supervisors and attendings who've given her their their time, their input and their opinions, over the years since she graduated medical school.

She doesn't reference Robby by name in this, her private dedication. Her feelings about him will always be conflicted. He is a challenge, sometimes a massive asshole, sometimes, irritating and unerringly, he is right. He deserves her thanks for some of it, her disdain for others. She settles for the middle ground: silence, if not quite indifference.

The third is for Jack Abbot. The only person whose email address she puts in the cc box. The only person she knows will read the fine print. The only person alive today, she knows will want to.

'Thank you,’ she writes, addressing him directly, 'to Jack, for his support. For journal club and the flowers and for teaching me that there's more than one way to save a life. In case you didn't know,' she adds, typing quickly and feeling braver than she's ever been in her life, 'I'm in love with you.'

-

Jack doesn't believe what he's reading at first. Had groped blindly for his phone in the dark after waking from a part-remembered nightmare and opened the attachment, still half asleep, breathing unevenly.

Scans the first page, fumbles with his phone and promptly drops it down the gap between the side table and his bed; swears colourfully to himself and scrambles for it. Not quite willing to believe the information his brain has processed, even as he pinches himself and squints into the darkness to read it again.

Her words are still there. Something a lot like hope blooms into his intercostal spaces. Extends outwards, warmth spreading across his ribcage.

Samira Mohan is in love with him.

(In case he didn't know.)

He didn't. He’d hoped, maybe. Has been fighting against his own heart for almost as long as he'd known her. Has almost successfully convinced himself that he's no good for her; that she deserves better or younger or less damaged. That she could never look at him and see something worth loving.

Except there it is - in twelve point Times New Roman (a font that he disagrees with in principle, but would happily ink across his skin if it meant he got to see those words again. Got to see them every day. Got to see her every day.)

-

He's at her door in fifteen minutes flat, has her underwear round her ankles in twenty. Reads the rest of her article on Samira's sofa; on her laptop, hours later, his arms curled around her.

"What do you reckon?" She asks him eventually, chewing on her lip as she looks up at him through her lashes.

This is a fragile situation. One wrong move, and the entire house of cards crumbles. Samira does well with fragile things. With delicate things. With precarious things. So she keeps still. 

She keeps her head on Jack’s chest, noticing the rise and fall of his breath. The now familiar beat of his heart. Samira memorizes the way light filters in through the window, peeking in through haphazardly drawn curtains. Jack has his hand pressed against her spine, his thumb resting against her T3. 

They haven’t crossed any lines yet, not technically. They haven’t crossed any of the lines that they themselves drew, at the very least. They’ve never had sex. Haven’t even kissed, if you don’t count New Year’s Eve. Samira wouldn’t expect anyone to count a drunken kiss with their best friend as a real kiss, so she doesn’t. Jack doesn’t either. 

His shirt is soft against her cheek, softened from half a million washes and a decade of wear. There’s a hole along the collar. It’s small, barely noticeable. Samira notices. His duvet is pulled up high, nearly reaching Samira’s shoulder blades. It almost feels safer this way. A shield of downfeathers covering the two of them. 

Samira has slept at Jack’s house plenty of times. So many times she’s literally lost track. She always sleeps in the guest room. The queen bed is tucked against the far wall. There’s a nightstand, nice sheets, a big plush rug, and a row of bookshelves Samira has perused and stolen from time and again. She stays over when she’s too exhausted to drive all the way home after a shift. Or when she and Jack are working on their research. Or when the silence is too loud in her apartment. 

Or when Jack asks if she wants to. She’ll always come over when Jack asks. 

It’s a platonic booty call. Jack offers her take-out, a shower with incredible water pressure, and familiar company. Samira obliges. She keeps an overnight bag packed. It’s just the basics: a pair of scrubs, a set of pajamas, a sweatshirt she’s been meaning to give back to him for months now. It’s all above board. It’s all friendly. It is all strictly on the correct side of the line. 

But now, Samira is in Jack’s bed with Jack’s broad chest under her. Now, Jack’s palm grazes her bare skin, her t-shirt having hiked up her back sometime in their sleep. Her curls are in his face, and his breath is warm against her skin. His heart rate is elevated, beating far too fast for having just woken up. Samira’s sure hers is too. 

“Samira,” his voice is gravely, deeper than usual. Still filled with the dreamy uncertainty of recent sleep. Samira. That is the first word he has said this morning. Her name.

She hums in acknowledgment, but doesn’t actually say anything. 

There is no follow-up, though she half-expects him to tell her to kindly get out of his bed and then out of his house. She knows he would never say that. Not her Jack. And that is how she thinks of him, as her Jack. 

Despite the comforter, her legs are covered in goosebumps. The tip of her nose is cold. 

She was just checking in on him last night. Samira knows about his nightmares. He told her once that they’ve become more of an inconvenience than anything. His meds help blot out the worst of it. Most of the time, Jack knows it’s a nightmare even as he’s having it. The panic is purely physical. Still, when she heard him talking to himself, heard him calling her name again and again, she slipped out of the guest room and walked the nine steps to his door. Samira was doing what any friend would do when she nudged him awake as gently as possible. 

His nightmare had something to do with her. She doesn’t want to be the reason for his panic, even in his nightmares. Even when it isn’t actually her. Samira was going to slink back to the guest room, but then Jack lifted up the corner of his bedding in some sleepy offering mumbling something along the lines of, ‘So I know you’re okay.’

This is a delicate situation, so Samira is especially cautious as she turns her face into his shoulder. For warmth, she tells herself. An entirely justifiable excuse. January in Pittsburgh is miserable and dreary, but Jack runs hot. His hand sits heavier on her back, a conscious, purposeful presence. She can feel the whorls of his fingertips and lines of his palm. 

There are five minutes, then ten, of silence. Just the sound of breath and shifting bedding. Two thudding hearts.

Jack is brave. She’s always admired that about him. He breaks the silence first. “I didn’t mean to wake you up last night.”

Samira has to move to respond unless she wants to mumble directly into his acromion process. She tilts her head to the side. “It’s okay.” 

“And I’m sorry that I made you—” 

“You didn’t make me do anything.” It’s funny to think of Jack ever making her do anything she didn't want to. 

“You’re in my bed.” Samira can tell he has chosen his words carefully. 

This is a delicate situation. “I am.” 

She actually doesn’t know who moves first, which is almost embarrassing because Samira goes out of her way to know as much as she can. She plucks knowledge out of case studies, commits statistics to memory. She learns and absorbs and memorizes, but she truly could not pinpoint who moves first. If it’s Samira or Jack who props up on an elbow. If Samira cards her hand through his sleep-tangled curls before or after Jack wraps his arm around her waist. If she kisses Jack or if she is kissed by him. 

He let her pull air from a heart with a French 5 pigtail catheter. Samira wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Just a little bit. She doesn’t actually want to hurt him, but she kind of wants to kill him, if that makes sense. Abbot bodyblocked Emery Walsh because he believed Samira was capable enough of pulling off a hare-brained procedure, and then he looked at her like she had hung the fucking moon, and she hadn’t even noticed. So she kind of wants to kill him. 

Dr. Abbot was flirting with her. Has been flirting with her for god knows how long. Not even nine hours ago, Cassie was telling Samira that she needed a life outside of work. Not even nine hours ago, Samira was disputing that fact, high off a cocktail of shock, adrenaline, and pride that she’s never felt before and isn’t sure if she wants to feel again. Not even nine hours ago, Dr. Abbot was offering Samira a ride back to her apartment. Not even nine hours ago, Samira was refusing that offer. 

Now, in the stark and cold early morning light, Samira is back, trudging past the metal detectors, tapping in through the staff entrance, her eyes narrowed in search of him. 

She knows that Abbot is here. She knows that he is always here, haunting the halls of PTMC, because this is the only place where he feels like he makes sense. Samira knows this because she feels it too. She is a person, yes, but more importantly, she is a doctor. She is a person, yes, but more importantly, she is a person who can help other people here, within these walls. Samira helped a lot of people last night. She is a person who helps people and she isn’t very sure of her personhood otherwise.

He’s easy to spot. Samira would be able to pick his silhouette out of a hundred other silhouettes. She would know him anywhere, anytime, in any life. Maybe that is why she’s so pissed, because she knows Jack Abbot. He seems to sense her presence. Abbot turns on his heels immediately, eyes catching on hers, and Samira feels something crack open in her chest. An acceptance, an understanding, a new flavor of anger.  

“Dr. Mohan,” they’ve always been Abbot and Mohan. “You’re here early.” 

“Can we have a word?” Samira asks. Her voice is oddly hoarse. “Privately.” 

He takes stock of her, assessing her for injury and impalement before he nods, arms crossed over his chest like a security blanket. “Of course.” 

The air in the locker room is stale. The overhead lighting is just a touch too yellow. Abbot follows her anyway, wordless and looming and nervous. He looks so tired. Samira can feel the exhaustion that thrums through him, weaving itself between marrow and bone. There is an instinct within her, a desire, that tells her to grab him and smooth her thumbs over the high points of his face. His stubble is well past a five o’clock shadow now. Samira wouldn’t be surprised if he had simply turned around and got back to work after she turned down his ride home. 

“Is everything alright?” 

She almost laughs. “How long have you been flirting with me?” 

“Mohan,” 

“I don’t think we need to do the Mohan thing right now. How long?” Samira asks.

A flush creeps along the tips of his ears. “Years.” 

“Everyone has been letting me bumble around cluelessly for years?” Letting her yearn. Letting her imagine and then feel an all consuming guilt for the crime of daring to think something up in her own head.

“You have every right to be mad at me. I’m your attending, and I know this puts you in a—” 

Samira presses against her eyes until she sees stars. She does laugh now, sharp and hot. She feels her teeth catch on her bottom lip. “You wear your wedding ring,” is all she can manage to say. “I didn’t think—you still wear your wedding ring, so I thought I was—” Evil. Cruel. Entirely off base. “You are so…” Her hands ball into fists, flex, and then relax repeatedly until she has no choice but to take the kinetic energy building within herself and propel herself forward with it.

She misjudges the room between them and almost bites him. Maybe she’s hungover from the adrenaline and the beer in the park and the half bottle of wine she drank sitting down in the shower last night. Maybe she’s just a little bit nervous. Jack’s lips fall into place soon enough. His hands fly up by his sides before settling along her waist. He’s warm, and worse, he feels right. Samira exhales against him, fingers twisting in the fabric of his scrub top. 

Someone, and she doesn’t even know who, wolf whistles at them from around the corner. 

"For the record, I'm really mad at you right now," Samira says against his mouth. He could have told her. He could have told her. He could have told her.

The corners of his lips curl up in something like a grin before he regains his composure. “Understood.” 

Jack had learned the fine art of not getting in Samira’s way when she was on a mission. Working together in trauma rooms had trained them both to move around each other without losing speed or purpose. At home, that skill translated into a choreographed, quiet efficiency that made sharing small spaces feel like a relief rather than a hindrance. 

It was for that reason he was quite fond of her weekend aligning with his so she could spend the days off at his place. It happened less frequently than either of them liked, but it was the reward at the end of this particular long week. 

Samira packed a bag that she left in her backseat and then followed Jack home after a shift that included a bus accident and an outbreak of norovirus. 

An exchange of tight, tired smiles was their only communication as he unlocked his door. 

Jack made his way to the bedroom, clicking the prosthetic foot free of his shoe with his toe and then sitting on the bench at the foot of the bed to do the rest. It was an efficient dance; he learned to make a ritual out of maintenance when his body gained additional components.

Samira didn’t look away while he peeled off the sleeve and checked the limb, not gawking and not pretending she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing. He had loved her for that before he had words for it.

“I’m taking an Everything Shower,” she announced like a code, dropping her bag beside the bed. “I am a biohazard.”

“Noted,” Jack replied with a nod. “Do I need a containment suit?”

“No PPE needed. You’re on observation and supply duty. Bench is for the supervising physician.”

“Finally,” he deadpanned. “The respect I deserve.”

Jack leaned in the doorway with his crutches to watch her stage the operation. It never stopped impressing him, the way she could extract order from chaos with nothing but a list in her head. There was something surgical about the way she approached small domestic tasks without turning them into theater. She set out an array with clinical precision and took two folded bath sheets from the linen shelf. 

He couldn’t help himself. “Are we running a code in there?” 

“This is a comprehensive protocol. A Level I Everything Shower. The whole catastrophe,” Samira said seriously. 

“The whole catastrophe,” he repeated, smiling and shaking his head. “Do I… scrub in, or are you in a closed room?”

“You may observe from just outside the sterile field.” Samira gestured to the shower bench. 

The bathroom was one of his small apologies to himself. The renovation was the result of years of therapy homework learning to be more considerate of his own needs.  Wider doorway, seamless threshold, grab bars that didn’t look like grab bars, heated tile with enough tooth that you didn’t feel like Bambi, and a built-in bench the length of one wall. The massive shower head hung above like a benevolent god and a handheld wand sat in a cradle that pivoted like it was trying to show off.

Jack stripped off his clothes and used the bars to navigate to the bench. He propped his residual limb up and rested, the heat of the tile seeping into the scar tissue and settling the restless itch. Phantom pain came and went with no respect for his schedule. It had made him mean in the years where he had less to lose, and it had made him gentle since. He had built the shower with this bench because he wanted one place where his body was easy to live in.

Jack sat contentedly and watched as she worked a cream product of some kind into her hair. She caught his gaze in the mirror as she twisted the strands up into a clip. “Team, please confirm the patient and procedure.” 

“Patient: Dr. Samira Mohan,” he intoned, trying very hard not to grin. “Procedure: Everything Shower.”

Samira laughed and then fixed him with a faux serious look. “Stop staring.” 

She didn’t wait for him to look away before undressing and tossing her scrubs in the correct hamper. He wasn’t going to look away anyway. 

“Never,” he said, perfectly honest. “I’m here for learning purposes. Continuing medical education. One point five credits.”

“You can help or you can mock,” she said, stepping past him into the shower and turning on the left valve with a practiced hand, adjusting the temperature with the right, standing just out of the line of fire until the water went from cold to steam. “You cannot do both.” 

When it seemed hot enough he worried she would scald, Samira stepped into the water.

He could write a journal article about that moment, the hinge of her jaw relaxing, the way her sternum lifted as she let her lungs actually fill. Instead, he picked up the little silicone scalp scrubber she’d taught him to like and left it on his knee like an offering.

“Okay,” she said a minute later, unclipping her hair. He traded her the clip for the tool without having to be asked, a small economy of anticipation between them.

It was ridiculous how much he liked this. Not the water or the steam or the view, though he loved that too, but the choreography. He loved the way she made a plan and then pretended she hadn’t; the way she triaged herself with the same ease she did a trauma.

As she slid the tool over her scalp, Samira made a content noise so small it felt private and he filed it away like he did everything he wanted to keep forever. She stepped back and let the first wave of product rinse from her hair. 

Jack had always loved the way she moved, direct and economical. He handed over shampoo as ordered, then took it back when she tilted her chin and turned to face away from him, the small request a trust that made something in him ache.

“You’re looking at me with your soft eyes,” she said, eyes closed to keep suds out.

“Uh-huh,” he agreed, because she was luminous, and it made him a little lightheaded. 

“Tilt,” he said, and she did, so he could work the lather into her scalp the way he’d work a knot out of his own calf after a long run ten lives ago. Samira made a noise she would deny later.

“Don’t get used to this,” she teased, but there was barely a breath between her teeth and his name.

Jack didn’t answer because he was busy re-memorizing the map of where she liked pressure and where she liked it to be nothing but his fingertips and nails. He plucked the wand from the wall and used it to carefully rinse the suds from her hair, letting the strands gather like silk in his fingers.

He had wanted to be useful his entire life, and now he got to hand this woman a conditioner bottle before she had to open her eyes and look for it. 

If you had asked him the day they met what luck was, he would have used larger words and narrower definitions. Right now, luck was this - his stupid fancy shower, her mouth tipped down like she was trying not to smile even as her dimples appeared, the slow human domesticity of it all after a day of putting people back together while the world took them apart.

“Timer,” Samira said, and he picked his phone up from the counter and thumbed in three minutes. He wasn’t sure when his vocabulary for love had become a list of small, stupid acts like starting a timer on his phone while he watched the woman he loved rub something that smelled like coconut and mint into her hair, but there it was - a language he understood fluently.

With her curls conditioner sodden, she gave him that sheepish little grin he only got in moments like this - a concession that being admired didn’t feel terrifying if it was him doing the admiring.

“Body wash next,” she said, “with the mitt, then shave. We’re doing the full debridement for your nice sheets.”

He held up the mitt like a trophy. “This looks like a felony.”

“It’s the only thing that stands between me and becoming a crusty raisin,” she said evenly. “Water engages; friction debrides.”

“Spoken like a woman who charted twelve wound checks today,” he said, and she snorted.

The mitt went on, and he didn’t intrude. He took the handheld and let it hover where she directed. He could see her turn off the part of her brain that had been listening to monitors for twelve hours and on the part that knew where her own edges were as she felt all her muscles one at a time.

“Next,” she said, and he reached for the razor. She could have done it herself; she often did. Instead, she handed him her shin with a doctor’s lack of preciousness and a lover’s trust. She lifted one foot and braced it on the bench near his thigh and he slid his hand under her knee.

He drew the razor in sure strokes, so careful it made him a little dizzy. He rinsed it in the stream and worked his way carefully around her leg. Jack had learned to save moments and let them tether him. This one went in his pocket with a weight he could feel.

“Other side,” she said, sounding breathless. Her cheeks were flushed when he looked up at her with that intense stare that made her knees weak. 

Jack took her other shin just as gently and did it all over again. Samira put one hand on his shoulder. His brain catalogued the fact that her fingers were cold at the tips, that they warmed quickly. The razor slid and he watched the clean path in its wake like he had performed a trick.

He finished rinsing her leg and looked up at her again with the satisfied look of a puppy who had retrieved the paper. 

“Okay,” Samira said, sounding determined to keep her wits about her in spite of the heat settling. She shot him a warning look that he answered with his hands up. He could do a thousand things. He could do restraint.

He watched her scrub the bottoms of her feet with a brush that looked like a tiny torture device, and he leaned forward without thinking to hold her steady by the ankle. She relaxed into his hand like he was part of the bench.

“You’re being very helpful,” she informed him, which was her version of a medal ceremony.

“I am deeply useful,” he said, eyes meeting hers.

“I know,” she said, and the words landed somewhere between a vow and a joke and rattled around in his ribs.

“Face next,” she said, and he knew the sequence by now. The first cleanser melted the day off; the second one actually cleaned. He handed them in turn and watched her shove her face into the stream with a determination that would have made him laugh if the tenderness in his throat didn’t make noise feel impossible.

The timer chimed. She moved fully under the spray to rinse everything off, and Jack couldn't help but reach out, his hand catching her hip to steady her when she wobbled slightly.

"I'm good," she said automatically.

"I know. I just wanted to touch you.” The smirk was back. 

"Come here," Jack said softly, and she went, letting him pull her down onto his lap. The position was awkward, water hitting them at an angle, but neither of them cared. Samira curled into him, her chin finding the crown of his head.

"Long day," she mumbled into his damp curls.

"The longest."

His hands moved over her back, not seeking anything beyond contact. Samira let out a long breath.

She pulled back to look at him, water droplets clinging to her eyelashes. "You need to wash your hair."

"Are you offering?"

"I'm saying you smell like The Pitt."

"Romantic."

Samira was already reaching for her shampoo again. He could suffer spending a couple days smelling like her.  Her fingers worked through his hair, nails scratching lightly against his scalp in a way that made him groan.

"Feel good?"

"Everything you do feels good."

Samira let the words and the moment settle between them for a second before turning the wand to spray him once in the face with the smallest smirk. “Focus up, soldier. The procedure is almost done.” 

He blinked up at her as she rinsed him off, an impossibly mushy look on his face.

When she stepped out of the shower, she kissed the top of his head on the way by, a soft, absentminded thing that hit him harder than expected.

Jack watched her do the whole post-op ordeal - serum, moisturizer, the body oil she told him made her smell like a fancy bakery, curl cream - like he was observing a master class in triage.

She caught him looking in the mirror and raised an eyebrow. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he protested, and she narrowed her eyes at him as she tucked the ends of the towel into themselves at her chest.

“You’re being impossible.”

“I’m literally just sitting here,” he argued, the corners of his mouth tipping into a smirk that betrayed him.

Jack got up, grunting at his joints, and toweled off lazily before moving carefully into the bedroom again. He completed the mundanity of residual limb maintenance. He took his time because it mattered, every day, the same way flossing mattered and he pretended not to watch her watch him. 

Samira leaned against the doorframe and dried her hair with the towel in the way a cat will sometimes forget you’re there and show you its belly. He loved that he could look and she could be looked at and neither of them would jump out of their skin.

“Good?” she asked, and he nodded.

“Better now,” he said before his better judgement could tell him to be cooler about it.  Her dimples appeared even as her eyebrows narrowed, the way she did when she wasn’t expecting him to go earnest on her.

“Stop,” she muttered, smiling into the towel.

“Never,” he said again, because if you found your way to simple words, you should say them.

They drifted to the living room, Jack heading for the kitchen on his crutches while Samira emerged from the bedroom in one of his henleys, her legs bare and her damp curls plopped on her head in another of his ancient t-shirts. She looked smug and freshly laundered and like an absolute menace.

“Are those both mine?” he asked needlessly.

“It’s called post-op dressing,” she said, tugging at the hem. “Cotton-rich. Smells like you. Clinically indicated.”

“In that case,” he said, “I’ll alert Materials Management we’re low on Jack.”

The refrigerator offered up a variety of tragic leftovers.

“No,” Samira said immediately, looking over his shoulder. “Absolutely not. None of those are edible.”

“Agreed,” he said, making a sheepish face. “We pivot to Plan B: omelets with reckless quantities of cheese.”

She perched on one of the barstools, legs folded, chin propped in her hand, watching him like a favorite show. “Reckless is a choice I accept when it comes to cheese.”

Butter hit the hot pan with a hiss. He whisked eggs, scattered scallions and added a blizzard of sharp cheddar that would make a cardiologist sigh.

“Jack,” she said, trying to sound stern and failing. “That’s a structural hazard.”

“I do reinforced construction,” he replied, nudging the edges with a spatula. “Load-bearing dairy.”

“Just call it a frittata and stop fighting gravity.”

He flipped it anyway and she clapped, a delighted sound that made him grin. 

They ate on the couch, plates warm on their knees, the good blanket dragged over both of them. On TV, a couple debated the moral necessity of shiplap.

“Why is everything greige?” she asked, poking another bite with her fork. “Did color offend them personally?”

Jack snickered and pointed out a particularly heinous wallpaper on the opposite side of the room. 

They critiqued strangers’ bad choices, and let the drone of the narrator do the rest of the work. An easy quiet they had earned.

“Those pendant lights look like urine specimens,” she mumbled.

“Now I can’t unsee it,” he groaned. “Who puts the stove that far from the sink? That’s a twelve-step walk for a pot of boiling water.”

“Unsafe. I’m writing them up,” she murmured, already settling heavier against him, eyes half-closed. “Now you’re going to let me sleep for a hundred years.”

“Twelve tops,” he bargained. “We have plans.”

“We have no plans,” she reminded him.

“We have plans to have no plans,” he corrected, and she hummed a note he could feel resonate in his bones.

Jack had stitched enough bodies with love in them to know you don’t ignore the fact you have the chance to touch one while they’re warm and breathing and lying on your couch. He reached over, and she laced their fingers without looking.

The feeling that threaded through his sternum thinking about the fifteen minute shower where the world did not ask anything from them was unexpected. It was quiet and bright. He respected the moment like it was a patient’s last good vein. He didn’t try to label it out loud with a word heavier than the night could hold. He let it be what it was and sat with it. He could call it love later when his mouth wasn’t so dry. He could tell her when it was daylight and their bodies weren’t so rung out. 

Or he could put it in his pocket with all the other weighty, perfect things and let it ground him. 

“Quit narrating,” she murmured without opening her eyes.

“I’m not saying anything,” he defended himself.

“You’re so loud in here.” She tapped her temple with their joined hands and then pulled his knuckles to her mouth.

He exhaled a laugh and kissed her hairline.

“Checklist,” she said, eyes still closed. “Everything Shower - complete. Post-op - complete. Post-op dinner - complete. Patient - stable.”

“Follow-up in forty-eight hours,” he said.

“Follow-up in twelve,” she countered. “I will need breakfast.”

“Breakfast we can do.” He was thinking of the place on Liberty with the sticky tables and the cook who never stopped moving.