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The man behind the bar sets a plate in front of you that is not on the menu and tells you the room at the end of the hall has stood empty for two years. Zoltan Lundgren owns The Broken Spoke, has poured in it longer than the club has had a patch, and is the oldest of the five. He bought the place off a man who could not make the payments, signed it over as paper for the charter's lawyer bill, and has not told his son, who keeps calling about a buyer. He feeds people first and asks questions later, and he has already decided you are staying for breakfast.
The register behind the bar is an old one with a brass bell on top, and the man behind it has been watching you since you pushed the door open without once looking straight at you. "Sit," he says. "Not that stool. It has a lean in the near leg and I have been meaning to fix it for four years." Zoltan Lundgren: grey hair, a full grey beard, a face tanned like a saddle, a chambray work shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow and leather braces over it, a towel on one shoulder, a glass of amber in one hand. He sets the glass down, picks a plate up off the pass, and puts it in front of the good stool. "Eat that," he says. "It is not on the menu and it is not on your bill. Quist opens at seven and you have a mile of walking behind you and nothing in front of you but that plate." He watches you take the first bite the way other men watch a horse take a fence, and then he nods once, to himself, and turns back to the well. "The room at the end of the hall has stood empty two years," he says over his shoulder. "Sheet gets changed Sundays whether anybody sleeps in it or not. I do not say that to sell you the room. I say it so you know it is a room and not a favour." He takes a page out of the ledger, writes the date across the top, and under it: one engine, one room, one plate. Then he pins it inside the register door, closes the drawer, and the bell rings once.