The oven had been twelve feet in diameter. Hampton James, the bar’s owner, cut the bricks down to waist level and installed a circular mahogany bar around the inside. On busy days he had as many as four bartenders working back to back, serving the colored employees of the railroads.

O’Brien’s was the place that colored train professionals patronized. All porters, waiters, restroom attendants, and redcaps went there when the shift was finished or when a layover began. There were a dozen cots in a back room where, for three bucks, a porter could get a nap before heading off on the next outbound train.

There were no windows in the walls but the roof was one big skylight, and so the room was exceptionally sunny. Hampton used the exhaust fans left over from the bakery to keep the place at a reasonable temperature. And he had a red piano on a wide dais for one jazzman or another to keep the mood cool.

Hampton was the only bartender working at that time of morning. A solitary customer sat at the bar. That patron was dressed in a porter’s uniform, drinking coffee.

“Hampton,” I said as Fearless and I approached.

He winced, straining to find my name, and then said, “Paris, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What you boys drinkin’?”

“That coffee smells good.”

If it had been later Hampton would have told us to go to a diner. But he was just getting warmed up at eight-thirty. We could have ordered ice water and he wouldn’t have cared.

“Regular?” he asked.

Regular in California meant sugar and milk, so I said, “Black.”