The restaurant on Larimer was closed.
Not seasonal-closed. Not renovation-closed. The kind of closed that happens overnight — lights off, chairs still visible through the glass, a handwritten sign taped to the door that said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE in letters that shook at the edges like the hand that wrote them was shaking too.
I noticed because I walked past it every morning. Larimer to Union Station, the same route I'd taken since opening day. The restaurant was Italian — good pasta, reasonable prices, the kind of place that survived in LoDo because the owner worked the floor every night and knew his regulars by name. Marco. I'd eaten there twice. He'd comped my espresso because I'd sent him customers from Treeline and that's how small businesses work in Denver — you send me yours, I send you mine, and we all stay alive.
