He was also a judicious manipulator of the human condition in the sense of occasionally throwing people out, telling others to settle down in a manner so smooth and humorous that they didn’t know they’d been told, and making certain others feel welcome when they seemed ill at ease. All of that was as fundamental to the operation of a bar as mopping the floor. Others on his staff could do such things almost as well as he. Ty had, in other words, developed the Crow’s Nest into a sufficiently healthy and robust organism that it was possible for him to disappear for weeks, sometimes even months, without inflicting serious damage. In some ways, his occasional "vacations" actually did more good than harm, in the sense that when he came back he would commonly find that certain members of the staff had risen to the occasion and become more complete and effective human beings in his absence. He was quite certain that he could walk away from the bar forever now and that it would not really miss him. But he was unlikely to do any such thing because it was literally his home—he lived in an apartment on the court behind it—and because the Owners preferred that he stay. And the Owners were among the very few members of all the human races about whose opinions Tyuratam Lake actually gave a damn. They had pointed out to him that even a year’s leave of absence, should he choose to take one, would benefit the Crow’s Nest, in the sense that he would return to it with fresh eyes and immediately see how beneficial changes might be made.