The jacket is me in a way I don’t bother explaining to people. They see it or they don’t. Most don’t. Most see the patches and the piercings and the hair and make a decision,which is fine. I’m not asking anyone to understand. I’m not asking anyone for anything.
I lock the back door. Check it twice because I always check it twice. Walk home, which is six blocks east on streets I’ve been walking since I moved here at twenty-two, back when Anthem was just a bar I drank at and Carl was just a guy who poured heavy and didn’t ask questions. Three years later I’m behind his bar and he’s in Tampa and the neighborhood knows me by name, or at least by hair, which at the moment is pink on top and buzzed on the sides and probably needs a touch-up I’ll get to eventually.
My apartment is above a laundromat. One bedroom, clean enough, cheap enough. The laundromat closes at ten so the machines are quiet by the time I get home, which is the only reason the location works. I’ve got a couch I found on the sidewalk in October that turned out to not have bedbugs, which felt like winning the lottery. A record player my mom sent me for my twenty-first birthday with a note that saidfor the music you won’t stop playing. A kitchen I cook in more than people expect because eating out costs money and money goes to the Anthem fund and the Anthem fund doesn’t get raided for takeout.
I eat standing up. Leftover rice and beans from yesterday, cold, out of the container. It’s 2:30 in the morning and the laundromat is dark and the street outside is quiet and I’m alone in the way I’m always alone, which is to say: on purpose.
I’ve been alone on purpose since I was twenty. Since Elsie, whose name I can spell but whose memory I’ve stripped down to a few hard facts: she wanted me to be softer. I wasn’t. She left. I was sad for about a month and then I was fine, and the fineness never went away, which told me everything I needed to know about what I actually need from people, whichis not much. I like sex. I like company. I don’t like the part where someone decides those two things mean you owe them your mornings and your weekends and a version of yourself that smiles more. I’m not mean about it. I’m clear. I tell people what this is before we get to what this isn’t, and most of them hear me, and the ones who don’t are the ones who stop coming to the bar for a few weeks and then come back like nothing happened, which is its own kind of respect.
I wash the container. Set it in the rack. Stand in my kitchen in my jacket because I haven’t taken it off yet and listen to the building settle.
Thursday I’ll sit in Vanessa’s chair and she’ll finish the koi on the inside of my forearm and it’ll hurt and I’ll hold still because holding still is part of the deal. Friday I’ll work a double because the weekend crowds pay for the weeknight lulls. Saturday Carl calls to check in, which means Carl calls to make sure I haven’t burned the place down, and I’ll tell him everything’s fine because everything is always fine.
That’s the week. It's not so different from other weeks. Anthem, Vanessa, the apartment, the walk. I built this life piece by piece, every part of it chosen because it fits and nothing in it requires me to be anyone other than who I am. No surprises. No negotiations. No one on my couch in the morning expecting coffee and conversation.
I take off the jacket. Hang it on the hook by the door. Go to bed.
Chapter Three
Zoe
I practice the speech in the shower.
It’s a good speech. I wrote it on the back of a CVS receipt at two in the morning and then rewrote it on actual paper and then rewrote it again when I decided the second version sounded too desperate. The final version is confident but respectful, specific but not presumptuous, and clocks in at exactly ninety seconds because I timed it against the stopwatch on my phone while standing in front of the bathroom mirror in my underwear.
Mom thinks I’m going to the gym. I told her I signed up for a trial membership at a place near Granger, which is technically in the direction of Station 11, so it’s not a complete lie. It’s an adjacent lie. A lie that lives in the same neighborhood as the truth.
I wear jeans and a clean t-shirt and sneakers that aren’t too new. I thought about wearing something more professional, but showing up at a firehouse in business casual would be weird and showing up in my dress uniform would be psychotic, sojeans it is. Normal. Casual. Just a person, walking into a fire station, totally chill, no big deal.
My hands are shaking when I turn onto Haverford.
Station 11 looks different when you’re walking toward it with a plan. I’ve seen it a thousand times from the car, from the bus, from the sidewalk on the other side of the street, and it always looked like the firehouse. Part of the block. Brick and bay doors and a flag. But today it looks like something I’m about to ask for, and asking makes it bigger.
The bay doors are open. One engine is visible inside, Engine 11, red and chrome and clean in a way that means someone maintains it with intention. There’s a folding chair near the side entrance, same as always, and a pair of boots drying on the concrete and a clipboard hanging from a hook on the wall.
I walk up to the open bay door and stop.
A woman is crouched near the front wheel of the engine, doing something with a gauge. Dark hair in a ponytail, work shirt, clipboard balanced on the wheel well. She hears me before she sees me, glances up, and gives me the kind of look you give a stranger standing in your workplace doorway at ten in the morning.
“Help you?”
“Hi.” My voice comes out about half an octave higher than normal. I clear my throat. “I’m looking for Captain Donnelly. Is she available?”
The woman stands up. She’s got a pen behind her ear and an expression that’s halfway between curious and amused, like she’s already decided this is going to be interesting.
“You a reporter?”
“No.”
“Inspector?”
“No, I’m a firefighter. I just graduated. I was hoping to talk to the captain about a position.”
Both eyebrows go up. She looks at me for a long second, and I can feel her doing math. The age, the civilian clothes, the nervous energy coming off me like steam. She’s cataloging.
“You got assigned somewhere else.”
It’s not a question. I nod anyway.
