“Can I order a real drink now?”
“What do you want?”
She looks at the menu for the first time. Reads it slow, like she’s taking it seriously, which she should because I wrote that menu. “Moscow mule?”
“Good choice.” I pull the copper mug from the rack. Vodka, ginger beer, lime, ice. The mug frosts immediately. I set it in front of her and she wraps both hands around it like it’s cold outside, which it isn’t.
“I’m Zoe,” she says.
“Teague.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Is Zoe yours?”
She grins. It’s the first full smile I’ve seen from her, and it’s ridiculous. The whole face changes. She went from sad-eyed girl drinking a Shirley Temple to someone who looks like she just remembered something good, and the shift is so fast it’s almost disorienting.
“Yeah,” she says. “Zoe Kimball. What’s the rest of yours?”
“Moran. Teague Moran.”
“Teague Moran.” She says my name like she’s tasting it. Rolling it around. “That’s a cool name.”
“Thanks. I grew it myself.”
She laughs. It’s loud and surprised and she covers her mouth with her hand like she didn’t mean to let it out, and three of the four other people in the bar glance over. The paperback guy doesn’t look up. He never does.
The playlist shifts. Buzzcocks. “Ever Fallen in Love.” I turn it up a notch because you have to turn up the Buzzcocks, that’s just respect, and Zoe tilts her head.
“This is good.”
“This is 1978.”
“It sounds like now.”
“That’s the whole point.” I lean on the bar. “Good punk doesn’t age because the things it’s angry about don’t change. The details shift but the feeling stays. Kids in 1978 were pissed about the same stuff kids are pissed about now. Being lied to. Being told to fall in line. Being handed a future they didn’t ask for and being told to say thank you.”
Her face shifts. A small collapse, just for a second, like I hit a nerve I didn’t know was there. She takes a long drink of the Moscow mule and sets it down and wraps both hands around the copper mug, gripping it like an anchor, and I watch her put herself back together in real time.
“I got assigned to the wrong fire station,” she says.
I blink. Of all the things I expected her to be upset about, fire station assignments was not on the list. “You’re a firefighter?”
“I just graduated.” She says it with pride underneath the frustration. “I wanted Station 11. I got Station 24. They’re not the same.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Station 11 is in my neighborhood. I grew up there. I’ve been listening to their sirens my whole life.” She wraps her hands tighter around the mug. “And today I went there and asked the captain to give me a chance and she said no. She was nice about it. But she said no.”
I don’t know anything about fire stations. I don’t know what makes one different from another or why it would matter enough to send a twenty-two-year-old into a bar alone on a Tuesday. But I know what it looks like when someone wantssomething so bad it’s wrecking them, and I know what it sounds like when the story is real, and this girl isn’t performing. She’s just sitting at my bar telling me the truest thing she’s got.
“So what are you going to do?” I ask.
“Go back. Try again.” She says it without hesitating. “I have three weeks before I have to report. I’m going to go back every day if I have to.”
“Every day?”
“Every day. With cookies.”
