Page 35 of Gave Proof Through the Night

A block later she stops without announcing it. Just plants her feet in front of a narrow storefront with crates of vinyl stacked in the window, and a cat asleep on top of the crates like it owns the whole operation. I stop because she stopped. That’s apparently just how this works now.

“You a record person?” I ask.

“I’m a nosy person. Records happen to be involved.” She taps the glass near a sleeve with a lurid orange cover. A barbershop quartet that peaked a decade ago. “I dated a guy who owned four hundred records and zero furniture. Slept on a mattress on the floor surrounded by milk crates like some kind of vinyl monk.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s out there somewhere. Presumably still alphabetizing.” She says it completely deadpan, and starts walking again before I can ask anything else.

We argue for an entire block over whether owning a turntable in this decade is a personality or an affectation. She’s firmly in the personality camp. I point out it requires a certain aesthetic to make oneself appear sophisticated, which feels like a level of commitment most people aren’t built for. She says commitment’s overrated, and she just smiles like I’ve somehow proven her point for her.

There’s a guy up ahead playing electric guitar through an amp the size of a lunchbox, absolutely wailing on a solo. Eyes closed, one foot up on his own guitar case, sweat rolling down like he’s headlining a stadium instead of a strip of sidewalk between a bank and a Chipotle.

“He’s really going for it,” I say.

“He’s really loud is what he’s doing.” She stops to watch him hit a note that seems to cause him genuine physical pain. “There’s a difference between talent and volume. He’s picked a side.”

“He’s got confidence, though.”

“Confidence isn’t the same as good. Half the worst people I’ve ever met had incredible confidence.” She drops a twenty in his case anyway.

I have never in my life met anyone like this.

He winds into a big finish, misses the landing by a full half-step, and takes a bow like he nailed it.

“See?” she says. “Confidence.” She starts walking again, easy as anything, not even glancing over. “Keep up, Zesty.”

She tops it off with a wink, like the word’s just part of her vocabulary now.

I almost miss it. It takes a few steps before it lands, before I register the word she just used like it’s something we’ve always called each other.

Zesty.

That nickname is maybe two hours old. And somehow it’s already made it out of the rink, out of the hotel, clear across the city and into the mouth of a woman I’ve known for four days.

DC is not that small of a town. It really isn’t.

“How do you know that?”

She blinks, like she genuinely didn’t notice what she’d said. “Know what?”

“Zesty. You just called me Zesty.”

“Did I?” She actually looks surprised at herself. It’s maybe the first fully unguarded thing I’ve seen her do all week.

"You just said ‘Zesty.’ Right at the end there. Like punctuation."

“Huh. Weird.” She doesn’t even slow down, already onto something else like nothing happened.

“No, you called me Zesty on purpose. Just tacked it onto a sentence like a verbal tic.”

“Oh. That. I have a very specific superpower.” She says it completely straight-faced. “Mind reading. Extremely limited range. I mostly just pick up embarrassing team nicknames.”

“Now you’re just mocking me.”

“Telepathy. Very rare gift. I don’t like to talk about it.” She’s fighting a smile and losing badly, and it takes about four more seconds before she cracks entirely. “Fine. I heard your friend say it to you outside the post office. He called you that right before you walked in.”

“Oh brother!”