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I typed: hey. u still in halden?

Three dots appeared, and vanished, and appeared again.

LEX PENDLETON. it’s been 47 years. yes. why.

wanna get a drink?

is this a booty call

it’s a drink

it’s a booty call with plausible deniability

it’s a DRINK vanessa

ok ok. northern lights lounge on kessler st, 8pm. i’m bringing a friend to watch my back in case u are a serial killer

i’m not a serial killer

that’s what a serial killer would say

I was smiling at my phone. I noticed and stopped. I put the phone away.

That was the first time I remember thinking, this is going to be fine.

It was not fine.

I would like to be clear about this. Vanessa was great. She was wearing a green dress and a big scarf and the kind of earrings that jingle, and when she saw me walking across the Northern Lights Lounge she jumped up from the booth and hugged me so hard my ribs creaked. She smelled like vanilla and cold air. Her friend, a tall woman named Dara with a long braid, took one look at me and said, “Oh, he’s exactly as tall as you said,” and then went to the bar and stayed there.

“She’s on decoy duty,” said Vanessa. “She’ll come back if I flash the signal.”

“What’s the signal?”

“I sneeze.”

“You sneeze?”

“I do a very specific sneeze.” She demonstrated. It sounded like a duck being hit by a car. I laughed so hard I had to hold onto the table. It was good, honestly. It was great. She was warm and quick and easy to be around, and she asked about the game and pretended to know what an enforcer was and made me explain it, and when I got to the part about fighting she winced and said, “But why do you like it?”

I thought about that.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s like— I’m loud on the inside. Constantly. And when I’m fighting, it goes quiet.”

She looked at me for a moment with a different expression.

“That’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she said.

“It’s my first drink.”

“Then you’re a lightweight.”

“I am a lightweight,” I said. “I had two shots yesterday and cried at a payphone.”

“Oh, honey.”

We were on our second round when she leaned over the table, with one hand on my knee and her hair falling over her shoulder, and she said, low, “You know, I have a hotel room.”

And I felt absolutely nothing.