Screw the Saloon

Lux

Around 8 pm-or-so-after-dark: a phone-call. The number shows up as X. Dubois.

Nate Marszalek

Technology being what it is these days all she can hear when the line connects is his voice, even younger without the image of him slouching against a wall and smoking. No context for his environment without background noise. He hesitates a couple of seconds before answering:

"Hello?"

Lux

He doesn't hear her take a couple of breaths while he gets around to answering. But not everybody's a mouth-breather. "What's up? I'd like some company tonight; wanna come out?"

No: Hi, it's me, remember, Lux. Just: what's up. It might take him a moment to place the voice, but then again, maybe it doesn't, or maybe he doesn't place the voice at all. Should've texted.

Nate Marszalek

"I'm sorry, who is--"

Makes a grab for the sentence before it gets too far ahead of him. Maybe she jumps in to help him at the same time he places the name he'd saved in his phone.

"Oh. Lux! Hey!" Pleased either to hear from her or that he remembered. A few keystrokes and then the percussive sound of something silicon and metal clapping shut. "Uh... out? What'd you have in mind?"

Lux

"Nothing specific. Just general outness; someplace we can have a conversation in the best tradition of strategic communication." A pause for him to say something like he really hates hanging out in bars or he could use some caffeine, though if he hesitates too long, she'll probably jump in with something more tangible than: y'know, where-ever... 

Nate Marszalek

Give him credit: he laughs.

"Alright, I can do general outness. Uh... where can I meet you? I'd offer to pick you up, but... I mean, unless you want to ride on the back of a motorcycle with total stranger, then I'll offer to pick you up."

Lux

"Hmm! Two things. One: Ever been in an accident? Two: Who's the total stranger you're gonna send to pick me up? Because last I checked, a phone number and a name isn't nothing. I don't know how less a stranger you can get."

Nate Marszalek

He still thinks this is amusing but it's all in his tone now, no outward laughter.

"I'm a newspaper reporter, Miss Lux. Folks give me names and numbers that end up being nothing all the time."

Lux

Brief pause; then, that rill of contained amusement again, like tarnish-around-silver: "I'd say 'touché,' but wouldn't you say mister Nathan that if they end up as nothing they've gotta start out as maybe something. You can pick me up on the corner of [too lazy] and [to do strange-city geography]." This last sentences she leaves dangling like it's an offer, not a decision.

Nate Marszalek

"Alright. Thirty minutes, Miss Lux."

The sound of nothing where before had been something. A television or music turned off. A set of hinges squeak.

"And, uh, make sure you're wearing shoes that won't fall off. Safety."

Lux

"Seeya." And, click.

Nathan

So he picked her up. The motorcycle boots he wore the night they met in the library at DU are not a fashion statement. They are sturdy and beat-to-hell and serve to anchor one leg onto the footrest while the other maintains balance idling on a curb so he can do as he did. Peeled his helmet off his head and shook the hair out of his eyes. Heat and lack of breeze taking the curl out of his mop and leaving it flat.

He took a second helmet out of his bag and handed it to her before she got on the back.

"I've never been in a bike crash," he said, like there were other kinds of crashes he's been in that warrant the designation. "No tickets, either."

He wore a leather jacket despite the heat. Didn't put the motorcycle back in motion until she'd put on the helmet. Threat of a thunderstorm and wind coming out of the east.

They end up out near the reservoir after passing plenty of places to get coffee or a cocktail, cocaine, whatever it is people with no place in particular to be go on a Sunday night. The city lights behind them. Nate parks the bike and kills the engine and makes sure both her feet are on the ground before he slings himself off of it.

Lux

Lux looks as if she hasn't been waiting for very long when Nate rolls up. There's none of that impatient fidgeting, that glazed-eyed almost-alertness that denotes the just hanging around not on my own honest somebody's coming attitude people just naturally get when they're between things. She's leaning her shoulder against the facade of a wall, but she isn't texting; she's just watching the night life go by, looking slightly more interested every time there's the sound of a motorcycle. And then here's Nate, and she...

She is, of course, a lovely thing; the line of her throat and shoulder - visible and drawn-attention-to by the casual side fish-tail braid thing that's in right now -  the sort-of thing that would inspire a photographer, or an artist, or anybody with an eye for beauty and the ivory of her skin flushed with the blood of some earlier snack. Though perhaps we shouldn't mince words, because snack is just another word for person, human being, living breathing soul who'd bled and given up (but he can make more [he still has a beating heart]), eh?

One should be warm when one is really pretending to be kine.

…grins at him when he lays out his credentials. "That's good to hear."

Then she climbs on. Doesn't ask him where they're going.

But when they've arrived, she says, "So why here?"

Nathan

They're on East Union Avenue where it turns into Dam Road. He's parked the bike on a shoulder and with the sun gone down traffic has lightened. Off in the distance kids laugh and egg each other on but the distance is so great they have no visual confirmation of their existence. Flatness expands but for where hills jut up out of the earth and no buildings tower around them.

So why here?

"Eh," he says. he hadn't thought about it or he doesn't want to talk about the actual reason. He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and removes two. Pack is consumed enough that he could tuck his lighter into it. "I'm from Nebraska. I like going places where there aren't any big buildings sometimes."

He pauses to light both of the cigarettes, squinting against the flame so close to his eyes, and passes one off to her filter-first. Pockets the pack and the Bic and blows out the breath. Gestures north with the cigarette.

"If you wanna get a drink and watch other people sing karaoke, there's a saloon about a mile up the road. We could walk that way."

Lux

"You're cute," she says, the edge of her smile a vibrant thing in the dark. Her voice isn't laughing or playful, and it isn't particularly condescending; she says it like you are a smoker or no thank you let's not take a walk. Like it's a discovery, something just explored. Like something she is exploring, huh?

Lux nods her thanks when he hands off the second cigarette, is a polite and European-style smoker, someone who might've been comfortable in a room where the smoke was so thick that you had to scoop it out've the way with your hands in order to hear the other person talk sometimes. "Let's stay here; screw the saloon."

After taking - let's be honest, a slightly wary - stock of their surroundings, she walks a couple of steps over to a low wall or a stone or something, though instead of sitting she's just looking off into the dark mountains, her gaze slightly narrowed like she's considering what's on the other side of them.

"So what's the strangest thing to happen this week in the life and times of Nathan, newspaper reporter? Anything good?"

Nathan

No condescension in it but he grows self-conscious in the way all humble people become self-conscious when light floods their attributes. He smiles or laughs without making any noise and then plugs up further response by dragging off the cigarette.

"Screw the saloon."

He traipses a respectable distance behind and then leans against the fence she's found. It's sturdy enough to support modest but likely not full and dependent weight. He has a solid build and looks more solid for the black and the leather he wears tonight. His jeans are acid-washed and the t-shirt he wears beneath his jacket is white or gray or some other easily bleached color.

He ashes his cigarette into the dirty easy-as and follows her gaze into the mountains.

"Actually," he says. "A conspiracy nut called me at work on Friday wanting to talk to me about--okay, back up." He pushes his hair back off his brow to refocus his attention. "I post articles that don't make it into print circulation on a website. Mostly interviews with homeless veterans and their families, right. Started it my last year at Berkeley because I needed to do a project for a course on social media I was taking and just kept it up when I moved out here. Gets a lot of hits sometimes.

"So anyway, get a voicemail from this guy says he runs this blog called truthhunters-dot-net and he was interested in this latest, uh, post I'd written about a Vietnam vet who's gone missing. Real squirrelly guy, could barely get through a sentence without stammering. Met him at a diner yesterday and it was like... you ever see The X-Files? Or any of those shows about basement-dwelling nerds who believe in a second gunman and chemtrails and all of that? That's who met me at the diner."

He's been ignoring his cigarette so he takes a hard drag to keep the cherry from fanning out.

Lux

Now, the beautiful girl's eyes doesn't stay on the mountains and their implaccable and far too unleavened by civilization dark. She isn't that kind of searcher, doesn't look to explicate meaning from the horizon. She pays attention to Nathan. No: She gives attention to Nathan, free-of-charge. Because something about him apparently makes her want to. Lux makes an interested hum when he describes his website and what those articles mostly are, but she doesn't interrupt.

If he looks at her, he can see her eyebrows loft at the name truthhunters-dot-net. He can see a different shade of interest candling in her eyes, a transformative sort-of mood, accompanying the almost-lazy angle of her chin to say yes she's seen X-files. That's who met me at the diner.

"So he was the stereotypical fat unhygienic slob, is what you're saying? Or the balding, spindley four-eyes with a too-enthusiastic smile and a twitch?

"Or was he more man-in-black?"

Beat.

"So what conspiracy did he think you were onto?"

Nathan

His cigarette disappears more quickly than does hers. His lungs carry oxygen to his bloodstream and his heart pumps it, hemoglobin binding the particles. Using and wasting. She can read the life in his skin even in the dark and when he breathes out it isn't just smoke. It's byproduct. It's proof he's still alive. Nothing he thinks of because to look at him the only options for him are alive or buried. No concept of the intermediary nature of things even conspiracy theorists can't explain.

"Who even knows," he says, choked for the held-onto smoke he blows loose a second later. Spares her a sidelong glance and then decides to look more at her than at the jutting horizon. "He looked like one of those--yeah, the spindly balding types. Real thick glasses and a bad combover." A beat. "Who wears a trench coat in July?"

Drag.

Lux

"Murderers," Lux says, and there is a moment when Nate exhales-or-inhales that her eyes want to linger on what that does to his throat. On his throat. But because she doesn't want to linger on those tell-tale signs of life, she doesn't. "Londoners. Dedicated trench-coat aficionados."

Then, "How strange. That's a pretty good story. He didn't even ask you about anything specific or warn you off?" Lux executes a gesture -- and she executes it perfectly; it dies beautifully, a thing to be remembered; the gesture sends a fall of ash down onto the ground, and causes her to look at her cigarette as if it were more than just a prop, then put it to her lips a last time before dropping it down [Morningstar, kicked-out-of-Heaven] and neatly stepping on what's left.

Nathan

And he catches her looking at him and has no reason to suspect the motive behind her attention on his throat. Nate is a young man. Looks younger than his true years in the thickening moonlight with the reservoir rippling beyond his attention. Needs a comb or a woman to tell him he needs a comb. Something. He has the appearance beyond the messy hair and the lazy clothing of a man chained to a career that's going to die before he does. Print media is on its last legs. That he professes social media savvy puts him ahead of the dinosaurs who loathe and pity him at the same time. If the newspaper folds he was one of the last ones in. He'll be the first one out.

"I mean, he says he knows a guy works as an orderly in the hospital." He takes a final drag off the filter and pinches off the cherry. Pockets the butt instead of littering. Like it matters. "Offered to check around to see if anyone matching his description turned up in exchange for me, uh... you know, if there is some vast local government conspiracy to skew the numbers of reported missing homeless veterans, that I write it up so he can publish it on his site. But I don't think there's a conspiracy. I just think there are folks falling through the cracks. Always have been."

Silent self-directed admonition not to stare at her too long. Fine-boned woman alone in the middle of nowhere with a stranger. He lets his eyes graze over her face again before he looks away.

Lux

"That's true," Lux says, reflective. Her voice a shadowling-thing, but not quite tenuous. Folks falling through the cracks. Always have been. Then, with more of clarity, "Though sometimes people choose to live that life."

"So, c'mon, tell me. What is it about the veterans specifically that interests you so much? Family or friends?"

A pause, and then a smile that starts in one corner of her mouth, tugging upward like a compass needle has found its magnetic pole and won't resist any longer, a beside-the-point-smile:

"And do I have to google your name to find your blog, or are you going to give me the url?"

Nathan

That off-guard laugh again. He has a wide smile, big dark eyes. Fluorescent-pale skin. Makes for an honest enough expression.

"No," he says as the laugh dies off, "I'll give you the address. When we get back. It's dark."

Building himself up, perhaps. Like most people don't even bother to think why he would have an interest in veterans affairs what with everything in the news, all of the opportunities available to young folk needing jobs. Isn't like his father was a soldier. Had to have come from somewhere.

"I enlisted. Instead of going right to college. Ended up doing three tours as a combat correspondent overseas." And he's not looking at her as he says this. "Probably would have stayed in but, uh..."

Clears his throat like to signal that's as far as he'll go unprompted.

Lux

That's as far as he'll go unprompted.

The compass-needle tug of a smile diminishes; that's the appropriate thing to do. Lux leaves her fence behind to come a little closer to the reporter, one hand sliding into her back pocket, the other one, the cigarette hand, reaching out to tweak a fold of his shirt or his jacket, specifically the sleeve.

"You were injured." It is a question, though it's almost not inflected as one; as if she doesn't require him to elucidate on the nature of war-wounds. What is this, a bad made-for-TV movie? "Why'd you enlist in the first place?"

Nathan

He looks over at her at the tug. Not so far gone in his own past that she can't draw him back. She guesses and it's a question as much as it is a completion of the sentence he'd abandoned. Nate nods his head and it's reflected in the corner of his mouth, the tension between his brows. Yup. He was injured. No need to go into it. She can see he moves slow sometimes and he doesn't explode with the same energy other guys in their twenties do. Like he's tired all the time. But he's still here so that counts for something.

Must be a bad made-for-TV movie. Or a Nicholas Sparks novel. Something. She asks why he enlisted in the first place.

"Uh..." Scant laughter. "That's a long story."

Lux

"Do you not wanna tell me right now? Because we can talk about something else."

Nathan

"Naw, I mean... I don't really know. I was eighteen and bored. Got average grades in school. Folks split up when I was in middle school. Might've done it just to piss off the old man, you know. He wanted me to Do Something with my life." A beat. He glances down at his hands hanging over the other side of the fence, jacketed forearms braced lazy against the rail. "It's not really a story. That was just a bad joke."

Lux

"But you would have stayed, huh," she says. Lux draws in a lungful of air, then exhales slowly and turns her eyes away from Nate's, from Nate's face, looking down-and-away-into-the-dark, presenting a pale and fine-as-a-beeswing profile. The gloom really gets into her hair; really turns it.

"What did he think was Doing Something with your life?" A pause; a side-long look, the trembling hint of an almost-other smile, something off-and-away, offering this scrap to share, "But I can understand the urge. I've done a few things calculated just to piss off - "

and she doesn't say 'dad' or 'my old man' or anything like that, just lets context carry the day. 

Nathan

As for what one's nameless featureless father would have considered to be Doing Something with one's life: Nate just gives her a smile. Teeth held behind his lips, merriment failing to reach his eyes. The same thing every father wants for their children. That immigrant mentality reaching those who didn't exactly grow up starving. Just don't end up pumping gas or flipping burgers. He isn't pumping gas or flipping burgers. He served his country. Now he's a journalist.

Close enough.

Can't read her mind but Nate can see the progression of thoughts come out of it and he holds his tongue as she goes on to say she knows that urge, that she's done the same thing. Keeps the end of her sentence to herself but he looks over at her again all the same. Drinks in the pallor of her profile and the darkness in her hair.

She can practically feel him wondering what the hell she's doing out here with him.

"What'd you do?" he asks.

Lux

"I'm an artist," she says, soberly.

He's leaning on a railing, and Lux was facing the same way he was when she first came over. At some point, maybe even now, she turns so that her back is to the scenery, and she's facing him and the street and his motorcycle just over there with the two helmets hung where-ever is convenient.

The soberness lasts for all of a second: and then she's laughing. The laughter's all contained-and-transfigured-light, all fluid-shade: " - of course."

Like: how stupid, right? Because what else would piss off - right?

But, "Watercolor, mostly," she says, so he won't think she's laughing at him; though Hell, there are worse things than making her laugh.

Nathan

"Watercolor, huh?"

He's tall enough and the fence is not quite-so-tall that he's more hunched over than leaning. His height is a modest thing and he isn't so loftiness installed above average that he looms over other people but he's tall enough. This hunching over won't be comfortable all night but it takes the strain off his lower back.

"Yeah, I guess that'd do it."

If they're talking mediums that will piss off a parental unit. Another joke. He clearly hasn't met enough artists in his life to know what it is they get up to when they aren't squirreled away in their studios.

Lux

"You think so," she says, still laughing, though now it's more of an in-the-eyes sort of thing, an in-the-radiance-of-her-skin sort of thing, in the angle of her chin. But her voice has shaded once more down to almost sober; they say that confession is good for the soul; they say that criminals want to be acknowledged. They say a lot of things that basically mean secrets won't be kept.

"Pretty smart, too." Lux braces herself against the rail, muscles tensing, then she pulls herself up so she's sitting on the rail, boots finding purchase on the lower-rung, a moment of wavering balance before the perfect spot is obtained.

"So tell me something else interesting." 

Nathan

Her boosting herself up onto the rail is the impetus he needs to straighten up again. He tucks one of his boots onto the bottom rung of the fence and pushes back the unzipped hem of his jacket to house one of his hands in the pocket of his jeans. The other stays draped over the rail. A post between them.

A slight breeze tosses Nathan's hair across his brow as he looks back from the motionless reservoir to survey her face. Alone with a woman this is always a bad idea. A person gets to look at her eyes and her mouth and it doesn't even occur to him that he ought to be fearing this woman and not opening himself up to her. Moonlight hides a multitude of sins.

"I should warn you," he says, "I'm a fount of useless information. We'll be out here all night if you're not careful. Narrow it down for me: whaddaya wanna hear?"

Lux

That gets a shrug; her balance doesn't waver again. Poise, whether learned or innate, married to an economy of movement gives her at least the illusion of control. Her mouth twitches. "I wanted company tonight," says she, "so how exactly is information that keeps us out for all of it 'useless.'"

"But okay, I'll rise to the challenge." Not - and it is neatly done, and purposefully done - I'll bite. "Tell me about - I don't know - your heroes, hopes, dreams, tell me about the weirdest ice cream flavor you've ever eaten, the weirdest thing you've ever done with - with gum. What you'd write across the president's face with sharpie if you could get away with writing anything, and everybody'd see it. What would you write if only he'd see it."

"Tell me the name of your childhood pet."

Lux

[Appearance + Intimidation. Subliminal. Don't even think about it. Just be happy you're graced with my presence.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Lux

ooc: agh. "What you'd write if only he'd see it." *flail* the rhythm got off. f'ing rebels.

Nathan

Some part of him has to start thinking she's gay or she's otherwise not interested in him. Not for a lack of self-confidence. He isn't the world's most perceptive person but the impulsiveness of her call or the languidness in her form or the fact that they're out here with no plans and no place to be and no goal for the evening other than that they stay out, he give her company, these things hold whatever baser urges go on in a man's mind where they are.

Lux can see his interest in her leashed before he's aware of its restraint or even that it was rearing its head in the first place.

"Before I shipped out," he says, "I was picking my little sister Hannah up from a slumber party. She's... uh... nine years younger than me, so she must have been about nine then. Anyway she comes running out of the house all NATE NATE THEY HAVE KITTENS.

"Ma never went for us having pets when we were growing up, like we had barn cats after she moved us in with her new husband because he was way out in the middle of nowhere but nothing we had to feed or take to the vet or anything. The old man was pretty miffed about me joining up but our stepfather was even more shitty about it so I was like WELL GO GET IT WE'RE BRINGING IT HOME."

Some memory of the story come out of nowhere makes him huff out laughter. He pinches the bridge of his nose, brief, and pulls out his cigarettes again. Wordless lift of his brows to ask if she wants another one before he goes about lighting them.

"It was all her idea to say the kitten had just crawled into her overnight bag and decided to come home with her. I was just like I had no idea it was even there. She ended up naming the cat Awilda. Like the fifth-century Scandinavian prince's daughter who became a pirate. Hannah loves stuff like that. Speaking of things that piss off our stepfather, when she goes to college next year she says she wants to study history."

Again with the distraction so complete his cigarette nearly starves. He takes another fanning drag and lets the smoke go slow out his nose.

"I don't think I'd write anything on the president's face whether. I met him when he was out at Bagram in 2010. He seemed like an okay guy."

Nathan

[Strike that "whether" from the last paragraph.]

Lux

Beauty is a weapon; it cuts, and none of that bullshit about both ways. When wielded by somebody who knows what they're doing, somebody who was born to it, somebody to which it is innate and intrinsic and all that jazz, then it does not cut both ways. It cuts the way it is told to cut; it never draws blood [go ahead, say that to Troy--], only insecurity, only restraint, 'cause beauty is a weapon and life is war.

Lux doesn't care about winning the war, she just cares about living it.

But there are times - like this, Nathan talking about his family, laughing at a memory - when she finds herself almost wondering. Her attention is total; is fixed-point-compass again, though her lashes have lowered, lent shadow to her eyes.

"Really?" She sounds wistful, perhaps. "What branch of history?" A sliver of a pause; "Too much looking back's not good." Then: she lets her head drop, flicks her bright-now gaze up [shadows, gone], something arch about the line of her eyebrows, intent and inviting:

"That's pretty cool. But what does being an okay guy have to do with it? You wouldn't write a message warning him about some future danger? You wouldn't tell him good job you're okay? I'd give him a mustache, personally."

Nathan

What branch of history, she wants to know, and Nate grimaces and shrugs, broad, like he either has no idea what she wants to study specifically or he has no clue what branches of history exist to choose from. Either way. Too much looking back's not good.

And onto the matter of secret presidential messages.

He looks so young even when he's just standing still staring off into the distance. Laughing doesn't help. And she is what makes him laugh this time, not some private piece of what he thinks is his own history.

"Okay, a mustache is one thing. I wouldn't write a warning on his face though. I'd have to do it backwards so he'd see it when he looked in the mirror. Any kind of warning I could give him I'd want to be legible, you know? You haven't seen my handwriting yet. It's barbaric."

A beat. His cigarette is rapidly disappearing. When he wakes up in the morning he must cough himself hoarse.

"Once, like before Hannah was born, I said I wanted to be president at the breakfast table. No idea why I said that. I wanted to be a writer. Like I had these composition books full of stories I'd write when I was bored and pretending to pay attention in class. Most of them weren't fiction, they were like, memoir type stories. Stupid things other kids in school were doing. Maybe I just said it to see if my dad was paying attention." He takes another drag. "He teaches at the University of Colorado now, but at the time he was working for the Douglas County DA's office. He was like Holy shit, that's not even funny. Don't go into politics."

Another beat, this time to ash his cigarette.

"So if you weren't doing watercolors, what would you. You know. Was that your aspiration, as a kid, to be painting and pissing people off?"

Lux

Lux thinks back to when she was a child.

The jacarondas are what she remembers first. The color of them. The palm trees, too. The dark spikes they made on the wall of her family's place. Lux thinks back to when she was a child. Little girl. Little beautiful girl with lustrous eyes, plush-of-lip, but too skinny for her mother's taste. Too everything for her mother's taste. Too, too. Lux thinks back to when she was a little girl. Little girl who's father made pictures move. Little girl with two languages whose father went away and promised to bring her back some barbed-wire from Paris. Little girl wanting to run wild, not for wild's sake, but because somebody told her not to. What the hell did that little girl dream about? What did she wish for when she looked up at a star?

Lux tips her head back and back to look up at the stars now. The ones that make it out've or past (depending on your perspective) the net of light-pollution that halos the city because of the actual pollution and because there's just so damned much city. Her gaze isn't quite opaque, but it is seriously searching.

This is how she answers, still looking up, a pale-fire girl:

"No. As a kid, I wanted to change the world. I thought I'd make a fine warrior-queen. I figured, hey, the world is big, so there's a lot of it to deal with, and I can make little worlds with my paper and my paints, so I probably have the proper perspective. I wanted to tell the world to go to Hell. Or to stop going to hell, and go to Heaven."

"I don't know. I just wanted to be present. I wanted to have a voice that was heard. I wanted a different life. Not really a different one, just like - I wanted to take the life there was and kick it into being different."

"I kind-of wanted to be on the radio. I thought that was neat."

Beat; her mouth curves, dreaming.

"Can you see me as a fucking actress?"

Nathan

With any luck he will never understand the distance stretched between the present and the past he enjoyed as a child. He has no children so he can't understand now how quickly time passes once the time isn't one's own anymore. When she looks at him instead of the stars tonight she'll see a young man grounded and tired but not beaten down. Like he's seen enough of the world to know what it is that beats others down and considers himself fortunate to be able to stand and breathe and string together sentences.

Doesn't understand the fire that drives some women but they have that creator's spirit in common. He tells stories even if he has to wear business casual clothing and keep his opinion to himself, wake up every morning unassured of his job's survival at week's end. No idea who the woman talking to him is. Not enough perspective to question it.

Brief stitch between his brows at her wanting to be on the radio. Nobody's wanted to be on the radio since about 1955. A singer could end up on the radio these days but Lux wants to know if he can see her as a fucking actress.

"No," he says, after a time, and pockets another dead cigarette butt. "But I also don't know you very well."

Both hands planted on the rung between the posts and he pushes himself back like to see if he can still do it. Uncertain balance. He walks like someone who had to relearn how to do it once, maybe, someone whose back still remembers a hospital bed.

He smiles a tooth-hidden smile at her and jerks his head towards a horizon that doesn't reveal a goddamn thing.

"C'mon. Lemme buy you a drink."

---

He keeps her out until long after last call and then drives her back to the city. Slower than the going-out and round-about. Doesn't try to kiss her when they idle at the curb where he'd picked her up but pulls off his helmet to say, atop the URL for his blog scrawled on the back of the receipt from the saloon, "Stay outta trouble, huh?"

Then he shakes the hair out of his face and puts the helmet back over his skull and revs the engine. Pulls back out into dead after-hours traffic. Dawn threatening to show itself in less than three hours.

His blog is hundreds of thousands of words, hundreds of pictures, of local men and women living their lives after coming home from the war. All his bio has to say about him is this:

Nathan Marszalek served as a combat correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2005 and 2011. He is now a crime reporter for the Denver Post.