Page 47 of Second Alarm
"Yeah."
We sit in the cold under the light while Mrs. Hallaway's terrier barks at nothing two doors down, and we sit for a long time, neither of us talks, and neither of us needs to.
Eventually Hanna stands, walks back to her car, and I watch her taillights turn off my street.
I go inside, turn off the kitchen light, and go to bed.
I don't dream about anything. In context, that's a mercy.
Chapter 9
Hanna
Iaccept the date with Kevin for three reasons, none of which are good.
Reason one: Cal set it up. He set it up the day after the Watershed disaster, from inside the apparatus bay, by cornering me and using his best earnest big-brother voice, because Cal has detected, in his way, that something about that Friday night went sideways, and Cal, bless him, has concluded that the cure is to get his sister on a date with a man he personally approves of. I accepted because saying no would've made Cal ask why, and why isn't a word I can afford to answer right now.
Reason two: I want to prove something.
I don't ask myself what, because I know what, and I don't want to know that I know.
Reason three: Kevin is a paramedic. I have one thing in common with Kevin, at least, and one thing in common with another human being is a better premise for a date than fifty percent of the dates I went on in Portland, and Portland had a lot of bad dates.
Kevin arrives at the Italian place on Main Street at seven-oh-four on Thursday evening, four minutes late, with an apology so complete and detailed — a construction detour, a neighbor'sphone call, an opinion about the city's public works department — that I'm unfairly prejudiced against him inside of ninety seconds. By the time he finishes, he's been at the table longer than he was late.
He's tall, well-dressed, wearing a gray sweater over a button-up, looking like a man who thought about what to wear for a date, which is more than I can say for many. Cal didn't lie about the tall.
"Hanna. It's really nice to meet you."
"You too."
"I've heard a lot about you."
"Oh no."
"Oh no?" He smiles.
"From Cal, right."
"Yes."
"Then yes. Oh no."
"No, it was all — he's proud of you." Kevin leans in. "He said you were top of your cohort at Portland Fire. He said you saved a kid's life last year with a — "
"It's possible," I say, "that we could have a conversation about anything other than me for the next ninety minutes."
He laughs — loud, enthusiastic, relaxed. A good laugh, objectively. Also, I notice with the slow crystallization of a person ruining their own evening, a laugh that fills all the space in the room with itself and doesn't leave any for the other person to laugh back.
Kevin tells me about his Subaru. Not as a joke. As a fifteen-minute story — the Subaru has a name (Bruce), all-weather tires, a roof rack, and apparently a personality. I start timing it at the three-minute mark when it becomes clear this isn't a fact he's mentioning but a story he's building.
He calls the waitress "champ."
Twice.
When she comes to the table the second time — a woman named Jen, someone I know from my brother's school class — Kevin says, "Hey, champ, can we do another basket of rolls," and I watch Jen's face do the infinitesimal thing it's been doing when a man calls her champ.
"Did you know her?" I ask.
