We Don’t Talk About Flagstaff
We Don't Talk About Flagstaff
Chapter Two
Two hours later, I was standing in front of my bathroom mirror, questioning every decision I'd ever made.
I'd showered more than once, though I was pretending I wasn't counting, and the smoke smell was still winning.
Wildland firefighting left a particular kind of shadow on a person.
It got into the seams of things, into the fiber and the weave, into the very grain of the skin.
I understood this about fire. Fire was patient.
It waited in the walls of things. I did not want to smell like one on a first date with a woman who smelled like vanilla and warm, sunlit pages.
My wardrobe offered limited assistance. Military surplus, work gear, band t-shirts.
I owned approximately one civilian outfit that could work: dark jeans without any of the usual battle-damaged holes, and a black button-down I reserved for funerals and the one time I'd appeared in small claims court over a noise complaint at the station.
It had performed adequately on both occasions.
The motorcycle jacket went back on. It wasn't exactly going to complement coquette, but it was armor, and I had a feeling I was going to need all of it.
I stared at myself in the mirror for a moment. Tattoos. Scars. Dark, purplish circles that had been there so long they felt like features. The jacket with its red embroidery. The boots.
I looked exactly like a Petra, apparently.
I chose to take that as a compliment and left before I could talk myself out of going.
Rosie's Diner sat on the corner of Main and Second, chrome and red vinyl, unchanged since before I could remember, a kind of monument to the idea that some things didn't have to change to stay worth keeping.
The neon sign buzzed and flickered in the early evening, casting everything in a soft and post-sunset pinkish-purple hue, like the whole parking lot was being seen through a giant rose-colored glass.
I pulled up on my Harley as Vera was stepping out of a powder-blue vintage Beetle that looked so exactly right for her it was almost magical.
She'd changed into a navy dress with tiny white flowers, a cream (or was it Antique Bridal Whisper?) cardigan, hair pinned up with a few pieces escaping around her pretty face.
She looked like she'd been painted by someone who loved the 1950s and had very strong feelings about soft lighting.
It was profoundly unfair how attractive she was.
She waved when she spotted me, and I tried to do something normal with my face. I'm not certain I succeeded.
"Nice car," I said, pulling off my helmet. My hair came down in its usual dark chaos, a small weather event of its own.
"Thank you. Her name is Daisy." She patted the roof with genuine affection. "She's not as exciting as your motorcycle, but we have an understanding."
"What kind of understanding?"
"She doesn't break down somewhere too inconvenient, and I talk to her nicely and name her after flowers."
"Does that work?"
"Mostly. She had one incident in Flagstaff." A pause. "We don't talk about Flagstaff."
"What happened in Flagstaff?"
She looked at me. "We don't talk about Flagstaff."
I held the diner door open. She walked through, and the warm smell of coffee and frying onions folded around us both, familiar as an old argument, reliable as gravity.
Classic Rosie's. Unchanged since 1984. The kind of place that had outlasted everything else in San Jacinto by simply refusing to become anything different.
We slid into a red vinyl booth, and the waitress poured coffee without being asked. Vera wrapped both hands around her mug and looked around the diner with the particular satisfaction of someone discovering that a place actually resembles the idea they had of it.
"This is perfect," she said.
"It's a diner."
"It's a perfect diner." She looked at me. "There's a difference. Some diners are just places that have eggs. This one has character."
"It has a jukebox that hasn't worked since 2003 and a pie display that rotates the same four pies in a different order every day."
"That's what I said." She wrapped her hands tighter around her mug. "Character."
I looked at her. She looked at the pie display with genuine admiration and respect.
"What brought you to San Jacinto?" I asked. "Originally."
"Honestly?" She traced the rim of her mug with one finger.
"I wanted somewhere that felt like the books I grew up reading.
Small town, slow pace, everyone knows everyone.
The kind of place where things happen at a human speed.
" She paused, watching the steam rise from her coffee.
"I wanted somewhere I could put roots down without them bouncing back. "
"And is it?"
"Mostly." She smiled across the table, that full, unguarded one, the one I'd already started registering against my better judgment. "Though I didn't expect to meet someone like you."
"Someone like me, meaning?"
"Someone who makes me actually want to stick around."
I stared at her, trying to process how a person could be so goddamn direct and still not scare the absolute living shit out of me.
"I… Okay."
Vera smiled. "I know we just met. But I believe in saying what I mean."
I looked at her across the table, this woman who said things like that with the same ease she breathed, and felt something in me quietly rearrange itself. Like tectonic plates resettling, creating mountains where before there had only been plains.
"No," I said. "It's not too much."
Her smile could have lit up the whole building. The whole town, maybe.
We ordered burgers and discovered we both apparently only knew how to order burgers, and fell into the kind of conversation that had no business being as easy as it was.
She told me about the library: the reading programs she was building, the children's hours, the book club she was planning, the joy of placing exactly the right book in exactly the right hands at exactly the right moment.
The way she spoke about it, her hands moving, her eyes animated, I got the feeling she wasn't describing a job.
She was describing a vocation. A calling.
"It sounds like rescue work," I said.
She pointed at me. "Yes! That's exactly what it is.
Narrative rescue." She looked pleased I understood, the way you look when someone puts into words something you'd only ever been able to feel.
"What about you? What does a person have to do for a living to get biceps like that?
And don't say CrossFit, I'll be devastated. "
"Why devastated?"
"Because then you'd be the kind of person who does CrossFit."
"I'm not."
"Good." She looked visibly relieved. Like this had been a genuine concern. "What then?"
"Most people guess construction."
"Most people aren't paying attention." Her eyes made a slow, considering tour of my shoulders, my forearms, back up to my face. I felt it like a lighthouse beam in a storm. "Something outdoors. Something that requires actual strength, not gym strength." She tapped her chin. "Search and rescue?"
"Closer than construction."
She sat up straighter. "Oh, this is the second game tonight.
" She studied me with the focused intensity of someone who had gotten Rilke right and had not forgotten it.
"You're tan, but not beach tan. Desert tan.
And you still smell like—" she leaned in, just slightly "—smoke.
Even after what I can only assume were multiple showers. "
I said nothing.
"How many showers, Petra?"
"That's not relevant to—"
"How many?"
"The number of showers I took is not—"
"More than two?"
Silence.
"More than three?"
"The smoke gets into things," I said with considerable dignity. "It's a known phenomenon. It's not a reflection of anything personal."
She was delighted. She was so delighted she had to press her lips together to contain it. "Firefighter," she said. "Final answer."
The silence lasted exactly one second.
"Library science," I said. "You people are genuinely terrifying."
"So this means the embroiderer of your leather jacket—"
"Miller."
"Miller. He's a fireman?"
I nodded.
She laughed, delighted. "Firefighting is a noble profession. I'm on a date with a firefighter."
"Helitack crew forewoman, specifically."
Those cornflower eyes went wide. "Helitack. You fight fires from a helicopter?"
"I mean, we rappel down from it, but—"
"You rappel." She set her mug down. "You rappel out of a helicopter. Into a fire."
"That's the general sequence, yes."
She stared at me for a moment. "That's the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me in a diner. Anywhere, even. Top five, possibly top three. I'll need to review the full list, but preliminary numbers are looking strong for you."
I stared at her. "You have a list."
"Everyone has a list."
"Of the hottest things people have said to them."
"Of impressive things, generally. I'm very organized." She smoothed the edge of her napkin with perfect composure. "Library science."
The waitress arrived to refill our coffee, looked between us, and left without a word. Smart woman.
"Do you like it?" Vera asked. "The job."
"It's not about liking it." I picked at my fries. "It's about purpose. Knowing what you do matters when the day's over. I did two Army tours before this, came back and still needed something that felt real."
She nodded, not pushing for more, not pulling back from it either. No pity in her eyes. Just concerned, genuine understanding, the kind that doesn't rush, that lets a thing be what it is. I hadn't expected that from someone who named her car after a flower.
"Do people ever actually understand the danger?" she asked. "Not the calendar-photo version. The real version."
I looked up. "The what version."
"You know." She gestured vaguely. "The hot firefighter calendar. It's a whole genre."
"It is absolutely not—" I stopped. "How do you know about the calendars?"
"Everyone knows about the calendars, Petra."
"I don't—I'm not—"
"Are you in one?"
"No."
"You answered that very fast."
"Because the answer is no."