Closing Time at the Wall

Vicki was halfway up a yellow problem she had no business being on when the speakers crackled.

"Ten minutes to close, folks. Finish up and start peeling shoes off."

Great. Perfect timing. She was thirty feet up a wall shaped like a thrown fist, chalk on everything, forearms done. She looked down to judge the drop and caught someone watching her from the mats.

Not staring. Watching. There was a difference, and Vicki decided on the spot that this was the good kind.

The woman below was tall, must've been six feet in socks, long blonde hair pulled back, sitting on a bench like she owned it. She gave Vicki a small nod, as if to say carry on, I'm enjoying this.

So Vicki carried on. Obviously. Nobody performs well under pressure, except sometimes they do, and this was one of those times. She found the crimp she'd been hunting for, swung a foot up onto a sloper that had insulted her twice already, and topped out. Breathing hard, grinning at nothing.

Then she dropped. Badly, honestly, landing in a heap a few feet from the bench instead of a controlled fall like a person with sense.

"Nine out of ten," the woman said. "The dismount cost you."

"It's a sport," Vicki said from the mat. "Judges reward commitment."

"Do they? I thought they rewarded footwork."

"Funny way up there. Down here it's all just falling with style."

The woman laughed, and it was a real laugh, the kind that got other people to look over. She was older than Vicki, somewhere past thirty she'd have guessed, and she had forearms like a dock worker, which on her looked like sculpture.

"Vicki," Vicki said, sticking out a chalky hand and immediately regretting it.

"Stacey." She took the hand anyway, shook it like it was nothing. "Your hands are a crime scene."

"Yeah, I'm a hairdresser. I do this to my hands professionally too, just with bleach instead."

"A hairdresser who climbs. That's the work fingers getting a second job."

"Nobody at work believes I climb. They think I do yoga and drink Aperol."

"And you don't?"

"I do both. The climbing's the part I don't post about."

Stacey was peeling her climbing shoes off, one heel hooked on the bench, and she did it with the casual economy of someone who'd done it a thousand times. Vicki sat down on the mat next to the bench because standing was suddenly optional.

"That yellow one's a nightmare," Stacey said, nodding at the wall. "The foot chip at the halfway point is garbage. Half the height advantage of just skipping it."

"I tried skipping it. I fell into the wall."

"You have to trust your left hand more. It's good for longer than you think it is."

"Have you done it?"

"Twice. Once clean."

Vicki looked at her. "Once clean in how long?"

"Three years."

"Oh, so it's actually just terrible!"

"It's actually just terrible," Stacey agreed. "I like it."

The gym had gone quiet around them. The last few climbers were shuffling toward the front desk, and the hum of the fluorescent lights got louder once the background noise died. Ahmed, the manager, was already sweeping chalk off the mats with a push broom, which he did every night like it was a religious obligation.

"Five minutes," Ahmed called out. "Then I'm turning off the music and you'll have to listen to each other."

"He's charming," Vicki said.

"He's been trying to get me out of here early for three years." Stacey stood up, stretched, and Vicki noticed she was really quite tall, tall enough that most people would find it intimidating. Vicki mostly found it interesting. "So."

"So," Vicki said, because it seemed fair to give something back.

"You look like someone who's got some restlessness to burn off. I could tell from the way you attacked that wall."

"Is that an insult?"

"It's a diagnosis. I have it too." She slung her shoes over her shoulder. "There's a dive bar across the street. It's terrible. Do you want to grab a beer?"

Vicki thought about it for approximately zero seconds. Tuesday night, no plans, a face she liked looking at, a laugh she wanted to hear more of.

"Yes," she said. "Absolutely yes."

"Good." Stacey smiled like she'd already known the answer. Maybe she had. "I'll just warn you, Ahmed will tell this story wrong for the next three years."

"He would not."

"He would. He'll say we met romantically over the yellow problem, when really you fell near me."

"I fell near you."

"Near. Sure. That's how it'll go in his version, near."

They got their street shoes on. Vicki wiped a palm down her leggings and it left a white smear, which felt about right for her whole aesthetic. Ahmed watched them walk to the door with the expression of a man doing arithmetic.

"You two coming back tomorrow?" he asked.

"Depends," Stacey said.

"On what?" Ahmed said.

"On how the beer goes," Stacey said, and pushed the door open with her hip.

The dive bar across the street was called the Broken Spoke, which was exactly the level of naming effort it deserved. Inside it smelled like old beer and better decisions. The bartender was a guy in his fifties who nodded at them like regulars, even though neither of them was.

Vicki was twenty-three and had been happily single by choice for two years, since a fling ended the way good flings end, with both people agreeing it had been nice and then never mentioning it again. Since then she'd had a system. The system was simple. Fun, no expectations, out by morning. Nobody's feelings got hurt because nobody let them get big enough to bruise.

She didn't explain this to Stacey. Stacey ordered two pints of the cheap lager and carried them to a corner table under a neon sign for a beer brand that probably didn't exist anymore.

"To terrible footwork," Stacey said, raising her glass.

"To falling with style."

They drank. The beer was cold and slightly wrong, the way cheap lager in a dive bar is supposed to be. Stacey sat with one arm stretched along the back of the booth, taking up space like she was allowed to, which she was.

"So what's your deal," Vicki said. "Besides being good at terrible problems."

"Other than that, not much of a deal. I do IT support. I climb. I make bad decisions on Tuesday nights."

"Is this a bad decision?"

"Not yet. Give it an hour."

Vicki laughed and drank again. "I came in tonight because my flatmate was watching a documentary about competitive cheese rolling and I couldn't handle being indoors with my own thoughts."

"That's a strong reason."

"Also my week was a riot of bald men asking if I can make their remaining hair look intentional. It cannot. It's not possible. But they pay me to try."

"And the gym helps?"

"The gym helps with everything. When I'm on the wall my brain goes quiet. It's the only place it does." She traced a circle in the condensation on her glass. "You too, probably. You sit on that bench like it's your office."

"I've had a membership for three years. Ahmed basically charges me rent." Stacey turned her glass slowly on the sticky table. "I started climbing right around when I started transitioning. The gym was one of the first places that just felt like mine."

Vicki had noticed Stacey's hands on the handshake, had clocked the little tell of her voice, and had filed exactly none of it as a problem. She was aware some people made a whole production of acting unfazed. Vicki never saw the point. Either you were fine with someone or you weren't, and all the performing in the world didn't change it.

"Cool," she said. Just that. "I like this place too. Though I've only been coming a few months."

"You're strong for a few months."

"You should see my go at the blue one. It's humbling."

"The blue one humbles everyone. Ahmed put it up as a joke."

"That explains so much."

The bartender put music on, something old and good, and turned it up like the night had started even though the gym across the street was dark. Vicki felt the last of the Tuesday restlessness settle down into something warmer. She knew what this was going to be. She suspected Stacey knew too. Dawn was the deadline, and the deadline suited her fine.

"You know what's funny," Stacey said, tipping her glass toward Vicki's. "I almost skipped the gym tonight. I was tired. I had a whole argument with myself in the car park."

"And you came in anyway."

"And you were on the wall looking like you were going to break that problem's neck. I thought, well. Now I'm here."

"That's the cheesiest thing anyone's said to me all year."

"It's only March."

"It's going to hold the title anyway."

Stacey grinned, finished her pint, and set it down with a click. "Another one?"

Vicki looked at the clock over the bar. It wasn't even ten.

"Definitely," she said. "Another one."

* * *

The second pints arrived and the conversation got looser. The thing about cheap lager was that. It didn't make anything funnier, it just removed the pause before you said the funny thing.

"So the purple hair," Stacey said. "Go back to that. You skipped over it."

"Oh no."

"You absolutely said the words 'set fire to a man's head' and then changed the subject."

"I said singed. There's a difference. Legally."

Stacey waited, chin on her hand, grinning. Vicki sighed and gave in. It was a good story and she knew it.

"Okay. So. Hair bleach is basically a controlled chemical burn. You leave it on too long or it hits something it shouldn't and the hair just goes..."

She made a sound like a kettle dying.

"That's a technical term, is it."

"Kaput. Melted off. So this bloke, Mr. Hendricks, wants silver. Silver. He's sixty-two and he wants to look like he's in a band. Fine. Love that for him. But he also refuses to use toner because he says it's a scam invented by the French."

"Is it?"

"Everything's a scam invented by the French. That's not the point. So the bleach pulls and pulls and instead of silver he goes this gorgeous radioactive violet. Like a grape that's been through something. And he sits there in the mirror going, is that right?"

Stacey laughed so hard she had to put her pint down.

"And you said?"

"I said, sir, that is platinum, it just reads purple under shop lighting. He believed me. He left a five-star review."

"No."

"Four stars. He docked one because the chairs are uncomfortable. I don't control the chairs, Mr. Hendricks."

Stacey wiped her eyes. "I work in IT and I've never told a lie that clean. Mine are all 'have you tried turning it off and on again' when the answer is definitely no."

"What's the worst one? Worst ticket."

"There was a man who emailed me to say his mouse had stopped working. I asked if he'd tried a different port. He said, and I'm quoting, 'what's a port.'"

Vicki groaned into her glass. "No."

"I shipped him a new mouse. It didn't help. It was never going to help. He had unplugged it to vacuum his desk and plugged it into the hole where his speakers go."

"He vacuumed his desk mid-shift?"

"He was a vacuuming enthusiast. That's the part I remember most. There are people who vacuum recreationally and they walk among us."

The neon sign buzzed. The bartender was doing the crossword, pen moving, not looking up. Nobody else in the place except an old man asleep more or less upright at the bar, which seemed fair.

"So how long," Vicki said, and then did the arithmetic on her fingers, which got a look. "Three years. You started transitioning three years ago. Was it... was it awful? People make it sound like a war film."

Stacey considered that. She turned her glass a slow quarter turn.

"It was both. Some of it was war film. My mum took eleven months to say my name right, and I could hear her practicing it through the kitchen door sometimes, getting it wrong, and that was worse than the shouting would've been. But she got there. She got there and now she corrects other people, which is its own problem."

"And the gym?"

"The gym was easy. Ahmed never made it a thing. First week back after I changed the membership name, he just read the new name off the screen and handed me the chalk. Didn't blink. I nearly hugged him and he looked so alarmed I decided against it."

"That tracks. He's got the emotional range of a fire extinguisher."

"He's a good man though. Three years he's been trying to get me to leave the gym before closing. Three years. Tonight you did it in four minutes."

"Ten minutes is generous. It was more like four."

"Efficient," Stacey said, and there was a little pause after it, a tiny held breath, like she was checking the road before stepping out.

Vicki let it sit there and didn't rush to fill it.

"Can I ask a thing," she said. "Feel free to tell me to mind my own business. Do people make it weird? When they find out, I mean."