The Ferry Strike Dare

The ferry strike started Tuesday and by Thursday I was stuck. Ferries run half the city's commuters and when the union walked out, everything got weird. Buses packed. Cabs vanished. I work in HR at a logistics firm, which means I spend my days telling grown adults to stop replying-all, and suddenly I couldn't even get home myself.

I'm Shona. Thirty-four, single, dating around, tired of dating apps. My friend Ivan is a land agent for a development firm. He's thirty-six and as single as I am, which we have confirmed over many hotel-bar drinks. We met five years ago at a work conference in a hotel ballroom that smelled like carpet cleaner, and we've been flirting ever since. Nothing ever happened. Neither of us ever pushed.

Then the zoo called for volunteers.

Here's how that happened. Ivan sits on some young professionals board that does charity stuff, and the city zoo put out a call during the strike. Half their staff couldn't get home and couldn't get back, so they needed bodies to help close the Night House after hours. Ivan signed us both up. He didn't ask first.

"You owe me," he said when I complained.

"For what?"

"Consulting. I referred you a plumber in March. The plumber was excellent."

He was right about the plumber. So Thursday night I found myself at the zoo at nine p.m., helping lock up a building full of nocturnal animals under dim red lights.

The Night House is my favorite building at the zoo and I don't care who knows it. Everything in there is built for creatures that sleep all day. Low ceilings. Red lamps everywhere, because red light doesn't spook the night animals. Bats hanging like laundry. A fossa that stares at you like it's doing math about you. The whole place feels like being inside a deep red throat.

The regular keepers had left at six when the last shuttle ran. A supervisor named Elizabeth gave us a laminated checklist, two radios, and a warning.

"Don't touch anything in the back halls. Some of it's older than both of you."

Then she left, and it was just us.

* * *

We worked through the checklist. Latch the service door. Log the bat counts. Check the water drip in the galago enclosure. Ivan took it seriously for about forty minutes and then started getting weird.

"Shona. Come look at this."

I came and looked. It was a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall in a back hallway behind the aviary. Old one. Chipped red paint, brass valve, a paper label gone yellow.

"Okay. It's an extinguisher," I said.

"Read the label."

The label said PROP. DO NOT CHARGE. DISPLAY ONLY. Under that, in smaller print, somebody had written 1974.

"That's from the seventies," Ivan said. "It's a fake. They bolted it up for looks and never took it down. Fifty years on this wall."

"So?"

"So it's the fakest object in this entire zoo. It's an extinguisher that cannot extinguish. I want you to touch it."

"That's your dare? Touching a wall thing?"

"It's a test of nerve. Everything escalates from the test of nerve."

Ivan does this. He finds a game inside a boring situation and won't let it go until the game ends or someone bleeds. Five years of friendship taught me two options. Play along, or listen to him sulk about it for a week.

I touched the extinguisher. Flat palm, right on the cold metal tank.

"There. Nerve tested."

"Good. Now lick it!"

"Ivan."

"It's a museum piece, Shona. It's basically a historical document. You're not licking an extinguisher, you're licking nineteen seventy-four."

I looked down the red hallway. Bats rustling somewhere. Fossa doing its math. Nobody alive to see me except Ivan, who has watched me lose worse bets than this.

I licked the extinguisher. Full tongue, side of the tank, one long stripe.

It tasted like red dust and old paint and, faintly, like pennies.

"You're a monster," I told him.

"You licked it with commitment. That was impressive. Most people do a little tap with the tongue tip."

"I have pride."

"You licked a prop fire extinguisher to own me. Your pride is doing great."

We walked on. He checked a door latch. I logged it. Then he stopped at the next dark stretch of hallway and turned around.

"New dare."

"Objects or people?"

I said it as a joke. He didn't take it like one.

"People," he said.

The red light made everything look warm. His face was half shadow and half that deep amber glow, and I realized I'd been waiting five years for a hallway like this one.

"Okay," I said. "Dare me."

"Let me kiss your neck."

My stomach did a thing. I kept my face neutral, because I have a reputation, but my stomach did a thing.

"Where on the neck? Be specific. This is a dare, it needs terms."

"Right here." He tapped a spot below my ear. "And just that. Nothing else until you dare the next thing."

"Consent via dare game. Very modern."

"It's worked for centuries. People just didn't have a name for it. And for the record, nobody owes anybody anything tonight. The plumber is squared, the volunteering is separate."

"Squared. Noted."

I turned my head and pulled my hair off my neck and said yes. Out loud, plain, so there was no confusion about what I'd agreed to.

He kissed the spot below my ear. Slow. His hand came up and rested light on my shoulder, not pulling, not gripping, just there. His mouth was warm and he took his time, and a small noise escaped me that I chose to pretend was the air conditioning.

"That's a yes from the committee," he said against my skin.

"The committee wants a minute."

The committee got its minute. He kept his mouth there, patient, and my knees did a mild, embarrassing wobble that I blame on the ferry strike and eleven hours of coverage meetings.

Then I pulled back and looked at him. He waited. He's good at waiting. It's one of the genuinely attractive things about him, along with his forearms, which are a separate topic.

"My dare," I said. "Unbutton my blouse."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Under the red lights. Right here. And I want it slow, so the committee can evaluate."

"You're turning my game against me."

"I learned from the master. Touch the buttons, Ivan."

He reached out and stopped with his fingers an inch from the top button.

"Last check. You sure?"

"Yes. Go!"

He undid the first button. Then the second. He was slow about it, careful, watching my face the whole way down like I might flinch. I didn't flinch. Third button. The red light turned my skin the color of embers and I watched his eyes follow his own hands and I liked it more than I expected to.

Fourth button. Fifth. The blouse hung open over my bra, dark red on dark red, and the air of the Night House was cool on my stomach.

"There," he said quietly. "Committee report?"

"The committee is considering extending the session."