The Last Stop

Carlos Rhodes was forty-four years old and he drank Old Crow because it was cheap and because his father drank it and because at some point the reasons stopped mattering. It was a Tuesday in late autumn and he had nowhere to be. His apartment had a new couch in it that he didn't like, and a silence that he liked even less, so he walked the six blocks to The Anchor instead of sitting in it.

The Anchor was the kind of bar that didn't try. Vinyl booths with the seams split, patched with gray tape. A long oak bar scarred by forty years of glasses set down too hard. The jukebox only played old soul and old country, and tonight it was playing Johnny Cash, low enough that you had to lean in to catch the words. Two truckers sat at the far end nursing beers and not talking. Denny was behind the bar doing a crossword he'd already filled out twice.

Carlos took a stool in the middle and ordered his usual. He was maybe half done with it when the door opened and let in a blast of cold air and a woman in a long coat who stamped her boots on the mat and looked around like she was checking the place for exits. Then she looked at him and stopped moving.

He knew her before he knew that he knew her. That's the honest way to put it. His body figured it out a second before his brain did.

"Carlos Rhodes," she said.

"Keisha Bennet." He stood up off the stool, which surprised him. He hadn't stood up for anybody in a bar in years. "Well. Look at you."

"Look at you." She came over and they did the awkward dance, hug or handshake, and she solved it by hugging him, quick and firm, and then sitting down two stools away like she'd been coming here for years. She hung her coat on the hook and settled in. She was forty now, ten years since he'd last seen her, and she looked good. Older, sure, they both were, but good. Her hair was shorter than he remembered. She was wearing a thin gold necklace with a small round pendant that he didn't remember at all.

He was thirty-four the weekend they met, and she was thirty, at a house party some mutual friends threw, and they'd spent one ridiculous, wonderful weekend together before her consulting job took her to another city, and then another, and neither of them called, and that was ten years ago. He'd thought about her more than he'd ever admitted to anyone.

"Can I buy you a drink?" he asked.

"You can." She looked at Denny. "Bourbon, whatever's middle shelf."

Denny brought it over and went back to his crossword. Johnny Cash gave way to Etta James.

"So," Carlos said. "What are the odds. In Portland. On a Tuesday."

"I'm in town for a conference. Supply chain stuff, don't ask, it's boring and I get paid too much for it." She took a sip. "And I asked around. A friend of mine used to live in this neighborhood and she mentioned this bar, and she mentioned that a guy named Carlos Rhodes drank here. So it's less of an odds thing and more of a plan thing."

"You tracked me down."

"I tracked down a rumor of you." She smiled at him over the rim of her glass. "Is that weird?"

"No. I mean. A little weird. But good weird." He rubbed the condensation off his glass with his thumb. "It's good weird."

"Okay, good, because I committed to the weird already and there's no walking it back."

They looked at each other and something settled, some stiffness that had been sitting between them on the stools. He laughed and she laughed and it got easier after that.

Then she tilted her head at his glass and said, "You still drink Old Crow?"

And that got him. It really got him. He'd told her that once, ten years ago, probably at two in the morning, some throwaway line about his father and cheap bourbon, and he had forgotten saying it completely. She'd carried it around for a decade, through two marriages and however many cities, and here it was, back in his lap on a Tuesday.

"You remembered that," he said.

"Of course I remembered that. You made a whole speech about it. Something about how a man should drink the same thing his whole life so his liver knows what to expect." She was grinning. "I've quoted you at bars in four states, Carlos. People think I'm charming."

"Well, I can't argue with the results." He raised his glass. "The liver stays loyal."

"The liver stays loyal," she agreed, and they drank.

They caught up the way old friends do, in short sentences with big gaps between them. She'd been married twice since they'd lost touch. The first one lasted four years and the second one lasted two, and she described them both the same way, with a little shrug, like she was describing weather.

"Two divorces," he said. "That's a lot of weddings."

"That's a lot of divorces is what it is." She turned her glass on the bar. "How about you?"

"One. Recently. Like, recently recently. The papers are still warm."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was quiet. That's the worst part, honestly. Nobody threw anything. We just kind of ran out of things to say to each other and one day we said it out loud." He took a drink. "Fifteen years. She's a good person. We just weren't good together anymore."

"That's the saddest kind," Keisha said, and he knew she meant it, because she touched her necklace when she said it. Small thing, the pendant, rolling between her finger and thumb.

"You doing okay?" he asked. "For real. Not the version you tell people at conferences."

"I'm great." She touched the necklace again. "I'm happy. I travel, I work, I make more money than I ever thought I would back when I was doing graphic design in a cubicle. I'm happy."

She touched the necklace a third time and he understood, without knowing how he understood, that she was lying. Not in a bad way. In the way people lie when the truth is too heavy to put on a bar in a strange city.

"Okay," he said, and let it go, and her shoulders came down about an inch.

"And you?" she said. "Happy?"

"I'm adjusting." He shrugged. "Some days are better than other days. Tonight's a better day. Tonight the bar came up with a ghost I actually liked."

"Ghost." She put a hand on her chest like she was offended. "I prefer classic friend resurfacing at a dramatically appropriate moment."

"That too."

They talked about the friends they'd lost track of. About the house party where they'd met, ten years back, and how the host had moved to Arizona and gotten weird about cryptocurrency. About her sister's kids, who were grown now, which made Keisha put her face in her hands and groan about her own age. About the food in airport bars, which she'd become an unwanted expert on. Easy stuff. The kind of talk that fills a room up so the quiet isn't so loud.

At some point the two truckers paid their tabs and left, and the bar got smaller around them, and neither of them mentioned it.

* * *

Denny looked at the clock, then at them, and called it the way he'd been calling it for thirty years. "Last call. One more round, then I'm shutting the music off and you're both strangers to me."

Carlos started to nod, to reach for his wallet, and Keisha put a hand on the bar.

"Two more, Denny. For both of us." She pulled a twenty out of her coat and slid it down the oak. "And keep it."

Denny raised his eyebrows, poured, and went back to pretending not to listen.

"You know it's last call," Carlos said. "He's going to kick us out in twenty minutes."

"Then we've got twenty minutes." She picked up her fresh bourbon and turned on her stool to face him, and when she did it she leaned into his space, close enough that he could see the small scar above her eyebrow that he'd never asked about, close enough that he caught a faint smell of perfume under the bar smell, something warm. "That's plenty."

And Carlos felt the old pull in his chest, the one from ten years ago, the one he'd figured was dead and buried, sit up and open its eyes. She was forty and he was forty-four and they were sitting in a dive bar with the jukebox winding down and the tape holding the booth vinyl together, and it felt exactly like it used to and also nothing like it, better, maybe, because neither of them was pretending to be cool about it.

"You're staring," she said.

"You're close."

"I know what I'm doing." She took a sip, eyes on him over the glass. "I've done this before, you know. With you, specifically."

"That's right, you have." His mouth was dry. "How'd that go?"

"Well." She set the glass down. "Ask me in twenty minutes."

"I'll hold you to that," he said, and she grinned into her bourbon, and Denny shut off the jukebox, and the twenty minutes were gone like they were nothing at all.

* * *

Outside, the rain had started. Not a storm, just a steady gray drizzle that made the streetlights blur and the parking lot shine. Keisha stepped off her stool and buttoned her long coat, and Carlos stood there holding his half-finished drink as if he hadn't been given instructions.

"My hotel is out past the bridge," she said. "Near the convention center. I'd take a cab but the cab app says twelve minutes and I don't want to wait twelve minutes." She paused. "You