The Night Service

*Wrote this for anyone who's ever wanted a birthday that felt like a new beginning, not with a relationship but with a laugh and a dare. Thanks for reading.*

Alan turned 40 on a Friday. His shift got canceled at two in the afternoon, which should have been a gift. Instead it meant he had nowhere to be and nobody to spend it with.

He thought about calling one of the women he'd been seeing. None of them were birthday material. None of them were anything material, really, which was the whole point of how he'd been living since his last real relationship ended at 30. Ten years of dating light. No heavy lifting.

So he put on a decent shirt and went to Sal's.

Sal's was an Italian place on Ninth, loud and honest and usually packed on Fridays. Tonight it was worse. There was a transit strike on, buses and trains both dead, so the whole city seemed to have walked into the same restaurant. Alan stood in the doorway and took it in. Every table full. People standing three deep at the bar. A waiter carrying four plates and swearing under his breath.

"Happy birthday," Alan muttered to himself, and pushed in.

He had to squeeze past a party of eight crammed around a table meant for six. A man in a suit had his elbow in Alan's ribs and didn't notice. A kid, well, a grown kid, 25 maybe, was filming the chaos on his phone. Alan ducked under his arm and kept going.

The bar had one open stool. Alan took it before anyone else saw it.

"Whiskey. Neat. The good one," he said to the bartender, a big guy named Sal Junior who had his father's face and none of his patience.

"Forty bucks."

"It's my birthday."

"Thirty-nine."

Alan paid the forty. The drink arrived and it was a proper pour, so he forgave the man.

He was halfway through it when he saw her.

She was sitting at a small table near the wall, alone, in a red dress. Red like a fire truck. She was laughing at something on her phone, one hand over her mouth, the other holding a glass of white wine. Thirty-something. Dark hair pinned up with a pencil stuck through it, which Alan found more interesting than he probably should have.

She looked up from the phone. Their eyes met across the room.

Now, Alan had been in a lot of bars. He knew the difference between a woman glancing at you and a woman looking at you. This was the second kind. She didn't look away. She didn't smile, either. She just held the look, one full second, two, like she was daring him to do something about it.

He raised his glass a little. She raised her wine back.

Then a man in a kitchen apron started yelling about an order and the whole room surged, and the moment was gone. Alan turned back to his whiskey and told himself he was 40 now and this was fine. A look. A good look. Birthday accomplished.

He lasted about ninety seconds.

He glanced back. She was still there, still alone, and now she was watching him instead of her phone. There was the smile. It was a real one, crooked, the kind that made you want to know what was funny.

The waitress arrived at her table with two plates. She set down a bowl of something with clams and a plate of something with veal. The woman in red said something. The waitress said something back, shrugged, and left. The woman stared at the clams like they'd insulted her family.

Alan got up. He didn't plan it. His legs just did it.

He picked up the veal plate on the way past the waitress station. The waitress, a tired woman of about 50, watched him do it and decided it wasn't her problem. Good. It wasn't.

He walked to the red dress table.

"Excuse me. I believe this is yours," he said, setting the veal down in front of her. "The clams belong to the guy at table nine. He's been crying about them for ten minutes."

She looked up at him. Up close she was even better. Late thirties, easy to guess. Green eyes. The pencil in her hair had a bite mark on it.

"How do you know which one is mine?" she asked.

"Lucky guess."

"Or you've been staring at my table."

"That too," Alan said. "Mostly that."

She laughed. It came out loud and unguarded, the same laugh he'd caught from across the room, and a couple at the next table turned to look.

"Sit down," she said. "Before you get arrested."

He sat. The table was tiny. Their knees were already close.

"Alan." He put his hand out.

"Bridgette." She shook it. Her grip was firm, as if she worked with her hands.

"What's the story, Bridgette? Alone at a table at Sal's on a Friday, fending off wrong orders and strangers."

"Strangers who bring me veal, anyway." She took a bite and nodded. "Okay. The story is the buses are on strike and my car is in the shop, so I walked forty minutes for the gnocchi because Sal's gnocchi is worth forty minutes. And then they gave my gnocchi to someone else."

"Tragedy."

"I'm managing." She pointed her fork at him. "What's the story with you? You're drinking alone and handing out plates. Either a waiter or a very strange man."

"It's my birthday. I'm 40. My shift got canceled and everyone I know is busy, so I bought an overpriced whiskey and prepared to feel sorry for myself."

"Wait." She put the fork down. "It's your birthday today?"

"Today."

"And you're alone?"

"Currently not," Alan said. "Currently I'm stealing veal for a woman in a red dress."

She pointed at him again. "That's a crime. Turning 40 alone. That should be illegal in this state."

"Tell me about it. I considered crying into the whiskey but it seemed wasteful."

"You're funny." She said it like she was surprised. "I didn't have you down as funny."

"What did you have me down as?"

She looked him over, openly, no hurry about it. "Tall. Confident. Probably annoying at parties. Some kind of job where you tell people what to do."

"Paramedic."

"Oh!" She blinked. "That's better than my guess."

"Pay is worse."

"Florist," she offered. "Twenty-two years old, straight out of, well, never mind. Fourteen years of flowers. I can tell you which bouquet means 'I cheated, please forgive me.'"

"Which one?"

"Roses. Always roses. The cheaper the worse."

Alan laughed and signaled the bartender for another round. Two more whiskeys arrived, plus a fresh glass of white for her, on his tab.

"To your gnocchi," he said, raising the glass. "May it rest in peace at someone else's table."

"To your birthday," she said. "May the next one have actual people at it."

They drank. Her knee touched his under the table and neither of them moved it.

"So," she said, twisting the little ring on her right hand around, a nervous habit. "Forty years old and celebrating alone. You don't strike me as a man who does anything alone."

"You'd be surprised. I'm actually very good at alone. Ten years of practice."

"Ten years?"

"Since I was 30," Alan said. "Long story, boring ending."

"Impulse control," Bridgette said. "That's what you've got. I can see it. Me, I've got none. Never had a wild night in my life. I'm 36 and I've never once done anything on a dare."

Alan set his glass down. "Never?"

"Never. I plan. I make lists. I bring an umbrella even when the sky is blue." She took a drink. "Sad, right?"

"No," Alan said. "That's just untapped."

She raised an eyebrow. "Untapped."

"There's a whole art to it. Doing something dumb on purpose with the right person. Somebody should teach you."

"And where does a person find this teacher?" she asked. "Is he taking students?"

"Depends," Alan said. "The teacher is very busy. He's got veal to deliver."

She looked at him over the rim of her glass, and it was the look from across the room again, the dare, now at close range.

* * *

"So what's the curriculum?" she asked. "This class in recklessness. What's lesson one?"

"Lesson one is letting a stranger buy you a drink."

"You already did that."

"Then you're ahead of the class. Advanced placement."

She snorted into her wine. "That's not reckless, though. That's just a drink."

"Lesson two, then." He leaned back. His stool wobbled on the uneven floor and he caught himself on the table edge. "You tell me one thing you've always wanted to do and never done. I tell you mine. No laughing."

"That's a terrible lesson. That's just talking."

"Talking is the whole game, Bridgette. The rest is logistics."

She chewed on that. Also on a clam, since the guy at table nine had been given soup instead and nobody came back for them. She ate them with real commitment, one after another, like she'd earned them.

"Fine," she said. "I've always wanted to dance somewhere that isn't a wedding. Like a real dance. A bar with a floor and everything. I've never once done it. Fourteen years of weddings and funerals and I've never danced for me."

"Funerals have dancing?"

"Florists see things." She pointed the fork at him again. He was starting to like that fork. "Your turn."

"I've always wanted to walk out of a