Maggie flattened her with a look. “There should be.”
“Well, you just did pot. Isn’t there a law against that?”
“Sadly, I’m not even sure. I guess it depends on what state you’re in. And I’m in…the state of bliss.”
“Nice,” Jo said, pushing up to a stand. “But I’m parched and ready to dance. After french fries! You don’t think they closed the grill, do you?”
“If they have, they will just reopen it,” Maggie said.
Feeling expansive and joyous and oddly powerful, she threw her arm over Jo’s shoulders and squeezed.
“I gotta tell you something, Jo. I don’t need a man in my life. I don’t need to kiss or date and accept gifts. You know why?”
“’Cause you’re old?”
“Because I have you.” She squeezed again and grinned at her friend. “I have a partner, a friend, and a sister. Best one in the world.”
“Oh, Mags!” Jo Ellen melted into an embrace. “I love you so much.”
After an overly emotional hug, Jo Ellen opened the door and they took one wobbly step into the hall as the light behind them flickered, sparked, buzzed, and died.
They were bathed in darkness, the bar sounds silent for a second, followed by loud cries and hoots.
“Oh, no, there goes the power,” Maggie said.
“There go my french fries.”
From the barroom came two dozen voices rising at once, more delighted than alarmed with a scattering of laughter, and somewhere a man whooping like this had been the entertainment he’d been waiting for all night.
“Maggie? Which way is the door?”
“It is…” Maggie turned, with great confidence, and pushed open a door. It smelled like?—
“Ugh, men’s room,” Jo Ellen groaned, pulling them out.
They shuffled down the pitch-black hall with the four-legged gait of two women who needed to be one slightly tipsy organism. Maggie’s shin hit a crate and, whoops, that was a bad word.
Jo laughed so hard she walked into a doorframe.
Neither of them stopped giggling for one second of it, and the giggling made the navigating worse, and the worse navigatingmade the giggling worse, and by the time they got to the door they thought led to the bar, Jo was making Depends jokes.
The barroom was a warm chaos of cellphone flashlights, the little blue-white beams crisscrossing the dark, the locals all in tremendous spirits, somebody already leading a recklessly off-key rendition of a song that did not need accompaniment.
And out of the dark, a white beam of light swung up and found the two of them—and behind the light came the low, amused, unmistakable voice of Brick Collins.
“Well, well, well,” he said.
Maggie blinked and made out his face in the weird light.
He looked at Maggie. He looked at Jo Ellen. He looked, unhurried, back at Maggie, and she watched the man take in every single piece of evidence and arrive, with visible enjoyment, at the correct conclusion.
“Ladies.”
“Brick,” Maggie said, with as much poise as she could muster in the moment, which was not a great deal.
“Generator’ll be up in five minutes. We’ll have lights and the jukebox again before you can miss ’em.” He tilted his head, and even by phone-light, Maggie could see the grin coming up under the beard. “You two have a nice time in the storeroom?”
“Lovely,” said Jo Ellen, radiant. “It’s a very nice…storeroom.”
