There’s only one time a year you can depend on St. Louis weather: midnight, January first. In a few minutes, it’ll rain enough bullets to more than make up for the near-drought we’ve been having, which was making up for flooding over the summer. “Thirty bucks says we’ll have one lodged in the roof before sunrise.” It’s a safe bet. I can’t even remember the last year we were left unscathed. “Shut up.” Billie grinds her teeth. She’s been dreading tonight, just like every other small-town transplant with an internet connection and a biweekly shrink appointment. Building it up in her head to be a bigger deal than it is. “Forty?” I don’t know what she’s so worried about. I made insurance spring for the high-quality shit after an accident last year saw a shattered front window and a lead raindrop lodged in our far wall, inches from some drunk’s brain. What a story that would’ve been. I could’ve named a specialty cocktail after him. Hung up a plaque at what was once “his booth.” Reveled in the subsequent increase in foot traffic. Instead, all I’ve got for my trouble is a mostly full bucket of spackling shoved under the counter and a few panes of bulletproof glass. I told Billie as much when she came in a week ago rattling off about gun control, but it only seemed to make her jumpier. Her hands haven’t stopped shaking since her shift started. Two minutes to midnight, she’s found herself in the bathroom pretending to clean up a stain that’s been here longer than she has. Without her behind the counter, it’s down to three of us—me, a snoring regular, and a woman who’s been here since six checking her watch and drinking so many mixers I’ll be lucky if I can make a rum and coke tomorrow. Shit, maybe I should let Jonah pick up some extra hours to make that Facebook page. What kind of dive bar is dead on New Years? The woman slides on her tan trench coat, blissfully ignorant of the blow she’s dealing to my pride as she asks, “Could I get my bill?” Her voice trembles. “You might want to wait until the storm passes.” She looks up for the first time, makeup messy and face blank. “You from out of town?” She nods. “Sit back down.” I’m halfway through ringing her up when the first shot goes off. What follows is a thunder of gunfire. I can barely hear the beeping of the register between waves. But that’s the city I know and love. Our citizens are careful enough of the law to abide by the fireworks ban, but not so courteous to their neighbors to keep from shooting live ammunition into the air instead. It’s only after the now-morning goes quiet that I hand the woman her receipt. Billie creeps out of the bathroom soon after, not a rag or bottle of bleach in sight. “Told you we’d be fine. It’s more annoying than anything.” She takes a deep breath. It’s slow and long, the way she does when she’s trying to keep herself from snapping at a customer, or more often, at me. “That’s not the word I’d use.” “It’s just a local tradition. Like jokes on Halloween. You thought that one was adorable and this one is too. Just imagine the city as a bag of popcorn.” “Only because everything else about this place sucks. Cut the bullshit, Mick. Even you can’t be okay with this. Someone’s going to get hurt.” The regular shoots to attention. He hadn’t so much as flinched during the celebration, but her cursing seems to have broken his trance. His lips move and sound comes out. Not coherent enough to be called language, but it’s something like “Another.” Billie’s jaw tightens. It’s a miracle she has any enamel left. “I’m not serving him.” “You know policy.” This is where she’s supposed to echo what I’d told her day one—“Fuck dram shop.”—and drag her feet to the tap, but she doesn’t move. Her eyes are steel. Four months tending bar for me, and now she decides to grow a conscience? I skirt around her to grab his empty glass. “You can bet we’re going to be talking about this.” “I’ll wipe down the tables.” There’s more froth than Budweiser in the glass by the time I’m done pouring, but it doesn’t matter—he’s asleep again. I could drop it right by his ear, send glass flying everywhere, and I doubt he’d wake up. But before I get the chance to test the theory, delayed discharge sees an arc of foam escape over the rim. It creeps across the scuffs and divots of the wood before flooding the guy’s sleeve. Billie breaks her tantrum to state the obvious. “That one sounded close.” “It probably was. The Grove got a taste for it after last year, unlike some people.” She’s usually happy to keep trading snipes, but tonight, she turns back to the Lysol. I pull out a roll of paper towels and follow suit. She’ll be over it by clock-in tomorrow. Still, the remaining hour passes slowly. Our hard-edged silence is only broken when another slurred “Another,” sounds off from the bar. He wasn’t even looking up that time. “Sorry, my friend, you’re cut off.” I slide across the counter to search his coat pockets. His wallet is made of leather so new it creaks as I rifle through its contents. Garrett Anderson, 5’8”—even I have a pang of sympathy at that—born 1989, organ donor. Nice guy, fucking over some poor, sick kid with his bum liver. I feel less bad about dropping a crisp twenty in the tip jar. “That’s theft,” Billie hisses. “Then call the police.” I swipe Garrett’s card. A sixty-dollar tab, plus a cleaning fee for the piss I’d inevitably mop up before closing. God, straight-beer piss is nasty. And I’d have to handle it myself, even if Billie wasn’t mad at me. She’s a solid worker, but she doesn’t do body fluid. Makes her vomit. It’s pretty much her only failure as an employee. That and the stubbornness. Still, she’s a better worker than most of the college kids that pass through. Stays off of her phone, unlike Jonah, and sticks to the uniform. The girls tend to lose it the second they find out that a lower cut top brings in more tips. I can’t even blame them—I use my assets too. My sticky fingers, for one. I reach for Garret’s phone next. Luckily, it’s a thumbprint lock. “Mick!” “Relax, I’m getting him an Uber. Or a Lux, I guess. Gross.” It’s a testament to the youth of my employees that I’m able to make that joke, but not even the briefest tirade against the proliferation of the gig economy fills the bar. It’s one of Billie’s favorite not-me things to complain about. “We might as well close up once he’s gone. No one else is coming in tonight.” She just keeps cleaning. *** Billie’s standing at the backdoor texting by the time I’ve shepherded Garrett outside. He hasn’t let any of the beer escape yet, which my pants are endlessly grateful for, but the owner of the Mercedes he’d crawled inside of has something to look forward to. “Got everything?” She shoots me a thumbs up. The other one doesn’t slow down. I know exactly what she’s typing—she can’t believe I behave like this, she hates St. Louis, can’t wait until this chapter of her life is in her rearview mirror. All the things she’d usually lecture me about on our walk to her car. I don’t bother to listen most nights—there’s only so many times a man can be told off by someone that doesn’t pay their own rent—but I can’t help but miss it. “You writing an essay on that thing?” “Of a kind.” Of a kind. Students. She doesn’t even complain about the objectification of women as we pass the hula girl on my dash. The tremble of its hips combined with the flicker of the last working lamppost makes it look more terrified than happy. Then again, it had to brave the night outside. Billie’s never parked much farther from the bar than I am, but tonight, it feels like miles. Even with the city’s natural soundscape, it’s so quiet I can hear our breath crystalizing. Hear her quick-bitten nails ricochet against the screen. By the time we get there, I’m actually grateful for the unimagined splash of our footsteps in the puddle beneath her door. Finally, the phone goes into her pocket. “Night, Mr. McHaffie.” She unlocks the car. Gets in. I nod. Take a step back and turn to leave as she flicks on the light. The puddle is red. I stumble in my haste to get away from the—from whatever it is. It might not be what it looks like. But it’s sticking to the soles of my worn-out boots, and I can smell it, now that I’m paying attention. Just like the register after some frat boy’s come in with a bag of pennies and a megawatt grin. They all think they’re the funniest people on earth until you start making stacks. “Oh my God.” Billie’s slamming the door and running, retching into the street the second she’s clear of the blood. “What is it?” I’m dialing before she’s able to answer. *** A tan trench coat splayed across black asphalt. The woman I’d rung up not an hour before is now face down on the ground, unmoving. Passenger’s side, luckily, or we probably would have tripped over her in the dark. The bullet must have hit an artery because her blood has flooded the area. Still wet. Puddle in a drought. I should’ve noticed. It’s only a lifetime in St. Louis that’s keeping me calm. New York had its monstrous rats. Los Angeles its inexplicable shit. Our claim to fame is our body count, same as every other mythless city. I was always going to see a corpse on the street. This was inevitable. “You should go clean up.” Billie hasn’t moved from where she sat after emptying her stomach of its contents. She doesn’t move now, either. Her Converse are soaked through. I tap them with my toe. “You’ve got shoes in your locker, right?” When she looks up, her face is blank. Puke has crusted up beneath her nostrils, at the corners of her lips. It’s unnerving to see her like this. “I’ll talk to them. Go.” This was inevitable. It’s become my mantra by the time the patrol car grinds to a stop down the road. The cold is burning my nose, but I bite back my complaint about his response time. “You find her?” He sounds exhausted. Fair enough. All of us over-forties have to be by now, and this probably wasn’t his first call. “Me and my employee. She’s inside.” “Do you mind if we ask you a couple of questions while we wait?” I lead him through the night, excluding the details that might get me shut down. No overserving here, officer. Billie will do the same. At least, she would have yesterday. “This was inevitable, right?” The words have lost all meaning to me, but the cop seems to understand. He sighs. Rubs the knot between his eyebrows. “Happens every few years. No one seems to care where the bullets land. Forensics will be able to identify the bullet, but it’s a long shot. Pardon.” A firing squad the size of a city. The rest of his team has swarmed the body—“Crime scene,” corrects Officer Hill—by the time Billie returns. She corroborates, but her answers are hollow. Route. Like she’s reading the specials. “Be expecting a call.” He waits for our grunts of acknowledgment before joining the frenzy. It’s only then that I realize Billie’s car has been swallowed by yellow tape. “You need a ride?” “My girlfriend’s going to pick me up.” “Good.” “You can head off, if—” “We can wait by my car.” I’ve lived in St. Louis so long that it’s in my DNA, but now, every car horn, siren, peal of drunken laughter feels like an invasion. How could I have ever thought this chaos was quiet? There’s no room to think in a place like this. No room for what-ifs. That used to be a good thing. No room for what-ifs means no room for regret. What if I’d let her go when she wanted to? I’m trying to picture her face, but all I’m getting is runny makeup. Sad eyes. But what color? Tan trench coat and a watch. That I noticed—she was checking it every five minutes. Was she stood up? On a date, or meeting family? She came all the way from somewhere to nurse non-alcoholic drinks at my bar for six hours, and I can’t even say what she looked like. It’s never mattered before. I take careful stock of Billie as we pass through a ring of light. Pale. Tall. So many piercings that the tips of her ears sag under the weight. Her hair’s a different color than it was when I hired her—she’s bleached it since, and the roots have grown back in dark contrast to the blue tips. Still cut right above the chin. Unflattering, but she prefers it that way. And she’s ganglier than I would have thought from the way she handles the kegs. Insectoid, almost. She moves like one too, like any step she’ll be hit with a rolled-up newspaper. But that might be new. I should’ve been paying attention earlier. My hula girl trembles harder as she leans against the side of the car. Her hair falls out of her eyes. They’re brown. “At least you’ll get your plaque now.” “What?” “After last year’s disappointment.” Even with the explanation, it takes me a while to understand what she means. “No, that’s not—” “I know.” She takes a deep breath. Stares firmly at the ground. She’s got a mole beside her right ear. “Look, I like working here. I like arguing with you and beating everyone at darts. And I like shitting on the customers, usually. Tonight was just a lot. My high school…” her voice trails off. Well, fuck. That’s all I can think to say. “Yeah.” “You could’ve said something.” “I thought the city’d be better than back home since there aren’t any fireworks. By the time I found out about,” she waves a hand, encompassing everything, “I was already on the calendar. I didn’t want to bother anyone. Especially after how much shit you gave Jonah the last time he called in sick.” “That’s different. Kid thought I didn’t see him disappear during clean-up the night before.” “He’s such a tool.” “That makes three of us.” She doesn’t smile, but it’s close. A pair of headlights peal onto the street, dragging a dilapidated pickup behind them. By all odds, it should crush us, but Billie’s girlfriend must have a hairpin trigger on her brake because she slams to a stop inches from my muffler. The glare on her face says she would’ve liked to keep going. Guess I know who was on the receiving end of that essay. “Get home safe. We’ll talk about scheduling next week.” “Not tomorrow?” “If the others want to come in, I’ll let them, but I’m taking some time off. Might be out of town for a while. I’ll need a manager if you’re interested.” She hesitates. “I’ll think about it.” “Just let me know.” I wait for the truck to be out of sight before I collapse ass-first on the pavement and cry.