said, why didn't you post it right away? And Theo had said, because I didn't want to make it worse. And Mr. Farouk had nodded slowly, and folded up the résumé without reading the rest of it, and said, can you start Monday?
So it was a Monday. Seven-thirty in the morning. Theo's first day. And it was raining again, the soft, gray, settling rain that had been coming and going all week, so that the asphalt of the forecourt was black and gleaming and the white lights of the canopy lay across it in long silver streaks.
Theo was behind the counter in a red Farouk's Fuel & Food polo shirt that was a size too big, ringing up a coffee for a man in a suit, when a small white compact car with a rental company sticker on the back window pulled in off Linwood, slowly, its turn signal blinking for a long time before it turned, and parked at the edge of the lot by the broken car wash. And a minute later, the old gray SUV with the dent in its bumper pulled in behind it, and stopped at pump one.
Theo watched through the window. He did not mean to. But he could not help it.
Dara got out of the SUV. She was not wearing the leather jacket. She was wearing gray sweatpants and an old black zip-up hoodie with IMURA TKD across the back in faded white letters, and running shoes, and her braids were pulled back in a plain elastic, and she looked, Theo thought, about five years younger and about a hundred times less frightening than she had in the video. She took her card out of her pocket and slid it into the reader at the pump.
Brooke got out of the white car.
She was not wearing red. She was wearing jeans and a big gray sweater and a pair of white sneakers and an ankle brace, and she walked carefully, favoring the left foot. Her hair was pulled back. She had on a little mascara, Theo saw, and nothing else. She looked small. She looked like a girl from a small town. She walked across the wet forecourt toward pump one, slowly, not in a straight line, the way you walk toward a dog you are not sure about, and she stopped about six feet away from the tall young woman at the pump. Well outside the line. Theo did not know about the line. But Dara did, and she noticed, and something in her face, which had been very carefully neutral as she watched the blonde woman approach, softened a little.
Dara lifted the green nozzle off its cradle and fitted it into the side of the SUV and squeezed the handle and locked it. Then she rested both hands on top of it. And then she looked at Brooke.
"I'm still fueling," she said.
And for a second Brooke's face went white. And then she saw the corner of the taller woman's mouth, and she understood, and she laughed. A shaky, startled, wet laugh, half a sob. She put her hand over her mouth.
"Okay," she said through her fingers. "Okay. I deserved that."
"A little," Dara agreed.
They stood there in the rain. The numbers on the pump climbed. Inside the store, Theo had stopped ringing up the coffee, and the man in the suit said excuse me, son, and Theo said sorry, sorry, and finished it without looking at the register.
"I wanted to say I'm sorry," Brooke said. "In person. Not on a phone. I know I already said it. I know it doesn't fix anything. I know what it almost cost you. I just. I wanted you to hear me say it with my face."
"I heard you," Dara said. "On the call. With the panel." She looked at Brooke for a long moment. "That was brave. What you said. With nobody telling you to."
"It wasn't brave. It was just true."
"Most people can't tell the difference," said Dara. "That's why it was brave."
Brooke looked down at the wet asphalt. At the faint pale stain near the rear of the SUV, where Mr. Farouk had scattered the cat litter and scrubbed it away afterward, but not quite all of it.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Okay."
"When I grabbed it. The nozzle. Did you know? Right away? What would happen if I pulled it out?"
Dara was quiet for a moment.
"I smelled it," she said. "The gas. That's all. I didn't really know anything. I just smelled it, and I could feel how hard you were pulling, and I could see your shoes, and I could feel how hot that car was behind you. And then it was already done." She looked at the pump. "I've thought about it a lot since. Whether I could have done something else. I still don't know. My coach says I'll never completely know. He says that's the price."