I never found out what happened on Kira's tragic date last night. We were about to hear the grisly details when she stopped, mid-sentence, staring across the room at the television over the bar. Jo and I traded looks of confusion as we waited for her to go on, but Kira was elsewhere. As she sat there, transfixed, her face lit up, brighter and brighter.
I turned to look at the television behind me, but it was just the same basketball game that the other screens were showing. I looked all around the bar, trying to figure out what would explain this sudden delay of gossip. Then I turned back to Kira and examined her more closely. I wondered if I'd find a tranquilizer dart sticking out of her neck, or rays of light streaming down from an alien spaceship. Anything that could explain why last night's dismal date was now forgotten. To paraphrase the announcers at the end of Elvis's concerts, Kira had left the building.
Jo waved a hand in front of our friend's blank eyes. "Hello! What's going on?"
That snapped her out of it, and she turned to us with a hard gasp. "Oh my God! This is too good to be true." She yanked out her phone and started to work it like a video game. This only made her more excited. Did Kira just win the lottery? Maybe she'd just been awarded a Nobel prize.
Whatever this was, Kira was definitely taking it seriously. You'd think her world had just been turned upside down. She tapped her phone one last time and looked up. "You're not going to believe this. Guess which band is back and making a reunion tour? They're playing here at the end of June!" She sucked in her breath and jumped a little.
I started to work on her riddle but was impeded by two and a half pints of beer. What can I say? It was a Thursday, girls' night out. And we'd been at it for a while. Also, I hadn't been paying complete attention up to that point because, honestly, this had started off as just another one of Kira's breakup stories, and I'd heard them all since, well, forever. So I had to recalibrate my brain to focus on whatever it was that Kira was now talking about.
Neither Jo nor I actually had a chance to answer Kira's question-she was way too excited to let anyone guess. She waited a tenth of a second, then blurted out the band's name, loud and fast like a popped balloon.
"Fiery Boys!"
Whoa, had I just heard her right? I sat up straight, knocked my hand against my beer glass, then miraculously caught it before anything spilled. See? I can hold my liquor.