“I’ll get on it.”
“Good.” She makes a show of tossing her hair over her shoulder. “And maybe next time you will be nicer about my memes.”
“I’m always nice about your memes!”
She shakes her head. “You don’t think they make sense.”
I rest my elbows on the bar. “Well, it’s just sometimes they’re a little confusing.”
She brandishes a pint glass at me like it’s a weapon. “Whatever, bro. English is dumb and confusing.”
Then she reels something off in French too fast for me to be sure I follow, but I think it’s along the lines of, “And it’s not my fault my brain operates at a higher level than yours.”
“The pizza one was funny!” she adds, switching back to English for me.
“You sent me the ‘Ermahgerd’ girl when I told you I didn’t know what kind of pizza to order last night. I think I was justified in asking what that means.”
A sly grin spreads across her face. “How about asking what that memes?”
I do my best to look scandalized, but I can’t help laughing even as I place a hand on my chest like I’m offended. “Oh, DeeDee, that was so bad I don’t even know if it counts as a pun.”
“See!” She waves the pint glass around some more. “You’re mean!”
I can’t help myself. “No, I’m meme.”
“Tu es fou!” she shouts, calling me crazy. “Tu es complètement fou!”
“What’s all this revelry?”
I look over my shoulder to see Monroe, the owner of Taverne Toulouse, striding out of the hallway. She grabs a spot beside me, hiking herself up onto a stool. Even from that vantage point, she’s still way shorter than me. She’s way shorter than most people, but that doesn’t stop her from being one of the biggest badasses I know. She went from being the underpaid and overworked manager of a grimy student bar slowly going out of business to buying the place for herself and turning it into a Montreal nightlife Mecca—at just under thirty years old.
“Zach is being mean to me!”
Of course, dealing with her insane staff is probably the hardest part of Monroe’s job.
“I am not!” I turn to Monroe and put on a fake whiny voice. “DeeDee tried to lock me in the fridge.”
Monroe gets in on it, tutting and shaking her head. “DeeDee, what did you do to poor Zach?”
“Poor Zach?” DeeDee shelves the last pint glass and puts her hands on her hips. “Poor Zach? Everyone is always going on about poor Zach. Just because he looks like a cute little farmer—”
“How many times do I have to tell everyone?” I cut in. “I grew up in a small town, not on a farm.”
“You do wear a lot of flannel,” Monroe points out.
“Flannel is not just for farmers! Kurt Cobain wore a lot of flannel. Flannel can be grunge. Flannel can be lots of things!”
Monroe crosses her arms and pretends to appraise me as she taps her chin. “I think it’s the combination of the beardy thing and the flannel. It’s just very...wholesome. Not that that’s a bad thing!”
I attempted to grow a beard so everyone would think I look like less of a benevolent farmhand. I can’t manage much more than some blond scruff, and apparently it’s not having the intended effect.
“This bar is a hostile environment today,” I accuse.
“Oh, come on.” Monroe scoots herself off her stool. “You two know you’re both the shining stars of the staff. Now play nice while I’m gone. You’re closing together, aren’t you?”
I nod as DeeDee gasps and starts clapping her hands.
“We are?” She does a little wiggle to the rhythm of the indie rock anthem pumping through the bar’s sound system, and I have to avert my eyes. “Oooh, this is going to be fun! We haven’t closed together in so long, Zachy Zach!”
I cut down my hours at the bar a few months ago, after my ecommerce business started taking off. In truth, being here tonight is going to mess up my whole schedule for the week, but Monroe needed someone to pick up a shift, and I’m not really one to say no to a friend in need. Plus, DeeDee’s right: we haven’t closed together in so long.
Monroe laughs. “Glad to see you’re best friends again.” She pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket and swears. “Shit. It’s later than I thought. I’ve been locked in the office training Lisanne on manager stuff all day. It’s like a time warp in there.”
“Gotta get home to the hubby?” DeeDee jokes.
“He’s not the hubby.”
DeeDee winks. “Not yet.”
We all know it’s only a matter of time before the power couple of the century gets hitched. Monroe’s boyfriend is almost as big of a workaholic as she is, but I’m sure they’ll fit a wedding in there somewhere.
We say our goodbyes, and DeeDee and I settle into getting our stations prepped. We duck and weave around each other while tossing out jokes and friendly insults, falling into the comfortable co-working rhythm we have down to a science. I get the lemons sliced before doing a final sweep of the seating area, checking the mismatched coffee tables, leather couches, and clusters of chairs for any stray napkins or spilled drink residue that might have been missed.
I know she had a lot of people help her bring it to life, but as the mastermind behind the overhaul of Taverne Toulouse’s decor, Monroe really is a genius. The new space has held onto Taverne Toulouse’s signature dive bar charm with things like our neon ‘Please don’t do coke in the bathroom’ sign and the infamous graffiti wall covered in years and years’ worth of drunken signatures and pictograms, but the space has been classed up with her additions.
The swank new bar station, casual furniture arrangements, and yards and yards of string lights casting a warm glow over it all make evenings spent at Taverne Toulouse feel like hanging out in your trendy friend’s living room. It’s the kind of place you go to kick up your feet and let loose for a while, to sit back with friends or party until last call on our tiny dance floor. It’s the kind of place you can waste time without feeling like it’s wasted, and the whole city knows it. We’ve been packed every weekend since the reopening.
“Duh duh, duh duh. Doot doo doot doo doo.”
DeeDee sings out the instrumental opening of the Sheepdogs song that just came on, loud enough for me to hear her all the way across the room. I look over to the bar and see her doing some kind of hair-flipping, hip-shaking routine that stops me dead in my tracks.
If there’s music on, DeeDee’s dancing. It’s an unwritten law of the universe. She might just be tapping her foot or nodding her head, but if there’s a beat, she’ll be moving to it. More often than not, she’ll be doing an all-out performance that’s enough to knock the wind out of anyone who might be watching—but that’s the thing: she does it whether anyone’s watching or not.
When DeeDee dances, she does it for herself. Sometimes I’ll come around the corner and catch her spinning around with her hands thrown up and her head thrown back, and I swear it’s like I’m watching the surge of the sea, some eternal pattern filled with power and purpose and a meaning too deep and secret for any one person to grasp.