“Night, sir!” he called out as Walter left the building, the door automatically locking heavily behind them.

The ride home was quiet, and by then Burnside traffic had begun to sort itself out. Walter enjoyed the silence, not even turning on his music as he drove home. A quiet drive was a needed break from the noise around the station as they got everything ready for the final shoot the next day.

Walter was surprised to pull into his driveway and find a little red two-seater parked outside. He had half a mind to just go inside and let her idle in the driveway all night, but he sighed instead and pulled up alongside Penny and got out of his car.

“You think it’s this easy to make it up to me?” he asked, leaning through the open passenger window.

“You’ve made your point. Get in,” Penny said.

“Have I?” Walter didn’t think he had, but she was right about one thing: he had absolutely nothing planned for the night. With a great show of rolling his eyes and looking deeply inconvenienced, Walter pulled open the door and fell into the low seat, having to adjust his tail underneath him to keep from stepping on it. He hated Penny’s car. It sat so low to the ground, it damn near broke his spine at every speed bump and pothole, and sitting it in made him feel like he was trying to eat his own knees. In no other place on the planet did his heels wind up so close to his ass that he was constantly stepping on and getting tangled up in his own tail.

“Just because I got in doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you yet,” Walter said, popping open the glove box to see what she had.

“Yes it does,” Penny argued as she backed out of his driveway, careful to avoid hitting the gate that hadn’t bothered to install itself yet.

Walter couldn’t find anything worth taking from her glove box, so he slapped it shut and connected his phone to her stereo instead, overriding the talk radio she liked to listen to with some actual music. He didn’t miss the sour look on her face, nor did he care. They rode in a comfortable silence otherwise, winding through the same hilltop streets that had just brought Walter home, and eventually down into civilization. It was rare that Walter got to be the passenger in the car, and he took the opportunity to enjoy the novelty as they got onto the highway. Once they were out of surface congestion, Penny opened up and starting cruising toward the East Side.

“Too bad Bigby’s sentencing is tomorrow. It’ll probably be too late to cover it on the show,” Penny said suddenly.

“He’s old news anyway,” Walter said.

“I guess,” Penny agreed. “Have you ever followed up on a story?”

“Wendigo,” Walter said as he lit a cigarette. “I milked that story for every second it was worth.” It got his name out there. That was the important part.

Penny seemed surprised for some reason. “That was you?”

“That was me.” He wasn’t surprised to see where Penny was taking him. They’d fallen into a routine that involved about three different places, and she was obviously trying to make it up to him for forgetting the previous night. The woman did know what he liked, though. It was going to suck having to find her replacement in a few months.

She pulled into the parking lot and checked her phone for a few seconds before getting out of the car.

“You ready to get your ass handed to you, old man?” she asked, flashing Walter a sly smile.

“In your dreams.” Walter got out and followed her through the doors to the register.

“Do you take card?” he asked.

The fox behind the register nodded. “There’s a five dollar fee if the total is under ten dollars,” she said. “And we close in a half hour.”

Walter nodded and pulled his credit card out. “Half an hour in the cages then,” he said, handing the card over.

The fox took the card, pausing for a moment. “The tunnel, or the cages?” she asked.

“Cages,” Walter repeated.

Nodding, the fox rang him up. “For both of you?” she asked again.

“I’m paying separate,” Penny said.

Once Walter was rung up, Penny paid for the half hour as well, and they headed further through the maze of gates and fences to the row of batting cages. They both picked their cages, ignored the offered helmets, and took a bat from the pathetic selection available. Walter never brought his own when they came here, mostly because Penny never told him they were coming here before meeting up.

The bats kind of sucked, but the machines were decent. It took a few swings for Walter to find a setting he liked, but soon he was knocking the balls right back at the machine as fast as it could spit them out at him.

“What happened to that ass kicking you promised?” Walter called over to Penny as she struggled with the settings on her own machine.

“I’m just warming up,” Penny taunted back.

Before too long, they were calling out numbers in whatever random increment they settled on, in between taunting one another into missing. Penny knew what she was doing. She didn’t miss very often, and when she hit the ball, it went where it was supposed to go. It meant Walter didn’t have to go easy on her, and suck all the fun out of it for himself. Outside of these evenings with Penny, Walter was woefully out of practice. He hadn’t swung a bat in years before she started taking him here, but it hadn’t taken long for his body to remember how it went. He’d never swing like he had when he was younger, but the competition from someone who knew what they were doing pushed him back into a familiar spirit.