The target was young, early twenties, blond, pale, and thin and chirpy as a baby bird, one of a small flock of potential victims Maureen had been watching. She wore billowy cotton pants in a fake African pattern, a charcoal top about a size too large that almost matched the pants, and wedge-heeled shoes. She had the look of someone who’d borrowed her curvier roommate’s clothes. Maureen had seen her come in around eleven, alone and already listing from drinking at home. She wore only a thin jacket against the cold night, which told Maureen she lived nearby. She’d spent most of the night squinting at her phone, texting. The girl was upset about something, Maureen figured, that had happened before she’d left home. Her outfit had a touch of “Fuck you, I’m going out.” She’d almost had the energy to get dressed up, but hadn’t quite made it. She’d done just enough preparation to convince herself she wasn’t going out purely to get shit-faced, which gave her permission to do exactly that.
As for what had wounded her, Maureen thought at first that a job interview had gone wrong, or maybe a rejected grad school application, but Maureen soon noticed that the girl emanated a swoony neediness that repelled everyone around her, male and female, like a bad smell. That stench, Maureen knew, was heartbreak. The girl had been dumped. Some boy’s job interview or grad school application had gone really well, and this girl was now collateral damage to his success. She watched as the girl stood on her toes on the bar rail, leaning over the bar, talking to, talking at the seething bartender, who Maureen could see had no interest in the sob story being shouted in her face.
At about half past midnight, the girl had started bumming cigarettes from anyone whose attention she could corral. She’d have one burning down in the ashtray while she was bumming another from whatever bland boy drifted by with a Marlboro in his hand. She was light-eyed and banally cute and alone, Maureen saw, but not one of those boys hung around to talk to her. Not one of them bought her a drink. None of this was surprising. The girl was not out to hook up. This wasn’t an “I’ll fuck him over by fucking someone else” outing. This was “I can’t stand another minute of my own company alone in that fucking apartment.”
Maureen could see the girl’s emotional defenses whirling in the air around her like a cloud of stinging insects. Unfortunately, while the emotional defenses were working overtime, Maureen feared alcohol and the late hour had dulled the girl’s other self-protective instincts. And she was not the only one who had picked up on that weakness.
A dark-haired, clean-shaven man, his thin shoulders hunched, sat alone at a small table under a huge television, a collection of plastic cups on the table in front of him. He wore a black hoodie, deep indigo jeans with the cuffs folded up, expensive and well-worn black work boots. He wasn’t dressed breaking-and-entering dark, Maureen noted, that might be too conspicuous, but dark enough to hide in the nighttime shadows. He was pretty good at hiding, she had to admit.
She hadn’t seen him enter the bar, hadn’t seen him order a drink and sit. She’d been scanning the room like she’d done fifty times that night and had missed him, until that last time. Like a ghost, he wasn’t there, and then he was—alone, disengaged, hiding in the shifting light of the big television screen over his head. He was collecting plastic cups in front of him instead of throwing them away as he got another drink. To Maureen, that was the tell. He was measuring something, Maureen thought. Something inside himself. Adding up, piling on. Keeping count. Trying to hit a target. Proving to himself how much liquid courage he’d poured into getting his nerves up. See what you can do, he’d tell himself. You’re ready now. How many drinks lit the spark, Maureen wondered. How many to turn the power on? Six? Seven? Was there a magic number he needed to reach? Or did he wait until some internal switch he hadn’t quite learned to throw on his own turned over?
Maureen watched as the girl signed for her tab, chattering away at the ever-bored bartender as she did so. She staggered to the door. The man ran his fingers through his curly hair. He zipped up his sweatshirt. Maureen saw the thick ring on his finger. She had her man. He used the glass of the bar’s French doors to track the girl. Maureen downed the last of her watery whiskey, slid to the end of the bench in her booth to get a better look at the man. She slipped the ASP into her back pocket, pulled her sweatshirt low over her backside.
The girl paused in the open doorway, not five feet away from the man in the black hoodie, opening her clutch and removing her phone. Maureen hoped she’d had a moment of clarity or instinct and was calling a cab. No such luck, as the girl frowned into the blue glow of the small screen and her thumbs went to work.
Can’t you leave it alone, Maureen thought, for ten minutes and get yourself home in one piece?
The girl stepped out of the bar and staggered down the sidewalk, focused on her phone. Maureen risked losing sight of her for a quick second as she slipped out the side exit instead of taking the more exposed path through the barroom to the front door. She pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt, hiding her face and hair, and stood beside the door, pretending to be checking her own phone. The girl drifted by, texting away.