The men in the sidewalk café call something out when I go in, as if they immediately see that I’m a stranger, that I don’t fit in, but I don’t catch what they say. More people are sitting inside, some men who look like alcoholics are drinking at the bar, two or three guys stand by themselves at the slot machines, a larger group sits at one of the tables. I stand at the bar, without making any eye contact, but I can feel their eyes on me. I never drink on the job, I’m surprised at myself. The bartender comes over, says nothing, just gives me a questioning look. There’s something guarded about him, as if he doesn’t understand what I’m doing here. He takes my order. There are no other single women here, absolutely no one my age. He dries off the glass with a towel in his pocket, sets the beer down in front of me on the counter. I hand him my credit card. My phone says it’s almost quarter to six, Leila hasn’t texted back and I take a few deep gulps of the ice-cold liquid.
Then I get a look at her — she must have been sitting there the whole time on the other side of the bar, looking at me without me seeing her. She’s wearing a red T-shirt, I try to read the faded gray words printed on her chest, something with Plugged. She’s thin and sinewy, has two tattoos on one of her upper arms, two bands in the same black, stylized tribal design, which run around her biceps, separated by a few centimeters. She doesn’t look much like the photo, and she’s not the enigmatic figure she ought to be, given the circumstances, and yet I know this is right, this is her, it can’t be anyone else. Suddenly I wonder what she’s doing when she’s not taking care of business. I see her in an apartment, alone, how she sits there during the day and plays video games. She studies me calmly, almost curiously. Shame and eagerness stun me for a few moments, and I wonder if she can see this, when one of the drunks staggers toward the bar, close to me.
“You’re cute,” he whispers, and I remove his fat hands from my body, take a swig of my beer without looking at him.
After a while she gets up and comes toward us, shoves him aside with her arm and a hard, weary expression on her face. When he goes, she puts her beer down on the bar: I can’t figure out whether she’s amused or contemptuous.
“You don’t live around here,” she says, and I don’t know how to reply, as if nothing I can say would be right.
“No,” I finally answer.
Her forearm against the bar counter, it’s covered with thin strands of hair and I can almost touch the attraction that binds us.
I check the time on my phone again. “Could you wait a minute?”
She nods.
Outside the autumn sun disappears behind the roofs. I dial his number, walking back and forth in front of the restaurant while the call goes through. When he finally answers I tell him that he doesn’t need to come anymore, but I can hear that my voice sounds too harsh.
“What’s happened?”
“She’s not there.”
“Have you already been there? Yourself?”
I see the contours of her body inside, leaning slightly forward, her arms resting against the counter. I don’t really answer him, only repeat that she isn’t there.
“You’ve been there? What the hell are you thinking? You broke into the apartment? Without a warrant?”
“She’s not there. I know where she is. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” I answer, fatigued.
It’s cold, and I’ve left my jacket inside — I see it hanging next to her on the barstool. When I walk in again she looks at me quite openly, all the way from over by the bar.
Her apartment is dark, I sense that it has two rooms, that it’s completely symmetrical, one room on either side of the hall and maybe a kitchen between them. When she takes a step toward me I seize her wrists and put her hands around my neck.
“The bathroom,” I whisper in her ear, holding her wrists gently; she doesn’t try to free herself. I lower her arms and put them around my waist, concerned that she’ll place her hands on my shoulders if I let go of her and feel the holster straps through my jacket.
“There,” she nods toward a door behind my back.
I let go of her and walk into the small bathroom, closing the door carefully behind me. I hear her take off the jean jacket and hang it up, then she goes out to the room on the right. I remove my own jacket, the pressure in my chest, as if it belongs to someone else, a cry that isn’t mine. I unbuckle the holster and look around. It’s clean and impersonal, like a hotel bathroom, the only signs of her are the laundry basket in the tub and her clothes inside it, underpants, T-shirts; I want to open the medicine cabinet, but stop myself. Turn on the water instead, wash my face before I carefully bend down, protected by the running water, until kneeling on the floor, and I shove the holster with the pistol as far as I can under the bathtub. The feeling of pressure, as if I’m going to vomit. When I turn off the water I don’t recognize my face in the mirror, it is closed, locked, and I don’t know what’s going on behind it.
It’s still dark in the apartment, she hasn’t turned on any lights, I hesitate, enter the room on the right, and stop in the middle, not knowing where she is. Suddenly she’s close beside me, quiet and agile like an animal. We kiss softly and carefully, the sharp, cutting taste of alcohol and her thin, sinewy body turns beneath my hands. I pull up her T-shirt, she’s not wearing a bra, her breasts are so small they fit in my palms. Her nipples, big as raspberries, are hard between my fingers, she draws me closer, breathless I inhale her scent, feeling her angular hip bones against my own.
“Who are you?” She pushes me back at arm’s length, her eyes searching in the darkness. Black as coal against her pale face, her dyed hair reaches just below her shoulders and I know from the photo that her eyes are green, but it’s too dark to see their exact color.
She strokes my cheek gently. “Come,” she whispers, taking my hands and pulling me toward the bed. She removes my clothes, turns me over like a baby, strokes my back, touches me with firm, open hands, kisses the nape of my neck, takes one of my breasts in her hand, and with the other, presses an open palm against my cunt. It’s like being caressed by a pro, someone who knows my body by heart, someone trained in shooting it straight up. The serenity, the substance that brings everything to rest.
Afterward I try to make her out in the darkness, she’s lying on her side of the bed, naked, but I can barely see the outline of her body. She sits up, reaches across me, and gropes for something beside the night table, gets hold of her T-shirt and a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray and a lighter. She smokes slowly with her back against the wall and I recognize her from the photograph. There’s something self-sufficient in the way she smokes, in the discrete, defined movements distinguishing her body from its surroundings. I can understand why they leave her alone.
“I saw a performance,” she says slowly, exhaling the smoke. “A day or two ago. I never go to such things.”
She leans her head against the wall, waits and peers down at me in the bed. For a second I see Mia’s sleeping body, the nightmares that chase her, how sometimes when she wakes up she doesn’t understand that they’re over until several minutes later. The terror that shines in her eyes before the dreams flow away, until everything clears and grows still.
“A man ran from one corner of the stage, jumped high up, and fell straight to the floor. Then he got up and did it again. Again and again.” She slowly lowers one hand toward the blanket. “How can that be called a performance?”
Something warm shoots up behind my eyes and I smell her cunt through her crossed legs; she’s only wearing the red T-shirt. Plugged Recording. I wonder what it means, where she got it from. She exhales again, suddenly indifferent, before she stubs out the cigarette, gets up, climbs over me, and disappears into the bathroom.