But having realized all this had made me even more depressed. I began to despise the world and to wish that I had never been born. At the same time, I didn’t have the strength to end my life. Either I was a coward… or I still had some hope left.
This I pondered when somebody sat next to me in the bar.
It was a woman in black.
7
The woman in black seemed quite drunk. She asked me what I was drinking.
“Alcohol,” I said.
She gave an imitation smile. “Smartass.”
“That’s me.”
“Why are you sitting here all alone then?”
“Too smart I guess.”
“Or maybe not smart enough?”
“Maybe.”
I finished my drink.
“You want another one?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“What do you want?”
“How about a Bloody Mary?”
“Okay.”
She ordered two Bloody Marys. We sat in silence whilst the bartender mixed the drinks.
“So what brings you here?” she asked.
“My feet,” I said, taking a sip from the Bloody Mary, the smell of Tabasco and black pepper tickling my nostrils.
“Very funny. But really?”
“Got no place to go and going there tomorrow,” I quoted from an old movie. I guess I didn’t know how to talk to people.
“Okay, okay,” she said, gesturing with her hands. “Mister mysterious. Are you a magician?”
“I was.”
“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows. “Were you able to make something disappear?”
“Yeah. My will to live.”
“Oh, hush now.” She put her finger on my lips. “None of that kind of talk. How about a cigarette?”
“Sure thing.”
We took our drinks with us and went upstairs to the smoking area and sat down. I opened my pack of Marlboro Reds and extended it to her. She took one and we lit up.
“You’re weird,” she said, letting out a puff of smoke.
“Am I?”
“Yes.” She put her hand on my leg and moved it towards my crotch. “But attractive.”
After we had finished our cigarettes in silence, she asked me whether she could push her tongue down my throat. “All right,” I said and got assaulted with it shortly after. Her mouth tasted like cigarettes and alcohol. But so did mine.
She moved her tongue around in my mouth for a while, as if searching for something—perhaps the meaning of life—and eventually pulled it out.
“Wanna go to my place?” she asked.
“Okay.”
We got up and walked downstairs. Before leaving the bar, she pushed me into a dark corner, shoved her hand down my pants and wrapped it around my cock, which immediately got hard. She played with it for a while as I took out my phone and ordered a taxi.
After the taxi arrived, it took us about ten minutes to arrive at our destination. We entered the building where she lived, took the elevator to the top floor, and walked to her apartment door. She fumbled with the keys for a bit but eventually got the door open.
The apartment was a penthouse suite, not far from the harbor; from the windows, I could see the sea in the distance. “Nice place,” I said.
“It’s not mine. I’m just borrowing it for a while.”
I sat down behind the kitchen table. She brought out a bottle of white wine and poured us both a glass. We sipped on the wine in silence.
“So… are we gonna have sex?” I finally asked.
“What do you think?” she said teasingly.
By the time we had finished with our glasses, she looked as though she was about to pass out at any moment.
“I’m gonna go to the bedroom,” she slurred, getting up from her seat.
I followed her.
She sat down on the bed and sluggishly began taking off her clothes. She removed her shirt but left her bra on. While she was in the process of taking off her jeans and panties, she suddenly passed out. It didn’t seem as though she was going to come to before the morning.
Since I was drunk and tired, I decided to lay down next to her. From my vantage point, I could partly see her shaved pussy. It looked inviting. What a shame, I thought.
I observed her body for a while until I drifted off to sleep.
8
I opened my eyes. The woman next to me was awake. “You look much younger than you did last night,” she said.
In daylight, with her makeup smudged and without the influence of alcohol, I could see that she was visibly older than she had looked like the night before. She must have been at least ten years older than me.
“Did we have sex last night?” she asked coyly.
“I’m afraid not,” I said, trying to conceal my disappointment.
She frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. You fell asleep whilst trying to take off your pants.”
“Ah, so that’s why my ass was bare…”
There was an awkward silence.
“I’m gonna go take a quick shower,” she finally said. “Be right back.” She got up and left the room.
The clock on the wall said it was nine in the morning. I checked my phone. There was a text message from my ex. “Sorry, I was working,” it said. I wasn’t surprised. She was a veterinarian and often worked long hours, including night shifts. The message continued: “We can have steak together. How about one in the afternoon at the steakhouse we were supposed to go to?”
“All right,” I texted back to her. “I’ll meet you there.”
The woman soon came back into the room, wearing only a towel, her big breasts half-showing.
“I guess I should leave, right?” I asked.
“Afraid so. My mother’s coming over soon.”
I started getting up from the bed.
“Wait,” she said. “I can’t let you leave empty-handed.” I began to get excited. I hoped she was referring to a blowjob.
She took something from a shelf nearby. “I’ll give you a tarot reading.”
I felt disappointed. “A tarot reading?”
“Yes. I’ve just bought a new deck and I’ve yet to try it on anybody. You must first charge the deck through a special ritual before using it, you see. Otherwise it might be dangerous. I’ve done the ritual and I wanna see if it worked.”
Although I knew that tarot was bullshit, I saw no harm in humoring her. “I don’t really believe in that kind of stuff but go ahead.”
She shuffled the cards and put the deck on the bed. “I want you to cut it three times.”
I cut the deck three times.
She took the top card and turned it over. “This one’s The Fool. It symbolizes new beginnings. But the card’s reversed, which is not good.”
She took another one. “This one’s The Devil. Although it can be good, yours is upright, signifying downfall.”
She drew a third card. “The Hanged Man. Strange. I’m not sure the ritual worked.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because it’s the third bad card in a row. If it were upright, it would mean improvement. But yours is reversed, indicating bad decisions and being trapped.”
Sounds exactly right, I thought.
She took the fourth card from the deck, looking a little flustered. “I need to redo the ritual. It seems the cards are negatively charged.”
I looked at the card and smiled. It was Death. “Seem to be working just fine to me,” I said, getting up from the bed. “Can I use your bathroom before I leave?”
“Of course.” She put the cards away.