It doesn’t take much. I pay off some guy to stay at work a couple hours later than he’d like to. I follow her to the bar and sit where I can watch her without being seen. I wait for the call to come and when she knows she’s been stood up, I move in.
I don’t know much about her. I’ve seen a snapshot. It’s a blurry photo of her stepping off the “L” platform, taken by a car parked a dozen or so feet away. There are about ten people between the photographer and the girl and so her face has been circled with a red pen. On the back of the photograph are the words Mia Dennett and an address. It was handed to me a week or so ago. I’ve never done anything like this before. Larceny, yes. Harassment, yes. Not kidnapping. But I need the money.
I’ve been following her for the last few days. I know where she buys her groceries, where she has her dry cleaning done, where she works. I’ve never spoken to her. I wouldn’t recognize the sound of her voice. I don’t know the color of her eyes or what they look like when she’s scared. But I will.
I carry a beer but I don’t drink it. I can’t risk getting drunk. Not tonight. But I don’t want to draw attention to myself and so I order the beer so I’m not empty-handed. She’s fed up when the call comes in on her cell phone. She steps outside to take the call and when she comes back she’s frustrated. She thinks about leaving, but decides to finish her drink. She finds a pen in her purse and doodles on a bar napkin, listening to some asshole read poetry on stage.
I try not to think about it. I try not to think about the fact that she’s pretty. I remind myself of the money. I need the money. This can’t be that hard. In a couple hours it will all be through.
“It’s good,” I say, nodding at the napkin. It’s the best I can come up with. I know nothing about art.
She gives me the cold shoulder when I first approach. She doesn’t want a thing to do with me. That makes it easier. She barely lifts her eyes from the napkin, even when I praise the candle she’s drawn. She wants me to leave her alone.
“Thanks.” She doesn’t look at me.
“Kind of abstract.”
This is apparently the wrong thing to say. “You think it looks like shit?”
Another man would laugh. He’d say he was kidding and kill her with compliments. But not me. Not with her.
I slide into the booth. Any other girl, any other day, I’d walk away. Any other day I wouldn’t have approached her table in the first place, not the table of some bitchy-looking, pissed-off girl. I leave small talk and flirting and all that other crap to someone else. “I didn’t say it looked like shit.”
She sets her hand on her coat. “I was about to leave,” she says. She swallows the rest of her drink and sets the glass on the table. “The booth is all yours.”
“Like Monet,” I say. “Monet does that abstract stuff, doesn’t he?”
I say it on purpose.
She looks at me. I’m sure it’s the first time. I smile. I wonder if what she sees is enough to lift her hand from the coat. Her tone softens and she knows she’s been abrupt. Maybe not so bitchy after all. Maybe just pissed off. “Monet is an impressionist painter,” she says. “Picasso, that’s abstract art. Kandinsky. Jackson Pollock.” I’ve never heard of them. She still plans to leave. I’m not worried. If she decides to leave, I’ll follow her home. I know where she lives. And I have plenty of time.
But I try anyway.
I reach for the napkin that she’s crumpled and set in an ashtray. I dust off the ashes and unfold it. “It doesn’t look like shit,” I say to her as I fold it and slide it into the back pocket of my jeans.
This is enough to send her eyes roving the bar for the waitress; she thinks she’ll have another drink. “You’re keeping that?” she asks.
“Yes.”
She laughs. “In case I’m famous one day?”
People like to feel as if they’re important. She lets it get the best of her.
She tells me that her name is Mia. I say that mine is Owen. I pause long enough when she asks my name for her to say, “I didn’t realize it was a hard question.” I tell her that my parents live in Toledo and that I’m a bank teller. None of it is the truth. She doesn’t offer much about herself. We talk about things that aren’t personal: a car crash on the Dan Ryan, a freight train derailing, the upcoming World Series. She suggests we talk about something that isn’t depressing. It’s hard to do. She orders one drink and then another. The more she drinks, the more open she becomes. She admits that her boyfriend stood her up. She tells me about him, that they’ve been dating since the end of August and she could count the number of dates he’s actually kept on one hand. She’s fishing for sympathy I don’t offer. It’s not me.