Tamara’s eyes creaked towards mine.
“She wasn’t really that funny,” he said.
“You’re getting a 1-star review,” I said. “Just for the record.”
“Now that’s funny,” the driver said. “One more time. We’re headed down to River North? Where you girls going, exactly? My Maps app is just giving me an address.”
“It’s called Howl at the Moon,” Tamara said.
“Huh…” the driver said.
“What’s ‘huh?’” I asked.
“Ah, nothing. Forgettaboutit.”
“I’m new here,” I said. “Any advice you can give me will help. I’m looking for the weird stuff in town. You know—legends, unsolved crimes, Satanic highways with unmarked cars, that sort of stuff.”
“Oh, hell, you and I should sit and talk some time,” he said.
“I’d—” I’d opened my mouth to say, “I’d love to” but Tamara gave me her dagger eyes, the kind that I knew meant “if you leave me in the bar alone to interview a cabbie, I will never forgive you,” and so I snapped my mouth shut. “Maybe, yeah, some other time. It’s for work. I’m a journalist.”
“She’s trying to relax and get to know the city since she’s so new,” Tamara said. “Mandatory girl’s night.”
“Oh, I get it, I get it,” the driver said. “You girls mind if I listen to some music? Give you two some privacy.”
We nodded, which was a mistake. It was fifteen minutes of polka. I’d never been so happy to get out of a Lyft in my whole life.
* * *
The driver pulled to the curb and started his end-of-ride speech, asking us survey questions that Tamara half-stumbled through. I couldn’t pay attention. There was so much to see all around me, and my eyes were on the building and the street outside—a pedestrian-heavy section of the city, people my age, mid-twenties to late-thirties all milling about, and music from a live show blaring into the street.
There was nothing like this back home. A little childish part of me squealed inside. I wanted to pull out my phone, to take a snapshot of this moment, to send a picture message to Mark back home and hope beyond hope he would get it, get why I came here, get why I had to do this…
“Don’t look,” Tamara said to me, vaguely gesturing in a direction, so, of course, I looked.
A man and a woman stood in the puddled ambiance of a streetlight, heads low as they talked. Seemed like some kind of intense discussion. The man kept grabbing the back of his neck, shoulders shrugging. Looked like a typical lover’s spat. There was something about the man, though.
I couldn’t take my eyes away from him. His back was to me—black hair slicked and greased, combed straight, long and kind of old-school, in that hipster way that I hated to admit made me weak at the knees. Tattoo sleeves on both of his arms, even down to his hands. And black-varnished nails! He was short but built—wearing army fade camo shorts that showed off amber skin, calves, furred legs down to leather ankle boots.
The piece de resistance: a sleeveless leather jacket with safety pins and patches on the back, all surrounding a demon’s hand jutting forth from a burning fire. Flames of Hell, his jacket said.
“Look, it’s not that simple,” he was saying. “This wasn’t my fault. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“Look at all of the people,” Tamara said, pulling me back to reality. “We should have done more drinking at home.”
We got on the curb, checking our hemlines, shaking our shoes off from a slight slick puddle where the street met the sidewalk. The line past the bouncer wasn’t too long and was moving quickly enough. The pause was enough to put me at eye level with the lovers from a minute ago.
I hated that voyeuristic part of me, but it was what made me a writer. I looked over at them—the woman’s voice was growing more and more heated. My gaze drifted past the man’s shoulders and met his girl. Her eyes met mine, and it felt like I’d been punched in the chest suddenly.
Her face was a scowl, a twisted gnarled hateful grimace that seemed to pulse her pain out from her like a fountain. I clutched my neck, turning away, a sudden spasm in my throat. Whatever this man had done to her, he’d fucked up in some gargantuan way, some primordially evil way, even if he didn’t mean to. I could tell. And having been on that side of things, I thought: Good fucking luck, and turned away.
I could feel eyes glaring at me as I went through the line, and before I hit the bouncer, I turned and saw the woman was still glaring. Now her angry attention was directly on me. And how funny, I thought, in the half-instant our eyes locked. What did I ever do to you?
And then Tamara grabbed my arm, and we were in, the music throbbing in my veins and the lights of the club dazzling my senses. The thrum of people and live music sent tingles down my spine. The blueish purple stage lights and cigarette smoke from the smoker’s hole out front wafted around us in a cloud. It was like walking into some kind of faerie realm.
And still. I could not help but think about the woman’s hateful eyes…
Tamara screamed with excitement at a group of people our age.
