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Her glass clinked against mine as she sat beside me at the bar.

“Another one, Joe,” she said, her voice slightly slurred by what I assumed was more than just a single previous one.

I glanced up from my own glass towards the mirror behind the bar, keeping my head down. She had dark hair; even darker eyes, though that could’ve been due to the extreme lack of light in the bar. Joe, and more importantly, Joe’s patrons, liked it dark.

She had too much make-up on her small, pixie-ish face. The way her big, dark eyes were surrounded by eye shadow made me think of a raccoon I saw once as a kid, in a forest near home.

Her raven hair was cut short, her bangs longer, parted, framing her face in shadow. Her arms were bare and she shivered as she waited for Joe to pour her drink, though, given the goose bumps I was able to make out in the darkness, I doubted it would be able to warm her.

She pulled a slim, silver cigarette case from her small purse, along with a chrome Zippo. With simple precision, she slid a cigarette from its sheath and slipped it between her lips. With a flick of her fingers, the lighter sparked, its flame twisting and leaping in the dark, begging to be freed from its chrome-plated prison. She brought the fire up, illuminating her face, as she lit the cigarette. Briefly, beneath the make-up she wore, I thought I could see some discoloration around her perfectly-formed cheekbones; a mass of dark purple, the skin slightly puffy, as if bruised.

Her eyes, as I had originally thought, were indeed very dark, pools of inky blackness. In that one stolen glance, I knew I could easily drown in those pools if I let myself.

As quickly as it appeared, the flame vanished, chased away by the ghosts of the bar, fearful of the light. Her face slipped back into darkness, the smoke from her cigarette forming a halo of dust particles above her head.

On her right arm I could barely discern a tattoo, though its design was lost in the shadows of the bar.

Joe finished pouring and she nodded to him. I figured she’d get up, go back to her table, leaving me here to make love to her memory, but she sat there, fingering her glass, her head bowed, peering into the murky liquid.

“Like what you see?”

I froze, my heart pounding in my chest like a sledgehammer I was sure could be heard a mile away. She wasn’t looking into her glass. She was looking into the mirror, her reflected gaze fixed on me.

“I, uh…what?” I stammered embarrassed by my voyeurism.

She turned towards me then, slowly, as if any sudden movement would upset her delicate, drunken balance and send her sprawling to the floor.

“I think you heard me, Chief.” Her eyes drilled holes in me as she slowly lifted her glass to her blood-red lips. She sipped, shivering as the liquid burned its way down her throat. A smile spread across her face, her eyes dancing, laughing in the darkness.

“I, um, I’m sorry…for, uh, for staring.” I started, unsure of what I was getting myself into. The way she was looking at me, I felt a twinge of fear deep inside.

“No you’re not,” she said, her small voice almost childlike in its playfulness, “you’re just sorry you got caught.”

She was wrong, though. I wasn’t sorry. A little scared, maybe, but the emotion I felt more than any other right then was excitement, which was, I was sure, a result of the whiskey I had been drinking as much as it was her.

“What, uh, what’s your name?” I asked, downing the rest of my whiskey, feeling its liquid courage warm me. I signaled Joe for another.

“Does it matter?” She smiled a small, sad smile, her eyes slowly drifting out of focus. She shivered almost imperceptibly, her mind obviously somewhere else. I was beginning to think it was somewhere not good.

Just as quickly as she faded out, she was back. Her face bright and inviting, her doe eyes back on me. She sipped her drink and I felt something rubbing against my calf. I didn’t have to look to know what it was.

This girl was trouble. I’m not that much of an idiot. I can tell these things. I had my own problems. I didn’t need to get wrapped up in someone else’s shit. I kept telling myself that over and over, but deep inside I knew it was an exercise in futility. I have this thing, this condition. I always suspected it would one day be my downfall. Maybe this is the day.

I’ve always been drawn to girls who have…issues. Or maybe they’re drawn to me. Our paths keep crossing, is all I know, me and these girls, all my life. Whether they come from abusive homes, or have abusive relationships, alcohol problems, drug addiction, you name it, I find them. There isn’t an inner demon out there that I haven’t met. And it’s always up to me to fix them.

“Well, I have to call you something, don’t I?”

She grinned impishly, leaning forward, which caused her foot to fall away from my leg. I missed its touch the moment it was gone. This close to her, I could smell her perfume, though it was slightly masked by the alcohol on her breath. It smelled faintly of lilacs. “You can call me whatever you want, Chief.”

Leaning forward as she was, in the state she was in, it was only a matter of time before she lost her balance. She flailed her arms out in front of her, grasping the air for something to hold onto. I reached out to stop her fall, nearly tumbling to the ground myself. Her left hand snagged my shoulder, pulling me towards her while stopping her fall at the same time. Her right hand landed between my legs, where I felt a brief squeeze before she slid her hand onto my thigh. She righted herself inches from me, her flushed cheek brushing mine, her breath warm against my ear. “My hero,” she whispered.

I knew where this was heading, where she was leading me, where I was following, as if I were on a leash. I could see it clearly; a writhing mass of sheets and squeaking bed springs, the awkward, hung over morning after. My feeling like shit for taking advantage of a situation placed, quite literally, in my lap; her feeling used and screaming at me before lapsing into ashamed tears. She would pour her guts out to me, her every problem on this earth and she’d look at me with those big, dark eyes and I’d melt. I’d have no course of action other than to attempt to right whatever wrongs have been inflicted upon her.

Looking at her then, the smoke from her cigarette a halo around her head, her eyes searching my own, pleading with me, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the next morning. I didn’t care about whoever had marred her milky skin. All I cared about was making the pain go away, consequences be damned. I knew I already was.

“Your place or mine?”


I awoke in the middle of the night to the thunderous noise of thousands of raindrops splattering against my bedroom window. Lightning flashed, illuminating the torrent of water cascading in sheets down the pane. Thunder rumbled slowly after, halfheartedly chasing the electricity across the sky.

Something shifted next to me and I glanced down at the curled up, rumpled silhouette that had stolen my sheets in her sleep. The periodic bursts of light revealed her sleeping form wrapped tightly in a cocoon of cotton, her dark, tousled hair a stark contrast to the whiteness of the pillow, like a small bottle of ink splashed by an artist against a blank canvas.

Barely visible against the sheet was a pale shoulder, soft and smooth, the tattoo I caught sight of in the bar, and only briefly glimpsed earlier, now lay there, quiet and still. It was a faerie, I could see, bright with yellows and oranges, sitting in a tree, against a backdrop of greens and browns. A mischievous grin played across her face, dark, sorrowful eyes peering out from behind even darker bangs. She looked a lot like her owner, I thought, though that could have been the shadows caused by the flickering light playing with my mind.

A loud crash of thunder reverberated through the room. I could feel its echo deep in my heart, like the thumping of bass when you stand too close to the speakers at a club. She felt it, too. She stirred in her sleep, and turned over, whispering something so softly, I wasn’t sure I heard anything at all. I cocked my head towards her, straining to hear over the cacophony outside.

“Hold me…”

I slid my arms around her, felt her cold skin shivering against my chest, and let the booze still running through my veins overtake me. I welcomed its dark warmth, falling asleep with a drunken promise on my lips: Whoever had done this to her had better pray they never meet me in a dark alley.


The next thing I knew, the morning sun was piercing my eyelids the way a warm knife slides through butter. As consciousness slowly reclaimed me, memories of the previous night flooded my mind. I remember brief flashes of trembling skin, moist with sweat; of hot breath against my neck and chest, the salt of tears in my throat; of quiet gasps and cries in the dark, in rhythm to the beating of two lost and frightened hearts.

My head throbbed as I gingerly sat up, still feeling the whiskey from last night. I blinked my eyes a few times in a futile attempt to clear the fog. “Good morn-,” I began, looking down beside me, coming up short with a start. Where once an angel lay I saw only air, a faint outline of her still playing in my thoughts. “What the hell?”

I got up and looked out into the living room, straining to hear something, anything, but with no luck. She was gone, in and out of my life in less time than it takes to get an oil change. I never did get her name.

The hot spray from the shower felt good against my skin, washing away the sex and sweat. I stood there for a long time with my head down, letting the water flow over me. It felt good, little daggers of heat stabbing into my head and neck.

Stepping from the shower, I grabbed a towel and began to dry off. I wiped the fog away from the mirror and what I saw staring back wasn’t pretty; old-looking, slate gray eyes, rimmed with blood, two days worth of dark stubble, and a mess of brown hair already sprinkled with age. “You dumb fuck,” I mumbled to myself, “what, you though she was going to want to stay with you? In this dump? You should know better than that. No dame would be caught dead in a place like this with a guy like you. You’re lucky the lighting is so bad at Joe’s and that she didn’t get a good look at you.”

While feeling sorry for myself, I noticed a few tiny bruises scattered around my neck and chest. I gently ran my fingers over the bite marks, remembering her warm breath and her soft moans, nearly whimpers in the dark. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret and sadness. I hadn’t really thought she’d want to stay with me. But it would have been nice if she had.

Not quite finished feeling sorry for myself, I wrapped the towel around my waist and headed for the kitchen. My head still throbbed from last night and I needed my fix. I was surprised to find a fresh pot of coffee waiting, my white “I Heart NY” mug, a gift from my mother years back, sitting beside the coffee maker.

I walked to the counter and was about to pick up the mug when I saw a slip of paper sticking out from beneath it. My heart immediately began to pound in my chest. Why was I so nervous? I raised the mug and noticed that her lips, dark and red, had stained one side of it. It even smelled faintly of her. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to wash it again.

The folded piece of paper just sat there, taunting me. I could see the curve of her handwriting through the thin scrap, but couldn’t make out what it said. Hands trembling (from the chill, I told myself), I picked up the piece of paper and slowly unfolded it, afraid of what I was about to read.

“Thank you,” it read, in the kind of beautiful, elaborate handwriting most guys can only marvel at and never master, but women seem to do with ease. It was signed “Ricki,” a small, cheesy heart dotting the second “I,” like the pretty high school girls would write in your year book, a little tease, knowing they’d never see you again. You never minded, though, welcoming the tease. Hope, even false hope, is sometimes all you have to cling to.

I stood there wearing only a towel and stared at this little scrap of paper, mesmerized by her perfect handwriting, my eyes fixated on her name. I could hear it echoing back and forth in my head as I tried to put her voice to it. Ricki. Ricki. Ricki. Where the hell did you go, Ricki? At least I knew her name.