Across the room, a woman with a cigarette scar between her collarbones exhaled smoke through her nose. The way her hips rolled when she laughed told me she wasn’t laughing at the joke. She was laughing at me, at the way my pupils dilated when her skirt hitched up her thigh. Exposing her neatly shaved jukebox without scratching the whiskey label but betraying her soul, she whispered in a voice like rusted nails, bringing on the cult of my thumping erection.
Her tongue wet her bottom lip, slow, deliberate. Not an invitation—a challenge. The jukebox skipped, a record needle catching on a warped groove. Behind her, the neon “Miller High Life” sign buzzed like a dying wasp. She leaned forward, and the streetlight through the window painted her collarbone scar silver. “You look like a man who knows how to keep a secret,” she said. Her knee brushed my erection beneath the table. The contact burned through my slacks.
The bartender dropped a glass. It shattered like a gunshot. Nobody flinched. Her fingers traced the rim of her glass, collecting condensation. “They say you left something behind tonight.” She tilted her head toward the alley. A drop of sweat slid down my temple. The humidity wasn’t that bad—my body knew before my brain did. She wasn’t hunting for strange. She was the strange.
Her knee pressed harder. The pain sharpened into something sweet. Under the table, her heel hooked around my calf. The straps cut into my skin. I could taste her lipstick in the air—cherry turned metallic. When she smiled, her canine caught the light. Too sharp. Not human. The scar between her collarbones pulsed faintly, the color of a fresh bruise.
The bartender mopped up broken glass with deliberate strokes. His rag left smears like old blood. I watched his shoulders tense when the woman’s hand slid into my pocket. Her fingers closed around my switchblade—cold steel against my thigh. She knew I wouldn’t stop her. The jukebox stuttered again, playing the same three notes of a trumpet solo on loop. Static clung to my teeth.
She withdrew the blade with a magician’s flourish, flicking it open under the table. The edge kissed my inner thigh just above the femoral. A bead of blood welled, hot and insistent. Her nostrils flared. “They also say,” she murmured, “you’re good at disappearing.” The scar on her chest darkened to arterial red. I smelled ozone, the electric charge before a storm breaks. The bar’s fluorescents buzzed louder.
Her knee jerked suddenly—not her own movement. Behind us, the bartender’s hand clamped her shoulder, fingers digging into the hollow above her clavicle. His other hand pressed the snub nose of a revolver against her ribs. The jukebox needle screeched across vinyl. “Last call, sweetheart,” he growled. She went rigid, but her grip on my knife never faltered. Her pupils swallowed the room’s jaundiced light whole.
I exhaled smoke I didn’t remember inhaling. The bartender’s grip slackened for half a second—just enough. Her head snapped back, skull cracking against his nose with a wet crunch. Blood arced across the bar top, spattering the untouched whiskey. She twisted free, my switchblade now hovering at his carotid. The neon sign flickered wildly, casting her scar in strobe-lit crimson. “You always take the wrong side, Sal,” she cooed. The wound on my thigh throbbed in time with her pulse.
Her free hand darted out, snatching my tie. The fabric tightened like a noose. Behind her, the jukebox sputtered back to life—some forgotten jazz standard warped by decades of grime. The siren wailed again, closer now. Too close. Sal’s revolver clattered to the floor. His face went slack, eyes rolling back. The scent hit me then—burnt almonds beneath the blood. Cyanide sweat beading on his forehead. My balls crawled upward.
