She walked into the bar just after midnight wearing a red velvet jacket over a black dress. She had no umbrella, rain still shining on her shoulders, and ordered bourbon neat. A man three seats away watched her for ten minutes. She knew. He bought her a drink. She didn’t touch it. “Be careful who you buy drinks for,” she told him. When she walked outside, he followed. Beneath the hotel lights she lit a cigarette and looked back at him. “You coming?” she asked. “Where?” “Anywhere.”
They walked two blocks. She asked why he had picked her. He told her it was because she looked like a woman who never learned. In the hotel room there were two drinks, a loosened tie, a jacket thrown over a chair. Then she opened a drawer and showed him a gun. “Relax,” she said. “It’s not for you.” She placed the gun on the table beside his phone. “Now we can talk.” That was when he understood that the encounter had never been chance. She had known his name before he entered the bar. She had chosen him deliberately.
At 3:17 she left. The rain had stopped. The gun was gone. So was his phone. He looked into the mirror. Written across the glass were five words: “Next time, buy your own drink.”
Next time, buy your own drink.