I became intrigued. Instead of hurrying away, I slowed down and stopped.
“Can we talk?” she said.
“There’s a bar at my hotel. It’s just down the street. We can sit there.”
As we started up the sidewalk, I zipped my coat and put on my gloves. I had no tolerance for the evening chill.
“Since you were at the event, I assume you know who I am,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Pamela Winters. Believe it or not, I’ve come a long way to meet you.”
“And yet you never even got an autograph. So it’s not because of my writing.”
“No, not really.”
“Then this is an interesting mystery.”
Abruptly the cold air stung my sensitive esophagus and I was hit with a paroxysm of coughing. She took my arm as if to steady me, and we walked like that, arms linked, without speaking, until we got inside and sat down in a booth.
I ordered gold tequila on the rocks, and she ordered white wine.
The murmurs of quiet conversations lapped like waves against the silent shore of our isolation from one another.
As the tequila warmed and relaxed me, I began to think I had made a mistake in inviting her to join me.
Abruptly she said, “Do you recognize the name Sarah Winters?”
I tried to think back. “No, but I’m not so good with names.”
“You would have known her about thirty-six years ago in Seattle.”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember much of what happened back then.”
“She worked as a secretary in a transport office. And she was a dancer. She had dark hair kind of like mine.”
The name hadn’t rung a bell, but the description was enough to trigger a memory.
Of course. I’d been waiting at a bus stop. In fact, I was on my way to visit another woman, someone I hooked up with on a semi-regular casual basis. When I saw Sarah standing there I lost focus on my original objective. I sidled up to her and started a conversation. Somehow we worked our way past the bullshit fairly quickly. She had a boyfriend but that was becoming less and less important by the moment By the time the bus arrived, I had lost all interest in keeping my previous appointment. I accompanied Sarah back to her apartment. We poured glasses of wine and sat on the living room floor. We talked for hours. The culmination of the situation was inevitable: we ended up stripping and having sex right there on the floor.