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Lola met me on an fall Friday night below the city lights. I'd met her years before.
She met me on a night when her breath smelled like sweet tequila, mine like the cheap beers I'd drink out in the country, overlooking acres of someone else's dreams, not mine of course.
I met her on a night when a pretty face on a city street caught my eye, became etched into my mind, didn't disappear until I learned every last thing about it.
In a flannel and workman's jeans, I didn't fit in any. But she did. Dark hair, blue eyes that sparkled in the nightclub. A smile brighter than the strobe lights. I caught her eye, gave her a wink. Girls like her, they're romantics. They see a fellow like me and swoon of.
She worked mostly for a local strip club. Me ? I played in a band. Sorry, used to. She Lived in an apartment with a small yappy dog, at least until recently. I hate yappy dogs.
She loved cheesy pickup lines. Guys in flannels. Loved the five-o'clock stubble I had on my face.
She didn't need to tell me all that.
I already knew.
She loved a bit of confidence in a guy, so when I strode across the room and put a hand on her hip, I knew she wouldn't mind the smell of cheap beer and old Cologne.
"Hello," I said.
"Hello," she said back. Her voice sounded just like it did on the phone. Less confused, maybe. More alluring.
"You here alone?"
"For a guy like you, I could be," she said.
And it started like a lighter to a cigarette, the dull love that burnt on only one side.
I talked, she laughed. I smiled, and she couldn't help but smile back. I'd do all the things she wanted a man to do, then wink and play it off when she asked me how I knew.
"I just know," I'd say. I'd watched for long enough.
For a heartbeat and a half, it looked like I'd met my match. She'd take my phone, scroll through pictures of a hundred women and make me delete every last one. Memories, gone like the smoke of one last cigarette on an evening breeze.
Gone like the smoke rising from a fire born of their clothes.
She'd enter my house without knocking, ask about the collections I kept.
Psycho.
That's what people called girls like her.
Girls who couldn't keep from snooping.
Girls whose temper burnt like dry kindling in the hollowed heat
And just as fast, that temper would disappear to embers.
She'd turn romantic. Sweet as a honey, until the sting of a bee. She'd ask questions. Romantic questions, I guess.
"Why'd you choose me when you saw me at the bar?"
As if it hadn't all been written in the sand long before she ever met me.
"What was I wearing?"
That skirt, the one her ex loved. Same perfume, too.
She figured if i had liked it, other guys would, too. I didn't care for it.
"What caught youre eye about me?"
Oh, honey. It was never what caught my eye about you, it was the drunken thoughts and wild drugs that made glance at you.
finally answered to nothing but the moonlight as another shovelful of dirt fell on her body.
