Max Collins - Girl Most Likely

So you sit awhile and wonder if she’ll disappear with your money. Maybe Tony will show up with your glass of wine.

But it’s Jasmine who comes, bringing a bottle and a glass. She sets it before you, and takes the seat beside you. Then she fills the glass all the way, which is what Frank Sinatra is singing. You sip. Then she looks around surreptitiously and does the same — an under-drinking-age girl, stealing sips. How much sweeter the wine tastes because of that.

You speak very softly. It’s barely audible above “Ol’ Blue Eyes.” You tell her how much you miss her. How often you think of her.

“I think of you, too,” she admits.

“That makes me happy.”

“But I think we both know it was wrong. You told me so yourself. You told me how wonderful it had been, how much you’d cherish the memories. But that we would have to go our separate ways. You were kind about it. Sweet, even. But it hurt. Do you know how much it hurt?”

You put sadness in your smile. “Wasn’t it Roy Orbison who said, ‘Love Hurts’?”

“... I think it was Nazareth.”

She steals a sip. Yours takes its time.

Then she says, “We haven’t spoken since then. Except when you and your family were here and I took your order. Do you know how hard it was for me to see you living a life like that without me? But at the same time... how could I deny you that? No. I was in the wrong. I made the first move.”

They always did. They always thought they did. You were really good at maneuvering that. Which always paid off, when it came time to talk about blame.

“I’m not here,” you say, after a sip of wine, “to start things up again... as hard a reality as that is to face. You have a new love in your life. I saw you at the reunion.”

She shrugs. “We’re not real serious yet. Getting there, maybe, but... not like we were. Maybe that’ll happen. I know I haven’t really been in love since...”

Her lovely brown eyes are swimming with tears. That’s good! That’s perfect.

You consider touching her hand, but think better of it. If Tony should peek in, and saw that, you would have to call it off. They trade sips.

“Sweetheart,” you say, “I just had to talk to you because... well, you’ve been much on my mind.”

“I have?”

“You have. After what happened to that reporter from Chicago, Astrid Lund—”

“She was from here, you know. One of the girls I room with had a sister who went to school with her. She was on TV in Chicago, I guess, really kind of a big deal.”

“Yes, I know. I wanted to make sure you weren’t too upset about it.”

“Why would I be?”

“Well, that boy you’re seeing, I don’t know if you know this, but he used to date her. The dead girl.”

When she was living.

“I knew that,” Jasmine says. “But that’s old news.”

You almost smile at that — Astrid the big-time broadcast journalist... old news.

“I think,” you say, “that everyone at the reunion has been questioned by the police. I know I was.”

“Me, too!”

“Oh?”

“Earlier today. Right here. Police chief and her father.”

“I hope you weren’t too alarmed.”

“No. It was just a matter of giving them... I guess you’d say an alibi for Jerry.”

“He was with you after the reunion?”

She seemed embarrassed now. “Yes, I, uh... we spent the night.”

“You’re not just saying that to make me jealous.”

“No! No. You didn’t have anything to do with it. Uh... that sounded wrong. I didn’t mean anything by it. But you must know I’ve gone on with my life. I had to. And I’ve never told a soul about us. Not a soul.”

You sip wine. “The age difference, I’m afraid, would have people judging us.”

She sips wine. “That’s what I think. It’s not fair. So what if I was sixteen? Some places people marry younger than that!”

Yes, but seventeen is the age of consent in Illinois. You’d been all too aware of that, but not enough for it to matter.

She asks, “Is your... situation at home better now?”

“Not really,” you say. “But I have to think of the bigger picture.”

“Oh, I know. I don’t blame you. I really don’t.”

“Good.” You put concern in your expression. “Really, I just wanted to make sure this horrible event hadn’t upset you terribly.”

“I don’t consider what we had to be horrible at all!”

“I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about what happened to the Lund girl.”

“Oh. Well, yes.”

Again you trade sips, hers cautious, yours not.

“By the way,” you say, “did anyone see you and Jerry together after the reunion? I mean, if you’ll forgive me for snooping, where did you... wind up?”

“My apartment. Over Honest John’s Trading Post? But my roommates weren’t around.”

“Not even the next morning?”

“No. I know how to be discreet. You know that.”

She has her last sip of wine and says, “Well, better say good night. There are a few things I need to take care of before closing.”

Dino is singing “Arrivederci Roma.”

You gesture to the sound. “What he said.”

That makes her smile.

She is talking to Tony at the register by his station when you pass, nodding to the host, but not acknowledging Jasmine, who does not even glance at you. She was right — she always was good at discretion.

You slip outside.

The night is cold. Colder. You have a coat on, but not the coat you need. You move the car, parking it on Bench Street. You go around to the trunk. You glance about — nothing around but the rear of stores and the front of churches, neither doing business right now. No traffic at all.

You pop the trunk. Exchange your coat for the black hooded raincoat. Climb into it. Again, it’s a new one, the previous one discarded in a dumpster in Dubuque. You take out the fresh pair of kitchen gloves and snug them on. You’re getting used to the feel. The butcher knife you had not needed with Astrid is here for you now.

You shut the trunk and head down the concrete stairs. The world is not just cold but empty and almost silent, just some distant bar noise. You are at Main now. You tuck into the trees of the park-like area adjacent and wait as a couple of cars glide by. Through the trees you have a view on Vinny Vanucchi’s. You hear a door open and a good-night exchange between Jasmine to Tony, clear yet distant in the chill.

You rush across the street.

Along the side wall of Honest John’s Trading Post a wrought-iron stairway with wooden steps rises to the door to the apartment where Jasmine and two other girls live. You know that already. You do your homework.

You rush up the steps, your running shoes making a little noise but not loud, not echoing. At the landing where her apartment door awaits, you tuck yourself into the recession. You wait. Not long.

Because she comes up just as quickly as you had but with no worry about being heard. Her feet are gunshots — she’s in shoes not sneakers — and you count her steps, because you know how many there are. Homework.

And when she reaches the landing, you raise the knife and jump out and bring the blade down.

But without her in front of you, to judge, you only slash the sleeve of her red thermal jacket. There’s enough street light conspiring with a nearly full moon to show you her face as her eyes go so wide they might have fallen from her face, dark brown centers and stark white in an almost as white face, her mouth open in a silent scream.

She reacts quickly and well, you have to hand her that, turning and running down those stairs and by the time she reaches the sidewalk she is screaming. It resonates through the canyon of the facing buildings. You are close behind her but not close enough to strike, though as she runs across the street, she pauses, whether to duck any car that might be coming or to flag one down, only there isn’t any car, and when she starts running again, she stumbles a little.