meditations on a leather-bound journal, pt. ix

She asked me if I was a writer. She said I had a notebook, carried it around, had the band sign it. We were maybe halfway through the wine. She was drinking more than me--I was busy brooding. I think she noticed at first, but eventually she was talking and laughing and I barely had to maintain our conversation.

I stopped and stared at her. In the candlelight she looked like a painting. Red wine, soft light, red hair. Laughing, but sad.

Why did she want to know about the notebook? I told her it was nothing. She asked to read it. I was reluctant, but I said it was okay.

She read aloud from one of the pages. "I'm half drunk. Probably more than half. Took some fellow home after a show. I wasn't too interested in conversation. Just wanted the companionship for a night. So I took him back here, that little hotel on 99. The light burned out as soon as we got in." She laughed. Sounds like us, she said, and put the notebook aside.

And she asked if that was why I took her back here. I didn't write it, I said. I hadn't read that part. I was looking after that for a friend, I said. "Her name was Liana."

She did not, I noticed, care. We finished the wine. She finished the wine. We made love in the flickering candlelight, intertwined like characters in a tawdry romance novel, and she was gone in the morning. It was raining again. And the lights were back on.