Chapter 1. The Room and the Wine

The restaurant was high-ceilinged and smelled of floor wax and expensive tobacco. She came through the door and the air in the room seemed to change. It was a physical thing, like a shift in the wind before a heavy rain. She wore a dress the color of bull’s blood, and she moved with the easy, dangerous grace of someone who had never known a day of doubt.

​She was blonde and her eyes were very blue and very cold. They were the eyes of a person who looked at the world and saw only things to be used. She did not look for a table; she simply walked until a waiter scrambled to find one for her.

​"Champagne," she said. Her voice was low and carried no weight.

​The waiter brought the bottle. He handled it with the exaggerated care of a man holding a live shell. He pulled the cork and it made a sound like a distant pistol shot. He poured the wine and the bubbles rose fast and tight in the glass.

​

She took the glass by the stem. She did not look at the waiter. She looked at the room, but she saw no one. She drank. She drank the way a thirsty horse drinks at a stream, but with a terrifying elegance. Every movement was meant to be seen. When she tilted her head back, the line of her throat was long and white against the red silk of her collar.

​

"Is she always like that?" the man at the corner table asked. He was older and his hands shook slightly when he lit his cigarette.

​

"She is what she is," his companion said. "She is stunning. That is the beginning and the end of the story."

​"It is a hard way to be."

​"It is the only way she knows."

​The woman in the red dress set the glass down. It made a sharp click against the white linen. She knew they were watching. She liked the watching. It was the only currency she had left that still held its value. She was a woman who lived in the spaces between glances, a creature of the immediate present.

​She did not care for the past and she did not believe in the future. There was only the cold wine, the red dress, and the way the light hit the bubbles in the glass. She took another long drink. It was good wine, and the coldness of it felt clean against the heat of the room.

​

Outside, the sun was going down over the city, turning the buildings the color of old bone. But inside, under the hard electric lights, she was the only thing that was bright. She was a fire that consumed everything and gave nothing back. When the bottle was nearly empty, she stood up. She did not wait for the check. She simply walked out, the red dress snapping around her ankles, leaving the room feeling suddenly very dark and very quiet.