I followed just behind. It was hot, the city buzzed. It could have been any city. She walked, feigning a desire to get from here to there. I zoned the small of her back, just above her tight shorts. Looking for what? Expecting. Surely not a spider, as big as my hand, moving up? It was impossibly black, and must have been a tattoo, and yet. I closed in. She walked like a woman used to being caboosed. And I liked being the caboose for a time. Far too short a time as it happened, for in a blink, she was gone.
But where? Perhaps in that bar. It could have been any bar. I don’t normally enter bars. But who’s normal. I entered. She was seated at the bar, with a full shot glass in front of her. The stool to her left was empty. I filled it. Ordered a beer, too expensive for the glass. She ignored me, lifting the shot glass and draining it in one swallow. It could have been any whisky. She slid from the stool, turned towards me, bending a little, her behind behind, the spider secretted.
”Do you like my spider?” She asked. Her dark eyes spun like tiny figure skaters in death spirals. I was woozy and couldn’t respond. She added, “Was he coming or going?”
“Going,” I said. She straightened, put her hand on her hip like some World War II pinup, and said with a kind of Marlene Dietrich breathiness, “Sometimes he’s coming.” She turned and walked away, her lower back completely uninhabited.
I started to drain my glass of ale as she had her whisky, when about halfway, I noticed a black spider at the bottom, probably just etched into the glass.
It could have been any coincidence.