Last Call For Cheaters

At the bar, a man in a navy suit lifted his drink and rubbed his thumb over the pale groove on his finger. Mattie marked him, then watched the woman beside him laugh too loudly at something he said. Not his wife. Too attentive. Too careful.

Across the room, a broad man with silver at his temples sat alone beneath a framed photograph of the city at night. His left hand rested on the table, wedding ring visible. He checked his phone, frowned, and turned it facedown.

Mattie ordered champagne.

The man looked over before the glass arrived.

She let him look once. Then she turned toward the pianist.

A minute later, he looked again.

“Beautiful song,” he said when the bartender placed her glass down.

“It is,” Mattie said.

“You know it?”

“I know what it wants to be.”

He smiled, uncertain whether she had complimented him. His teeth were very white. One front tooth had a faint gray line near the gum.

“Evan,” he said.

She touched two fingers to the stem of her glass. “Mattie.”

“Are you waiting for someone?”

“No.”

The answer pleased him. She could see it settle into his shoulders.

He glanced toward the empty stool beside her. “May I?”

“You already did.”

He laughed and sat.

Up close, he carried the clean, expensive scent of cedar and rain. His ring was platinum, broad and polished. There was a faint indentation beside it, as if he had taken it off recently and put it back on for appearance.

“What brings you here alone?” he asked.

“The same thing that brings everyone here.”

“Bad judgment?”

“Good lighting.”

His laugh came easier this time. He ordered another drink, then leaned toward her as though the room had become suddenly private.

For several minutes, he gave her harmless facts. He worked in commercial real estate. He had an apartment near the river. He hated traffic. He liked old movies and women who didn’t ask too many questions.

Mattie let him talk.

The first lie usually arrived dressed as a complaint.

“My wife thinks I’m working tonight,” he said.

There it was.

Mattie lowered her eyes to her champagne. “Are you?”

“Technically.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“She makes everything exhausting.” Evan rolled the glass between his palms. “We’ve been over for a long time. We’re separated, really. Just not officially.”

Mattie looked at his ring.

“Separated people usually stop wearing those.”

He glanced down as if surprised to find it there. “Habit.”

“Of course.”

“She’s seeing someone too.”

“Is she?”

“I’m sure of it.”

He said it with the confidence of a man who had never needed proof to accuse another person.

Mattie took a sip. The champagne was dry and sharp against her tongue. “What’s her name?”

The question caught him. Only for a second, but it was enough.

“Laura.”

“And where does Laura live?”

His expression tightened. “Why?”

“Because if you’re separated, she must live somewhere.”

He studied her, perhaps deciding whether this was flirtation or interrogation. Mattie held his gaze and smiled with the same easy softness that had brought him across the room.

“Westhaven,” he said at last. “Near the park.”

“Does she know you’re here?”

“Mattie.”

“Does she?”

Evan’s mouth curved. “You’re dangerous.”

“No. I’m curious.”

“She knows the marriage is finished.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

His phone vibrated on the bar. The screen lit with a woman’s name.

Laura.

Mattie saw it before he turned the phone over.

Evan’s face changed. Irritation first, then calculation. He silenced the call.

“She worries too much,” he said.

“Or she knows you.”

“She knows what she wants to know.”

“And what is that?”

“That I’ll come home.”

Mattie let the silence widen.

The bar pressed around them, loud and glittering. A server brushed past with a tray of martinis. Someone at a nearby table dropped a fork. The pianist moved into a slower song, the notes falling one by one like coins into a dark well.

Evan touched her wrist.

His fingers were warm. His wedding ring scraped lightly against her skin.

“I don’t want to talk about Laura,” he said.

“Then don’t.”

“I’d rather talk about you.”

“There isn’t much to say.”

“I doubt that.”

He looked past her shoulder toward the exit, then back. His decision had already been made. Mattie could almost hear it clicking into place.

“Do you live nearby?” he asked.

“Close enough.”

“Would you let me take you home?”

“No.”

The disappointment crossed his face so quickly it became funny.

Then she smiled.

“Unless you’d rather come to mine.”

He stared at her.

Mattie finished her champagne. “You said you didn’t want to talk about Laura.”

“I don’t.”

“Then stop looking at your phone.”

He turned it facedown again.

When they stood, the room seemed to tilt around them. Mattie slipped into her coat and felt the familiar steadiness return. The plan was simple. The night was contained. Evan had a wife. Laura existed. Laura had called. Evan had lied.

A marriage had been confirmed.

At the door, a woman sitting alone near the coat check looked up.

She was perhaps thirty, with dark hair pinned loosely at her neck and a sketchbook open beside her drink. Her eyes lingered on Mattie’s face.

Not on Evan.

On Mattie.

For a moment, their gazes met.

The woman’s pencil stopped moving.

Mattie gave her the easy smile.

The woman did not smile back.

Outside, downtown glittered under a thin rain. Evan’s car waited at the curb, black and polished, its interior glowing blue when he opened the door.

As Mattie slid inside, she looked back through the glass.

The woman from the coat check was standing now. She watched from beneath the gold light of The Velvet Hour, one hand pressed against the edge of her sketchbook.

Mattie raised two fingers in farewell.

The woman’s face had gone pale.

• * *

Evan’s apartment overlooked the river and contained nothing that suggested Laura had ever been there, except for the photographs.

They stood in silver frames along the console table: Evan and Laura in front of a vineyard, Evan and Laura on a beach, Evan and Laura smiling beneath a winter sky. In every picture, Laura leaned toward him. In none of them did he lean back.

“Beautiful,” Mattie said.

Evan loosened his tie. “The apartment?”

“The photographs.”

He glanced at them and shrugged. “She likes pictures.”

“She looks happy.”

“She’s good at looking happy.”

Mattie set her purse on the marble counter. Her hand remained on it for a moment, feeling the small glass vial tucked inside the lining.

Evan poured two drinks.

“Whiskey?” he asked.

“Whatever you’re having.”

He handed her a glass. The liquor burned warmly down her throat when she tasted it. Evan watched her swallow, then drank his own too quickly.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said.

“What did you expect?”

“Someone younger.”

“Then you’ve had poor expectations.”

He laughed and crossed toward her. His confidence had thinned since the bar. Men often mistook privacy for permission. Evan reached for her waist.

Mattie let him.

His mouth found hers. Cedar, whiskey, the faint bitterness of mint. He pressed closer, and she felt the hard edge of his ring against her ribs.

For one instant, another room rose behind her eyes: a hotel corridor, a woman’s perfume on a man’s shirt, the soft click of a wedding band set on a bedside table.

Then it was gone.

Evan pulled back. “You all right?”

“Perfectly.”

She took his glass from his hand.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping.”

His brow furrowed.

Mattie kissed him again, and while his eyes closed, she tipped the vial into the whiskey. The liquid vanished without a trace. She returned the glass to him.

“Drink,” she whispered.

He did.

Five minutes later, he was talking about Laura again.

“She never understood me,” he said from the sofa.

Mattie sat across from him, her legs crossed, her coat still on. “That must have been difficult.”

“She knew what I was when she married me.”

“What were you?”

“Ambitious.”

“Is that what you call it?”

His eyes struggled to focus. He smiled at her as if she had become the only stable thing in the room.

“You’re very beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“I could leave her.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

His head dipped. “I could.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

He tried to answer. The words tangled. His glass slipped from his fingers and struck the rug, spilling whiskey into the pale fibers.

Mattie rose before he could fall sideways. She caught his shoulder and eased him back against the cushions.

“Laura,” he murmured.

“She’ll be waiting.”

His eyes fluttered.

“Tell her…” He swallowed. “Tell her I’m sorry.”

Mattie looked at the photographs.

“No,” she said. “You never are.”

He stopped breathing sometime after three.

Mattie knew the exact moment because the apartment changed. The refrigerator hummed. Rain tapped the windows. The river moved below, black and indifferent.

She sat beside him until the first gray light entered the room.

Then she lifted his hand and removed the ring.

It came away easily.

In the pale morning, Evan looked younger and less certain, stripped of the animation that had made him seem alive. Mattie placed the ring beside the empty whiskey glass.

“Cheater,” she said.

Her voice sounded almost tender.

At the door, she paused.

A faint black mark showed on the marble counter near her purse. Not from the vial. Not from the whiskey. A narrow crescent, like graphite dragged across stone.

Mattie touched it with one finger.

The woman at The Velvet Hour had been drawing.

She looked back at Evan’s still body.

For the first time in years, the room did not feel entirely hers.

By nine o’clock, the sketch was on a detective’s desk downtown.

By noon, a witness had described the woman who left The Velvet Hour with Evan: platinum-blonde hair, expensive clothes, and an easy smile.

By evening, the description had begun to circulate.

Mattie stood at her apartment window, the city reflected in the glass, and understood that someone had finally looked closely enough to remember her.

End of chapter one. 19 more chapters in the full book.