2005-03-16 - 9:56 a.m.
The first time I saw Eva Mills she was standing off the end of the bar in The Pines wearing a pale peach evening gown that was as elegant as it was tightly conforming, accentuating her figure as well as her dark hair and eyes. Compared to the Thursday night karaoke crowd she looked out of place, as if the royal carriage had detoured on the way to the ball. But despite the slightly excessive elegance in her mode of dress, the subtle sway of her hips as she lip-synched silently to the music seemed to prove she belonged. She smiled warmly at people she knew, and every now and then tilted her head to one side, allowing her neck to be kissed by the young man waiting beside her.
A friend discovered her tending bar one day on his way home from work. “If I weren’t married…” and he let the thought trail off, ripe with implication.
That midsummer night I saw what he meant for myself.
“Who is that?” I asked, speaking to the young woman beside me during a lull in the music. She too had dressed somewhat extravagantly, wearing high heels, a medium-short black skirt with black patent leather belt and black button-up blouse. My first words had been to say black was a good color for. She’d murmured, “Thanks, friend,” clicking the neck of her bottle against mine before starting to idly scratch at the beer label again with her thumbnail, waiting, it seemed, for something better to do. She paused at the question, frowning quizzically, holding her thumb still against the bottle as she tried to determine who I meant. I looked discretely towards the couple standing just beyond the far end of the bar.
“The beauty,” I nodded. “Over there.”
“You don’t know?” She smirked as she turned back around, resuming work on her label. “I thought everybody knew Eva. But that guy with her, I haven’t a clue.”
We began to talk some more then, having found a subject we could discuss with an abstract yet mutual interest. Eventually we moved to a table in the elevated dining area overlooking the main floor. It was darker here, a little quieter, a little more intimate despite the bad music. Two half drunk women and a man were singing into a microphone at the far side of the scuffed, worn dance floor, following as best they could the promptings of a monitor on the wall: "One day in September love came falling down on me..." We talked in snatches between songs, my new acquaintance scratching away at the label on her bottle the whole time. She said she was a lawyer. She did okay. Apparently at one point in the recent past she had tried to help Eva, had apparently hired her, to no avail. She alluded disapprovingly to a certain undefined character flaw which never fails to prevent some people from getting ahead. Finally, in the murmuring half-silence, I asked if she wanted to go outside for a walk. She said she hardly knew me, scraped at her beer label a little more, then sighed, “Why the hell not?”
We walked around in the dark behind the bar for a bit while she smoked a cigarette. She looked sexy doing it, I confess. I’ve always had a thing, theoretically at least, for a smoking woman in black. But when we kissed all I could taste was that stupid cigarette.
“We could go down to the falls,” I said, after a long silence, but she shook her head. We both knew it wasn’t going to happen.
We walked back towards the front door and she sighed. I felt as if I was letting her down.
“It's like I’m Nick Caraway,” I said, “and you’re the woman golfer.” She looked at me, quizzically.
“Huh?”
“In The Great Gatsby… the two would-be lovers who were peripheral to the main action.” I knew I was being a jerk; there are times I can’t help myself. But whether or not she’d read the book or not, what I said must have made some sort of sense. That or she thought I was just strange and somewhat amusing.
“Okay,” she smiled. “Whatever.”
Either way it didn’t seem to matter. We walked back, hearing the muffled goings-on of the crowd getting louder as we approached the front. She obviously wanted to go in; I didn’t. I stalled, stopping to read a poster on the outside billboard announcing: The Cross-town Cowboys, Sat. Nite. By now neither of us felt much of a dynamic going on. We parted company at the door.
Looking at it one way you could say it was a wasted evening, but I didn't see it like that, because in the weeks to follow the idea of finding Eva occupied my mind and soon became an obsession.
