Chapter 1 #2
She has no idea how beautiful she is right now, with her hair slightly mussed about her face, silken blonde strands having come loose even before the dinner rush.
She brushes them away from her glasses, one of the strands getting stuck in the hinge where the arm meets the body.
I notice every detail about this young woman.
I drink her in as if she were a fine wine.
I can hear every word she says clear as a bell, though I am several feet away. I am unseen, a complete shadow in her world that is limited to the ring of light cast by the spider web-ridden bulb above the rear door of the restaurant.
Laura. The name is a reference to the laurel bush, a plant from which Roman emperors used to have wreaths fashioned. Her role in this world was cast from the moment that moniker was bestowed on her. The one who claims her will be the victor.
The weather is starting to cool, and it’s getting dark now. The shadows clothe me as I listen to her call on my laptop.
“Come and get me.”
I grit my jaw as I listen to the way the young man speaks to her. His voice is deep, but the words coming out of his mouth belong to the lips of a whiny man-child.
“No, Dave. I’m not going to come and get you. I don’t even have a car,” she says. Her voice sounds tense. I don’t like that. She shouldn’t be irritated by a man like this. She deserves better in so many ways.
I’ve been watching Laura for quite some time.
She’s a very pretty young lady with a bright mind and a delicate demeanor that I find incredibly appealing.
It’s not a physical quality. She is quite a generously proportioned young lady, but there is something about her that puts me in mind of a doe quivering in the sights of a hunter’s scope.
She is not the most situationally aware young woman, a fact that works to my advantage. I have been in the restaurant with her from time to time. Never in her section. I want to maintain some distance until the time is right.
I will never forget how she looked while working, how she put on a smile when she was taking orders, and how it faded slightly when she stepped away to put the orders in. It still lingered about her lips, a shade of an expression that does not reflect how she really feels.
Laura is afraid. Always. She walks around with a tinge of fear about her at all times. It is the kind of scent a predator cannot help but find appealing. There is perpetually blood in her water.
When she had a quiet moment, I watched her tuck herself into a corner and pull an old book out of the pocket of her apron. I got a glimpse of the cover.
It was an old romance novel. Dog-eared, well-thumbed through. She disappeared into it like it could save her. It endeared her to me in new ways.
We have had so little contact, she and I, but I feel like I already know the core of her. I will know more later on, of course. When we start to really get to know one another, I will discover even deeper layers. The thought makes me nearly salivate with anticipation.
Most of the customers pay little attention to her. She’s pretty, but not in a way that stands out too obviously in a college town. I wonder how they do not see what I see. I especially wonder how the lout on the phone dares to demand anything of her.
“I have to get back to work. We’re not even dating anymore, Dave,” she reminds him. “You have to stop calling me. We’re done.”
“We’re not done,” he says. My teeth slide against one another. My upper lip curls in something that starts as a sneer, but soon becomes a snarl. How dare he have any kind of claim over her.
“We are though,” she says, displaying that little streak of sass that doesn’t come out all that often. Laura works very hard to be polite even when the world is not being fair to her. I’ve seen her swallow her anger several times. She is doing it now.
“I have to go,” she adds. “Bye.”
He starts to say something else, but the call is terminated. I log his number and add it to my other file.
She was not lying. Her break is over and she has to disappear back into the restaurant. For a brief moment, I consider going in and ordering dessert just so I can watch her, but I know I have to be careful. I do not want to become a familiar face to her. I need to keep distance for the moment.
Instead, I wait. Her shift is another four hours.
I busy myself with other work while I wait, enjoying the quiet of the car and the way people pass by without any sense of my presence.
There is something delicious about being unseen.
I will have to expose myself soon, and that will add a new layer of intensity to this little game.
But I am enjoying this part a great deal.
My pulse spikes when I see Laura leave through the back door. She looks tired, but satisfied. She seems to enjoy her job. I like that about her. It takes a certain kind of temperament to truly enjoy waitressing.
I watch her walk across the parking lot, cross the street, and take up her customary position at the bus stop, waiting for a bus that might arrive in five minutes if she is lucky, or twenty if I am.
More time to watch her gives me deep satisfaction.
It is like god himself is granting me a little more time with one of his greatest works.
She’s leaning up against the bus shelter reading that romance novel now. I wonder how many times she’s read it. Dozens, at least. Hundreds, more likely.
There are three seats inside the shelter. She’s not taking any of them, even after a long shift at work that followed a full day of school. This girl works every hour she gets, aside from the ones where she is forced to sleep.
Now she is pressed up against the edge of the scratched and grafitti’d Plexiglas, the book held up close to her face.
She needs a new glasses prescription. I noticed the way she squinted when she was trying to help customers with the menu.
I should take her to my optometrist and get her a cute pair of new frames if she wants them.
The ones she’s wearing are nice, but look worn.
The same can be said of many of her things.
Almost nothing Laura owns is new. She thrifts much of her attire, and wears it until it cannot be worn any longer.
This does not make her any less stylish.
She has an eye for aesthetics that I very much admire.
The bus pulls up. Tires screech, complaining from lack of maintenance. I can see a series of tired people sitting staring out the window.
She deserves to have someone drive her everywhere she needs to go. She deserves to be put on pretty display. Soon she will know what it is to be truly cherished. The time is coming, sooner than she thinks.
The bus rumbles off and I put my car in gear and slide into the night, following the bus. At each stop, I pull in behind and wait for it to go again. If the driver were paying attention, he might notice he was being followed. But he’s not interested in what’s behind him.
She goes to the main station, and I could lose her there when she changes buses, but I pick her up on the 56 out toward Westbrook.
She commutes an hour each way to get to her waitress job.
She cannot afford to live in traditional campus housing.
It’s too expensive. But if you go further out to the other side of the city, you can find places to live that even a full-time student with a part-time job can afford.
If I were an impatient man, I would have taken her already. But I know how to draw out enjoyment. I know that all of this waiting, this watching is going to pay off, and very, very soon.
I park outside her building, around the back, where there are no street lights and no security cameras.
I am invisible here. And I wait again, this time with a growing excitement.
Tonight is the night I begin to teach Laura a lesson she very much needs to learn.
Teach might be the wrong word. Tonight I plan to start training her to be mine.
I will not be gentle, but I will be thorough.
Her apartment is a fourth floor walkup. The security door is propped open with a brick, even at eleven p.m. She moves it on her way in, but I already know the door code.
I walk up the stairs, to her apartment.
I let myself in.