The Lonely Hunter by Aimée Lutkin

Author:Aimée Lutkin [Lutkin, Aimée]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

This guy was aware of these two important hurdles. He’d caught me at an alert moment and pressed that advantage.

How about I come to meet you at a bar, I’ll get in a car right now, and there’s absolutely no pressure to do anything, he wrote.

Staring at the phone in my hand, I pondered whether or not to say yes to meeting some passing wacko after midnight when I had work in the morning. I looked at Bert, who blinked at me slowly. Then, suddenly, I felt the brisk wind of the dying season howl over me. Summer was ending. Life was fleeting. Chances for kissing a cute man were passing me by. Would I meet the winter of my life without having run through the green fields?

Okay, I wrote. But if you’re not in a car by 12:30, forget it.

I gave him the address for the Georgiana, cleaned the kitty litter, took out the garbage, and even managed to put on pants before running downstairs. I arrived right behind him, recognizing his hair as he stepped out of a cab in front of the bar. We turned toward each other in the doorway and embraced as we evaluated the reality against the pictures. Then we entered, conspicuous in the almost empty establishment, clearly there for a hookup. He had very lovely skin, showing the heat in his cheeks, the slight film of sweat at his temples. He had nice arms, pretty eyes, and a heavy gold ring on his pointer finger, a flamboyant adornment incongruous to his simple hipster aesthetic. I decided right away that unless he said something absolutely incriminating in the next five minutes, it was going to happen.

I watched him drink whiskey on ice as we tried to cover whatever needed to be said before making a final decision. He was an actor, in town to discuss producing some project or other. Having grown up among artists with media ambitions, I recognized someone trying to seem more successful and important than they actually are, which was fine. I was not as successful or important as I wished I was either, and it ultimately didn’t matter very much to me who he would be tomorrow, when he returned wherever he had come from.

I had always been very attracted to the superficial charm of people who perform for a living. Their work demands a certain ability to observe others and respond well, to re-create a simulacrum of a human person that disguises their actual vulnerabilities. Something in me loved to search for and touch the spots where the real person showed through. I wanted to split their shells like I was shucking an oyster, throwing defenses aside and looking at the wriggling pink matter within.

Or I just knew an actor, a good one, would fake whatever you wanted or needed in the moment, which is useful when you’re trying to have a pleasant one-time encounter. It was also great that this man would be leaving my city in less than twelve hours.

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