A woman July 12 was given a courtesy ride to a Metro North train station in Westchester County after a man she met at a wine bar invited her back to his home. Police say there was a misunderstanding between them and he wanted her gone.
She thought he looked like a possibility the moment she saw him threading his way through the throng of people waiting, some impatiently, to get the bartender’s attention. He was well dressed and at the very least, didn’t appear to be a serial killer or have that helpless hang dog look of the recently divorced or dumped. It was Friday night and Sisters, a new bistro and bottle shop popular with Millennials and Gen Xers, was busy with lonely singles who through a misfortune of fate had no agreeable friends with a home or a share in the Hamptons or the Vineyard or Jersey shore to help them get through what promised to be another sweltering weekend. Anyone with connections or money did whatever they could to escape the city heat and the equally torrid environs of the northern ‘burbs. The only good thing, she thought, about a boiling hot weekend stuck in town was it was a reason to stay lubricated and hydrated and out late. If she got lucky, she might make a new friend with a pool.
He saw her, too, out of the corner of his eye as he was telling the harried bartender his order, a 2023 Division Gamine Grenache. If he was a bit of a wine snob, he was less discerning about female company. She wasn’t bad looking, maybe a little older than what he usually went for, but he could deal. The main thing was she was looking at him, staring actually, which meant he didn’t have to go through the potentially humiliating work of approaching a woman who hadn’t already set her sights on him.
He approached. The conversation was stilted. There was no immediate rapport. He bought her another glass of wine, and then a third. Her choices were mediocre, nothing special. He schooled her a little on better wines. By the time they left Sisters, it was after 10:00. She said she didn’t have a car and had taken the train. Her address was White Plains but it was a temporary address as she was living with her mother for reasons she didn’t elaborate on or care to explain. She was too lit to drive in any case. They got into his Tesla and she made a lame crack about wasn’t he embarrassed that he chose to let roll off his back.
If she was disappointed about the house, she tried not to show it.
I was hoping you might have a pool, she said.
He opened a new bottle and took out two glasses.
No pool but I was thinking about installing a hot tub, he said.
Twenty minutes later he was fed up with her and just wanted to go to sleep. She wouldn’t stop talking and it was obvious they weren’t going to have sex. She looked good enough at the wine bar but in the glare of his overhead kitchen lighting she looked her age. She was also a sloppy drunk, he thought with distaste. If there was anything that turned him off more than a sloppy drunk, he didn’t know what it was.
I think it’s time for you to leave, he said.
Leave? She was angry. You invited me here. I thought we were going to swim.
You’re hallucinating, he said, not nicely. I’m going to call you a cab.
You better be paying for it, she said. I’m an administrative assistant for crissakes, not a rich fuck like you who can afford Ubers and cabs.
He despised profanity in a woman. Instead of calling a cab, he called the police.
There’s a woman I don’t know at my home refusing to leave, he told dispatch. She’s causing a disturbance.
In the police car, on their way to the station so she could still catch the last train, she asked the cop what she’d done wrong.
Nothing, lady. He just wasn’t into you, I guess.
All I wanted was a swim, she said bitterly. Fucker didn’t even have a pool, goddamnit!
Better luck next time, the cop said.
Enjoyed the story, Eve. Good serving of creepy tension.
Better luck next time, the cop said.