A Notebook For Every Town (Third Place - Fiction)

by Corynn Del Core

I told her I had a different notebook for every town, but really, this was the first one. The idea was nice, I don’t know, I thought she’d like it. And she did. 

The place was just like a bar only it was a coffee shop. It must’ve been meant to be a bar originally. I sat at the counter with a glass of water in front of me, no ice in it. I was there to fill in this notebook I had, and then she sat down by me.

Her name was Angela, she said, and I thought just in that second that it probably wasn’t her actual name. It didn’t matter though, and I told her my name was Christine. It isn’t. But what does it matter?

She had a drink that got whipped cream on her upper lip. She licked it off mostly, but there was a gloss of it left on one side and it annoyed me a little. She said, “What’cha writing?” And I told her I liked to travel, and I had a different notebook for every town. When she asked what I meant I told her, “I write down everything about a place, all the people I meet,” and here I showed her in the notebook as I wrote her name down. “Everything goes in the notebook and helps me remember things. Then when I go, I leave it somewhere in whichever town it was.” She asked me, “Why would you leave it? What’s the point, then?” And I told her it helped me remember anyway, and I didn’t want to be bound to that many notebooks.

Of course, really, this was the first one. And I was doing what I said, more or less, but I hadn’t planned on leaving my notebook anywhere and I thought probably six or so pages was enough for a place. But it sounded better the new way. Angela gave me a mixed smile.

I drank some of my water, found it warm as bathwater. I asked her if she lived in this town and she said yes. She was pushing grains of sugar around on the granite counter top, her fingers splayed straight out, sugar collecting under her chipped orange nails. She rubbed away that last trail of whipped cream, and then it was easier to talk with her.

She was there waiting for her friend Jessica who was supposed to meet her, and then they were going somewhere I forget…maybe the movies. She seemed like she wanted to make friends, and I liked that, so I smiled with her. 

She asked me where all I had travelled to, and I had to make some new places up. It didn’t sound good enough to say Spokane and Death Valley, so I added Paris and Cancun and Machu Picchu. Some others too. I was surprised she didn’t ask what I was doing in her little town after all that, but she just told me how interesting it was and said, “But don’t you have a job?” And I said, “I’m a reporter,” before I had thought of a place to work as a reporter for. But she didn’t ask, because she didn’t care or didn’t think of it, or because she knew right off I was lying and didn’t want to bother.

It was close to nine-thirty when she sat down by me, and a half hour later her friend still hadn’t shown up. I asked if she would go call? She said yes and asked to borrow my cell phone, because, could I believe it? she didn’t own one. When I told her I had just lost mine I could see on her face she didn’t believe me and thought I was just a bitch who wouldn’t let her use my phone. I disliked her for a second.   

She said she’d go look for a payphone, and I said Alright, good luck. I kept to my water and my mostly blank notebook wondering if she’d come back in. She didn’t. I decided to go, then. Or, thinking about it now, it seems like I had a feeling something was going on with her, and I left to find her. I must have thought she was in trouble, I guess. 

I was halfway to my car walking with my hands in my coat pockets and my notebook clamped to my side when I saw her in part of a second disappearing out of a circle of street lamp glow and into an alley. I saw her hand and her nail polish, and a whirl of black clothes. I ran after her, into the dark, not thinking.

The contrast from light to dark stole my vision. While my eyes adjusted I listened for her steps but didn’t hear them. I thought, she couldn’t be gone already, it was only two seconds ago she’d disappeared. 

The dark shapes of the alley finally came into focus against the light at the other end. She wasn’t there. 

Then I felt her move, she was behind me somehow. I turned but she was already on me, her arms clamped around me so I couldn’t move. And then she bit me. 

It was just like a movie. She bit my neck hard; her bangs swept against my chin. I rushed sideways and slammed us both against the nearest wall and her grip loosened. My notebook fell. I elbowed her in the belly and ran. I didn’t look back at her, just ran until I got to a 24 hour grocery, and went inside and back through a pair of doors with the round glass windows. I found the staff bathroom and locked myself in, took my hand off my neck. I checked in the mirror. 

I wasn’t bleeding. I thought I felt blood when I was running, but the slickness had just been her spit. Her teeth marks were bright screaming red on my throat, but not oozing at all and they were just normal squares. She wasn’t a real vampire or anything. Just some crazy chick who thought she was. Or maybe she had rabies. 

The way she’d lured me out into the dark though, that argued she was a crazy wannabe vampire. Maybe she watched too many movies and did drugs and cried in the shower or something. I didn’t think if I should call the police or not, it just didn’t occur to me until the next day, and I never did anyway. I washed my neck with hand soap. I pressed my hair down but it wasn’t long enough to hide the bite mark, but I didn’t care much. 

I had to walk back the direction I’d come to get back to my car. It seemed stupid but I couldn’t stop myself from flipping up the collar of my coat and hunching my shoulders. I watched for her in the streets and in the shadows. I looked over my shoulder as I unlocked my car, but she wasn’t there.