It was pouring that night. I was standing under the awning outside the bar waiting for a cab. After what felt like too-damn-long, a Checker Top came pulling up. No matter where you are in Mattoon, IL, you can always count on a Checker Top. Anyway, I got in and just as I was about to close the door, she showed up. Running into the rain with the type of over-exaggerated desperation on her face that you only see in scary movies, I felt badly for her. Being the gentleman I was raised to be, I poked my head out the cab and asked if she’d like to share a ride. She shook her head “yes” without saying a word and hurriedly dashed into the taxi.
She said her name was Riley. I never caught her last name. Maybe that was her last name. I wish I had found out. We got to talking and quickly discovered that we had a good bit in common. We both had unfulfilled pictorial pipe dreams. I wanted to be the next Ansel Adams. She wanted to see the world through her lens. It was weird, like she knew everything to say to make me want her. I’d never had an instant connection like that before. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She was one of the most breathtaking women I’d ever seen. Definitely top 3. And those eyes…god dammit those eyes. They were a shade of green I’ve never seen anywhere else, almost jade. They were stunning. Perfect. She was perfect.
My place was about twenty minutes away. I didn’t know if she would be getting out before or after me. I didn’t even notice when the cabby drove right by my building. She had me locked into her conversation. I told him to stop about four miles too late. When he finally turned around and got back to my apartment I asked Riley if she had much farther to go, fully intending to pay the difference in exchange for her number. She didn’t say anything at first, only looked out the windows of the cab nervously. She stared at the Jeep across the street for a second. Then she looked up at me. With those eyes. I asked if she wanted to come in.
It was one of those nights where clocks didn’t exist. Time was irrelevant. Our conversation continued until dawn. We kept talking about everything we could think of. She mentioned something about running into an ex at the bar right before our serendipitous cab ride. I didn’t put much stock into that last bit. I had fallen victim to her eyes. She said she felt “right” around me. I felt whole around her. We took pictures of each other. Photographic evidence of the night we both fell in love.
I kissed her. She kissed back. We made love with the kind of passion I’d only seen on screen. It was our own private Before Sunrise.
Next thing I knew, it was Sunday. I got out of bed. She was gone. She’d left a note: “Thank you. You’ll never know how much that all meant. -Riley.”
I tried calling her. No answer. I tried twice more. No answer. I decided to give it a day or so.
Monday morning I got a call about a job. It was a murder-suicide. Unidentified blonde white male. Unidentified redheaded white female.
I’d taken forensic photographs for the Mattoon PD for about two years. In that time I’d taken pictures of everything anyone would never want to see.
But nothing was worse than taking one last photo of those green eyes.
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