Kate Mara Nure Walks Into the Rusted Anchor Bar
Kate Mara Nure Takes the Doorway
The rain had a personal grudge against the Rusted Anchor. It pounded the tin awning overhead and pushed the gutter until it ran brown, and the whole east-side dive smelled of wet wood and old spills. Then the door swung in and Kate Mara Nure came through it, and for a heartbeat every stool turned.
She stood there soaked, jacket black and gleaming, torn denim stuck flat to her legs, boots planted like the floor planks belonged to her. Wet hair clung to her cheek and she let it. Her eyes moved across the room slow, unhurried, top rail to bottom corner, the way a person reads a menu when the order is already decided.
The bartender scrubbed one spot on the counter until it shone. Somebody under a trucker cap whistled and got nothing back. Kate shrugged the jacket off, draped it over a stool, and dropped onto the seat with the dead weight of a body that had been walking in weather. Mascara smeared under one eye, a bruise going yellow-purple across a knuckle. She looked like a mess that had already happened and was hunting a second one.
Whiskey Neat, and Kate Mara Nure Doesn't Flinch
"Whiskey. Neat. Don't get cute with the ice," she said. Gravel in it, the kind of voice built by yelling over loud speakers or by simply not caring. A cheap amber pour slid her way. She caught it blind, took half down in one swallow, and let the fire settle behind her ribs. Only then did she look toward the back booth.
He was already watching. Sleeves shoved to the elbow, a beer half gone, rings of sweat soaking into the wood. No wave, no grin. Just a slow lift of the chin and the salt shaker moved to the far edge of the table, making space.
Kate took her time. She drained the glass, set it down with a hard click, and crossed the room like the sticky linoleum was a catwalk. The booth cushions were red and split along the seam, and they exhaled when she landed. Close up he smelled of smoke, clean soap, and something warmer beneath. "Waiting long?" she asked. "Long enough," he said. "You always stare at strangers like that?" "Only the ones who slam the door hard enough to rattle my glass."
Jukebox Static and a Split Lip
They burned twenty minutes on nothing — the downpour, the jukebox jammed on the same muddy blues side, the trucker cap still sulking. Then his palm landed on her knee under the table, hot straight through the damp denim, and Kate's sentence died mid-word. She looked at his fingers, then at his face, and her jaw set. "You planning to use that hand or just leave it parked?"
He used it. Dragged it up her thigh, thumb grinding a slow line along the inner seam until her hips pushed forward and her breathing thinned out.
She swung over the table and straddled him right there in the booth, boots squeaking, and kissed him hard enough to bounce his skull off the wood behind him. He tasted of beer and his mouth was rough, and she caught his bottom lip in her teeth until he made a sound. His hands went beneath her jacket, up her ribs, thumbs dragging the thin cotton of her shirt. She rolled her hips down over the hard ridge in his jeans and felt the twitch answer her.
"Booth's too small," she said into his mouth. "Then move," he said. He walked her backward until the jukebox glass hit her spine and the record jumped. The laugh that came out of her was low and filthy, and then his teeth scraped her throat and the laugh flattened into a hum. He popped her button, hauled the zipper down, slipped inside her waistband while the machine buzzed static into her back. She hooked a leg over his hip and pulled him tight, and when his fingers found her she let her head fall against the glass and swore loud enough that the trucker cap choked on his beer.
Last Call, Wet Asphalt, No Questions
The bartender yelled last call and nobody in that corner moved. Kate came back to herself with her chest rising hard and her jeans hanging open, and she gave him a grin through a swollen lip and ruined mascara. "You got a name, or am I stuck calling you the guy from the jukebox?"
He gave her one. She gave him hers, then her address, and the way she said it left no room for negotiation. Outside the downpour had thinned to mist and the asphalt gleamed like spilled oil. She hauled her jacket around herself and lit a cigarette under the awning, and he stood near enough that their shoulders brushed.
"You're following me home," she said. Not a question either. She snapped the cigarette into the gutter and they went off along the wet street together, boots throwing water, his hand already sliding into her back pocket.
