My First Short Story

He could see the bar up ahead, the place where he was meant to meet Sarah.

The bar was an old haunt of theirs from their early twenties when they were still in college, and although he hadn’t seen Sarah in quite a few years he was really looking forward to seeing her tonight. He had forgotten until this afternoon how the sound of her low, smoky voice could affect him, he wondered how he could ever have put that fact out of his mind.

Theirs had been the kind of attraction that was immediate, and strong enough to last through three years of college, but not strong enough to prevent them going their separate ways when Sarah decided to go off to the wilds of Montana when they graduated and take on some two bit town practice that her uncle had run for thirty years.

Ben had never been able to understand how she could give up city life and the excitement of a corporate career, earning the kind of money he thought they had dreamed of together. He still got a kick out of his designer suits and his expensive weekly massage, not forgetting his personal trainer visiting him three days a week at 5am to put him through his paces before he headed off to work.

That brought him to wondering what Sarah would look like - would she still have that sweet little figure, maybe honed with years of running, riding and other outdoor pursuits or would she have allowed herself to go to seed a little with all that home town cooking?

He didn’t even know if she had married, he had been too surprised to hear her voice at the end of the phone to even ask her. Well, he figured he would find out tonight when they met and he wondered if her choice of venue was actually a sign that she was single. It had been their favourite place once.

Ben walked into the bar about 20 minutes before the time they had agreed, he looked around checking out the other patrons but there was no sign of Sarah yet, just a couple of small groups of business people dotted around the lounge area. If Sarah was anything like her old self he had at least 40 minutes to wait so he ordered a rye on the rocks from the barman and settled himself into a booth facing the door to wait and regain his equilibrium.

As he sipped his drink, Ben couldn’t help the surprise that crept up on him when he thought of the re-scheduling he had done to make this meeting with a woman he hadn’t seen in 10 years and, if he was truthful, whom he hadn’t thought of that much in at least 6.

Although he had never married yet, preferring to concentrate on his career, Ben was never short of female company. He was the kind of guy that made women feel comfortable, and yet maintained an air of aloofness that created a frisson of excitement and challenge, much in demand as an extra at dinner parties especiallly as the highly respected, youngest ever partner in his Corporate law firm.

Ben was disturbed from his reverie as the door opened. He watched disinterestedly as three men in fedoras and burberries entered and proceeded to seat themselves in the adjacent booth. Disappointment settled in as he listened to them order Bourbon from the barman. They were sitting close enough so that he couldn’t help but overhear snatches of their conversation despite their low tones, then suddenly he caught the sound of his own name being mentioned.

How could they know him, he was sure that he had never met these men before, yet he was equally sure that they had spoken his name. He did his best to tune in to their conversation while looking as nonchalant as possible. These men were talking about a hit! Not just any hit either - someone had paid them to kill him – Ben sat there temporarily frozen by panic, using all his lawyerly skills to keep from showing emotion on his face - but who would want him dead and why? He was a successful lawyer but he didn’t do criminal work and as far as he knew his tax clients were all kosher. His firm were pretty strict about the clients they worked with and in keeping all of their tax evasion techniques legal, weren’t they?

The men didn’t seem to know what he looked like from the snippets he overheard but they knew Sarah and that he was meeting her here. That immediately made him a suspect as he was the only single patron in the bar at the moment, everyone else was in a group. So they had chosen their seats both to watch the door and him at the same time. He had to get out of the bar before Sarah arrived, he wasn’t yet clear if they were the reason that she had contacted him this afternoon but he wasn’t inclined to wait around to find out. His immediate need was to get out of the bar to safety so he could work this thing out and decide what to do about it.

He caught sight of his watch as he reached for the last of his drink and gratefully saw that his appointed meeting time with Sarah was still a couple of minutes away. He prayed that she would be late as she always had in the past.

At that moment a single guy walked into the bar, he wasn’t as well dressed as Ben but his build and colouring weren’t too different so there was a chance that even by Sarah, after 10 years, he could be mistaken for Ben. The guy sat at the bar and ordered a drink. Ben got up as casually as he could and left $10 on the table for his drink and a tip. He walked as normally as he could towards the door, praying that Sarah wouldn’t come through it before he had the chance to make his exit.

The cool, Manhattan night air hit him as he stepped through the door onto the sidewalk, sweat beaded his brow and began to drip between his shoulder blades under his silk shirt and Hugo Boss jacket. Sarahs’ low, smoky voice whispered to him as he turned the corner and she stepped directly in front of him with tears in her eyes. Ben just had time to take in her hardly altered appearance and the sound of that voice that caused ripples of recognition to course through him.

“I’m so sorry Ben” she whispered as she leaned forward and shot him point blank through the heart.

The pain was real as he woke sweating and lurching from his bed. He could feel the panic and the shock as his senses began to return. This was the third time that he had dreamed this way in 2 weeks. Maybe it was time to look Sarah up so he could deal with whatever his subconscious was trying to tell him…