At precisely 10 PM, he walked into the little corner bar and sat down in the little tucked-away back of the room, pulling out a yellow pad of paper and a pen. The busboy gave him a knowing look: ah, a writer! They got a lot of those; sulky folk who sat in the smoky bar and jotted down notes or badly written, stream-of-conscious poetry; it could get pretty annoying when they were drunk.

The busboy was, of course, very wrong.

She came in about twelve minutes later. It was a guarantee to find her alone in this bar on the twenty-seventh of every month. Jackson presumed that this was a date drenched in particularly bad memories; a bitter break-up, perhaps? He wrote this thought down quickly. It could be used against her.

Her hair was pulled back into a pony-tail, and she looked the part of a responsible hotel manager. From routine, Jackson knew that by the end of her hour-long reverie, she would be slightly sweaty from the humid atmosphere. Her make-up would be smeared at the edges, and she would blur slightly: while mildly intoxicated, she seemed to hover, to not fully be there. Could this affect her decision making? He wrote this down, too.

Tonight was the same as all of the other nights she came here. He had a few other of these legal pads laying in his apartment, brimming with observations and thoughts and lists. Her purse was black and purchased at Nordstrom's, she didn't like to wear jeans, she had a fondness for beets. Small particles of her life were caught on his legal pads, like fly paper.

She was a workaholic, she liked dramas but wouldn't say no to a romantic comedy or foreign film, she didn't like the slivers of dried-up glue rubber cement left. She used teeth whitening strips. At the library, she went through stages of authors, and last month had been Murakami. This month, she was addicted to Harlequin romances. She used to play lacrosse, but now she took daily walks instead and occasionally visited the gym with a loose friend, though secretly she hated it. She didn't like eggplants. She was afraid of flying.

This last statement was underlined several times on his second legal pad; it could prove useful in the future.