Shadowkiller by Wendy Corsi Staub Page A

doing, Mack, inviting a girl here on a first date?
    Trying to prove a point—to himself, and to her.
    The point being: Don’t get your hopes up. This is as good as it gets, so take it or leave it.
    Who’d blame her if she’d already left?
    But she hadn’t. Suddenly, he spotted her, sitting alone at a table in the back. No, it was more that he recognized her. He’d seen her and glanced right past her at first, not realizing it was she, because she looked . . . again, not beautiful. She wasn’t beautiful. But now he saw that she was actually pretty.
    Her hair was loose and she was wearing makeup, and a navy blue sweater with jeans—not tight, but her clothes hugged her figure in a flattering way. But she wasn’t trying too hard. No, she was as unpretentious as the place he’d so deliberately chosen for their first date, and for him, tonight, it worked.
    Gazing at the chalkboard menu, she didn’t seem to see him as he made his way across the sawdust floor, enveloped in the familiar scent of beer and the lively chatter, and the familiar opening strains of one of his favorite U2 songs playing in the background.
    He made his way past a group of drunken former frat boys, swaying arm-in-arm. On another night, Mack might have been right there with the likes of them, sing-chanting the familiar lyrics. But I still . . . haven’t found . . . what I’m looking for.
    Not tonight, though.
    Tonight—he had a feeling he might have found it.
    A nother Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody . . .
    The lyrics of the old Cat Stevens cover ran through Allison’s head as she climbed the steps of her Hudson Street apartment building, holding an open umbrella in one hand and in the other, carrying a paper-in-plastic bag of Chinese takeout and a rented Blockbuster video.
    The movies had been pretty picked over at this hour on a Saturday night—to get the new releases, you really had to show up before the start of the weekend. But she’d gone out with friends from work last night, and she was supposed to have a date tonight—a blind date with a biologist named Justin, who was a cousin of a friend of a friend.
    He’d called to cancel last night, saying something had come up and he’d get back to her.
    He hadn’t yet, but she was hoping he would. He’d sounded nice and casual and normal on the phone, as promised by his cousin and her friend’s friend. In general, she wasn’t entirely comfortable with blind dates, but they seemed to be a necessary evil when you worked long hours in an industry that suffered a perpetual shortage of straight, eligible men.
    So here she was, spending yet another rainy March weekend alone, trying to get the old song out of her head because it reminded her of her father, who’d constantly played that ancient Cat Stevens Greatest Hits cassette on the tape deck in his car.
    â€œ ‘Another Saturday Night’ was Stevens’s remake of an oldie by Sam Cooke. It was released in 1974, the year I met your mother,” he would tell her. “That was a great year for music. Here, listen to another one from that year.”
    Then he’d play Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” and they’d sing all the lyrics together.
    And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon . . .
    She loved that song.
    Then, anyway.
    After he was gone, she couldn’t bear to hear it.
    When you comin’ home, Dad? I don’t know when . . .
    Yeah. She’d hated that song for years now.
    At the top of the stoop, Allison shifted the umbrella to feel in her pocket for her keys, and raindrops spilled down her cheeks like tears.
    Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody  . . .
    But on a raw, blustery night like this, she’d just as soon stay home. She’d been hoping to rent a good scary movie like The Sixth Sense , but it wasn’t