I get to the place early and take a seat at the bar. On either side of me are big guys who drive for a living, wearing trucker hats or leather. In my new clothes I look like one of them, which is why I picked this place. It’s good to blend in.

The bar is just off the highway, with long benches out back. They do barbecue. I thought it would be good because it’s been so hot lately. They put lights in the trees and it’s pretty. Women like stuff like that. But I see quickly that it is the wrong place to meet her. It’s raining tonight—a hot miserable thunderstorm. Everyone has been forced inside. And without the benches, the warm evening, the lights in the trees, this place looks very different. It’s quiet apart from the occasional belch. There’s no music, the fluorescents overhead are aching bright, casting glare on the aluminum tables which are littered with empty glasses and beer cans. The linoleum floor is slick with the tracks of muddy boots. I thought it was, you know, atmospheric, but now I see that it’s not nice.

I order a boilermaker. There’s a mirror behind the bar, which is another reason I chose this place and this particular seat. I can see the door perfectly.

She comes in, fresh with rain. I recognize her straight away. She looks just like her picture. Butter-yellow hair, kind blue eyes. She looks around and I see the place even more clearly, through her eyes. She’s the only woman in here. There’s a smell too, I hadn’t noticed before. Kind of like a hamster cage that needs changing—or a mouse cage, perhaps. (No. Don’t think of that.)

She goes to an aluminum table and sits. So she’s optimistic or maybe desperate. I wondered if she’d leave straight away, when she saw that the guy with the white smile from the stock photo wasn’t waiting for her. (I don’t use my own picture; I learned that lesson quickly. I found mine on the website of some accounting firm. The man is pretending to sign a document, but also looking at the camera and smiling with big white teeth.) She orders something from the tired waitress. Club soda. Optimistic with common sense. Her hair falls, hiding her face in a creamy swing of blond. And she’s wearing a blue dress. Sometimes they come in jeans or check shirts, which isn’t what I want. But this woman has done the right thing. It doesn’t float, exactly, the dress, it’s not organza, but made of some thicker fabric like corduroy or denim and she’s wearing boots not sandals. But it’s close enough.