CHAPTER ONE
Charlotte shifted the strap of her bag on her shoulder and stepped onto the elevator, relieved that at least there was no one already on it. She waited for the doors to close and exhaled slowly. She pressed the button for the ground floor and closed her eyes as she heard the motor for the elevator beginning to hum, and felt the movement of the car around her. “Thank God,” she murmured, taking another slow, deep breath. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing!” Charlotte pressed her lips together.
The past three weeks had been a steady stream of demands from the management team she worked under, culminating in a nightmare of a day where Charlotte hadn’t had time for more than a few bites of the lunch her assistant had ordered for her. She’d managed to get through it, but Charlotte could feel the tension in her shoulders, the knots in her back, the aches and twinges all through her body from the stress building up.
She opened her eyes as she felt the elevator slowing, and pushed her shoulders back, pulling her lips into a smile in case there was anyone in the corridor leading out to the parking garage. I am not going to let any damned one say they saw me losing it. Charlotte strode out of the elevator, looking conscientiously at the top third of the wall. She knew how it was: if she showed even a minor crack in the facade of smiling competence, the bitches that she’d beaten out for the assistant project supervisor position would start talking.
It’s just a high-value project, and it’s a demanding client. That’s all. Once you’ve got this behind you, things will go back to the way they were last month, and everything will be great.
She’d given herself the same pep talk every morning for the past three weeks, and it was starting to wear thin. It was finally Friday night, and she wouldn’t have to do anything with work for the next two days. As she left the building and walked through the garage, Charlotte thought to herself that maybe it was the right occasion to go out—maybe grab a drink or two, since she was downtown and the traffic home would be murderous on a Friday evening.
Jane is always talking about that cute tapas place they opened three months ago; I could go there. Charlotte grabbed her keys out of her bag and smiled to herself, imagining the night unfolding ahead of her: some sangria, some spiced shrimp and chorizo, a little bit of something more substantial with her second glass of wine, and then home to a hot, deep bath and the Janet Fitch novel she’d been meaning to start reading.
“That is just the thing,” Charlotte murmured to herself, smiling slightly again in anticipation. It would be even more perfect if she maybe found someone at the restaurant, but Charlotte had given up on hoping to find someone a year before.
It never seemed to work out with anyone she’d tried to date after she left college, and beyond a few one-night stands, she hadn’t bothered to even try. She unlocked her car, but for just an instant, she thought she felt someone looking at her.
Charlotte frowned, looking around the parking garage. She was almost certain she hadn’t heard anything, or seen anything. She’d had a few moments like that in her life before, where something secret, something wordless in the depths of her brain twitched, and she could never define it. “I’m being ridiculous,” she thought, shaking her head. It was almost—almost—enough to put her off the idea of going out for a few drinks and dinner, but the thought had been too alluring for her to give it up.
She climbed into the driver’s side of the car and threw her bag onto the passenger seat, intent on enjoying her Friday night after the weeks of stress. Charlotte turned the engine on and started her music playing, already beginning to feel more cheerful about the prospect of her weekend.
Charlotte was glad that the restaurant she was going to wasn’t far from the office; just as she’d thought, traffic was terrible. Charlotte took deep breaths, looking forward to sangria and tapas, and afterwards the bath and the book, and a decent night’s sleep, as she navigated the jam-packed streets. She had decided that she wasn’t going to let even the bad traffic deter her—after all, she reasoned, it would be worse attempting to drive home.
The little bar-restaurant was just what Charlotte wanted it to be: it was small and intimate, with orange-tinged light from the fixtures. The perimeter held high-top tables with white tablecloths and gleaming silver, and the interior of the dining area held lower, more intimate tables and a few areas with settees and coffee tables. It was busy, but the staff—dressed in clean white shirts and black pants—moved quickly and competently. A hostess stood near the door in a black dress that showed a small amount of cleavage and came down to two inches above her knee.
Charlotte stepped up to the hostess stand and waited for the blonde to look up. For a moment, it was difficult not to feel a bit envious of the woman. She was probably three or four years younger than Charlotte, and the woman’s flowing blonde hair contrasted with her own dark locks, pulled back into a braid.
That can’t be within health codes... but then again, she doesn’t handle food, does she? Charlotte shook the thought off. The blonde hostess looked up and Charlotte smiled politely. “Do you have a table for one available?” The hostess glanced around the dining area quickly.
“I think so. Let me check with one of the servers to make sure,” the blonde said. “We’re pretty busy on Friday evenings; happy hour, you know?” Charlotte nodded her understanding, and watched as the younger woman walked in the direction of the dining room and bar. She looked around again, breathing in the smells of garlic and onions, oranges and olives, a brittle hint of wood smoke, sweet-tart wine.
Just standing in the restaurant, with the rumbling chatter of patrons and the smells and the Spanish guitar music playing through the air, was almost enough to be intoxicating on its own. Charlotte thought that she had probably had the best idea of the week in coming here.
Then the blonde hostess was back, and she gave Charlotte a quick, polite smile. “We’ve got a table right here. I hope you don’t mind a high-top?” Charlotte shook her head and followed the woman through the dining room, glancing at the small plates on the trays the wait staff carried through the space. Everything seemed absolutely delicious, and Charlotte’s mouth watered in reaction to the sights and smells.
The table the hostess took her to was a little off the main area, but Charlotte was actually glad that it was a little quieter than some of the other tables. She sat down while the hostess whisked away the extra place setting, and settled in to people-watch and look over the menu in the warm light.
“I’ll give you a moment to look over the menu,” someone said, and Charlotte looked up to see that the hostess was gone and a server had arrived. Something—she couldn’t say what—about the young man, maybe two years younger than her, with dark hair and piercing green eyes, made the hair on the back of Charlotte’s neck stand on end. She took a quick breath and dismissed the reaction as more foolishness brought on by nerves. “For now, please enjoy complimentary marinated olives and roasted almonds,” the man said, setting down two small, metallic bowls.
“I would actually like to start with a glass of sangria, as well,” Charlotte said quickly.
“Excellent. It’s a specialty this time of year,” the man said. “In fact, we have a deal—Friday, happy hour—on a pitcher of white or red sangria for five dollars. Would you be interested in that?” Charlotte’s initial instinct was to say no; after all, she had to drive home eventually. But the deal was so good that she almost couldn’t turn it down, and after all, it wasn’t so bad to get an Uber or Lyft back to her place, and convince one of her friends—few though they were—to drive her into downtown the next day to pick up her car when she sobered up. Julia would do it if I bought her breakfast.
“Sure,” Charlotte said, smiling to try and take the edge off of her nervous mood. “The red sangria sounds amazing.”
“I’ll bring you a pitcher,” the man said. “My name is Juan, if you need anything.” Charlotte nodded and turned back to the menu, trying to make up her mind between all the delicious-sounding options. Serrano ham with plums. Fresh mussels with chorizo and tomato sauce. Grilled blood sausage with apple. Garlic shrimp. Cod skewers. Charlotte reached blindly for the olives—marinated with oil and orange, garlic and some kind of chili—and the roasted almonds with rosemary as she browsed the menu, considering her options. Each of the items was only a few bites, so she reasoned that she could get a few different things, but how much of a time investment did she want to make?
“Have you come to any conclusions?” Charlotte looked up to see Juan standing at her table with a metal pitcher, which he used to pour the big, deep wine glass on her table two-thirds full of rich, burgundy-red wine and fruit. “I can take multiple orders to keep things coming to you.”
“I think I’d like to start with the Serrano ham and some of the sautéed squid,” Charlotte said, glancing down at the card in her hands. “And maybe grilled asparagus to go with it.”
“Very good choices,” the man said, inclining his head. He seemed inclined to linger at her table, even though he’d written down her initial order and set down the pitcher. “We sort of have a rule about not leaving until a guest has at least sampled the wine,” Juan prompted.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” Charlotte said, giving him an awkward smile. She sipped the sangria in her glass and for an instant, thought that it tasted strange, but then as the liquid expanded across her palate, the brief moment of bitterness ended and the sweet-tart fruit-wine flavor deepened, sliding down her throat easily. “Delicious! Thank you.” Juan left, and Charlotte settled in to take in the atmosphere and general ambiance while she waited for her food to begin arriving.
After her initial taste of the sangria, she didn’t get the phenomenon of bitterness again, so Charlotte found herself drinking more quickly than she initially realized; in fact, it wasn’t until she stood to drape her sweater—a necessity in the cold office—over the back of her chair, and found her head spinning, that Charlotte even noticed how tipsy she had started to become.
Charlotte ate one thing after another; it seemed so easy to order more when the prices per plate were so reasonable, and the pitcher of sangria seemed never-ending. At some point as she nibbled and sipped and watched, a quartet stepped up onto a stage she hadn’t noticed when she first arrived, with two guitarists and a horn player and a singer.
Charlotte—like everyone else in the restaurant—applauded them as they played one song after another, and their music made it even harder to judge how long she’d been seated at the table, eating and drinking. Juan informed her at one point that since she’d purchased five items, she was eligible for more sangria for free, and somehow, she found herself agreeing to it, even though the common-sense voice in her mind told her it was a bad idea.
The performers took a break and Charlotte ate a little more and drank a little more. The room had started to spin a little bit, and her face felt hot from the rushing blood in her veins, but the sangria tasted good—so good that she couldn’t make herself stop drinking it, even though she knew that she should.
“How are we doing, ma’am?” Charlotte blinked slowly and looked up to see Juan standing at her table. “Do you want something to eat? A dessert maybe?” Charlotte shook her head and started to regret it.
“No, I think I should stop for the night,” she said with an apologetic smile. There was maybe another glass of sangria left in the pitcher, and part of her wanted to finish it, while a larger part of her mind insisted—sensibly—that it was a bad idea. She didn’t feel nauseated, exactly, but there was a remote, dreamy quality to everything that some deep core of her mind told her was wrong
You need to go home. You probably won’t even stay awake long enough to take a bath and even if you could, falling asleep in a full bathtub while drunk is a good way to die of drowning. “Can you bring me the check?” Juan nodded and left her at a speed that seemed almost incomprehensible to Charlotte.
She shook the impression off and tried to focus on finding her wallet in her bag, on mentally tallying up how much her total “should” come to, in case the total seemed off; it wasn’t unheard-of for unscrupulous restaurants to add things, and even if they didn’t do it intentionally, on a busy night someone might have added another customer’s items to her check on accident and Charlotte didn’t want to unexpectedly pay for someone else’s meal.
“Ma’am?” Charlotte wondered how long she’d been looking for her wallet when Juan had come back to her table. She looked up and tried to seem alert. “A man at the bar said that he would pay for your check, if you would accept.” Charlotte looked over at the bar and frowned, wondering why someone who hadn’t even spoken to her would want to pay for her food and wine.
“Is there any condition on that?” She looked at Juan once more and he shook his head.
“He said that you looked like an angel sitting here, and he wanted to bring a smile to your face,” Juan said. “Is that okay with you?”
“It’s fine with me,” Charlotte said, almost laughing at the strangeness of the compliment. “Let me make sure you’re tipped as well as you should be, though,” she told him. “What was the total?”
“Please don’t worry,” Juan said.
“No, I want to make sure,” Charlotte told him. She took a twenty dollar bill out of her wallet. “This should be enough, I think?”
“More than enough—please,” Juan told her. “Please, he’s already agreed to give me a generous tip.”
“I would like to tip you too, though,” Charlotte insisted. “Ten?” Juan looked in the direction of the bar, and then shrugged.
“If you insist on it,” Juan said. Charlotte didn’t know whether Juan genuinely felt uncomfortable about her tipping him or was—badly—trying to play her; but she put the twenty back and took out a ten, and handed it to the man. “Thank you very much, and we hope to see you again.”
Charlotte nodded and sat back in her seat for a moment. Just need a little bit of time... Just a minute to wait for my head to stop spinning. But then, she thought, if she waited around for too long, whoever it was that had paid for her meal and wine might take it as an invitation to talk to her. Did she want that? Not when you’re drunk as a skunk. Get out of here before he decides to take advantage of you.
Charlotte unsteadily got to her feet and grabbed her sweater and purse. She checked to make sure she had her phone—and that it was fully charged enough to last until she got home—and wobbled slightly before she started off toward the door. Charlotte tottered slightly on the step-down from the dining area to the entrance of the restaurant, and took out her phone to open the Lyft app. She managed to get through the door and outside, and blinked a few moments, trying to remember what it was she had been trying to do. Phone. Drunk. Some kind of app… It was strange; she knew there was something that she was supposed to be doing, but she’d lost the thread of it.
Charlotte blinked a few times and then it popped into her mind: she needed a ride home. She stepped out of the way of the front door and opened up the app, shaking her head to try and clear it as she attempted to remember how it worked. What is wrong with me? It wasn’t like being normally drunk—even when she’d been at the point of almost passing out from alcohol before, Charlotte had been able to mostly keep the thread of what she was doing when it came to something like looking for a ride. Then, too, she didn’t have the usual feelings that came along with being drunk, especially on red wine.
Black spots began to swirl in her vision as she scowled down at the screen of her phone, frowning to herself. Charlotte blinked rapidly, trying to clear the spots; that was definitely not normal. Everything began to go blurry, and she leaned heavily against the wall of the restaurant.
The world around her started spinning faster, and Charlotte groaned, struggling to maintain some kind of equilibrium. “We got her!”
“Fucking finally. Hurry up and get Les to pull the car around.” Charlotte opened her eyes wider at the sound of the two voices. One of them sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it entirely. The dark spots swirling in her vision were growing larger, swirling faster, and as she tried to focus enough to be able to see, her knees went weak, and she felt herself starting to sink down toward the pavement.
As the spots converged, darkening her vision, she felt hands on her. Charlotte wanted to struggle, but her arms and legs felt weak, almost numb—unresponsive. Someone drugged me! It was the last thought she had before everything went away.