Lenore was hunting.
Night in Seattle was like most other big cities: the noise and bustle of the days whittled down and became confined to the areas with bars, nightclubs, and late-night restaurants.
Those were usually her preferred hunting grounds. Tonight was different. The bars and restaurants downtown were boarded up and most of the drunks, her usual prey, were dispersed through the suburbs. A protest raged downtown.
Lenore, also known as Eleanore and occasionally as Nora, moved through the crowd of protesters anonymously. She wore a black hoodie and dark jeans, which seemed to be the uniform of choice amongst these types. Her hood was up, concealing fiery red hair.
There were hundreds of protesters out tonight. Some waved signs, or chanted, or screamed. They threw rocks and set off fireworks. A block away, a large department store was looted and a car was set on fire outside. The words changed but the sentiment rarely did. Change their slogans from "No Justice, No Peace" to "Down with the King" and Lenore easily could have been in Paris two hundred years earlier. People, with their small and insignificant lives, never change.
She'd found her mark.
He wore a red bandana over his face but she could tell he was handsome in a way that probably made him arrogant. He was lean, even skinny, and tall, with wild black hair pulled under a ballcap. He'd first caught her gaze when he, among others, pelted a passing police car with chunks of concrete. She watched him move around the protest alone, riling up others, leading chants, and pumping a fist in the air. He was a performer and liked having an audience. She waited, her patience bottomless, slowly moving into his orbit. When the moment was right, she struck.
She tripped, falling into him, pretending to stumble.
He cursed when her weight put him off balance, but quickly grabbed her and held her straight.
"Fuck! Sorry," she yelled. "I can't fucking see. Fucking pigs maced me." She rubbed her eyes, wiping a palmful of capsaicin paste across her face. It didn't burn her, didn't so much as irritate her but it was convincing.
"Hang on," he said, flinching from the intense burning smell. He fished a water bottle from his jacket and pulled her close. "Put your head back. Open your eyes."
She did as he instructed and let him pour tepid in her eyes, feeling it soak her shirt under the jacket. She involuntarily shut her eyes at the intrusion, and his large hand gripped the side of her face.
"Open your eyes. Gotta rinse them out. First time being maced?"
He used two fingers to open her eyelid. She let him.
"Yeah," she admitted. "Didn't exactly plan it."
He wiped her face with a clean bandana.
"Better?" he asked.
She got a good look at him now, still squinting. He was young, in his early twenties, and had dark brown eyes. He seemed genuinely concerned.
"Yeah, sorry," she stammered. "I drank too much and got in this cop's face. Crowd kept him from cuffing me."
"Fuck, lady. That's pretty hardcore. Is this your first protest?"
Lenore nodded, sheepishly.
"Goggles. Or at least safety glasses. Stops most of it from getting in your eyes. Won't stop tear gas though." He tugged at the goggles dangling around his neck for emphasis.
"Right," she said, looking around, "Look, I need to get out of here. This is too much for me."
He nodded, "Intense, huh?"
"Yeah," she agreed. "But I lost my friends and my phone died like an hour ago." She again made a show of looking around uncomfortably as the crowd surged around them. "Don't suppose you could help get me out of here? It hurts to open my eyes all the way."
"Afraid you'd get taken advantage of?"
"Would you call me a wuss if I said yes?"
This was the moment of truth. There was always a chance that a mark like this would be too dedicated, too fanatical, that her damsel-in-distress offer would be rejected. But she'd also done this enough to know who wouldn't.
Her hero looked around, assessing the protest.
"Car?"
"We took the metro."
"There's a station not too far from here. Where do you live?"
"Wedgwood."
He nodded. "I'm Aiden, by the way."
"Nora. And thanks."
"I'm sure your roommates are worried about you."
"Oh, I live alone. Shit apartment and rent sucks but I can't stand having roommates."
If she didn't before, she now had his full attention. The change was subtle; a subtle tilt of his head but she could see him making the calculations. "That's cool," he said. "Roommates are the worst."
She let Aiden lead her out of the crowd, zig-zagging around screaming lunatics. Like a respectable 21st-century gentleman, he held her arm through the crowd but let go as soon as they were out. Not being presumptive.
She didn't let him pull away, pretending that she needed him to steady her a little bit.
The noise and commotion faded away and downtown almost seemed normal despite being eerily empty.
Aiden attempted small talk. Attempted to flirt, even, but mostly talked about himself. That was fine by her. If he did start asking her personal questions, she would have steered the conversation back to him anyway. Men loved talking about themselves. She found out he was a grad student in an environmental justice program--whatever that meant--and was an aspiring social media influencer, another term Lenore only had a passing familiarity with. He also told her he was a feminist and that he believed women could do anything they wanted. She might have found it patronizing if it hadn't been funny in its absurd irony.
On the train, she pretended to pass out on his shoulder. She did this to avoid further small talk but also to engender some feelings of protection in him. Of ownership. She rested her head against him and draped an arm over his leg and it was like trying on a too-expensive jacket at a store. Try me on for size, she thought.
She could feel the wheels turning in him, calculating the possibilities. If he hadn't been thinking about getting into her pants, then something else was making him hard through his jeans.
She 'woke' just before her stop.
"This is me," she said, walking off the train. "Thanks so much for getting me out of there."
"Here," Aiden jumped off too. "I'll walk with you the rest of the way."
"Oh, that's not really necessary. I'm just up the block. I wouldn't want you to miss the last train."
