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Hallie watched with little interest as Bob slammed her appletini down before her with a flourish. She was used to the way he managed to slosh half of every drink he prepared across the bar as he served them and the green concoction in her glass held little allure. She smiled wanly and waited for him to go away, but he didn't. It was seven pm on a Tuesday at the Thunder Grill and hopping it was not.

You waiting for Mark?

She nodded, though she wondered why he had to ask. Isn't that what she did every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evening? Bob knew that, just as he knew exactly how much apple vodka was required to make his customers believe they were getting a lot for their money without upsetting the management. This was their routine. She would sit in the very last seat, next to the wall and order her appletini (on her birthday or particularly bad days at work she would go with a mango margarita, but today was just a normal Tuesday). After an hour or so, when Mark called to say he would be there as soon as he could she would order steak fajitas without moving to one of the many tables set up in the Union Station atrium and eat slowly, sucking the juice from the meat as she chewed. Mark would show up at some point after she had finished eating, it might be ten minutes or over an hour, but it was never in time to eat with her.

On nights when she was feeling a bit neglected she would imagine that perhaps there was a reason he always made excuses not to share a meal with her. Did she make odd noises when she swallowed? Did she look too carnivorous as she bit into her food? This always made her think of devouring him, slowly and with a side of mustard to dip his digits into one by one. Maybe as she sank her teeth into his earlobe and tore it off his body he would think to ask, How was your day?

These were uncharitable thoughts and she felt guilty. She had always had a bloodthirsty imagination which she was careful to hide from her friends and family. It didn't go with her mousy hair and wide eyed expression and she knew it. Mark had seen a few glimpses of it when they first met, in her Stephen King and Clive Barker book collection, in her intense desire to see every new horror film that was released, regardless of whether it looked poorly made. It made him laugh to see her grading papers for her third grade class as she watched Linda Blair's head turn around and around.

That was before they moved in together, when they were in those blissfully new and exploratory

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