@manuel-amador some place where nobody knows your name
There's some live band she's never heard of (and by rights, should probably never hear of again) singing some weirdly off-key cover of Thriller while she sits at a bar.
Tressa Shaw has never sat at a bar alone drinking, but something about the concept seems correct tonight. Because her normal Halloween activity is unavailable.
So fuck it. She's hunting. Sue her.
There's a bowl of candy in the lap of a lounging skeleton on the front stoop of Embrace. Next to is a note nobody's listened to that reads, simply. "Take some, but not too much." Because vagueness is true horror. Tressa sits at the corner of an ugly bar with an ugly shelf of drinks behind it and a bartender in a lackluster attempt at a Minnie Mouse costume pouring drinks. The energy's lethargic. Like everyone here's just not feeling it this year. Relatable.
One of them, by the end of the night, will probably be dead. Because them's the brakes.
And then, as she scans, she finds something trigger a click in the back of her mind, and, fast like a blink and quiet as smoke she's shifting her seat at the bar, leaning her chin on her palm and looking a gravelly man up and down. "Holy shit, you're Manuel Amador. Can I shake your hand? Buy you a drink?"