The story:

Writers like me use things that have happened to us as inspiration in our writing. Some of us tend to have a few core memories that affect every piece of text that comes out of us. I have one. One memory, or more so one person, who can be seen in every line I’ve written and each text I’ve published. She was someone who taught me more about myself than any adversity ever did, more about life than any lecture or textbook did. Her world was way greater than mine, her experiences way more extensive. And now my readers get to see the world she showed me for my writing hasn’t been the same since her.

I met her two years ago. I was 22, working at a laundry to be able to support the life I really wanted to live. Ever since I could read I wanted to write and I wanted to make a living out of it. However, I was privileged (or spoiled as so many of my writing professors said it) and lacked any real-life experience which made my writing very flat. I never fell short with motivation but no amount of will can save you if you don’t have skill. And skill comes from experience, which doesn’t come from a laundry. Or at least didn’t until she charged in.

I was working at the front desk as I sometimes did. I mainly worked at the back where all the washing was done. In a way I was grateful to have such a mindless job. I didn’t mind organizing sheets or throwing scrubs from washers to driers while my thoughts were somewhere else. That day though my boss was running some errands so I was covering for him in the front. The day had been unusually slow so I had a lot of time to let my mind wonder off. I had been trying to figure out a character around that time, not really knowing where I wanted to take her, so I was throwing scenes around in my head.

Suddenly, the front door flew open accompanied with a little ding from the bell. I looked up from my doodles and prepared myself for a friendly “how can I help you” -act. She was very dazzling from the very beginning. For anyone else she might have looked very ordinary with her trench coat - the one half was black and the other one was light brown - and with her long golden hair hanging open on her shoulders. But for me she seemed different. Maybe it was the way she came in or the way she gathered herself as soon as her eyes met mine. So many times, after that day, I have thought about her eyes. Her deep light green eyes. I’ve never seen that color in my life but she was special in so many ways that her having a unique eye color was pretty much a given. Or maybe her charm was in the confident smile that slowly creeped on her face through our first conversation.

“Hi”, I said. “How can I help you?”

“Hello”, she answered. “I’m, uhh… picking up my bedsheets.” She walked to the counter leaning over very confidently. “I brought them in a week ago.”

“Sure, let’s check. What’s the name?”

“Mary Trenton.”

I checked the file for commissions but I couldn’t find any with that name. She kept glancing at the door and tapping on the counter looking very nervous. Every time, though, that I took my eyes from the papers to her she gave me a warm smile, one with her teeth showing.

“I’m sorry”, I said. “I can’t see your order here.” In hindsight I should have realized she gave me a fake name but even with my imagination it didn’t come to mind at that moment. “Are you sure you came in last Thursday? My boss must have mixed the orders, he does that sometimes.”

“Ah, men”, she huffed. “Always useless. Gotta love them, though.”

I looked up at her. “I would hope not. It’d be a miserable rest of my life.” The way she smiled told me she shared the sentiment.

She must have had a sixth sense or something because she glanced at the window a few seconds before two men walked by. When they looked through the window, she was gone. For a second I stood there alone at the counter before the men continued on.

“You can get up now”, I said finally. She was sitting on the floor, behind the counter, next to my feet.

She looked up at me with a wide smile. “It seems like it’s best for me to go.” She stood up and backed up in the corner so she couldn’t be seen from the window. “Is there a back door I could possibly use?”

“That depends. What’s your real name?”

If possible her smile seemed to get even wider. “I like you.” She peeked behind the corner and glanced through the window. “Look”, she said to me. “Let’s make a deal. I tell you my name if you promise to meet me tomorrow for a coffee. Near the railway station, at noon.”

“I’ve already traded the back door for your name”, I said. “You can’t pay for two things with one coin.”

She laughed. “Well, in case you haven’t already noticed I’m a conman. That’s sort of what I do.”

I guess I had already figured out she was someone different but still her trusting me enough to say it to me out right took me by surprise. And her trust in me made me trust her. I never figured out why that was but I always felt safe with her.

“It’s a deal, umm…”

“Sabrina.”

“Kailee.”

A few minutes after Sabrina had disappeared in the back alley the two men were back. This time they came in. They didn’t even act like they had a reason to be there and just asked questions about the customers that day.

“Has it been busy today?” the taller one asked.

“Not particularly, no”, I answered trying to act as normally as I could.

“Anything weird, or suspicious, walking by?”

I laughed. “Suspicious? At a laundry?” They merely glanced at each other. “What are you, secret detectives?” I asked trying to make it sound like a joke. “Well, you won’t find anything here. It’s just me and the linens. My boss should be back any minute though, in case you want to interrogate him.”

The men asked a few more questions but soon enough, they gave up and left. The next day I walked to the coffee shop by the railway station on my lunch break. I couldn’t see Sabrina so I sat down to wait for her. In less than a minute she appeared around the corner and sat down in front of me. The server brought us some coffee and two stuffed croissants.

“You paid for these?” I asked.

“Two things, one coin” was the answer I got.

“I hope the Twins didn’t bother you yesterday”, she said. “They tend to follow me wherever I go.”

So, she had kept an eye on me. Or whoever the Twins were. Most likely they were someone who she had been running away from for a while. Something about Sabrina’s face made me feel like she considered it to be a game. Her childlike enthusiasm drew me in.

“No, it was fine. I tried steering them away from you.”

Sabrina raised her eyebrows.

“It’s basic psychology”, I explained. “There’s this thing called gaslighting. It’s basically about making them think they are stupid for thinking there could ever be a conman at a laundry. There are a few handy techniques to make people question their own decision making.”

For a while Sabrina staired at me. “There’s something about you Kailee. I’ve never been more attracted to anyone in my life.”

I matched her smile.

“I’ll take you out tonight”, she continued.

Sabrina always had a weird effect on me. Her energy drew a similar one out of me and through the period of time I knew her that pulling of energies dug out a side of me I didn’t know I had. The more time I spent with her the more I started to act as boldly as she did.

“No, you won’t”, I said. I moved forward to lean on my elbows. “I’m not yours to take. You should ask.”

She laughed. “Okay. Can I take you out tonight, Kailee? It’s a nice restaurant, I promise it’s worth your time.”

Of course, I agreed. I didn’t exactly know what I was doing, agreeing to go out with someone who I hardly knew and was very obviously lying to me about a lot of things. I was so swept off of my feet from the first moment I saw her that I just leaned into anything that happened.

After coffee Sabrina promised to be there to pick me up from my apartment that night. Once she stood up from the table to leave she walked pasted me and leaned down to whisper in my ear: “Wear something nice.”

Something nice? With my job I couldn’t really afford a lot of nice things. I stressed about it for the rest of my shift until I got home. Luckily my laziness and my friends being horrible at asking for their things back resulted in me having a perfect dress hanging in my closet. It was a bright red slip dress I had worn for my friend’s engagement party a few months before. With that dress on and some makeup and jewelry I didn’t look half bad.

Sabrina seemed to like it too. When she picked me up that night she took her time letting her gaze drag up and down my outfit. The way she looked at me, the way she always looked at me, made the butterflies in my stomach fly like crazy. She herself was wearing a dark blue suit and had her hair up. She looked very Bond-like standing under the streetlight, leaning on an Aston Martin, which I didn’t even dare to ask about. That night was the night I realized I had a thing for women in suits.

She took me to a restaurant that I had never been to. Mainly because the reservations had a two-month waiting list. And with my salary I could have afforded to buy one half of a drink. Sabrina didn’t seem to have the same problem. Somehow she had managed to get us one of the best tables they had in a matter of a day. I did think about it if she just had a regular reservation there so she could take whoever she was dating at the time for a fancy dinner. Sabrina was like driving a sports car. The faster you went the greater the high, but the shorter the ride. At the time, though, I didn’t care.

The restaurant was a rooftop restaurant on top of one of the most prestigious hotels in town. We sat down by the window overlooking the city. I have always been a night owl and preferred the city after sundown. With all the lights and the people having a night out on the town made it come to life.

“So, you want to become a writer?” Sabrina asked while we were sipping our drinks, waiting for our dessert.

“That’s the dream”, I said. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t really pay the bills, thus the laundry.”

Sabrina nodded.

“Also”, I continued. “There’s the fact that I suck at writing.”

“What?”

“Well, that’s what I’m told. I ‘lack inspiration and experience’” I said with air quotes.

Sabrina took a sip from her drink and leaned back in her chair. “Seems to me like you just need an adventure. Something to inspire you.”

I looked at her trying to figure her out. What she didn’t know was that she had already inspired me. What I didn’t know was that she would continue to inspire me even more. My natural curiosity helped me a lot. Common sense might have told me to go home and forget about her but Sabrina was like a good book. You just have to know how it ends and you disregard everything else going on in your life just to finish reading.

So, when she said: “You want to get a room for the night?” I had no choice than to keep turning the page.

I was attracted to Sabrina in more ways than one. So, you can imagine when a mysterious beauty takes you to an expensive hotel room you sort of have to let yourself enjoy it. I wasn’t exactly inexperienced back then and I bet Sabrina knew even more than I did. So, while the city streets continued on with its nightly celebration dozens of feet below us, we had a bit more private party taking a full advantage of the California king bed in our suite.

The next morning, I let the rising sun wake me up. I ended up ordering breakfast into the room so we didn’t have to get out of bed. Once the trolly arrived I served the food to bed wearing nothing but Sabrina’s dress shirt. She happily allowed me, watching me from underneath the sheets with her messy hair and sharp eyes.

“So”, I started while climbing back to bed. “You know awful lot about me but I know nothing about you.”

She just looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup. At first I had thought that Sabrina was a quiet person but later on I realized how calculated she was. Choosing her words wisely so she didn’t let out anything she didn’t want me to know.

“What are you going to do next? Where are you going to go?” I pryed.

She took a deep breath and turned to look out the window, like weighing her options. “Sydney, I think.”

“Sydney, Australia? Why?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Never been.”

“Is that what you do? You just go places you’ve never been to before?”

“More or less.”

I rolled my eyes to her evasive answer which made her laugh.

“I don’t know if you watch sports”, she continued. “But I’m not really on an offence right now more so than on a defense.” I didn’t watch sports. “The Twins”, she explained. “I’m sort of trying to lose them at the moment.”

Whoever the Twins were I never asked. I gathered Sabrina wasn’t really willing to tell me too much about her life and to me she was the most interesting thing in her life. So, I decided to spend all the questions I was granted on her. “And they won’t find you in Sydney?”

“I hope not. I’ll take a few detours on the way. Hope that will confuse them.”

“Isn’t that tiring?” I asked. Her stories were so interesting that I completely forgot I had food in front of me and just staired at her.

“Not really, if you enjoy it.” She turned her head to wink at me. “It gives you an opportunity to see the world. See new places, meet new people. Gives you an opportunity to wake up in the morning in a nice hotel room next to a beautiful woman.”

Sabrina’s life sounded like something you read books about. A person, a hero, running away from the bad guys, spending her time in private planes, and tasting food from all around the world. Experiencing so many new and different things. Just so many stories, so many memories, to bring back home.

I started to sink into my own thoughts about Sabrina’s glamorous life so she startled me when she said: “Come with me.”

The absurdity of her request made me laugh. “You really are the biggest conman”, I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You sell people on ideas you have no intention delivering on. You sell me on the idea of following you when at the end of it I will just end up alone, naked in bed in some hotel room in Paris. With nothing but a note from you saying that you’re sorry but you had to go.”

She leaned towards me on the bed with a smile on her face. “Sounds like an adventure to me.”

I met her in the middle of the bed and ran my finger down her cheek. The depths of her eyes reflected the whole world in them. All the things she had seen, all the things she’d done. All the things I could do with her. “Yes it does”, I whispered.

My boss wasn’t too happy when I explained him I was planning on taking a creative leave from work. I told him that I had an epiphany and I knew what I wanted to write about, I just needed more time. It wasn’t all a lie. Like I said Sabrina had already inspired me and a big part of her ended up in the character I was writing at the time.

I told Sabrina I needed a few days to get my ducks in a row. To let some friends know I would be travelling for a while, to pack my bags. I spent those few days in a constant state of giddiness. I pretty much felt like I stopped living my own life and started living on the pages of an adventure novel. That’s what Sabrina did to me. Not only was she an important relationship to me but more than that she pushed me beyond myself into something I had never been before. I packed my things, filled with nervous anticipation, and met her at the railway station at dawn like I had promised.

I was patiently waiting until we got into our cabin. Once we sat down I couldn’t hold my excitement anymore.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the airport.” Sabrina wrapped her arm around my shoulders.

“We are flying somewhere? Where are we flying to?”

“London”, she said and pulled me in for a kiss.

I had never been to Europe. The only time I had been outside of the States was a field trip to Canada in high school. So, it was my first time on a plane. To my disappointment Sabrina did not have a private plane so we had to fly commercial. She did, however, manage to upgrade our tickets to first class somehow.

I’m not afraid of flying per se but it has always made me sort of uneasy. I was fidgeting in my seat before take-off and of course Sabrina noticed.

“Are you afraid of flying?” she asked taking my hand.

“Not flying, just heights.”

“Well, you’re lucky we’ll only get up to about 35,000 feet.” She massaged the back of my hand with her thumb.

I let out a deep sigh. “Don’t even joke about that.” She laughed and leaned in to press a kiss on my neck, which did distract me nicely.

The flight was long but not too long with her. There was a lot of stories told from all the trips Sabrina had taken. A lot of secrets shared, the roar of the engine covering the whispers passing between us. Finally, we dozed off leaning on each other.

Our hotel room in London was again unnecessarily extravagant. The bathroom was bigger than my entire apartment in Chicago and the windows opened up to a view of the London Eye. The bed looked even more inviting than the one we spent our first night together in.

The clock in the room said that it was around midnight but I didn’t feel at all tired. The time difference must have been quite a few hours. Still crawling in bed sounded very tempting. Sabrina read my mind.

“You look good”, she said. “I like that shirt on you.” I looked down confused. I was wearing the comfiest shirt I had packed on me. It was all wrinkled and sweaty from the travelling. “It would look better on the floor, though.”

The flirting made me smile but it quickly turned into giggles when she came and picked me up and threw me on the bed. She climbed on top of me and was going to lean down and kiss me but I had something else in mind. I shifted my position and swinged my leg around her so I could turn us over and get on top of her. She looked startled at first but quickly recovered once I pulled my shirt off and threw it across the room. I never forgot the way she looked at me. I have never had anyone else look at me like that, with so much longing and pride. Like they wanted me, all of me, flaws and all.

A few hours later we were laying in bed. I was gliding my finger across the skin on her bare back. First I was drawing squiggles but shortly started to follow the different scars and markings she had on her. Most of them looked like whip lashes across her shoulders, some of them on her upper arm.

“What are these?” I asked.

“Got caught once, in Vietnam. Learned my lesson from that one time.” She turned slowly to lay on her back and watched my reaction.

That must have been the first time I saw the reality of her. I guess I hadn’t thought about it too much before. The glamor of her had took me away so strongly that there was no space for reality. But what she did was dangerous and there was a much more of a real side to it than the one we see in movies and books.

“Have you ever killed anybody?” I asked her abruptly.

“Don’t ask if you don’t want to know the answer.”

I don’t know why I was never afraid of her. In hindsight I had been dumb trusting her the first time I met her and then agreeing to travel around the world with her. I must have known deep down how brave I was because I don’t think I would have followed her if I wasn’t. But at the time I was incredibly interested in her, not only attraction-wise but also as a writer. There was a depth to her character that intrigued me to no end.

“I want to know you”, I whispered.

“I’m not a murderer.” She turned her face away from me. “Accidents happen, if that’s what you want to know.”

I waited but she wouldn’t look at me again so I pulled myself closer to her on the bed and pressed my lips on her shoulder. “I want to know everything there is to know about you.” I breathed in the sweet scent of her skin. “You don’t see yourself the way I see you, Sabrina. I want to see all of you.”

I would have given pretty much anything to get inside her head. Sometimes I found myself infuriated about how little she spoke to me. On the other hand, I guess I did understand her side to it as well. As little as I knew about her she knew about me. Based on everything I know about being a conman it requires trusting as few people as possible. For some reason she decided to trust me a little bit but not all the way.

She never told me where we were going next. “It’s a surprise” she said but I felt like she was trying to keep me in the dark for a reason. I can’t say it wasn’t an experience. We took the detours Sabrina promised we would. One day we were laying on a beach in Greece and the next we were taking a private plane to Russia, since she did end up having one by the way. We would walk around the busy streets in Singapore and fall asleep under the stars in Thailand.

From all the few things I had packed with me my laptop was one of them. Anytime we had a few hours in a train or a plane or a hotel room, I would write. The more Sabrina showed me of the world the more I had to write about and my screenplay started to take shape. I got so inspired, or obsessed, that I would sometimes ignore Sabrina all together. She tried her hardest to distract me by playing with my hair or kissing my neck and more often than not I would give in to her seduction.

My feelings for Sabrina were so strong and the way she had come into my life with such suddenness and such force made it impossible to let go of her. I hadn’t given a single thought to what would happen when eventually I had to go back home. In so many ways she made my life, and ended up making me, so much more full and real. Like I said she was like a sports car.

Eventually we made it to Sydney. We had been travelling for a few days and were as tired as ever. When we got up to our hotel room I remember the look on Sabrina’s face. She opened the curtains and was met by the Sydney Opera House. She took a very deep breath. I remember wondering how much significance that moment had to her. She had been talking about going to Sydney quite a lot and she had always mentioned the Opera House. Some things I never figured out.

The next morning, she had something she needed to do but she refused to let me in on it. Eventually I stopped asking and welcomed some alone time. I went on a walk along the Sydney Harbor and popped into a few gift shops. I felt a bit guilty. Sabrina had given me everything just by taking me on this trip and I had nothing to offer her. I walked around without too much of a plan until I found something perfect. It was a silver pendant with a carving of the Sydney Harbor Skyline. I hoped it would be meaningful to her but there was also the feeling of hope that it would remind her of me.

That afternoon Sabrina came into the hotel room with some Australian barbeque.

“Just wait a second”, I said and crawled from the bed where I had been writing. “I want to give you something first.”

Sabrina set the food on the table and leaned against the tabletop to wait. I almost ran to my purse I was so excited.

“Close your eyes”, I said.

“What…” Sabrina started but I interrupted her.

“Just humor me, please.”

I went to stand in front of her with the little jewelry box behind my back. She was trying to look impatient but I could see she was hiding her smile. To dig it out of her I gave her a kiss.

“Was that what you wanted to give me?” she asked giving a laugh with her eyes still closed.

“No. Give me your hand.” She opened her palms between us and I gave the box to her. “Okay, open.”

Looking at her reaction was funny. She was so apparently trying to say no to my gift but at the same time very intrigued about what it was. Finally, she opened the box and saw the necklace.

“Kailee…” she sighed.

I looked at her. I don’t think I ever saw her eyes like that. No matter what Sydney meant to her it must have been a lot. It even looked like she was holding back a tear.

“It has the Opera House on it. I thought you’d like it.” She took her eyes from the necklace to me. “Hope it will remind you of me.”

There was a different type of sadness in her eyes after I said that. She took a deep breath, turned to put the necklace down on the table and gave me a hug. She squeezed me tight around my shoulders and whispered in my ear: “I love it. Thank you.”

I mumbled “You’re welcome” against her lips before she kissed me.

I should’ve known. I should have known why she seemed so different. We had planned on going out that night but she wanted to stay in the room. She asked me to read my scenes to her. Every time I described my main character, who was vastly based on her, she smiled. She played with my hair that night and I fell asleep in her arms. I just thought my gift had made her feel sentimental, but I should’ve known.

The next morning, I woke up to an empty bed. I had seen a dream about my play so as soon as I opened my eyes I ran to my laptop to write my thoughts down. I didn’t see Sabrina anywhere but I figured she would be out getting us breakfast or something. Once I got all of my ideas out on a document I sat back on my chair. It was a gloomy morning, with only little sunlight coming in through the windows.

I stretched and saw a glimpse of something on the table. I reached to grab it. It was an envelope with a plane ticket back to Chicago, 500 dollars and a note. “Kailee”, it said. “Something’s come up. I can’t explain but you should fly back home. I promise I’ll see you soon.” At the bottom of the note it said: “I’m sorry, even though we’re not in Paris.”

In the end, the sports car metaphor doesn’t even describe my time with Sabrina. It was more like a bullet train on an ending track. It was fast and it was short. So exhilarating but bound to end in a heartbreak. Sabrina broke her promise. She never came to find me. In a matter a few months she went from a complete stranger to a muse, to a lover, to the person who destroyed me.

I don’t regret it though. How could I? In the short period of time, she gave me so much more than I was ever able to give myself. She handed me the piece I was missing in my writing. She inspired me to continue stretching myself in all aspects of life.

I never went back to the laundry. I continued writing, living on bread in a shoebox appartment. I dreamed about her a lot, both in my sleep and during the daylight. Sometimes I thought she was still following me, watching me from the distance. And when my script was adapted to a Broadway show I imagined seeing her sit in the audience at the premiere.

Writers like me need people like Sabrina to show us the world. Going through a rollercoaster ride of emotions in a short period of time shapes us and forms us into the writers we know we are able to be. The more selfish, humane part of me wishes I could have had her forever. But through my writing I guess I do.