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eBook Category: Fantasy/Science Fiction
eBook Description: A shy young man meets a beautiful young woman in a coffee shop. His heart goes out to her, and then he begins to learn about the god of the crossroads and those unprecedented quantum events that occur only where light and darkness meet in the far sectors of the soul.

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: Far Sector SFFH, 2003
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2003

42 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [26 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [43 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [11 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [73 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [12 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [98 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [82 KB] , hiebook (KML) [72 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [59 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [9 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [12 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [50 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [20 KB]
Words: 3600
Reading time: 10-14 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

When she came into the coffee shop, I didn't know she was the woman who would change my life. She wore black, she had a beautiful face--that's all I noticed when she came in and walked to the counter to order a drink.

I drank Guinness for the warmth, sitting at a round table in the far corner of the coffee shop. I spent a lot of time there, but no one knew my name. Most of the people who frequented the place were hip beyond words, all tattoos and esoterica. I didn't know the bands they liked, the bars they went to, the world they inhabited.

I had a book in front of me, though it was closed for the moment, with a long coffee spoon as a bookmark. It was a collection of the year's best essays. The book had no central subject, no overriding theme--diversity was the point. I wanted to broaden my horizons, so I'd be a more interesting person. Not that I talked to many people. Sometimes I went days without speaking to anyone but co-workers and waitresses.

I got a better look at the woman as she took her drink away from the counter. My old girlfriend Charlotte had been pretty, too, but in a taller, brasher, blonder way. This woman had gray eyes, and she wore her dark hair piled atop her head. She wore knee high boots, tights, a loose skirt, and a spaghetti-strap velvet top, all black. A fringed shawl hung loosely over her shoulders. Her skin wasn't dead-white pale, and she didn't wear heavy eye-shadow or silver jewelry, none of the trappings I associated with goth types. She seemed comfortable in her clothes, as if they weren't a fashion statement but a simple fact of her being: this woman wears black.

She caught me staring and I looked away after meeting her eyes for an instant. I fidgeted with my napkin, where a splash of Guinness had soaked into the paper.

She sat down across from me, putting her cup beside my pint glass. Her drink smelled wonderful, some sort of spiced tea.

"Hello," she said. "I'm Merrilee."

I looked up. I'm a shy person, I always have been, I never know what to say. But how often had I imagined a moment like this? The way it is in the movies, when a stranger sits down at your table and introduces herself, and it's a chance for your life to take a strange turning. A chance that shouldn't be passed up, a chance at the extraordinary.

But I try not to be so obsessive.

"Mike," I said, but I've never liked the short-form. "Michael."

"We could go anywhere from here," she said, stirring her cup, scented steam rising. There was cinnamon in there, and nutmeg, and I don't know what else. I wondered how much of the delicious smell was the tea and how much was her, then felt foolish for thinking such a thing. "Two strangers," she said, "no history, no past, we've never met before. This could be a conversation, it could be an awkward silence, it could be a love affair, a friendship, a rivalry. So much possibility. Wonderful, isn't it?"