More inclined to do impulsive activities. Naturally attracted to familiar locations. Familiar locations naturally populated with familiar people.


Naturally inclined to impulsive encounters with familiar people, as well as they can be recognized. 

What are you doing here, she asks him when she comes across him randomly on the city street; a city which he chose not to call his home, a home which he chose not to share with her; a city which has surrounded her in his absence, suddenly filled up with him again. 


Moments like this help the faithful stay that way, the affirmation of the law of large numbers showing them they hadn't wasted all that time they'd spent on their knees. 

She's weak in moments like these, caught off-guard in a place where she has to protect herself from strangers. Not from desires; not from abandoned hope and liquid dreams.  She snarls, but her kindness is her weakness.  To help someone, you have to let them get close to you. You'll help the people who mean the most to you most readily. Sometimes you don't mean that much to the people who mean the most to you; one of God's fucked-up jokes. 

She reaches out a hand to him, extending her body in his direction. He's lost.  She could tell from the entrance of the hotel.  She wasn't even going to go home this way, but she got caught up at work with that stupid new sculpture. Caught up in the law of large numbers, at the right place at the right time to help the last person she would choose to help unless she looked him in the face.  Once she saw that face the days and nights of rage and hatred washed away. Her dreams came true on fifth avenue, nowhere near where they were supposed to be.

He looks so cool, so composed, so free just standing there on the edge of the building. He doesn't look like he was waiting for her; he doesn't look like he waiting for anything-- he's just standing there with nowhere special to be. No hustle, no bustle, no ions or radicals running amok in his aura.  It's beautiful, like a unicorn. He is as majestic as an untamed stallion, his hair scattering in the whipping city wind.  She needs to be closer to him-- deep within herself she thinks, ever so briefly, that if she could get closer, if she could touch him, that somehow she too could be free; free from the confinement of life. Any amount of time feeling free like that, that would be a life worth living for.   She could blink, have it all be over, and so long as it was real, be satisfied. She would never need another thing so long as she lived, if only she could have this impossible freedom. 

The thought popped in her mind, faster than a lightning bolt along the synapses of her amygdala. Before she knew what she was doing she was moving, caught up in the swirl, the consuming typhoon. With each step along the sidewalk closer to him she got closer to the eye of the hurricane, and when she touched his jacket--just to see if he was real-- she felt the entire world become calm. The sounds of the city faded in the background around her. The leather collar was worn and warm in her hand despite the December weather. He turns with a smile that would shame a sunbeam, his lips barely cracked as not to blind her. He instantly recognizes her and greets her with a hearty laugh, then a hug; whose few seconds stretch out a lifetime. As his arms extended they already seemed wrapped around her, already holding her up; holding her in.  Their bodies came together like two droplets of water, with the eagerness of already having waited forever.

How've you been, he says, you look great. Streams of compliments wash over her and flood her mind with enough dopamine to kill a lab full of rats. She's helpless and at the mercy of his unrelenting charms, at his noticing the little things like he always would; never the big things --not that it matters now-- the little things always mattered the most. She could never change her hair without him noticing. 

Before she notices they're sitting down for a drink. She won't notice these either, not clearly anyway. Clinking collections of scenery and not much more. She brushes her hair back and he compliments her earrings. She's allowed her moment to blush and tug at one, thankful that he likes them. The world is filled with murmurs, her, and him.  Every round is an extension of this extra inning, every step he takes a step away from whence he came, every movement an opportunity. There is little difference between this moment and a candle-lit fantasy. Right now she's allowed to believe. Something so rare, so impossible to just happen, that has to be fate.  Kismet. Karma. Destiny.

Suddenly she's alone in the bathroom, looking herself in the mirror, blotting away the ghastly imperfections in the make-up on her face. He doesn't seem to notice at the table, he's so nice tonight, this is so wonderful! She resisted the need to leave him, feeling that wrench in her gut of reality, that as soon as she came back to the table he'd be gone-- worse, she'd realize she'd been sitting alone the whole time. 

One of the classic remedies of sadness is a faulty memory, blurring out the possibility of recognition; the recurrence of tears and heart-wrenching sorrow.  Not all the attributes of the best princes and princesses need be present when fate conducts her fairy tales, just enough of them to trick us into believing that we, too, deserve to be happy.