A corner Café
						He was sitting at corner of Fifth and Lombard at his usual cafe drinking his morning coffee when he saw her for the first time. Till this day he can’t put his finger on what it was that made him raise his head at that exact moment. She was crossing the street heading for the subway on the far side of Lombard when he spotted her and the easy unhurried stride she took with those long legs are what probably changed his life from that day on. He dropped the five-dollar bill on the table and the paper on the seat and almost got killed rushing across the street before he managed to get in line three people behind her on the eastbound to out of the city. She was tall and carried herself like a model on the fashion channel, and he could tell that she was in a hurry. Actually he should have been too, in a hurry to get to work but like in a dream when you know its only a dream but still can’t do any thing to change the scenario he was totally out of control. He watched her get on the train and followed. She got organized, sat down and opened her book, the one about the couple who never met but just wrote letters back and forth till they had sucked each other dry. Here was the first and last time he asked himself why her. The list, he remembers to this day, went something like this: -First, the eyes with the sparkle in them, which were the first thing he noticed. -Then, the long legs wrapped up in tight dark jeans. -And the bushel of unnatural black hair going each way. -And finally the unbelievably sensual lips that were all ready making his mouth water. Two stops down the line she caught him watching her and smiled. By the time she had gotten off the train he knew her name and she had his E-mail address with a promise to send him something interesting. Three weeks later he had a mobile phone number and she had his heart… It was like all the love songs in the world where written just for them. Both the deep crazy Leonard Cohen ones and the dripping sweet Backstreet boys ones. He slipped into her mind like a hand into a ski glove on a freezing night. She took in all of him, every single piece of what he was and could be, and gave him back what he needed most, love. They spent hours on the phone happily opening each others worlds like some emotional strip poker game, layer by layer, deeper and deeper, questions and answers till they both felt it was safe… then they met again only this time it was a genuine date. After spending a few hours at his little cafe on the corner they walked slowly to one of the little jazz bars down near the bay and spent the next few hours trying to decide whether to go to bed together or not. They didn’t, at least that night her kissed her on the doorstep and drove the hour it took to get home with an ache in his pants and a thumping in his heart. All the love songs turning slowly over in his head. A week and two dates later he relearned sex lesson number one: It’s always better when you’re in love, the sex definitely was good and the rest of the world took on brighter colors. It took three more months before they had their first fight and learned to do it without too much damage. They took their first trip together then another and both of them stated feeling it was getting more and more serious. A year later they made the decision set the date then ran away and got married on a yacht somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean… Two kids, one mortgage and one decade later… He crawled back up, out of sleep, into the last light of the evening trying to figure out where he was. He felt the cool evening breeze on his skin. He could hear the kids playing downstairs and the dog barking in the yard at something. He shivered, waking up completely and realizing where he was and who he was and that he was already supposed to be in love. If that’s so then it all… had… been… a dream…

--