so we meet in a cafe where the music is soft low frequency jazz, dwindling sonatas, moonlight outside, candlelit interior. i'm in a movie, the one where the guy smokes all the way through, jazz cigarettes. he wears shades and a looks like a west coast cultist, on the run from the masters of the galactic corporations, on the run from the heat, on the run from the past as it blazes a trail at his heels. comes a moment in that movie where you have to turn and face the strange right. else you just keep running. 
this past looks good, wow, impressive and sleek, like a thermo nuclear porn star exuding confidence and control, every structure bends her way, gravitational forces are at work. i perceive it with my seventh eye. 

i order some coffee for us, the coffee here is very good and there's something interesting about a city that allows people to smoke indoors a small slice of liberty in the cake of oppression that is forced down our throats until we choke.

zendra gives me the look. the wry one, the one that says everything i need to know. 

let's have sex, lets travel. she's ready to hitch wagons, i'm ready to ride. how about we finish our coffee first, i'm not quite the man you knew. 

really she says, i never really knew you.

no i was a different person, i'm still different, an anomaly apparently.

she smiles and takes the joint from me and puffs on it, she says she likes holding the joint, likes the way it smells, but doesn't really smoke at all anymore.

i take it back from her delicate fingers, and replace it with a sugar sachet. 

i always recall you had a sweet tooth and loved your lollies.

yes, and i still have my teeth, all good, shining like stars she flashes me her immaculate teeth, they do look amazingly white and dazzling. 

coffee arrives and we drink it down fast.

what now?

pack a bag, meet here in an hour?

i need more than an hour, let's make it noon.

that leaves me 4 hours. 

come on, don't you have loose ends to tie up.

no, they are tied up, put in a sack, driven to the docks and thrown into the bay.

she stands up. i hope you put weights on that sack.

don't need weights the loose end was heavy enough. 

noon. i will be here, she leaves.