Milky Way Joe and I lost touch soon after we met. He had given me a phone number at which to contact him, but when dialed, it rang for a curious amount of time until something that sounded like a crow made me hang up irritably. Meanwhile, that first novel of mine went navigating through the streets of nowhere, where it eventually vanished from my attention completely. That was no problem. It had really only been a means of beginning, of getting things turning. The first draft was the final draft but I gave a damn enough to write it in the first place. It wasn’t long until life opened up through the lens of working words. The first thing that happened was I got robbed. Someone reached out to me on the internet and told me that they liked my work, and asked if I would write a children’s short story for their nephew. The nephew’s name was William, he had a dog named Maxxie. The double x’s should have been the alarm that I was about to be bamboozled, but after a dry spell one jumps at an odd colored drop. I finished the story in a short amount of time. William and his dog take a rocket ship to the moon and glue it back together in order to save the world. Cute as can be. I was sent a two thousand dollar check, at which point I was told they accidentally wrote one zero too many, but I could cash it and send them back the extra money. Bad check cashed, money lost. My bank was not happy about this. In the end of it all my checking account clutched at fifty dollars and a resilient thirty-six cents stared at me from my savings. The second thing that happened was my girlfriend kicked me out of our apartment. She said I might become an alcoholic. I asked why. She said I romanticized life too much and made the real thing dull in comparison. I said I didn’t make life what it was, then went on an incoherent, abstract rant about how we could get better at making life what it was. She started gathering my things in a pile on the bed. I put them in a heavy duty trash bag and went out to the street. She asked me where I would go. I said Colorado. She asked why. I said the mountains seemed romantic. And I did. I borrowed some money and headed west. Other than a flat tire in Indiana, I arrived in Longmont, Colorado, where I had found a cheap room for rent on the internet. I was one for two with the internet and three for four with tires, lonesome as heck but hopeful. I got a part time job at a coffee shop and worked words everyday. That’s how I met Selene. Selene walked through the world on a sheet of ice, clear as glass with a depth of seven thousand leagues below. She worked with me but I hated her, for some damn reason, and in turn, she loathed me. I remember on my second day she said I resembled a dog she had when she was little. “What was its name?” I asked. “It was a she. And her name was Misty.” “That’s a pornstar name,” Eli said as he squeezed by us with a trash bin. “Not everything is porn-related Eli, especially if you’re not addicted to it.” “If you’ve never been addicted to it. Past tense. I don’t watch porn anymore.” “What is it exactly that Misty and I have in common?” Eli jammed his face between us. “Would have had in common. Past tense Rocco. I think Misty is fuckin’ dead.” “Shut up Eli! Why are you everywhere all the time? Why is he always listening?” “The man has good ears,” I said. “Thanks man.” “Of course,” I shook Eli’s hand. “He’s got a nice full head of hair too,” I said to Selene. She rolled her eyes. And that’s how it was at Blondie’s Cafe. It was a lot of nonsense and shouting and careless commenting and eavesdropping, and surprisingly often it was heart to heart and mind to mind. One day Selene came in with tears in her eyes. She was hanging up her coat in the storage room and sniffling, erasing the sentiment on her face desperately with both her hands. “Hey Selene,” I said. She did not turn around. “What,” she said curtly. “Can I do anything for you?” “No. I’m fine.” “You don’t seem fine.” “Do yourself a favor and…” And she broke further, and more rain came out. She turned to face me, less ashamed because now she had her weapons loaded, her insults known. “...and don’t even try to know what anything is…” It was clunky and she knew it. “Oh shit,” she said. “Never mind.” I moved closer to her and picked up something she’d dropped on the floor, a small envelope. I held it out in my hand. She inspected it for a moment but turned away, her long black hair flooding over the side of her face. “Read it,” she said. I opened the envelope and unfolded the paper inside. I read it. “I’ll bet those bastards didn’t even read my work, I’ll bet my resume wasn’t in the proper format. Rubbish. I’ll bet…hey, how in the hell do people like that come to be in charge of what comes in and what goes out anyway? That’s why there’s nothing worth reading out there. That’s why…” “Listen, Selene, I didn’t even know you wrote.” She looked up at me with tear stained eyes, red moons that were wet with bitterness. It was then I caught sight of how truly cute she was. Behind the veil of wounded wings and horns that crutched a fear, I melted in the actuality that she glowed. There were darkened street signs on her cheeks as well as avenues of adventure that curved up into her nose. Head-in-the-cloud restaurants and classic cafes, that only someone living there devotedly would know about, they poured across her forehead and brow. Swans sailed along the lakeshores of her jaw line, their ripples moving closer to me from the unknown setting sun which was her chin. And finally there was the firmament of her mouth, separating lip from lip. And I wanted to be there, for it was heaven. “Hello?” “Huh? What?” “Perfect. You’re a piece of work, you know that?” And she walked away from me. She thought I wasn’t listening. The truth is I had been listening to something you rarely ever get to listen to. I actually saw her for a moment.