Sense Memory

I don’t know what it was about my coffee this morning that suddenly and vividly reminded me of the Cat Burglar. And that night that he took me out for a birthday dinner.

When I arrived, he was sitting at the bar trying to order a martini. The gift bag next to him, saving my seat, held two bottles of high-end tequila.

He stood up to kiss me, perplexed that they couldn’t make his martini properly. Why can’t bartenders read our minds?

Tequila fueled our conversation that night. Like every other, it was a battle of wits designed to keep me on my toes. Always an enticing challenge.

Later he took me back to his house and introduced me to San Matias. He drank it straight from the bottle, like the savage he really was under those nice suits and Midwestern charm. The passing flirtation with both him and tequila exploded into a full affliction some time around midnight. He was very late--and very hungover--the next morning when he was supposed to meet with Very Important People. There was probably a mark or two under his suit too.

Too bad our delicious tête-à-têtes eventually devolved into angry encounters that left me battered and bruised on the outside and hostile and enraged on the inside. And I should have seen it coming.

That night last spring held so much promise. Now memories of him rest only half-dead in GPG Jail, while I sip my coffee and wonder how the toxic nectar led me to unlock that cell and replay those events in my head.

Fucking coffee.