Quickly, Gwen pressed the buzzer of the door, which was answered by the same tall, dark-haired woman with whom she'd spoken some weeks earlier.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked, looking peeved.

Gwen garnered her courage. "Yes, I hope so. I'm a freelancer. You've published my work before . . ." her voice trailed off as she smiled, hoping the woman would recognize her. "Gwendolyn Newsham?" she added after a moment, realizing that the woman definitely didn't.

"Newsham?" the woman repeated, a perturbed grimace crossing her features. "That's coincidental."

"What is?"

"Oh, nothing. Just that someone was here looking for you a bit earlier."

"Really?"

"Yeah, just about fifteen minutes ago."

Gwen thought. "Hm. That is odd. I don't know anyone that would be looking for me."

"Wanted to contact you about an article you wrote, but I told him we don't give out information. Anyway, why don't you come on around back, to the office. Obviously, if someone's asking about your work, you aren't lying about getting us to publish it. All right, go on around to the side. I'll let you in there." With that, the woman shut the door and disappeared in the interior of the building.

A little high on the thought that someone had come asking about her, Gwen walked a bit farther down the sidewalk and turned into the alleyway, where she made her way to the side door. As the door closed behind her, Gwen was led into a small office with a ratty, blood-red shag carpet and a desk overflowing with typewriter paper and stacks of magazines. A big green tree sat in a pot in one corner, contrasting with the red of the rug and the aqua color of the walls. The furniture in the room was brown and all looked as if it had been picked up at thrift shops, and the solitary light came from a bulb hanging naked from the ceiling.

"Sorry to be a bit gruff at the door," said the dark-haired woman, sitting behind the desk. "I mean, it's early, and nobody's here yet except me. We don't usually open so early."

"I'm sorry," Gwen replied, polite as she could be in spite of her misanthropic tendencies. She wanted another job. "I'm working this morning, and I can't be too late. I really didn't know what time you opened; I couldn't' remember from the last time I stopped by."

"Yes, the last time . . . what was it you'd written? Something about evolution?"

"Yes!" chirped Gwen, excited that her words had stuck in this woman's memory.

The woman shook her head cynically. "Don't get all excited. I only know it because the kid who came looking for you was trying to tell me about it."

"What did he say, if it's all right to ask?"

Rolling her shoulders, the woman picked up a pencil and began playing with it in her fingers. "Nothing too important. He just wanted to know how to get in contact with you, because he liked your piece."

"Really?"

"Apparently so."

"That's . . . unexpected! Did you—"

"What is it you came to see me about, Ms. Newsham?" the woman interrupted, obviously not giving much thought to the matter that had so interested Gwen.

Sighing inwardly, picturing an ice pick going through the woman's temple, Gwen suppressed her urge to kick a hole in the desk. "Well, I came because I've written another essay, and I thought that I would try to sell it to you. At first, I figured that since you didn't get feedback from my first, you might not want another, but I have faith that this is a good one, and seeing as I've just had someone come commenting on my article, I suppose that is proof that my stuff is worth printing."

The woman, who had to be only a few years older than she was, eyed her as if trying to figure out whether Gwen had just been arrogant or confident. She apparently decided on the latter, because she uncrossed her arms and leaned forward on her desk. "I tell you what," she said, her tone indicative of concession. "Why don't you leave what you've got with me, and I'll see if we can get it into next week's issue. It kind of depends on if we have space in the mark-up. So if you see your piece in there, we'll be sending you a check. If not, then we won't be. Sound good?"

Not good enough, she thought, but her words were, "Sounds great."

The woman rose. "Here. I'll take it." She took the manila envelope Gwen passed to her. "Send us a digital copy, too, via email. Make it to Angela Ortega at The Wanderer dot com. Got it? That way, we don't have to retype the whole thing if we want to use it."

Gwen nodded. "Oh," she remembered, just as they crossed the hall and reached the door. The sound of voices entering the front of the office reached her ears. "Can you please remember to put my email address at the end, this time? Just in case."

The dark-haired woman nodded, a tight-lipped grin on her chin. She really couldn't have cared less.

Gwen left the office fuming inwardly. Why was the world formed in such a way that it required one to deal with people? People were so . . . so insufferable, so gross to deal with. Gwen had been ready to erupt with the pressure building in her chest, the hot rage that she felt whenever she had to deal with someone ignorant enough to look down on her work. It was a strange sensation—that pressure in the chest, as if fluid was flowing from some unspecified source. It expanded, a balloon inflating behind her ribs, tightening her upper abdomen, prodding from behind the nerves and muscle and bone, looking for a way out, coming up in her throat in danger of bursting if she let the wrong words leave her mouth—words that would be like a secret password to open the door to the rage inside her. Gwen had always been able to control her rage, though . . . in fact, she was loath to call it such. She didn't consider herself an angry person. What was inside her was really too confined by the standards of propriety to ever do much more than ferment. When she'd been a little girl, even her brothers had been unable to get a rise out of her. They'd been so rowdy—the four of them—and so much trouble to their parents. Gwen, being the only girl, had been the darling of the family, and she'd grown up knowing how to get her way without losing her temper or acting out. Of course, she hadn't wanted much from her parents, anyhow, so it wasn't as if she'd had to be a whining, spoiled little rich girl. Gwen had just known there was something more for her—something special—and so she'd never wasted her time experimenting with things that could ruin her potential, as her brothers had all fallen into the habit of doing. In fact, the only reason she heard little from her parents was because her two younger brothers were still living at home (one in high school, one in community college), and they kept Mr. and Mrs. Newsham busy.

Derek had been the worst. He was older than Gwen by about two years. After getting his GED, he'd been in and out of three schools before their parents decided to quit wasting their money on him and let him drop out for good. They'd hoped he'd get a job, but at the time, Gwen, who'd been at home with them, had told them that they might as well give up that notion. Derek had been a squirrely teenager, and he'd grown into an even wilier adult. His habits of lying and squandering both time and money had never been problems his parents could correct, and Gwen, who'd grown up catching glimpses of her mother crying and her father yelling at her older brother, had made up her mind to dislike and avoid him ever since he'd moved out. She knew he lived somewhere in the city, but she wasn't sure where, and she was glad of that. In spite of her harsh feelings toward Derek, Gwen didn't hate her brother. She just couldn't stand the way he wasted his life; it physically pained her to think about how much time and energy he was wasting—if only she could take the time and energy he obviously didn't care about! She always found herself needing more of both: the time to get in her writing, and the energy to get herself to her stupid, boring desk job. Mrs. Ringword was hardly bearable in her insipid and constant conversation; Gwen didn't know how much she could really take, even if the downtime did allow her moments to get her thoughts on paper.

Gwen spotted an opening bookstore . . . that's what would help her anger deflate: a cup of coffee. She had just enough time to grab a cup before she needed to be at work. Sometimes she just wanted to sit and drink coffee and all would be well with the world (at least, until the coffee ran dry). Rarely did Gwen enter bookstores with the intent of looking at books. She almost always went into them with the express idea of getting something hot to drink, a seat in the café area, and a view of browsing people. Books interested Gwen very little; in fact, even the process of picking them off the shelf opened a bitter vein insider her. She would hate anyone else's published work until she herself was amongst the best sellers (or at least on the shelves), and the act of strolling into a bookstore was her way of torturing herself into the realization that she needed to do more. It was like a wake-up shower, only a bitter, bitter cold one meant more to give her pain she was determined to overcome than the vigor to start a new day.

"Coffee, please. Black," she instructed the barista. She took off the hat she'd been wearing. The mornings were still a bit brisk outside.

"Me too, same."

Gwen heard the voice behind her and thought it presumptuous, but she pretended not to have noticed and paid for her drink quickly. Without looking behind her, she took her coffee when it was handed to her and made her way to the cream and sugar counter. After dumping in four packets of creamer, she stirred the hot drink and found a seat at a table that looked out across the book store, so she could watch people walking around. It wasn't the people she was interested in, of course—it was what they were looking at. She wanted to see what sorts of things interested them, what didn't interest them . . . she studied them. They were her specimens; they were what she wrote about, and bookstore spying was an easy method of voyeurism, one that wouldn't get her in trouble.

She'd been seated only a moment when someone occupied the little round table next to hers. She didn't want to pay any attention to him, and in fact, she didn't directly glance his way, but the chair he'd taken was not the one where he would have had his back to her but the one which faced her directly, across both of their tables. It was as if he'd purposely done it. Gwen could see, out of the corner of her eye, his shock of orange hair, and even more disturbing—she could tell that he was staring at her. Entirely nonplussed, Gwen had no idea what to do. The back of her neck grew warm, and she felt the anger expanding insider her, again. He wasn't turning away; he was staring right at her, his eyes burning holes through her clothes. It was the most awkward, horrible feeling . . . yet she didn't know what to do! Certainly, it would be ridiculous to stay where she was and let him stare, but the last thing she wanted to do was address him; as irate as she was, she did not want to reproach a complete stranger. Interaction was just as horrifying a prospect as was the thought of continuing to let him stare. Entirely frazzled, Gwen sacrificed her prime position and got up from her seat, hurrying away to a booth toward the back corner of the café, near the pastry counter and the kitchen door. Nobody was back there; she was absolutely secluded. It was not where she wanted to be, but at least she could sit and drink her coffee in peace.

Or so she'd thought.

Within moments of moving, the man had risen and followed her, come right up to her table, and sat down directly across from her in the booth, as naturally as if they knew one another. Gwen was speechless. He was weird looking. She'd seen him somewhere before, but she didn't know where, and he was just . . . odd. He had these eyes that kind of popped a little, like he had just been spooked, and that orange hair stuck up strange off his head. He was slender and wearing clothes like he hadn't grown out of his high school days: converse sneakers, dirt-washed jeans with a hole in one knee, a gray cardigan over a graphic T-shirt. She had no idea what to make of him, let alone the fact that he had blatantly sat right across from her and was now rudely staring. The space in between her stomach and her heart widened, pressing the two organs to the top and bottom of her chest cavity, rendering her immobile. She choked on the small amount of coffee in her mouth but swallowed the cough, which formed a rock-like bubble in her throat. He didn't say a word of introduction, just continued to stare. She wanted to get up but couldn't.

"Can I help you?" She had scared off many a man by being rude; this one was surely going to be no exception, whatever his motives were.

He looked like he had something to say but hesitated for a moment, glancing down then up again, his breath catching a little. "I was behind you in line . . . the black coffee . . .?"

Gwen raised her eyebrows; her causticity was evident. "So?"

"So I . . ."

Was he nervous? She couldn't tell if he was, or if she was reading him wrong . . .

"I wanted to know your name."

Gwen knew it. He was like every other stupid man. "Why?" There was no way she was giving some strange man her name. This creeper didn't even deserve a hello.

He shrugged.

A little nervous spasm bloomed in Gwen's upper stomach. "Sara," she said quickly, absolutely shocked that she'd given him a name, even if it hadn't been her own.

He smiled, putting her on guard even though she'd thought she was fortified against such things. "Sara. You don't look like a Sara."

Goosebumps formed on her arms. She was one hundred percent aware of them. "I don't know what to tell you."

"Oh, it's all right."

He didn't offer his own name. He said nothing else. He just smiled at her. She had absolutely no idea what to think. She'd assumed when she saw him staring at her that he wanted to hit on her, but this wasn't hitting on her . . . he didn't ask for her number; why had he wanted to know her name? What was this? What did he want?

"I have to go," she managed to say, though it came out almost like a croak because her throat was constricting as if someone's hands were squeezing it.

"I've seen you around," he hurriedly said before she could get up.

She was startled and narrowed her eyes. "I doubt it."

"You don't recognize me at all? Not even a little bit?"

Gwen felt heat rush into her face. There was no way she was admitting she somewhat recognized him. Of course, she hadn't intended on giving him a name, either . . . he was dangerous. She needed to leave. She rose from her seat.

A placid look came over him as he rose too. He was going to let her go. He didn't look bent on following her. "It doesn't matter," he said as she stepped toward him. "I'll see you again, Sara. I'm glad we met."

Gwen looked immediately down to the floor, avoiding his probing eyes; something that could only be described as fear overcame her. That was it. She was out of there. Without a word, she pushed past him and hurried out of the café, out of the bookstore, far away from him. The cool outside air relieved her burning cheeks, but she couldn't get his face out of her mind: he'd glowed with interest as he said his last comment. And his words rang in her ears: I'll see you again . . .

For her sake, Gwen hoped he was wrong.