TENNIS AND DEATH

Howdy, *Jack Tide here.

You'd think a professional hitman would be in uncanny shape. I mean in all the movies the hero is always scaling walls and jump-kicking villains in the mug, sprinting and hurling themselves over rooftops.  You'd think a professional Big Game Hunter could keep up for at least an hour on the tennis courts. Not so. There's a large difference between putting a forty-four caliber bullet in some jerky's cranium and administering the perfect backhand.

She looks fantastic though. Wearing a white tennis skirt and a blue and white striped polo, her long hair pulled back in a loose pony-tail, tucked beneath a visor. Actually as I think about it, her wardrobe is fairly cliche. Me, on the other hand, decided to go Perry Ellis cargo shorts and a black Devereaux athletic shirt with neon green racing stripes. And Folio sunglasses.

Her legs have that perfect soft glow tan. Holy cats.

Cindy sets this stereo she's brought on the bench and takes a swig of water. She pushes play and the music starts. All tempo filled, summery, and fun.

      Ol' morning crimson dawn

...there's a creek now on the floor
Do the paupers sleep tonight?
Do the children read or write?

There's a pot a brewin'
A beat-up cup for fillin'

Now the paper is saying that are polls are shifting                 

"All right Jack," she says, smiling as she walks over to her side of the court. There's lovely confidence in her step and the sun feels amazing. "What are we playing for?"

I walk over to my side of the net and do some stretches. Spin the racket in my hand and give it a few good strokes. My shadow against the green is mighty fine.

"I was thinking..."

She smiles at me, takes up a stance, weighs the ball in her hand and tosses it up. Her stroke is alarmingly pristine and the ball goes sailing cross court.

I jog over and slap the ball up towards her with a bit of chip.

"Nice!" she shouts, backhand stroke.

I'm watching her as she jogs and swerves, sunlight glancing off her shoulders with brilliance. She's water on the court, liquid and cool.

I lose like a champ and then we're done, sitting on the bench, covered in sweat and newly minted tans. I feel good. She looks at me and smiles, then sprays me with her water bottle.

We have dinner at this trendy little bistro and as she's talking I'm studying her micro-expressions. There's six major basic emotions. Fear, Anger, Happiness, Surprise, Sadness, and Disgust. Below these are action units that help define what the human is feeling. Consider them like verbs or adjectives to your noun of emotion. Marry these facial expressions to body language and you can basically turn off what she's saying vocally and get everything from her physicality.

She's into me.

When you're a kid you somehow get it into your head that love and romance will be easy, full of laughter and smiles, singing and dancing, like in the movies, all set to a pretty cool soundtrack. And usually the first part of the new relationship is like that. But a movie only lasts 90 minutes

I can do the 90 minutes. That's never been an issue. It's what comes after the 90 minutes that usually fumble me up.

Aristotle said Love is Single Soul inhabiting Two Bodies. But who's soul? I'd prefer it to be my soul as I've worked rather hard on keeping it up. And how do I feel about someone meddling about in my soul? Leaving socks and laundry and empty mascara bottles around, and what if they bring along a friggin cat? Cat dander in my soul? And then you'll have that inevitable conversation Jack, could you kind of lay off smoking so much? We have to share this soul you know? But it's my soul. I had this soul long before you pranced along honey. But Aristotle said- Fuck Aristotle!

Love is a many splendid thing. Sure sure sure. So is taking out a dictator in some small banana republic with a .300 Win Mag sniper rifle while listening to Arcadia's Election Day. Now that's love.

I'm in Paramaribo, Suriname. The weather is hot. Humid. It doesn't get this muggy and stinky on a cramped New York subway train (the C Train yo).

I've got the guy in my sights. He's some faction leader in a proposed revenge junta that dates back to the December Killngs. Don't ask me the particulars. Politics aren't my thing. Like blondes. They just keep popping up in my life.

His skin is greasy brown and he has this posture of command, but it's a skittish command and he knows it. His eyes are shifty. I think there's a spider crawling on my back.

Vic's hooked me up with a boat awaiting me off of Henry Fernandesweg, on the Suriname River. From there I'll meet a larger boat fifteen miles off the coast.

This job should've entailed two weeks of planning at best but the backers wanted a quick in and out. Two days max. This is fine with me as this country sucks.

I adjust the scope. Test the wind with my Windwizard. Breathe. Sweat just can't stay in my body and I'm sorry I sprayed on a bit of my Acqua di Gio. It's wasted out here.

Told Cindy I had to leave for a few days, go back to Missionary, Kansas to visit the family. Did I feel bad about lying to her?

This is the thing. Lies. They will always dominate my relationships. This is what Peter Parker must feel like.

Thing is...I'm still sore from my bout of tennis. It's a good kind of burn and it takes me back to seeing Cindy on the court, watching her sitting across from me at the bistro, laughing. Her hair falling down around her chin as she nibbled on a blueberry muffin.

Of course there's still Keira. And now I'm smiling as I'm thinking about my last encounter with her. It was just coffee at the Tully's and she said a few interesting things to me. I wonder if she has a boyfriend. Of course she does. Types like her usually do. And they're usually in ties.

I have a couple ties though.

The man's name is Alexandre Calixte. He's stepping out of his truck with two of his muscle-heads, all carrying weapons. Looks like old Russian model semi-autos. Calixte dabs sweat from his brow and looks up at the sun, unsure if it's a kind look or one of annoyance. He grins and sets mirrored sunglasses on his face.

I set the scope hairs on his forehead.

I'm going to kiss her. This is what I'm going to do when I get back to the States, back to Seattle. I'm going to take her out. I'm going to take her on the Bainbridge Island Ferry and we will stand up on the bow and see the lights of my city, and I will kiss her. But what song should be playing while this happens?

I pull the trigger.

Calixte's left side of his face vaporizes in a mist of red, mingled with shards of skull and teeth.

I lower the gun a little and move it to the right, squeeze the trigger.

One of his henchmen's stomach erupts. He's thrown back into the ditch of the road, his leather boots flying.

I pull the trigger.

Another man's neck is shorn. It's the kind of ending for him that only happens in rock songs. With a heavy drum solo.

I pack up my gear and I'm running through the foliage, through spiderwebs built like sheets of cotton. Sweat tearing from my body and I'm happy.


*Jack Tide is a fictional creation of Michael Callinglast, as is everyone in these blogs. So don't get offended yo. Unless.....you like to get offended.  Check out Jack's adventures in FEROCITY. 

THE DAY I MET CINDY AT FREAKIN HASTINGS

Howdy. *Jackson Wellesey Tide here.

Waiting sucks.

Earlier in the week I happened upon a rather nice looking girl at Hastings. I consider myself an avid reader and so I'm always on the lookout for something intelligent and hysterical. The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson (author of The Men Who Stare At Goats) is pretty hilarious. I'm not a psychopath by the way. I read the book.

So I'm at Hastings perusing the non fiction when I see this girl walk by. She's got long dark brown hair and a friendly smile. She looks at me and then disappears behind the next shelf. I can tell she works there because of her outfit. I think it'd be cool to work at Hastings provided you get a healthy discount. Plus that girl's pretty good looking.

So I'm listening to the Beta Band and letting my foot tap out and occasionally a few lyrics of the song will pop out of my mouth like eggs. Easter eggs. I was thinking about getting a book about Hunter S. Thompson. I have a job to do next week involving a guy who's a programmer for Nine Data Networks, so all I'm doing is waiting for the nuerotoxin I ordered to arrive. Thank you Ebay. I figure I can read the book while I'm outside the party he's going to be attending.

The girl walks by again, this time taking a bit longer to move across the aisle. She keeps looking at me.

This is when I start thinking that she thinks

       A: That I'm going to steal something.
       B: That there's something wrong with my clothes.
       C: That there's something hanging out of my nose.
       D: That I remind her of someone.
       E: That she's interested in me for romantic reasons :)
       F: That she's interested in me to destroy. :(
       G: That she's not even slightly interested in me at all but there's something interesting behind me.

There's nothing behind me.

I decided to get Thompson's Screwjack. Just as I was plucking the book from the shelf I hear a small cough behind me.

"Hi," she says. Her nametag says Cindy.

I discover I don't have any objections to the name Cindy. I've never met a Cindy in my life. Her eyes are blueish green. Seahawk eyes. So she gets a +5. I'll even be generous and give her another +5 for her name.

"Howdy," I told her, "and I mean that."

She smiled. "You like Hunter S. Thompson?" she asked. Maybe she was a Hunter S. Thompson fanatic, in which case beware. But I had this feeling she wasn't really too interested in the Gonzo.

"Yeah. I like his writing style," I tell her. "It's very unedited. Uncensored. Bursts of rapid energy fueled by the gasoline of his mind. Too bad he killed himself."

We stand there and talk about the Johnny Depp movie and a few documentaries on Thompson and a few of his books and then the conversation gradually gets down to business. She said she'd seen me in here a couple of times with my girlfriend.

"You mean Piper?"

She nodded. "Is she here?"

"No. Piper's gone. She's left for parts unknown. Maybe she's in Peru."

"Aw I'm sorry."

I shrug. "These things happen. To me. A lot."

We continue talking until she has to go serve customers and we agreed to meet for coffee the next day. I had nothing else planned.

When you first go out and engender into the world the possibility of a new relationship you have to gauge just how long it will last. Certainly not forever. There was a time when Piper wanted forever and now she hates my guts.
Of course you know automatically that she's going to be the next ex-girlfriend. You just have to try and figure out how long. Relationships don't come with expiration dates. Sometimes you gotta make them on your own. Like you could tell her from day one; Okay. You have six months until this relationship dissolves starting.....now! Let's get started.

So I'm sitting here waiting for her and from our brief conversations I've discovered this about her.

A: She's not from Seattle. She's from freakin Kentucky. -5
B: She's highly intelligent and well read. +5
C: Her perfume is grand. You wouldn't have to put a gun to my head to make me smell her. Save your bullet man, I'll smell her. +5 for great odor.
D: She's funny. +5
E: She's got great hair. Like super thick and ultra shiny. I think she could be on a Revlon commercial. So we're going to have a lot in common to talk about. +5
F: She'd better be well read. She works at freakin Hastings! 0

Girls with bad hair...no me gusta.

I can't stress how important good hair is. You ever pass by a tree and all the leaves are wilted? You want to seriously have your picnic under that tree? That tree's got worms. And ants. How much fun would your picnic be then eh? Leaves are a metaphor for hair. I'm ranking hair right up there with a perfect set of

"Hi," she says, walking in and sitting down.

Well it's about time.

She looks stunning. Today she's wearing blue jean shorts and a pink Seahawks tank top. Her skin is tanned and her arms are toned. She smiles.

I check out her shoes. Addidas. Not bad.

I read a book once on the importance of nonverbal communication.

So I mimic her posture, suggestively, and when she's talking I continue with hand gestures and nod enthusiastically and smile at all the appropriate times and it's clear I'm winning because she's gradually becoming enamored with me.

Cindy.

This could be the beginning of something new. Some new sacred part of my life that has just wandered in from the city streets, to have coffee with me, and someone I can laugh with.

But then there's the Keira Project.

"You play tennis?" she asks.

"I play tennis," I tell her, "terribly. We should play sometime."

She laughs. "How about tomorrow?"

"That sounds great."

We get on the topic of art, a topic that I have casually guided the conversation towards so that I can bring out my art journal. She looks at the sketches and writings and is appropriately amazed and so she gets another +5 points. But lying in the bottom of the messenger's bag is my gun.

"What do you do for a living?" she asks.

I'm an assassin. A hitman. A Big Game Hunter, which sounds far more romantic and adventurous than the job really is. Mainly the job is boring and consists of lots of planning, research, and waiting. The margin for error is slim. I don't tell her this because it's likely to ruin our tennis date tomorrow.

"I work at this little sea-food dive in Seattle. We make nice chowder. You like chowder?"

"I like chowder."

"Hey, who doesn't like chowder? We also make a great oyster chowder."

She laughs.

So we're going to play tennis tomorrow and I haven't played in ages. I have to go buy a racket. These are the things we do for women. Women named Cindy.


Jack Tide is a fictional creation by Michael Callinglast. Go check out his adventures in the novel FEROCITY. 

THE PROS AND CONS OF SINGLE LIFE

Howdy, and I mean that. *Jack Tide here.

Things just didn't work out in the last relationship. I'm not saying it was her fault but let's be honest here. She had an unnerving ability to blame me for everything. It was cute at first but teach a kitten to shoot guns and let's just see how adorable they remain eh? When you're dating someone with that kind of consistent commitment it's a bit tough to remain charmed. 

Her name was Piper. What the hell kind of name is that? I knew I was in trouble the minute she said her name and still I continued on with it. Mainly because she was a looker, she was funny and intelligent. Come to think of it, I suppose her name still remains Piper and she still remains a looker, whimsical and smart. I could be wrong. I haven't seen her in weeks and since then a many things could've happened to her. She could be in Mogadishu right now collecting stray felines in the back of some green van. She could be emaciated and now fond of Twilight movies.

There comes a point in your life when you inadvertently find yourself in a relationship and you have to wonder where it's going. Do you tell the girl over coffee or a scrumptious dinner at Toulouse Petit (excellent cajun creole btw) that two months ago you laced a vice chairman's drink with tetrodoxin for twelve thousand minus Victoria's finder's fee? Or do you wait for dessert?

Ahhhh the single life. There's really nothing like it. No more having to worry about other people's feelings. No more having to make plans and struggle to find a way to keep them. No more having to write and store down important dates, like birthdays, anniversaries. Especially anniversaries.

                    -First day we met anniversary

                    -First date anniversary

                    -First time we became officially gf/bf anniversary

                    -First kiss anniversary

Crap. You see. 

This doesn't even include all the other things one has to remember. 

Like...

                    -First movie we saw together

                    -First restaurant we went to

                    -What she ordered at said restaurant

                    -What she was wearing on the first date

That's just a lot of stress a guy has to deal with.

What the hell kind of name is Piper anyway.

Of course there are cons to being single too. I try not to let my mind stay in that particular corner of the room.

The cons.

                     -Well now what.

                     -Less presents on my birthday and Christmas

                     -Valentine's Day is now shared with the lonely-hearted large people in the buffet line at King Buffet in Renton. It is a new kind of bonding experience though. Sad bond.

                     -Who you gonna watch Star Trek movies with now ya jerky?

                     -No more walks in zoo and feeding the ducks. 

                     -No more feeding and sheltering stray cats named Clifford.

                     -No more discovering new restaurants together and making lists as to why they were exceptional and what they lacked. Actually I was the only one who did this as Piper (Piper!) lacked the insight and where-with-all to create such intricate and highly detailed lists. Although she insisted she just didn't really care.

                      -Who's going to admire my hair and clothes now? hahaha. I'm joking. There's the entire world for that one.

Did I love Piper? 

What is love anyway? Is it located in an Beatles song? Is it secreted away in the depths of the Ark of the Covenant? Is it on the moon? Is it in a bullet? Yeah I did love Piper.

I suppose like anything it's subjective and that being the case it's best not to philosophize on it. Unless you're freakin' Aristotle or John Lennon.

I could be Aristotle or John Lennon.

I took her to see the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. We saw Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook. Skyfall. Prometheus. Which one of those was the first movie we saw together? It was one of those.

The point is to learn from past relationships and now there's this Keira conundrum. Monday I'm planning on heading back up to Redmond to see if she wants to continue our budding relationship. I'll bring a gun.


*Jack Tide is a fictional creation of Michael Callinglast. These blogs take place before the events in FEROCITY, which you can check out by clicking on the link. If you dare.

FACEBOOK FRIENDS

Howdy, *Jack Tide here.

I dated a girl once who broke up with me because I didn't have nearly as many facebook friends as her. To this day she'll tell you that wasn't the real reason she cast me hither but I know the truth.

Her name was and still may remain, Samantha. Samantha, ordinarily not too shabby of a name but I'm always cognizant of and a bit wary of girls names that can be abbreviated from the female to the male.
                                      Samantha-Sam
                                      Alexis-Alex
                                      Micah-Mikes
                                      Thomasina-Tom
etc.

Anyway the topic of my facebook friends would invariably show up at dinner or at coffee conversations among her friends. I never instigated it.

Example.

We were at a small cafe overlooking Woodland Park and Greenlake and the day was something out of a children's book, all colored in bright Crayolas. We were with two of Samantha's friends, Reuben and Charlotte. Reuben had made the mistake two years ago of somehow allowing himself to become engaged to Charlotte who thought it whimsical to go by Charlie. Reuben and Charlie. Sounds like a badly produced puppet show if you ask me.

Introductions had been made and we were sipping our respective drinks and eating our salads and breadsticks. I was trying to decide if if that was a piece of pubic hair on my salad. It just sat there curled up on my ranch dressing like a brown question mark.

"What do you think, Jack?" Samantha asked. She was looking spectacular that day with a trifle of wind through her hair.

"I think it is pubic hair."

"What? No I mean about what we were just discussing," she said, motioning to Reuben and Charlie.

"You see," I said, nodding down to my salad, "the barista or cook seems to have misplaced a-"

"I was just telling them that you've only twelve people as facebook friends," Samantha said. "They'd be more than happy to have you request them as friends."

Reuben nodded solemnly.
Charlie also nodded but I could tell her heart wasn't in it. Samantha had told me Charlie had over six hundred facebook friends already so she had commitments.

"It wouldn't be a problem," Reuben said.

"Gee," I said, "I mean we only just met."

Charlie shrugged.

"We've known Samantha for years," Reuben said, "and we trust her judgement. Her last boyfriend-"

"Dane," Charlie added.

"Yes, Dane. Dane was a great guy. Marvelous."

"He cracked me up he was so funny," Charlie smiled fondly. "And he was so charming."

"Smart too," Reuben added. "Remember when he changed my tire? In no time, Jack, the tire was off and the new one was on. Like a snap!"

Samantha smiled at me and nodded.

"Are you guys still facebook friends with Dane?" I asked.

Reuben and Charlie glanced at each other and then smiled briefly at Samantha.

"Um, yes," Charlie said, "but he rarely posts so it's like he's not even there."

Reuben changed the subject by pulling out his phone and scrolling. "What's your facebook name Jack? Jack Tide? Jacky Tide?"

"JacksonWTide," Samantha offered.

"Ah here you are," Reuben said, sliding  his sunglasses up. "Yes. Wow Samantha, you weren't kidding. Jack...what have you been doing? You haven't even added Samantha."

"You believe that?" Samantha said. "Don't even look at his relationship status. I'll get furious."

"Whaaaat?" Charlie whispered, a lilt of disbelief in her voice.

This little trio before me got quiet as I sat there contemplating the pubic hair in my salad. I knew it was a mistake to order it.

It was clear by their faces that I'd made some inexcusable facebook faux pas.

"Let's see here," Reuben said, examining my page. "Your last post was... two months ago!"

"You're kidding," Charlie said. I don't think she meant to say this aloud.

"It's a picture of a chimpanzee holding a gun," Reuben said, showing the image around, even to me as if I'd never seen it before.

"What a mean meme," Charlie said.

"It's an obscenely mean meme," I agreed with a smile, provoking a nudge of the elbow from Samantha.

"Ugh, I hate guns," Charlie said. "In fact I was just telling Baz at the Rec the other day" Reuben had been texting on his phone while she was talking and her phone buzzed. She read the text, smiled primly, glanced at me, and started replying. "-that guns are abhorrent. Baz agreed. Anybody who likes guns, we feel, are juvenile."

I thought about taking my Glock out of my messenger's bag and plopping it on the table with a 'Now What Chuck?'. It was already clear I was no Dane. Maybe I couldn't change the tires on Reuben's Mazda Shinari in a snap but I could sure blow them the fuck up. With my eyes closed.

"Jack just has to get out there and meet more people," Samantha said. "First thing he needs to do is change his profile pic. Get a picture of him up there and not one of John Cusack. Then change his relationship status and get some pics of us on there. Life's passing you by Jack."

Reuben and Charlie were nodding.

"Then friend request Reuben and Charlie."

"Well..." Reuben said.

"Jack?" Samantha said. "Jack are you going to eat your salad?"

"No, go ahead."

Long story short, Reuben and Charlie never added me.



*Jack Tide is a fictional character by Michael Callinglast. These events take place before the events shown in the book FEROCITY. Click here to check it out. Or you'll never have Jello again.

TAKE A PICTURE

Howdy. Jack Tide* here.

Best things happen when you least expect it. Worst things too, come to think of it, especially when you've a targeting dot on your chest.

I walked into this little cafe yesterday, the one called Tully's, over there the Redmond Town Center. I had a couple hours to chill so I decided to sip on a dark roast brew and work on some sketches.

She was standing behind the bar fixing a drink like she had done days prior and days prior. I'd seen her before and she was really the only reason I came here. I'd never talked to her and in the entire time I'd frequented the place she'd never waited on me. I think this is because she senses I'm a bit of an anti-hero or because she was clearly out of my league. Like Dirty Harry once said, a man's got to know his limitations.

She looked up and gave me a brief smile of recognition and I smiled back and was about to wave when she looked back at what she was doing. So I put my hand down.

"Welcome to Tully's," the blond barista said, stepping up. I'd seen her before too and though she was good looking, she was clearly the less shining of the binary stars.

"Just coffee," I told the blond.

"No," the dark haired barista said, walking over. "You always get that. Let me make something for you."

"Uhm."

"Do you trust me?" she asked. She rested her elbows on the table and looked up at me. "I know exactly what you need on a day like this."

"Er."

When I was a kid I somehow managed to catch hold of a magazine that one of my uncles left in the back shed. It was a pretty racy magazine and it stirred within me feelings of power and curiosity. There were lots of magnificent fleshy pictures stamped on those glossy pages and I memorized them all. This was when I was starting to practice my art skills. I had only one problem and that was I couldn't take the magazine with me. It was a dilemma. There was always that fear that my uncle would discover this important treasure missing from his Smaug Den. So I did the next best thing. One day I gathered my pencils and tracing  paper and traced my favorite ten pictures in sweaty detail with trembling hands. Then I ferried these riches away and secreted them under my bed where I planned to build a little nest egg for my future.

I had discovered a new dimension of happiness, one that I hadn't even suspected existed before.  This was on par with the kind of happiness Christmas Day always brought, only a little less...holy. Yeah. Even my child-like mind at the time recognized there was a fundamental difference between Christmas Day and sketches of naked women on motorcycles with goats. But I chalked it up to a 'who cares'. Trouble came when me mom discovered my cache.

"What the hell are these?" she asked.

I had just come in from playing catch with some of the neighbors and I was looking forward to some pizza rolls and lemonade. Instead I got her standing in the kitchen leafing through those sheets of paper that I recognized. I stopped and my good humor for the day was zapped dead. At first I hoped that she was looking at something else, like maybe tax returns or credit card receipts, some adult thing that had no relevance to me. Then I saw the gray outline of a breast that was struggled out in my handwriting and I knew I was doomed.

"What the hell are you drawing?"

"Er."

The moment that sexy barista said that I was instantly transported to that moment in the kitchen as all those strange and new feelings of horror and discovery came rushing back.

"It's on me," she said. "I have a feeling this is going to be your new favorite drink though." She winked and started her concoction. 

I found a table and pulled my art book out of my messenger's bag, careful not to let the Glock 37 drop out. That wouldn't make a good impression.

"Are you an artist?" the blond barista asked, walking by with a broom in her mitts.

"Why yes." Smiled. "Yes I am."

"Oh wow, hey, can I look?"

I positioned my sketchbook so she could peruse. Peruse she did and I had to give her five points for genuinely enjoying my sketches. She was a blond though and blondes have never really been my style. Kind of like Dockers.

Still, she did have nice perfume.

"How long did it take you to draw these?" she asked.

I'll admit I didn't particularly care for the wording of the question. I prefer the verb create. Ask da Vinci how long it took him to draw Vetruvian Man and see what kind of look he gives you.

"I must first find inspiration that is fueled by my passions," I told her, remembering my first foray into genuine art that was later censored by mom.

"I'm Claire," she said, extending her hand. Her handshake was warm and inviting but she had a slight flaw on one of her nails. I could overlook it though.

"Jack," I told her. I let my gaze linger a bit so that we could connect nonverbally and smiled the way that Bill Clinton or George Clooney might. "Jack Ti-"

"This one's my absolute favorite," Claire said, flipping to one of the lesser pieces. 

So she's an interrupter. This would mean that I would now have to keep my replies and questions to a bare minimum. I wondered what kinds of music she liked. She looked like a Seattle hipster pot-smoker which would put her snuggly in the Led Zeppelin/Dave Mathews/Jason Mraz category. This was fine with me. I don't smoke pot. Puts me right to sleep and-

"What's it a picture of?"

So she's not only a verbal interrupter but a thought-interrupter as well. Interesting. I could see how this was going to get tiring real fa-

"This one's pretty cool too."

"What are you guys looking at?" the dark haired barista asked. Her curiosity aroused she peeked over the steam machine and smiled at me.

"Keira! This guy's art is really awesome. You gotta come check it out."

Oh no.

It was when she walked around the corner, when I could see her fully, that things began, like a rapidly expanding universe a billionth of a second after creation. It was when she looked up at me with those blue eyes that time was born, stapled and now in tandem with space. What came before the birth of the universe? There are theories and up until that brief history of time I hadn't given the matter much thought.

She walked over and looked down at the art and the lesser of the two, the blond, naturally retreated.

"These are great," Keira said.

"Er."

She sat down across from me and then scooted her chair closer. She wore a white blouse, black slacks and just the right hint of perfume mist to never forget. She sat down and smiled while reading some of my writing, occasionally looking up at me.

I knew for a fact that my hair had seen better days and I tried casually and inconspicuously to search my pockets for my certs. Nothing.

Keira. I tasted the name. I'd never have guessed her name. Her name was beyond my imagination, beyond my galaxy. 

She stopped reading and set the book down carefully then slowly placed her whole attention on me. 

I'm a Big Game Hunter. It's what I do. I know over sixty ways to kill a man with a latte. I know how to rig a Tesla with an I-pod battery so that it'll blow the hell up once it hits 33 mph.

"I'm Keira," she said, extending her hand. 

I looked down at her hand.

I accepted her handshake and she felt as I had hoped. 

"Jack," I told her. "Jackson Wellesey Tide."

"It's good to finally meet you, Jackson," she said.

And that was how I met Keira Anastasia Mercile.




*Jack Tide's a fictional character from Michael Callinglast. For more of Jack check out his book FEROCITY to see what it's like to be a young hitman living in Seattle.