by Douglas Gross

Created on: February 13, 2009

Breathing in the smoke of a stale cigarette, Andrew turned his head about to scan the bar as he placed the empty pack on the countertop and tipped the last ounce of wine into his mouth between his lips. Wearing a red moustache from the wine spilling onto his upper lip, he stood and walked lazily toward the exit of the bar.

Straightening his tie and smoothing his hair as he walked, the lights on the ceiling lifted his gaze like the moon over clouds at night. A haze surrounded his vision, and a mysterious familiar sensation filled his senses. He told himself he would never return to this place, but the attraction he held for the music and the drink kept him coming. He had better things to do, he knew, but then again there was no other time and place to relax than at the Golden Still.

Something amazing happened at that moment that made him swagger startled and beleaguered with sensuous anticipation. The grazing brush of the passing woman made his eyes wide and his throat swallow his astonishment as her hair glided across his cheek. He knew her from somewhere, but where?

Once he noticed the color of her skin in the light, he knew who it was that his memory recalled. Her name was Kim from the Orient. When he was in the military he had met her, and she had been his companion many a night. So many he could not count. Was that really her?

She turned to face him as he rubbed his eyes with loose fists and glanced again. This could not be true. A memory had become reality. The white shirt and tie he wore among the crowd of social misfits upset his confidence. Why the hell did he come here?

He smiled kindly to her and turned on his feet to steer himself again toward the door just as she moved to stand in front of him in his way. Clearing his throat as he brushed his fingers through his hair, he struggled to speak without a slur.

"Do I know you?"

His words were perfect, but his tongue was dry and heavy from drink.

"You use to, but I don't think you would say you know me now," she shouted above the music.

The beat of the drums coming from the stereo hammered against his chest from inside his body, though he found himself sober enough to articulate his words as he spoke a second question in one word.

"Kim?"

The woman's face beamed with recognition, "Andrew?"

"It is you," his eyes blinked and opened wide as he gazed upon her face and let them linger to look over the woman he had known intimately during the war. "How are you here in the States?"

"I married a military man," she

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