She walked in, raising the temperature of the café with the heat of her looks as she filled the locale with the smoke of her character. Amidst the glacial weather punishing the Northeast those days, she couldn’t go unnoticed—that would’ve been rude and anticlimactic.

She walked in swiftly, blown aback by the Canadian winds and the Arctic frost. Her hair flowed like a flame, imperious and untamed, in a way that would’ve made Prometheus steal her from among mortals. She walked in, always on time, sharp at noon, and took her rightful place at her altar, right where a table met a windowsill. From there, she gazed at the infinities outside and the worlds within.

She waited. That’s what she always did. At the café. At home. In life. Yet she didn’t care for what or whom she was waiting. Perhaps it was herself, but she would never arrive. So she looked at other people, at the future, at the crowd out on the street—avoiding to see anything at all. Though sometimes she caught glimpses of her reflection on the windowpane, bedeviling her memory with the sole and unique red herring of her life.