Everything is quiet and gray-dark in the apartment. There's a half-filled glass of water on the coffee table but no one's there.

She waved to me from across the street and pointed we're going this way, across the avenue. Before we'd even crossed she asked me what do I do – oh you write? What kind of writing? If you write about your experiences, how does the reader know you're not lying? These writers who do this, they're vain, they only want to look good. Yes I suppose it's a problem, I said. We walked a few blocks, turning here and there, and she stopped across from a Mexican Restaurant.

"Do you want to go there?" she asked.

"Sure."

It was a generic blonde-wood margarita place with a basket of chips on every table and twinkling Christmas lights for décor, a sad and futile place to suit the nature of our encounter. Like me, illegitimate.