Guest blogger No. 4 - @midnightonmars

The Time Machine Points blog has its first "professional" contributing writer in @midnightonmars, who also happens to be a coworker in our quest to bring joy to the world through prose, or something like that.

Well, technically he's the second since I also can call myself that (it's on my business card). This is not to say any of my other guest bloggers aren't important, cause they are more than worthy and everyone has made this a great evolution on this blog.

And heck, Tony will be the first to tell you even he shouldn't take himself too seriously! That, my friend, is a joke. Thanks for the contribution.

Thanks for the submission. I have one more to post. I invite many more. Just let me know.

And here we go ......

Strangers When We Meet
by Tony Simmons

I was a young boy at the time, relatively speaking. Ten or 12. She was a lady of Paris, and I was in love, of course. She thought me a cute child. Precocious. She kissed my cheek when I brought her a flower at the café. We sat and watched the workmen in the distance lifting a girder to add to the tower, the monstrosity that was dwarfing all of Paris. The eyesore, they called it. The scar. 

She asked me where were my parents, and I proudly told her I was on my own. She did not believe me, but she pretended to be impressed. Then her gentleman caller arrived, and her attention wandered. 

He was taller than I, and darker of hair, and older and stronger. I hated him immediately, and told him so. 

“I felt the same, when I was your age,” he said. “You’ll feel differently when you’re my age. I guarantee it.” 

Now I am an old man, and I sit in the café and watch the young women meet the young men. I watch the boys bringing flowers to the pretty ladies. I see the child being left to consider the construction of the black monstrosity over the city of lights. It is 1888 all over again, or rather, still. 

I take a lemonade over to the table where the boy sits alone. His first crush has just left with a young man. He sulks and does not touch the drink. 

“I remember a day when I was a boy and a young man took away my first love,” I say to him. 

He glances at me only a moment, then crosses his arms and glares at the tower. 

“You look like my father,” he says, and I nod. “Only older,” he adds. “Are you a traveler?” 

“Of course I am. Aren’t you?” 

He thinks about that. I remember thinking about that when I was his age. I recall other things, as well, from when I was a younger man. I recall, for instance, the taste of the young lady’s lips, the touch of her skin, the scent of her hair, the way her chin wrinkled when she laughed, the way she moved with me in the night. And other things. I have a very good memory. 

“When you are older,” I say to him, “you will return to this place and romance a young lady. Be kind to the child who sits with her. Recall how he felt on that day.” 

The boy nods and a slow smile dawns on his face. He takes the lemonade and sips. 

“I know you, don’t I?” he says. 

“Not as well as you will when you’re my age,” I answer.

~end~