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A MAN ALONE

He stood in the middle of the evening street and watched the tail-lights of the Caravan pull away.
She was returning to her safe, middle-class home in the suburbs...to her safe husband and children...
to the safety of her known universe. She would miss him. She would remember their time together
and look forward to more time together...on her long drive home. Then she would be in that safe cocoon with other
thoughts...real-time thoughts...and he would be only an occasional and passing smile in her mind. He smiled for her... for love of her.

A sudden shift in the wind...perhaps a scent...brought him to other thoughts and the smile turned
bitter. He was reminded of other tail-lights going away. Not because the ones who had driven away from him were missed now. Now there was no other. Now there was only her. There was no one who he wished had not driven away but just because it was happening again. There was a stifling feeling of again-ness about it all. Another evening...another set of tail-lights receding in the distance...another nervous and secretive touch of the hand where there could be no public good-bye kiss.

His thoughts turned dark on the walk back to the hotel. He recalled a lifetime spent in deserted
streets and parking lots saying good-bye. He asked the powers above if this was to be his fate. Would he forever be
someone's lover, someone's secret? Was this what the fates had in mind for him? Good enough perhaps to be
someone's lover; probably not good enough to be anyone's husband. Not even good enough to be acknowledged.

Maybe a little too old, a little too scarred up, a bit rough around the edges to be presentable to
respectable folks. Years of booze and divorces and failed affairs had left him with too little to offer.
Yet, perhaps it was not their fault any more than it was his. Perhaps this was simply the way of things.
Maybe this is what Spirit intended for him.

He was reminded of Moses in the mountains looking down into the Promised Land and being told
that he could not go there. And of brave Chief Joseph within sight of Canada, and freedom, being run down by the cavalry. Was this to be his fate as well...to be often within sight of happiness and satisfaction but to never quite attain it? He shuddered and pulled his collar against his chest.

Before there was the wolfmate there was San Antonio......

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