I

The bell above the door jangled. The man who was typing furiously behind the desk did not bother to look up; he knew it was another old lady waiting for her cat to be rescued from a tree. Didn’t they know to call the fire department for something that trivial? The fire department—those fools were always getting credit for things, but it was the police department that was saddled with the actual rescue of cats from trees. Wasn’t it obvious how vital of a role they played in society? Policemen didn’t just sit around waiting for victims to call, working out, reading Madlibs and drinking hot chocolate like the stuck-up morons at the firehouse did.

Officer Jennings had been saddled with office work due to “irresponsibility during his shift,” otherwise known as sleeping off what he had eaten in his patrol car. The other guys did it too; he had just happened to get caught.

A discreet cough caused him to jerk his eyes up from perusing the screen. The punk sitting before him showed no signs of having tried to get his attention. Aside from the sleeve tattoos and lip piercing that were obvious calls for help. And the shocking black hair that was in severe need of a cut. He must have once had a thin black mustache and goatee, but these were disappearing into the black stubble that covered his jaw. He did not look like a man who would sit in the office of the police department reading a teen people magazine for fun.

The man was 26 if he was a day.

After one last suspicious glance, the sergeant returned to typing up reports. The Guys had the worst handwriting on the face of the earth, and trying to decipher English within their various illegible scrawling was no walk in the park (although a walk in the park would be grueling in this weather).

The town was experiencing a monstrous heat wave, although by rights they should have been enjoying the mild breezes and serenity of spring. Wasn’t the first day of spring only last week? Of course the office was air conditioned, but the weather did nothing to help Officer Jennings’ temper.

Neither did the throat clearing that soon disrupted his difficult mental processes once again.

He slammed his hand onto the desk and asked through clenched teeth: “Can I help you with something?”

The punk looked up in apparent surprise. He grinned beguilingly. “I don’t want to trouble you,” he said politely. “You look extremely busy.”

“I am,” Officer Jennings replied curtly, and returned to the computer. His concentration was completely off-kilter, and after several minutes of listening to the quiet chuckling of The Intruder, he finally demanded to know what was so funny.

“Oh, just this magazine. It’s so ridiculous. It reminds me of that Pedro the Lion song—You don’t know them? It goes like this.”

And much to Jennings’ amazement and anger, he began to sing:

“What makes you think that it won't grow back in a day or two?

Husbands in winter, they know the truth but what can they do?

I don't like girls the way they are

So shave their legs, and make them look like movie stars

Then we can pretend it's natural

Put on whatever makes you attractive,

If it's not you, then do it for the sake of fashion

If your friends like a certain you, that's who—”

“Jennings!” a familiar voice barked. “What is the meaning of this?”

An astounded officer Jennings realized his superior had heard the husky voice raised in song and had come to blame it on him, and his face flushed at the injustice of it all.

“Oh, it’s not Officer Jennings’ fault,” the other man cheerfully protested. “I was just telling him what this magazine,” he paused and gestured to it—“had reminded me of. Are you familiar with Pedro the Lion, sir? No? I highly recommend that you take a listen some time, sir. The rest of the song is as follows:

—you’ve got to be!

Junior high legs; blond hair gone brown—

From removing it

Waxing since thirteen - wisdom from a beauty queen;

Her tiara digging deep in her head!”

“That’s quite enough,” Capt. Slate told him sternly. “Now, was there some business that you had here?”

“Oh, no, I don’t mean to be any trouble!” He grinned at them boyishly.

They looked at each other for several long seconds. “Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Capt. Slate informed him with a tight-lipped and very brittle smile.

The grin fell off The Intruder’s face like somebody just flipped on the gravity switch. “But,” he asked, sadly, “why?”

“Because Officer Jennings is a very busy man on important business right now,” Capt. Slate said sarcastically. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” The Intruder smiled pathetically. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” He broke off and sighed. “Well, I’ll see you around, sir. You too, Officer Jennings, sir.”

The bell jangled again, this time with lingering melancholy, and Capt. Slate turned furiously to his least favorite fool. “What are you thinking, Jennings?” he demanded. “Did you perceive how easily I got rid of him?”

“It’s my belief he was drunk, or worse,” Jennings sulkily replied.

“Then you should have run tests on him, you—I’m going to go back into my office.” He spoke calmly and coldly. “I do not expect that you will need my assistance further. Today.”

And walking back down the hall, he slammed his door shut. Jennings sighed and went back to squinting at the paperwork in front of him.

Once in the sweltering heat, The Intruder allowed the sadness to drift away, leaving a satisfied smile in its place, and he slipped his aviator glasses out of his pocket and onto his nose, pulled out a beautiful thin silver case, perused his options carefully, selected a cigarette and lit it. He ambled down the street for several blocks before finding a coffee shop to his liking, and he settled on a chair outside to finish his smoke before venturing in.

Inside the establishment, two women stood behind the counter, making smoothies and other cold blended coffee beverages by request, but despite the heat, or probably because of it, business was relatively slow.

“Honey,” the tall black woman said to her coworker, “I’m gonna go wipe the tables outside; can you refill the ice chest?”

“Surely,” the girl answered, scrubbing loose espresso from the dirty machine. She brushed her hands off and went into the scorching kitchen. Pulling two bags of ice from the freezer, she hastily retreated to metaphorically cooler waters, only to find her coworker Jill back at the counter considering her thoughtfully, as if weighing the girl in her mind.

“Do you know who is outside?” Jill finally asked, leaning against the cool wood as her friend ripped open a bag and poured its contents into the ice chest.

“No, who is outside?” she replied.

“A tall punk. Smokin’, pierced up face, tattooed arms, I though you might know him.”

The girl holding the ice grew still and shot a sharp look outside.

“No, honey, not that punk,” she said kindly. “You know he isn’t coming back. He said he wouldn’t.”

“For once you believe him,” she remarked, opening the second bag of ice.

Jill snorted. “Oh, c’mon, you know as well as anyone—“

“Yeah, I know, he was a complete and total loser, not to mention complete ass, completely unreliable, completely stupid-looking, completely dishonest, etc. I know.”

“Then Gracie, honey, why do you—?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Don’t know either. I have a loyalty problem.”

“One that our friend Johnny Lubbock did not share,” Jill pointed out.

“And Johnny Lubbock, what a fake name, am I right?” Grace asked, snapping the ice chest shut.

“Sounds fake to me,” the tall stranger drawled.

Jill jumped about a mile in the air, but Grace just smiled. “Didn’t see you

there,” she remarked.

He introduced himself as Kit, and apologized to Jill for startling her. Something in his extremely polite tone mollified her, and she warmed up to him quickly, to Grace’s surprise. It was usually Jill who had more trouble trusting people that reminded her in any way of Johnny, and she wasn’t even the one who had gotten her heart broken. As Jill and Kit chatted away about the town (he informed them that he just moved there and new nothing about anything except a little about the police department, at which point the women both raised eyebrows) Grace took the opportunity to fully take him in.

He stood well over six feet tall, with artfully disheveled black hair that was on the long side. His facial hair gave him something of a wild air, as did the tattoos that completely covered his forearms and the single piercing on the center of his lower lip. But these things were softened by the friendliness of his dark, dark blue eyes. He was wearing a black and white baseball tee and fitted grey jeans with black boots. His wallet chain made a joyful noise as he walked. Despite the fact that he ought to have been smelly and sweaty from the walk, he smelled fresh and clean, like newly baked bread, or a brisk breeze after rain.

Grace was just leaning forward to inhale his scent more deeply, so as to identify it exactly, when Jill demanded to know what she was doing. She looked up to find both Kit and Jill staring at her in confusion, and she blushed slightly.

“Uh, nothing,” she replied. “If you want to take a break, Jill, I can stay here in case anyone comes in.”

Kit looked at the girl in front of him and smiled. She was extremely clean cut, without being at all preppy. She was probably around twenty-one years of age, shoulder length gorgeous brown hair in a ponytail with escaping bangs framing her face. Her lashes were thick and long around her avocado-colored eyes. She smiled cautiously back at him, which caused him to grin harder before pulling out his wallet.

After ordering a water bottle and paying for it, he somehow wheedled both of them into taking a break to talk to him. “Tell me of Johnny Lubbock,” he requested.

“I’m bored.”