A stranger in a fedora and an olive green pinstripe suit walks up to the table. Uninvited. The cut of the suit is peculiar. Retro. Ill-fitting. He pushes a roll of microfiche across the table towards me.

"I don't want it," I tell him. "It's a personal rule of mine: never accept microfiches from strangers." I turn to wink at my compadres. "We all remember the last time that happened."

He slides a slender cigarette from a pack of Acapulco Gold into a slow smile and lights it. "I'm not a stranger."

He exhales the smoke slowly as if for dramatic effect and offers a half question and answer at the same time, "This is Rosemary's Tavern ?". My compadres chortle. "Are you who the bartender says you are?" he asks me directly. "Perhaps" I respond, avoiding his eyes that are partially obscured by the low brim of his hat.

But suddenly I see a sparkle in one of them and I look up. He slowly smiles. "Yes," he says. "It is I."

"I have been waiting so long to see something like this, something so magical, so beautiful," I said. He stepped closer. I could almost touch those eyes. His right eye dull and . . . destructive? But the left, the glorious left, held the sparkle of a shooting star strong and . . . seductive?
"What are you/' I stammered. "Who are you?"

"I am light and darkness. Your right and wrong. Your needs and excess. I am your god. Your demon. I am the fleeting dream you remember. The legions in your head. I am your conscious and unconscious. The devil in disguise. I am your poison, antidote. Your king. Your slave. I am whatever you wish me to be."

So this is how Eve felt. She looked at that apple or pomegranate or whatever hell kind of fruit it was and knew instinctively it was the too-good-to-be-true kind of snack. But to be everything, have everything. Why not? Why should it not be possible to say yes without losing your soul?

"My soul . . . my soul . . . my soul for a fruit. My soul for a . . . a . . . fruit? No, no, no, no. My soul for everything! It is too good to even think this way. What can lie ahead for someone who has . . . everything?"

"Everything?. . .or nothing?. . .I don't know. . .I have to think. . .My soul. . .Oh, lord. . .what am I doing?"

Nothing, I realize.

I sit there, a thought forming and unforming in my mind. I discover I might be completely insane. My thoughts form and unform.

Then form and unform.