A Chance Encounter

"You're him right. You're Max."

"Yeah," said Max as he changed the clip in his gun. He had spent several rounds and now the jackets lay about him like a lazy dog. He stood before the downed tracker, who was just a freaking kid.

The tracker looked up at him and smiled. "Finally, a chance to meet the legend himself. And I can't believe he's going to be the one to finish me off. That's so cool."

"Well, after all, you did try to kill me," Max said. He squatted down over the soldier and reached inside his pocket and pulled out a neon pink book of matches, the logo stating that they were from Club Hanky Panky.

"No offense man, just doing my job," the tracker said, laying his head on the concrete. The tracker chuckled.

"None taken," Max replied. He lit two cigarettes and took a long puff from them both, then he took one and gave it to the kid. Max stood up.

"Before you do this, can I get your autograph? Make it out for my mother." The kid told him what to say on it. Max wrote it inside the matchbook. "Can you send that to her?" the soldier asked.

"Sure kid," Max smiled.

The soldier cracked a huge smile, his lips bloody. "My mother's a huge fan of yours. It'll do her good knowing her son was taken out by the best there is."

"Why don't you give it to her yourself, kid," Max said. He dropped the matchbook on the ground beside the soldier. "What's your name?"

"Dobie, sir."

"Dobie eh?" Max chuckled. "I like that."

There was a long pause, then the kid coughed.

"When you need a better line of work, look me up, Dobie," Max said as he dialed 911 on a cellphone and dropped it beside the kid and walked down the alley like a shadow being consumed by night.

A Strange Musical Interlude

Max pulled into the lot; he parked the car and slid out the door, leaving the keys in the ignition. He reached over and grabbed the book that was sitting on the passenger seat.

As he walked away from the car he instinctively turned in a circle, making sure he had not been followed. He tucked the hardback book under his left arm. His t-shirt declared Witness This!

He walked past a mother pushing a cart with her child in tow. Max could hear the little girl sing a verse from an obscure song. He walked to the mall doors and he could faintly make out the tune of the song that the girl was singing.

He walked through the doors and into the mall. The cool, controlled air greeted him like an old lover. He smiled. Three kids were sitting just inside the door and had picked the right time to sing the next refrain of the song. Max glanced at the boys, who for the life of them didn't realize what they were singing. 

Max passed an old man sitting by a fountain; the hunched fellow was reading a paper, but Max could hear him humming the continuation of the song.

Just then the mall speakers came on and the announcer said the next line in the song, picking up where the old man had left off. 

"This is the place," Max whispered to himself. Then he realized that what he said were lyrics in the song.

A smile larger than a crescent moon cracked his face. He took the book and opened it to a random page and in the words of the first sentence were the next lyrics of the song. He saw his intended destination, strolled inside and there he saw her. She was sitting at a table, a book in front of her, and she looked up and smiled at him just as the waitress placed down two cups of java.

"I was hoping you'd get the message," she said with a sly smile.