A thin woman who, because of her stature, looked more like a girl arrived with a scruffy bearded man at the coffee shop this morning. She was wearing a black helmet and he wasn’t wearing one at all but a plaid cowboy cut shirt and yellow-lensed sun glasses. His denim was faded and the boots he wore made a crunchy sound on the sidewalk. It was a pleasant sound and reminded me something old and comfortable. She had sharp features that weren’t unkind but angular. He hair, which was tied up at the nape of her neck was dyed an unnatural red that made her even more intriguing. They both looked like their motorcycle had brought them here from 1972. I found them mysterious. I could imagine them laying together, she burying her face into his neck and using her small thin hands to touch his sandy hair. He smells like gasoline and cigarettes, something that she has loved since the first time they met on that dirty eastern road. Because here was a man. He was not what this generation had been producing and mislabeling as a man. Movements from eras before had slowly emasculated them so that gender roles had become muddled and reversed. It’s not that she wasn’t strong herself but more that she was attracted to the same amount of strength and survival that she possessed. He was real though. He could fix his motorcycle and cook a steak. he wasn’t silent or unaware of his emotions but expressed them with an economy of words that she found attractive. They take solace in each other’s strength and purpose. She had been leaving the coastal town to get away from a number of things, and her piece of shit car broke down. That’s when he stopped there to buy a hotdog but saw her fiddling under her hood. It turned out that the timing belt snapped and on the particular model of vehicle it was risky to replace. That’s where they decided to moved out west where living is cheap and inconspicuous. They fucked in the dirty rest stop bathroom, hopped on that motorcycle, and never got off again.