I was sipping my tea and admiring the moped parked on the floor near the front window of The Blue Coyote Café when a young woman walked across my vision. Carefully carrying a steaming cup of something, she may have glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. She set her coffee on a table and took her seat. I found her much more interesting to look at than the shiny moped at the front of the café, which, according to a sign on the window, was being raffled for charity, twenty-five bucks a ticket.

The young woman had red-orange hair in a braid that fell almost to her ass. She was wearing gym shoes, slacks, and a gray hoodie. It was a vee-neck hoodie, and I couldn’t help noticing that the vee exposed quite a bit of her breasts, small though they were. She was facing at right angles to me, sipping her tea and studying her cellphone. I tried not to be too obvious about my gaze, hard though that was.

I dawdled over my tea and thought about getting another biscotti. The girl—she might well still be in her teens—I’m not a good judge of age—turned to me. For a panicky moment I thought she was about to accuse me of ogling her. Is ogle still a word anyone uses?

“You thinking about taking a chance on that bike thing?” she asked.

It took me a moment to figure out what to say. “Probably not,” I came up with. “I’ve never really ridden on anything like that before.”

“Me neither,” she said. “I can’t really imagine me riding that thing.”

“I can,” I said without thinking, so vivid was the picture in my head. I have a great imagination for that sort of thing.

Her expression changed for just a moment. Puzzlement? Disbelief? Had she read my mind?

“I’d probably crash,” she said. “Luckily the chances of winning must be one in a zillion.”

“You should buy a ticket,” I said.

“Oh no,” she said. “That would be a ridiculous waste of money.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But it would be for a good cause. Hey, I’ll buy a ticket for you.”

“Whoa,” she said. “Why would you do that?”

“Like I said, for charity. And as you said, the chances of winning are one in a million.”

“Zillion,” she corrected me.

“Right,” I said. “Zillion. But if you do win, maybe you could give me a ride.”

“Sure,” she said. “Hey, even if I don’t win I’ll give you a ride. For right now you could buy me another cup of hot chocolate.”

I bought her the hot chocolate and a raffle ticket. Turned out she didn’t win. Turned out the ride was better than anything I could have imagined.