Chapter 1: A Strange Meeting

To say that I was nervous at that moment would have been an understatement. I think every hair on the nap of my neck was standing on end. I was in panic seeing her standing there in front of me. I could only stare in astonishment at her, unable to speak. I feared she knew everything. I thought she had found me out. Knew what I was doing, and why.

I should have been paying more attention to my surroundings, but I hadn't. I had already finished my brunch. I never eat a breakfast or a lunch, just a brunch. One cup of coffee when I wake up is all I can take. It takes me a few hours before I am able to eat anything. Dinner is the only meal that I take seriously, and I take it very seriously. Always visiting the very best restaurants available in the towns and cities that I'm in. My brunch and my dinner are all the meals I need nowadays. It's been that way since she left me and I finally stabilized in my new lifestyle.

Having finished my brunch I stayed seated at my table at the open-air café in Miami Beach. I was taking pleasure in the cool mid-morning sea breeze flowing around my legs and through my hair. I was savoring the last remnants of a luscious cup of Cuban coffee. My laptop was open and I was answering emails to my stockbrokers, financial advisors and friends.

I had felt safe, secure and anonymous at the café. She was the last person I would have expected to see in Miami Beach. She should have been back in Denver, far away from me. Yet she was here at my table.

It seemed like everything was moving in slow motion until she repeated her request, "Excuse me, I don't want to disturb you, but all the other tables are full, so I was wondering if I could sit at your table." Holding up shopping bags in both hands as a reason, "My feet are killing me."

Wary and knowing that if she knew what was going on, that an unsightly clash could not be avoided, I shutdown and closed my laptop. I then pointed to the empty chair saying guardedly, "The Cuban coffee here is excellent." If I was the purpose she was here, it was going to get very ugly, very rapidly.

It was the look of delight, which then became visible on her face, as she sat down, that first hinted to me, that she not only didn't know what my plans were, or what I had already done, she did not even know who I was... her ex-husband.

Even though it had been only a little over three years since our divorce, I should have realized, that after all the changes I had been through, she never could have placed the now me, with the man I had been then. To tell you the truth, I seriously doubt that my own mother would have recognized me.

It was during our conversation that I began to recall so much of how she really was, before she did to me, what she did.

It was she, or better said, what she had done, that led me to my new lifestyle, and to the settling of scores I was planning... my final step in freeing myself from the anguish and distress she and others had heaped upon me.

It was during that first conversation at that Cuban Coffee shop that I altered my plans. My new plan, what I was going to do, would insure a far more lasting pain, almost equal to that, what I had suffered at her hands. She would not only feel the pain of betrayal by someone she loved, she would feel as much of a loss of self-esteem, as I had felt.

Before I go on with on with this story though, I'm going to have to retrace and explain why I am who I am, and how it all came to be.