"Look both ways before crossing the road," his mind's voice warned.

He had been looking both ways , for quite some time now. He really wasn't sure how long. The roads went on as far as the eye could see. Through the flat of the deserted wastelands it went. The desolate, barren landscape had its ways of tricking the eye and the mind. It used its expanses of featurelessness. These lands blurred Time and Space and then made them unimportant. They called these places "The Badlands." In "The Badlands" is where he stood.

He looked both ways once more. Still he could not make a decision. He looked at the crossroads. He had decided on going either left ... or right. For he would not continue on the road he had been traveling on, and he wouldn't turn back.

Left was southeast and right was northwest. But this didn't seem to matter because he had no destination.

Well ... he did. But he'd never been there before, so he didn't know where it was.

"I'll flip a coin," he said aloud and dug into the pockets of his worn jeans. All he found was a gum wrapper and a folded playing card. It was the ace of diamonds. The diamonds in the corners were colored in with black pen. In the same black pen a phone number was scribbled

He pictured her when she had brandished that pen, folded the card in half and thrown it at him. Then she had stormed away. Gone for good. He grinned and let the card drop to the parched ground, then shifted his well traveled hat, wiped his forehead, and began walking .... n