Love potion

Julia was 23, and single.  Being 23 and single was among the greatest
tragedies that Julia could imagine, yet here she was.  High
school had brought her a steady stream of boyfriends, but Steve, her last
boyfriend in high school, had to break up with her when he went off to
college.  She stayed behind, with an office job at a large bank that
was too good to pass up.

Since then, it seemed to her as if she had shrivelled up and become an
old crone.  Working life was fulfilling enough, but no one at the office
had the slightest interest in her, that she could tell.  She looked in
the mirror and spotted all the imperfections which her excessive age had
wrought.  In fact, with her light brown hair, blue eyes and beautifully
proportioned features, the men in her office had two separate but equally
restraining reactions: 1. She's way outta my league.  2. I don't want
another sexual harrassment suit.

For lunch, Julia regularly ate at a little cafe on 3rd.  They made a
Reuben sandwich that was out of this world, and she went there most of
the time.  They had another regular customer, on whom Julia had nothing
less than a red-hot, raging crush.

For his part, Ponytail Man (as Julia thought of him, having nothing
else to go on) didn't seem to realize she existed.  She saw him there
at least once a week, usually more, always reading his book.  He would
eat his sandwich or salad, read his book, and leave, completely failing
to acknowledge the desire that obviously burned in her heart.

To get to work, Julia rode the bus every day.  Parking in downtown Seattle
was completely out of the question.  Her route took her past a little,
out-of-the-way building; it had three neon signs hung in the window:

Psychic readings

Fortunes told

Love potions

One fine day in spring, when love was in the air all around her,
Julia was feeling particularly morose about her life.  She pulled
the cord early, and got off the bus near the psychic's little building.

"I shouldn't do this," she thought to herself.  By the time the thought
had fully resolved in her head, her eyes were adjusting to the dim
interior of the psychic's front room.

For a moment, nothing happened.  The bell on the door had been a
deep-toned, refined sound, more reminiscent of a church bell than the
tinkling, bright chipperness of the usual shop door bell.  As she
began to make out the room's contents, a mellow male voice with a faint
middle eastern accent said, "How can I help you, Ms. Knight?"

A cold thrill washed down her spine, and she turned her eyes to see a
small man with a neat salt-and-pepper beard, a hawkish nose, and deeply
tanned skin sitting in an overstuffed chair.  He lowered the book he'd
been reading, then carefully placed a bookmark in it and set it down.
He stood up fluidly, with a beautiful but imposing animal grace.

"Um."  She paused, trying to gather her thoughts in the face of the
unexpected.  "How did you know my name?"

"I would be a poor psychic indeed if I did not."  He smiled a little
smile, which Julia found unreasonably charming.  "What did you expect?
Perhaps an old gypsy woman who speaks in generalities and hopeful
non-description?"

"Uh, no," stammered Julia.  "Sorry.  I..."  She looked around, and a
sudden sense of panic and guilt propelled her out the door.

The next day, she was standing in the little, fabric draped room again.
"Hello again, Ms. Knight.  I see I didn't frighten you too badly
yesterday, then."  The smile was back.

Julia returned the smile, uncertainly.  "Um, you have a sign up,
that says..."

"Love potions?"  Julia just failed to suppress a gasp.  "Yes, but
I would warn you, my love potions are not novelty trifles."  The
smile was still there, but it seemed to have taken on a harder edge.
"They are expensive, and they work."

"How... how did you know?"

"As I said before, I would be a poor psychic if I did not.  Come this
way."  He pushed through a gap in the fabric, and Julia followed.  The
silky material seemed to caress her hand and arm as she passed.  "I
suspect this is what you want," he said, holding up a small vial
with a card attached to the neck.  The card was printed in gold on
black paper, in a neat, handwritten script.  She accepted it from him,
and at his gesture took a whiff of the contents.  The room brightened in
her eyes, the tealights on the tables suddenly ringed with tiny rainbows.

"However," he said, "what you hold is best described as the generic
version.  If you can bring me a hair from your intended, I can make
a much more potent version that will work only on him."

Julia was back two days later, nervously clutching a few hairs
Ponytail Man had dropped, and five crisp, new $100 bills.  The psychic
also plucked a hair off Julia's head in a sudden motion.  He twined
them all together.  "Two weeks," he said.  "Meditate in that time
on your goal.  It will increase the potency of my draught."  

For the next two weeks, although she tried to spot it every day, she
couldn't quite remember where the psychic's shop was.

But meditate she did, wavering between despair and confusion, and a
kind of overwhelming (if non-specific) romantic feeling that left her
lying in bed, soaked and  exhausted on more than one occasion.  On the
appointed date, anxious that she'd accidentally pass the shop, she
carefully pulled the cord and got off at what she knew was the right stop.
The shop was there, where it had always been, and she scolded herself
for being so credulous.

The silky fabric caressed her hand again, and the man with the faint
middle eastern accent and salt-and-pepper beard handed her a small
vial.  "He must drink this."  He handed her another, much smaller vial,
about the size of a cough drop.  "You should drink this.  It's the
same potion, and it will link you together.  Don't drink more than this
amount."  She looked down at the two vials in her hand in mute
amazement.  "If you decide not to do this, set fire to the potions and
see that they burn completely."  Suddenly doubtful, she uncorked the
larger vial, and sniffed gently.  There was no scent of alcohol,
although the rainbows appeared around the candle flames again.  He
smiled his charming smile and said nothing.

Julia's opportunity appeared a few days later.  Ponytail Man sat at the
bar which faced out onto the street, and Julia was able to power
through her self-doubt and sit down next to him.  He took no notice,
engrossed in his copy of Moby Dick, but when he got up to go to the
bathroom, she surreptitiously dropped the contents of the vial into his
drink.

Time passed, slowly and quickly at the same time.  By the time two days
had gone by with no change, Julia was convinced that she'd been ripped
off.  She felt like a fool, cursing ever more bitterly that she would
be single and lonely for the rest of her days.  A wasted old maid of 23.

She had nearly come to grips with all this about two weeks later, when
she entered the cafe on 3rd (which now seemed a lonely and bleak
place, but some faint hope still burned in her heart, and that kept her
coming back).  Ponytail Man was already at the bar facing the window,
but he wasn't reading.  When she entered, his head whipped around, and
his eyes met hers for the first time she could recall.  Her heart skipped
a beat, the previously faint hope flaring up with a cruel, white-hot
intensity.

In a scene fit for the most overwrought, tear-jerking romantic movie,
he stood up slowly, and walked toward her, his eyes never leaving
hers.  Barely conscious of his own actions, his arms encircled her.
All she could see were his eyes, burning with an intensity she had
never seen before, an intensity she hadn't believed could exist.
Their lips met, and she was overcome with a feeling as if liquid
fire had replaced the blood pounding through her veins.  Consciousness
faded, and she watched as from a great distance as the two ran,
hand-in-hand, back to his apartment.

He was gentle but insistent, and they explored every inch of each
other, floating on a platonic cloud of pure carnal desire.  Night
fell and the full moon rose.  Julia and Ponytail Man (who'd just
managed to gasp out at one point that his name was Connor) fell
back on the bed, exhausted and sated.  They may have slept, but it
was the deep sleep of true contentment, which brooks no dreams and
suffers no anxiety.

Julia looked at Connor, and gently traced her finger down his face.  He
smiled and opened his eyes, turning to look at her.  He moved her hand
to his mouth and kissed her finger.

A strange look then crossed his face, and he looked again at Julia.
Something was wrong.  He looked down, taking in her naked torso, her
leg wrapped possessively around his.

"Oh crap," he said, a look of horror suffusing his features.
"My boyfriend's gonna kill me."