Jack was not in Liverpool.

That�s where he thought he wanted to be, though, so he allowed his imagination to provide the feeling. To get at it, he had to remember that "I�m on vacation!" easy elation, mixed in with the sense of at once being in an alien environment and being completely at ease. He was good at playing tourist in his everyday life, especially when he wasn�t happy where he was.

His surroundings helped. He was walking on a cobblestone street. To his right was a series of metal posts, joined together one by one by chains, sagging loosely in the center. Beyond that, ocean. In looking to his left, as Jack was doing, he let his eyes follow upwards a gently sloping hill, alive but quiet with modest homes and winding streets.

A porch light came to life, and Jack could make out a man letting a dog out into his front yard. The people who lived in these houses on the hill, at the ocean, a beautiful daily sunset as reliable as the trees in their yards, these people had to be happy. There was no way they could live here and not be.

It had been a gray and cool overcast day, but the sun was now making it�s last stand at dusk, piercing large and pink through the clouds at the horizon behind Jack, casting one last sheet of bright gold on all it could on this last day of March. The air was crisp with the smell of ocean. The water didn�t roll in as waves as much as it strolled in as small humps, and lazily tossed itself against the wall with a quiet splash before collapsing back to formlessness.

Near the top of the hill was a church with a tall white steeple. The exact dimensions of the bronze or brass cross topping it were lost in the sun�s reflected glare. Jack let the brightness bother his eyes, and thoughts of foreign shores gave way to bigger things ninety-three million miles back behind his right shoulder.

He loved to remember that the sun was so far away that it took the light it generated eight minutes to reach us. It was so simple and so amazing that it seemed to him that everyone should know, but was secretly delighted when he shared this with someone to whom it had never occurred: Everything we knew was eight minutes late. Even though the light was traveling one hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second, if the sun were to burn out and die, we wouldn�t even know it until eight minutes after the fact. Every time we glanced at the sun, it tricked us�it had already sneaked away, eight minutes ago, without us even realizing it.

The thought made Jack stop and turn around. The sun appeared to be close enough to the horizon by now that, because of the eight minute difference, it may actually be already beneath it. It was cold, and Jack could see his breath, but his coat was warm, and this was his walk, and he would stay and watch.

His thoughts went behind him again, as he heard the footsteps make their way down the stone steps leading to the walkway where he stood. Jack turned around reflexively. The woman made her way down the steps carefully, watching where the tall heels of her boots landed. Her back was to him, the steps running parallel to the walkway itself, but he could see her blonde, curly, shoulder length hair. She was young, and wore a long black coat, her hands stuffed in the pockets against the cold.

Jack didn�t want to appear to be staring, and was about to turn away when she skipped the last stair and hopped safely to the walkway. The silly little act of defiance to all her previous caution was charming, and Jack smiled at her as she turned to face him and caught her eye. She recovered from her little leap, and strode confidently on, responding to Jack�s smile with a grin like she just woke up next to her lover. Here is someone who is alive, right now, Jack thought.

Jack spoke to her and made her laugh. She said her name was Abigail, and she worked for a doctor in town. Both of them were happy to be having a bright, clever conversation with a stranger on this ocean side walkway, and when she suggested more, Jack accepted. Her place was small and dimly lit, but homelike and warm. The furniture was right, and the books that weren�t neatly arranged in the bookcase were strewn about in a neat sort of chaos. The evening dark and cold now, she made hot chocolate as Jack selected and played a record he had never heard before, feeling as comfortable here as he had anywhere else in his life.

An hour later, a photo album tumbling to the floor between them, she leaned into him and they were kissing. Later still, they were in bed, whispers and smiles, both exhausted and sweaty and happy on what would be the first night of many like this. Months later, they would look back on the fact that they were out for a walk at the same time, and adopt the coincidence as their mythology.

Jack let Abigail pass him. He could still see her as he moved up the stairs, her back to him before she vanished beneath the sight line of the sidewalk above the walkway.