Forbidden Candlelight

Alistair Vane was an underground singer just starting to make a name for himself. He had planned to celebrate his new job with his buddy Gu Ming, but Gu Ming bailed on him at the last minute to be with his girlfriend. The two-story apartment was now empty except for Alistair Vane and Gu Ming’s mother, Seraphina Marlowe. Seraphina Marlowe was forty-two, divorced for years, carrying the kind of gentle melancholy that quietly ferments after being neglected by time for too long. She laid out a tableful of dishes, lit candles, and in her eyes was a cautious, tentative probing. Alistair Vane should have felt awkward, but the moment their knuckles brushed when she poured the wine, he realized there was something dangerously magnetic about this woman’s loneliness.