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figure you’re young and strong enough to handle it. Of course, it doesn’t enter your mind that all that money might get lost or stolen or fall into a black hole. I still don’t know what happened to it. The next day, the money just wasn’t there.
    Bad luck has a way of making you realize your full potential for stupidity.
    By the time I finish my grande cappuccino, my ten o’clock still hasn’t shown up. I check my voice mail and my text messages but there’s nothing. As far as I can tell, no one other than the cute brunette barista has been checking me out and I haven’t noticed anyone suspicious hanging around outside. If this was a setup then somebody didn’t get the memo. Which means I’m dealing with another customer who got cold feet. Just my luck. At least I’ve got the ten grand from Tuesday, which should help to cover my expenses for a few months.
    Before I leave, the barista with the Celtic-knot tattoo comes over to my table and gives me her phone number on a napkin.
    “I’m free for dinner,” she says, then bites her lower lip in that seductive way only women can get away with. Kind of like grooving to music at a bar. When a woman does it, it’s alluring. Appealing. Acceptable. When a guy does it, it’s like watching the end of cool as we know it.
    When the barista turns and walks away, she glances back over her shoulder and gives me a seductive smile. An unspoken promise of secret treasures to be found. But at the moment, I’m not channeling my inner pirate.
    For some reason, the bad luck I poached three years ago has left me with some sort of vibe or pheromone that attracts female baristas from corporate-coffeehouse chains. Which you wouldn’t think is a bad thing. Not only do I have all of these young, cute, sexy baristas coming on to me every time I go into a Starbucks or a Peet’s, but I have a world of free cappuccinos and mochas at my veritable fingertips. Free sex and all-you-can-drink espresso beverages. And with more than seven dozen Starbucks and Peet’s combined in San Francisco and several baristas at each location offering up their phone numbers and their sexual charms, who could ask for more?
    Except every barista I’ve slept with, from the Peet’s in West Portal to the Starbucks at Ghirardelli Square, wants something serious while I just want to have some fun.
    I prefer short-term relationships. Ideally, relationships that last one night. That way, you never have to worry about developing feelings for the woman or seeing her go to the bathroom while you brush your teeth.
    Even nearly halfway through my thirties, I still avoid emotional intimacy.
    Call it an occupational hazard.
    To be honest, the main reason I avoid relationships is because no normal woman would understand what I do. Who I am. She’d try to change me. Or else end up leaving me. So I just save them the trouble by leaving first.
    I never was good at making commitments.
    More than once, things have started to get complicated and I’ve had to make a list of Starbucks and Peet’s that I can’t patronize anymore. I even swore off baristas after the fiasco at the Peet’s on Fillmore, but some habits are harder to break than others.
    I watch the brunette with the Celtic-knot tattoo return to her post behind the counter, where she continues to glance my way, then I pocket the napkin she gave me without any intention of calling the number on it. But when it comes to baristas, my intentions are about as dependable as an incontinent bladder.
    On my way out the door, I bump into Mandy.
    “Hey,” I say.
    “Hey,” she says back.
    We stand there, me half leaving and her half coming, the two of us half blocking the entrance to Starbucks, half staring at each other, neither of us saying anything.
    I never was good with awkward moments.
    I watch her face, waiting for her to say something, to give me a cue to play off of. But she just looks at me withthat expression of disapproval, as if I’m perpetually disappointing