And so it came to pass that in a little dinner on Dover Street, during the lunch rush, on no distinguishably different day I met her.

She happened to be wearing a green smock which had a large four leaf clover embroidered in the center of it. She said the oddest things and in the blink of an eye, she was gone.

I couldn’t fathom what had just happened, much less describe it to anyone. She simply was there, and then wasn’t. I pondered it greatly over the next several hours, and in the end, I was certain of two things, she had been there, and I had been the only one who saw her. How this is possible I can’t explain it but I now know that I am not imagining what happened. I can say this with all certainty because she dropped a book before she disappeared.

I know she didn’t mean to drop it but nonetheless, there it was. Of course I went over and picked it up before anyone else had a chance to take it. After all, it was my ticket to meeting the woman who would end up saving the earth.