Her head lay on a white pillow with white paisleys knit into the fringes, almond eyes peering curiously up at him. He was sitting on the bed and drifted his finger along her eyebrow. Again. Again. Smoothing the dark hairs with a blank mind and a tactile finger. All nerve-endings focused in the tip of his finger, the rest of his body shut-down, only feeling the tickle of the dark hairs, nothing else. Again. She was smiling, as she had been, and answered his touch with a quizzical, questing gaze. Her pupils reflected the subdued flame of an oil lamp, a gift, from across the room, and twinkled.

His finger became his hand and moved slowly, softly toward her ear, brushing against her cheek on the way. He stroked her ebony hair behind her ear and curled it against her neck. Bristly hair ends tickled her olive skin and pointed at an exposed shoulder and shadowed clavicle. Following their cue, he floated in and nuzzled his lips there. Nestled together, warm, cozy, the flame lowering as it drank up the oil, they fell asleep in a dizzy reverie, two bodies connected, one mind, no thoughts.

She awoke before him and busied herself. The thin, white window shades helped little against the sun. He swore they even amplified it. Finally he relented to the morning light and joined her. She had made tea. It was probably 10:30.

They sat together on two stools before a stand-alone bar. Facing each other, they supped the tea. Steaming, herbal, aromatic. His foot hooked into her stool and his calf rested against hers. Her hand lay unconsciously on his thigh. The snow blanketed the roof outside and glistened in the sun. They looked at each other and didn't talk. Just watched and drank each other in.

They had met at a club. Dancing alone, he caught her eye. They flowed around each other for a while until gravity brought them intimately together. She wore black--a black skirt and a snug black top. The top she had rolled up--maybe for the heat. Her firm stomach showed and suggested just a hint of seduction, but a Victorian seduction, entirely chaste, or so she convinced herself. They moved together amidst the club-goers, lost in the haze, the lights, the music, him, blank, expressionless, her, always smiling. Their locked eyes leapt out of the still frames of this celluloid vision. They floated in an iridescent bubble, miles away from the other dancers.

Finally he spoke. They'd been dancing for probably an hour, and he suggested they sit down. After a few repeats, battling the bass buzz of the club, she understood and agreed. On their way to a seat, they passed the bar, and he grabbed some water for them both. They found a bench along a hall in the cavernous club and alighted together, sharing their area with another couple and a clump of three girls.

She thought he was European she said. He chuckled and with his best French accent confirmed that he had grown up in gay Par-ee. His accent betrayed him. It couldn't mask the unmistakable American in his voice from a California up-bringing and a Georgia mother. She seemed willing to forgive him his American-ness, although secretly she had hoped for the style, sensitivity, and sophistication of a European. Now it was her turn. She was an ice skater. He could have guessed from her physique, although he might have said dancer.

He mentioned he was going to be in the city again the next day and invited her to lunch. She accepted and in turn invited him to a dance performance. Happily he agreed. A harmonious start.

She had come with two friends, a couple, and the couple was leaving. The three of them had a huddle together and, boldly, she decided to stay. They danced more. They talked more. She smoked a cigarette, very discreetly. Then his friends were leaving. Together they went outside, and she slipped into a New York cab. With a kiss on the cheek he said goodbye to the puppy brown eyes and sinuous body that had graced him for an evening.

After being out till dawn, he managed to roll back into the city at about 3 in the afternoon. He called her and picked her up for a late lunch. After a few minutes she appeared in the lobby of her friend's apartment building wearing a velvety black dress that draped to the floor and a short white coat. He remarked that she looked fetching and suggested he might be under-dressed. "Oh, not at all. I always over-dress," she responded. And they traipsed cheerily outside into the rain.

Not knowing the city well, they stumbled around looking for restaurants. After too many blocks they surrendered the hunt and settled that they'd enter the next restaurant they came to, unfortunately an English pub. They both ordered the chicken sandwich. It arrived, a drab slab of meat on a hamburger bun with day-old lettuce. But they managed to overlook the food and concentrate on each other.

Their conversation flowed through introductory banter. She was a skater. She was in New York on vacation. She actually coached in Cape Cod. But she was going to train in Minnesota, and then on to the U.S. Open or Italy or touring with a skating troupe. Or some similar, convoluted trail speckled with past whimsy and future uncertainty. He worked for a software comany but was quitting soon, and then hopefully to school in New York.

Some time later found them at the Whitney Museum, dallying over Beat era art on one level and behemoth psychedelic creations on another. She commented on the works of the Beat poets, how she liked seeing an artist's handwriting because it spoke more than the words alone. The first level hosted the Picassoids, and he made the mistake of asking if the museum was showing any actual Picassos. The curator responded curtly, "This is the American museum of art." He smiled and wandered on.

Out of the pub and into the rain again. They hustled together down the drenched sidewalk and ducked into a cafe. The dance performance was a while off yet, and they had time to kill. They ordered coffees and talked about affairs. She was carefree and said she didn't make any rules, submitting herself wholly to emotion and her heart. He didn't quite know what he thought. Talk flowed then to past relationships and love. Had he ever been in love? she asked. Once, he replied, and recounted details. Had she? Several times. Although it seemed her definition of love was slightly more lax.

During a pause, she rescued a dainty flower arrangement from a dark, empty table and settled it on theirs. She looked at him, smiling. The light from above cast shadows on their faces, and she said he looked like he was wearing a mask. Ironic.

At the performance that night, he surrendered to the grace and precision of the dancers' motion, the beat of tribal rhythms, the rush of abstract white noise, and mostly to her venturing hand. In the dark of the balcony, charged with the flush of newness, they touched and explored, sharing each other through the friction of fingertips.

They saw each other again in the few days before he left. They spoke of their families, of their futures, and of trifles, all the while nurturing an intimate bond that transcended the words and whispered something more direct. Finally the cab stopped on her corner, and she reluctantly got out. He kissed her for the first time on the lips and tried to say goodbye, but the only words that came out were, "One more," as he kissed her again, and again. Then he was gone.

But he came back. He joined her in Cape Cod for five magical days in a downy, snow-covered wonderland. She met him at the airport in Boston. It was late already, but they drove into town. They parked and emerged onto a quaint street, dusted with snow, bordered by old Bostonian buildings, and illuminated by firefly-lights strung through leafless trees. Pinprick stars cloaked the lustrous black sky. They pranced down the street, holding hands, throwing snowballs, and rejoicing in a perfect night and an unlikely reunion.

They spent the next four days in her "tree house" on the Cape, reclining in the comfort of each others' presence. Nightly, for dinner they'd lay mats on the floor and dine on chopped fruit, smoked salmon, sourdough and cheese, with one of her CD's murmuring in the background.

One night he read to her. She nestled herself tight and close against him, periodically trying to burrow even closer. He read Come Lady Death, a story about an English socialite, Lady Neville, inviting Death to a ball. Death arrives, a ravishing young woman with coal black eyes. At first fraught with fear, the guests grow quickly to like Death, so much that they invite her to stay permanently. Flattered, Death wavers and then agrees, and must find a new Death, ultimately and willingly Lady Neville.

Candles threw shadows on the walls, and as he read, he would pause periodically to ask, "Is my voice too loud?"

"No, it's perfect," she would respond.

"Am I going too fast?"

"No, it's perfect," she would whisper back.

And then he would resume.

During their time together, they didn't do much of anything, but it was everything, looks, touches, words, gestures, warmth, delicate snowflakes, all blending together into what she later called her perfect memory.

And too quickly the time passed.

They took the bus together to the airport. She spent the trip in his lap, wriggling and cooing happily.

Inside the airport he took a seat on a bench while she went outside to smoke. He daydreamed for a while until she sidled up to his seat and, affecting the manner of a stranger, said, "Look, I don't have a lot of time, but you're an attractive guy. What do you say you and I..." She motioned with her head and raised her eyebrows in question as her sentence trailed off.

He measured her up with interest, head to toe, then responded, "Love to. Shame my flight leaves in ten minutes." He stood up and headed down the terminal. After about ten paces he paused and waited for her to catch up. She bounced up quickly and threw her arms around his chest from behind. He struggled on for a few feet until she released him.

As they waited in line to check bags, she tugged on his belt and rocked back and forth. She appraised him from different angles, tilting her head to see if he transformed when viewed from a new perspective, regarding him like a school girl trying to trick a hologram, to view from a place where its tracking eyes couldn't follow.

They futilely tried to drag out their time together before his plane left. They moved languidly, as if slowing their actions would curb the progress of the clock hands. They gazed at each other deeply, as if they could elude time in each other's eyes. But before they'd even finished their coffee and sweets, time had caught them.

She delivered him to his gate, and they exchanged goodbyes beneath misty eyes. Then, slowly and mournfully, she rolled her luggage away to her own gate, stopping to blow a kiss at him through the mesh security fence. His eyes followed her until she disappeared past a white terminal wall.

At quarter after three he glanced at his watch. In moments, he knew, she'd be boarding a flight to New York where her lover of a year and a half would be waiting anxiously at the gate, maybe with flowers in his hand.

He didn't hear from her for a while. A few weeks later the phone rang, and her breathy voice greeted his ear. She had been in Cancun, with her lover, recuperating from the stress of something stressful, she said. Soon she'd be in Minnesota, training full-time, under the martinet hand of her mother. She wouldn't be able to visit him because her mother didn't allow vacations. He wouldn't be able to visit her because her mother didn't allow guests. Stalemate. What then? Wait?

As she penned in one of her notes to him: "Could I possibly think the things I do, feel the things I feel toward someone I shared so fully, but so briefly in time? And to believe these feelings possibly shared, and for a moment to know it--could I possibly be so blessed? Shall I deny it or accept it? So, I accept it--what can be done now--except wait... How cruel! But how tantalizing."

And the wait dragged on. Months passed. The letters and calls dwindled, until it was no longer a wait, because for the most part they'd forgotten each other. Years now, and the only spark left of their chance meeting was a glimmer of memory on balmy, cloudless days, a passing deja vu, vague and insubstantial. Their lives had gone on. With time, their passion and hope had scarred over, old sentiments suppressed and shackled in the deep hollows of their minds, the portal to their dreams of togetherness grown over with weeds and dissembled under a blanket of prickly thistles.

With time also, they met new people, shared new dreams, fostered new loves. New paths in different directions, but never repeating, never recapturing the peculiar magic they'd shared with each other. She met men with qualities she adored, but no one with the same unfathomable blue eyes and child-like purity. And he never met anyone whose voice sang and lulled him into timeless repose, as hers had. Never did another woman's eyes sparkle with glints of Eden.

And the years wore on...

A spring sun kissed the moistened pavement, drying the morning drizzle. The two situated themselves at a cafe table outside. Awkward at first, each passing word bestowed an old comfort.

He regarded her wonderingly, marveling that the girl he'd once known now had a husband, a family. She sculpted, and her works were on display in a local gallery. That's how he'd found her, falling by chance into the small gallery that housed her exhibit. Engrossed by a foot-high bronze of a woman with her face buried in her hands, crying silently, he froze when he recognized the name...

They held hands across the table. For a few moments, the years raced backwards, and they recaptured the innocence and purity and affection of a union that had breathed deeply but exhaled a final, loving sigh long ago.

The rumble of traffic brought them back. She self-consciously withdrew her hand and brought her eyes down to rest on her demitasse. He continued gazing at her, enraptured once again by the woman who had caressed his heart years back. He left money for the drinks and rose to leave. As he stood, she lifted her head and peered openly at him, her face a painting of wistfulness and sorrow but not of regret. Her raised eyebrows and searching eyes told him tales of a path his life hadn't followed, with her its centerpiece.

As he departed, he brushed his fingers over her hand in quiet reminiscence. He walked away without glancing back, and cradled her memory in his mind forever.

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