After that, she began taking different clothes with her to school so she could change out of her Bais Yaakov uniform before going to Moishy’s, using the public bathrooms in one of the coffee shops. But that didn’t work out very well; the clothes, wrinkled badly from being stuffed in beside her notebooks and heavy texts, were not very attractive. She’d kept her winter coat zipped up. So the next time, she wore the clothes underneath her dowdy school uniform, grateful for the unusually cold weather and her under-heated classrooms. She chose a pretty, flowered Sabbath blouse and a slim, dark skirt that showed off her petite, slender figure, changing in the school bathroom and only unzipping her coat when she got to Moishy’s.

The effort had proved worthwhile. Not that he had actually said anything, but she could see how his eyes left her face and traveled up and down her body. Then he gave her that smile, that special Duvie smile she knew was meant only for her. It was thrilling.

The very next time, she found a note slipped between the cardboard and the pizza so discreetly that at first she didn’t notice it until she practically took a bite out of it. Delicately, she removed it, slipping it swiftly into her coat pocket without daring to even glance in Duvie’s direction. She fingered it for two blocks until stopping to unfold and read it.

Curious? Meet me after work, 8:30, Dome playground, 16th Avenue, between 37th and 38th, on Thursday.

What was that supposed to mean, curious? Did it mean he was curious about her, that he wanted to get to know her? Or was it a challenge, questioning if she was curious about him? Or was it about something else entirely? And if yes, what else?

She stood there a long time, confused, the paper crumpling in her hand as she squeezed her fingers into a fist. Am I? Curious? she asked herself, feeling something heavy—almost oppressive—mingling with her excitement and joy.

Of course she went to meet him, despite her anxiety about being caught. The playground would be deserted at that time of night, she convinced herself, and dark enough so that people looking out their windows in the neighboring apartment buildings wouldn’t be able to make them out. Shivering, she opened the gate and walked inside, taking a seat on a bench near the jungle gyms behind a large tree.

What am I doing? She shuddered, her eyes searching the streets, panicked she would be discovered by the eagle eye of someone she knew. The consequences would be devastating. Her reputation—or what was left of it, all things considered—would be ruined. But most people she knew were home eating dinner, or learning the Torah, or listening to a shiur, not wandering the streets of Boro Park or sitting in deserted, ill-lit parks. Right?