“It was a while ago. Six, seven years. It was October. I was coming out of Canal Plastics with huge sheets of neon acrylic, and I couldn’t get a cab, and I was trying to get them home, and I kept slipping, and I actually hit you with one and knocked your briefcase in the street. And instead of being mad, you took an end and walked with me—”

“All the way to some alley in the Financial District! Up nine flights of stairs!” His face opened up, and Charlie stared at me with an expression of total disbelief. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I didn’t remember you, with your hair and everything.”

“I had a scarf over it,” I said faintly, wondering what he would recall.

“Yes,” he remembered immediately. “A floral thing. And sunglasses, even though it was sunset. And a janitor’s uniform, with some kind of turtleneck underneath. And socks with sandals.” He laughed. “Now I get it. You didn’t have heat.”

“Eleven Dutch Street had many fine qualities. Heat was not one of them.”

“Oh, I’m such an arsehole.” He groaned, reaching for my hand across the table with his left and putting his forehead in his right. “You know…I looked for you at Carey’s funeral. A year later. I don’t know why. I thought you might know her. Out of all the events we attend, that was where I thought of you. It’s funny, now, to remember that.”

“We didn’t trade names.”

“No. Because you berated me the whole way back. I thought you were going to kill me.”

“You dropped six hundred dollars of magenta acrylic on the sidewalk!”

“Because you were walking too fast,” he said, still laughing, still holding my hand in his long fingers, the knuckles on his left hand stained from the ink of the extra-fine-tip markers he used. I felt self-conscious and drew my hand back, leaned away in my chair. Charlie didn’t let me make any space, though; he immediately put my hand to his face, a gesture that shocked and delighted me, and I wondered if he remembered doing that same thing six years ago, before kissing me in the stairwell of my building—that sweet kiss we shared before he walked down the stairs and into the night without another word.

“I did know you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I should have known you this whole time. Oh…please don’t stop being my friend. Please don’t be angry.”