I ran into him at Au Bon Pain on a Sunday morning. He let two people go ahead of him so we could stand in the long line together. He was wearing men’s corduroys and a wool sweater. Everything in my body shifted, as if it had known, as if it had been waiting. The way he put his hand in his pocket for his cash, the way he handed over the money and slid his coffee off the counter, the way he stood at the condiment stand and poured in some cream. The dresses had hidden the span of his scapulae, the narrowing of his waist, the hard muscles of his ass. Fuck. I’d heard he had a girlfriend. I left without milk for my tea.

He caught up with me, though, and we walked together with our hands on our hot drinks on the cold day. He asked if I’d seen the new sculpture outside Widener and veered into the yard to show me. We sat on the steps of the library and pretended we went to Harvard. “What’s your major?” I asked him and he said “art history” and I said “me too” and he said “no way” and we tried to figure out if we had any classes together. We made up our courses: Hangnails in Modern Sculpture, Western European Scowls Versus Smiley Faces. Not surprisingly, he was good at getting into a role. I felt like I was in college again, that he was a cute boy I’d just met and he was about to kiss me. And he did. At 11:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning in November. It was the first time a first kiss made me want sex. Immediately. He looked at me like he felt the same and like it was nothing new. He relaxed against me, like my father sinking into the couch with his first drink. In the distance there was the sound of a little kid squealing, and William pulled away. It was a little boy, just entering the gates, running toward us. William took my hand. “C’mon.” He tugged me down the steps toward the boy and the woman who trailed him. They were both dressed up, the boy in a silk bow tie and a tiny camel hair coat and the woman in heels and a black mackintosh and a flash of turquoise between.

“How is God?” William called.

“Good,” the boy said, still running. It took a long time for him to reach us on his very short legs. “He’s very good,” he said crumpling his face into William’s thigh.

He was still holding my hand when he introduced me to them, his son, he said, and his wife, Petra.