I swallow, collect myself. Collect a lot of unruly thoughts about Reid being unbuttoned.

“We can pick something else.”

“No, one word is”—there’s a pause—“fair. Hand-lettered only?”

“You trying to take the easy way out?”

“Alas,” he says, and I worry I’m going to start developing some kind of Masterpiece Theatre library of sexual fantasies. Alas, alas, alas. I’m thinking about the word cravats when he finishes his sentence. “I am not in an area known for its hands-craftsmanship.”

I’m guessing that means he’s downtown. Phallic-skyscraper city, dollar-sign-eyed people all around him. Neckties, not cravats, which is a shame.

“Not hand-lettered only,” I say, but I’m already snapping a picture of a chalk-drawn sandwich board, focusing on the S. I already know what my word is going to be. “I can be flexible.”

Reid and I decide we’ve got fifteen minutes to find the letters for our respective words; then we’ll send them to each other all at once when the time is up. At first, I feel a pang of nervousness—will we hang up, find our letters separately? Or will we stay on the phone, a distant sort of togetherness, trying to find something to talk about?

But Reid settles that for us, because as soon as we start the time he asks where I am, what it’s like in the neighborhood I’m walking through, as though he wants to minimize the distance between us. I snap photos as I walk, do my best to describe the particular flavor of Park Slope on a Tuesday early evening. Strollers and schoolkids on the sidewalks, Subaru wagons on already-clogged streets. I tell him about how I was surprised, when I first moved here, that some of the shops close so early, and I tell him—as I make my way all the way down Twelfth—about my favorite bakery, which stays open until seven. When I get there, I tell him my cupcake options and ask him what I should pick, and he says, “I don’t eat many sweets,” which makes me laugh.

I order a Brooklyn Blackout—four different kinds of chocolate—but decide not to eat it while we talk.

Reid tells me, too, about where he is. But he says he’s not as good at describing things as I am. He says that when he looks around, he has a hard time seeing anything that stands out.

“It looks uniform to me. Everything is tall. Gray. Busy. Dirty.”

“That’s what I used to think, too.” I snap another photo, the lovely, lowercase blue r from the bakery’s front window. “Before I moved here.”

“Yes, but you’re in Brooklyn. It’s different.”

“I didn’t always live in Brooklyn. I used to live in Manhattan, when I first came.”

“You did?”