“A picture . . . ,” he said with Masterpiece Theater gravitas, “of loveliness.”

Then it happened. She laughed. I laughed, too, and was restored to my normal, fully verbal state.

From that moment Charlie and I moved through the museum together as if obeying a little-known law of physics: when two forces collide while among pink, cavorting putti and lush, idyllic grottoes it results in indissoluble bonding. We walked among the Fragonards, the Sargents, the Vermeers. Together we got nose-close to the canvases. It probably looked like we were being connoisseury—ostensibly we were inspecting impasto—but really we were employing a pretext to move within inches of each other’s face, each other’s mouth.¹³

We pointed, we stared, we talked.

In front of one of Ingres’ odalisques I discovered why I hadn’t heard her behind me.

One of the things I hate about museums is the conveyor-belt attitude of some people. They act as if it’s a competitive event. “Classical antiquity, check. Vroom! Medieval armaments, gone! Renaissance, Enlightenment, all you Dadaists, gotcha! All done! I’ll beat you to the café and finish my cocktail before you even place an order!” It makes me nuts. But Charlie was different. I hadn’t heard her simply because she hadn’t moved. She had been standing behind me the whole time, totally still, totemlike, absorbed.

A dumb reason to find someone additionally irresistible, maybe, but no one else I knew—not even other pulses—could stand still that long and watch. Just like me. For the first time in my life there was someone who saw things, literally, as I did.

But we talked more than museums.

Charlie loved the pfffft sound of a freshly opened soda can pop-top.

If she adored a book she would never read a second by the same author because she was too frightened of being let down.

Her father wanted a boy so much that he named her “Charles Izzo.” It was only through relentless lobbying that her mother succeeded in securing “Charlita” as a variant, but the feminized version was limited to mainly mother-daughter dialogue, and it never became ratified by any documents. Birth certificate, driver’s license, school records—everything—were all under the name Charles. For a few uncomfortable years he even called her “Chuck,” a mistake that I made only once.

Every time she goes to this one bodega she gets accosted by the same Puerto Rican guys. At first they were trying to pick her up but when she didn’t respond to their overtures in Spanish they started berating her for not speaking her mother tongue. She tried to explain that she’s from Malta, that her language is closer to Arabic and Italian than to Spanish, but their English isn’t so hot and they never get the idea. They yell at her every time. When I asked her why she kept going there she said, “Alas, it is the only market around that carries Coco Rico.”

“So?” I said.

“It is the only soda that, ah...” She cleared her throat awkwardly. A sheepish smile was offered. “Well, it has . . . superior... acoustical properties. You know. When opened.”