Wanting must be glaring in her face. As obsidian glares in even the faintest light.

Casually he approaches her. Stands beside her, leaning his elbows on the railing above the embankment, where seed-flecked waves slap against the concrete in harsh arrhythmic surges.

Friendly murmur—“Hello!”

No threat or intimidation in the greeting, but she doesn’t reply, for it is her prerogative not to acknowledge a stranger approaching her in this public place.

Though noting to her amusement that the man’s (bulky) shadow precedes him, bent like a Cubist artwork against the vertical bars of the railing above the river.

“Hey. Are you—alone?”

L.K. has not looked at him. She is a mature woman, practiced in composure, who will not betray the surprise, alarm, intrigue she feels at this intrusion.

Telling the intruder lightly, though with an air of finality, “No. Not really.”

This is meant as a rebuke. Cool, definitive. But the intruder laughs as if she has said something witty, and in these circumstances (public place, attractive woman) witty means girly, flirty.

“‘Not really’—what’s that mean?”

A smile baring damp, chunky, stained teeth. A smile inviting complicity.

Faint odor of clay, paint from his clothes. Turpentine?

Exactly what the words say—she considers telling him. But no, better not.

At least he isn’t standing too close. There’s a comfortable distance between them. And there are others on the embankment and on the grass close by, adults who would come to her rescue if necessary.

He persists. “Well, you look alone. In the present moment.”

Laughs again, a sort of belly laugh, and in fact he is carrying a belly like a kangaroo pouch, above a sagging belt, khaki work trousers splattered with paint stains.

Adding, in a rueful tone, “And me, too.”

Meaning—he, too, is alone?

Something poignant in the admission by so self-assured an individual. And in the formality of his speech, even as he is trying to be casual, relaxed—In the present moment.

Yes, that is not an ordinary way of speaking. That is a distinctive way of speaking. There is subtlety here, irony. An education. Character.

The way he glances at her, sidelong—quizzical, searching. He knows her, she thinks. Recognizes her.

Someone L.K. might have known years ago, in her former lifetime in this city …

Well, it’s her fault that a stranger has approached her. Standing in this public place on Belle Isle, conspicuously alone.

Indeed L.K. has fashioned herself into a presence: tall, poised, wearing a shift of a coarse, nubby beige material that falls unevenly to her ankles, like sculpted drapery, and an antique satin jacket discolored with age; ivory bracelets clattering against her slender wrists, ivory beads the size of quarters around her neck. Hair loose to her shoulders, glistening silvery-blond like metallic filaments.

On her pale, narrow face stylish dark-tinted glasses that give the impression of being opaque. Half her face hidden.