She turned her head. “You could be back here in two days. Meanwhile, Miss Gennaro could get some sun, see the sights, relax.”

She pulled up at the Delta gate.

“Where do you want to meet us in Boston?” I said.

She stared out the window for a moment, her hands on the wheel, fingers tapping lightly, her breathing shallow. Then she rummaged through her purse, distracted, and reached in the back for a mid-sized black leather gym bag. She wore a baseball cap over her hair, turned backward, a pair of khaki shorts, and a man’s denim shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Nothing special, and she’d still put cricks in the necks of most men she passed on the way to her plane. As I sat there, the car seemed to shrink around us.

“Ahm, what did you ask me?” she said.

“Where and when tomorrow?”

“When are you arriving?”

“Probably tomorrow afternoon,” I said.

“Why don’t we meet in front of Jay’s condo building?” She got out of the car.

I climbed out, too, as she took another small bag from the trunk and closed it, gave me the keys.

“Jay’s building?”

“That’s where I’ll be lying low. He gave me a key, the password, the alarm code.”

“Okay,” I said. “What time?”

“Six.”

“Six it is.”

“Great. It’s a date.” She turned toward the doors. “Oh, I almost forgot, we have another date.”

“We do?”

She smiled, hoisted her bag onto her shoulder. “Yeah. Jay made me promise. April first. Fail-Safe.”

“Fail-Safe,” I said as the temperature of my body dropped twenty degrees in the sweltering heat.

She nodded, her eyes crinkling against the sun. “He said if anything happened to him, I was supposed to keep you company this year. Hot dogs and Budweiser and Henry Fonda. Isn’t that the tradition?”

“That’s the tradition,” I said.

“Well, then it’s set. A done deal.”

“If Jay said so,” I said.

“He made me promise.” She smiled and gave me a little wave as the electronic doors opened behind her. “So it’s a date?”

“It’s a date,” I said, giving her my own little wave in return, beaming my best smile.

“See you tomorrow.” She walked into the airport, and I watched through the glass as her ass swayed gently as she passed through a crowd of frat boys, and then turned down a corridor and disappeared.

The frat boys were still watching the space she’d occupied for all of three seconds as if it were blessed by God, and I was doing the same.

Get a good look, guys, I thought. That’s as close to flawless as some of you will ever encounter. Never, probably, was there a creature created who could match her spirit of relentless near-perfection.

Desiree. Even her name stirred the heart.