“Trying to get your attention,” Bobby Manning said. He attempted to pull himself to his feet, and slid back down. He looked up at her and grinned. “I'd say I did it.”

He's way too confident, said a warning voice in her head. But the wicked smile was infectious.

“You're making a fool of yourself,” she informed him.

“It wouldn't be the first time.” He struggled to get upright for a few more seconds. “I think you're going to have to help me—unless you like having a man on his knees in front of you.”

“Or I could just take off and leave you here.”

He shook his head. “You're not that kind of girl.”

She couldn't hold him up by herself, and Bobby was incapable of skating across to the barricade on his own. He'd barely made it the first time, he explained, and now his ankles seemed to have given out. Finally she commandeered one of the skating instructors who gave lessons at the rink and together they dragged him off the rink.

“Have you ever skated before?” she demanded when they were on dry land and Bobby was catching his breath.

“Once. When I was six. It didn't go very well.”

“You do know you're crazy.”

“But for a good cause. See, the way I figure it, now that I've ruined my best tie—”

“Are you kidding? That's your best?”

“Don't interrupt. The least you can do is have a cup of coffee with me.”

She made a show of looking at her watch. “I guess I can manage it,” she said.

“Of course you can.” And she knew from the way he was grinning at her that he knew she had nowhere else to go.

He took her to a place on Forty-seventh Street between Fifth and Madison with cracked Formica on the tabletops and fake paneling on the wall. She'd never been in a place like it before—she and her mother usually ate at ‘21’ when the cook had the day off—but she decided that the Forty-seventh Street Coffee Shop had its charms. Not the least of which was that it was not the kind of place where a man who was out to impress Lu Law-son's daughter would take her, Rose thought as she watched the waiter wipe off the table with a cloth that smelled of disinfectant. Clearly, Bobby Manning didn't know who she was. Or who her mother was.

“Think of the roaches as part of the ambience,” he said as he ordered a hot chocolate for her and coffee for himself.

She nodded and wondered why she felt so incredibly alive. It was like all her senses were heightened; even her skin was tingling.

But suddenly there was something wrong on the other side of the table. Bobby had stopped smiling, and he was looking uncomfortable—like a man who had to confess something. She had a sixth sense about these things.

Please let it be my imagination.