Should she tell Lewis?

Admittedly, she had come to feel more for Lewis in the last month than she had ever felt for him. He had been very kind to her, and attentive, and seemed warmer.

Swaddled in denial, she never asked herself if she was feeling this way about Lewis because she felt abandoned by Fire. She had convinced herself that Fire had been an insignificant dalliance that had almost cost her a valuable relationship. And she shooed away thoughts of him as though they were germ-infested flies.

Lewis would be coming over soon. To pass the time as she waited, she watched the Jets play Cleveland. When a string of commercials interrupted the game she switched channels randomly until CNN grabbed her attention. It was another story on the high proportion of black males in jail or on parole. As she leaned back to absorb the statistics, a follow-up story covered the plight of professional black women in search of partners of equal status. She listened intently as sister after sister produced the same I-got-everything-a-brother-would-want-but-no-brother-to-give-it-to sound bite in different words, accents, and degrees of demonstrated desperation.

When that was over she switched again and got a CNN promo: “Educated. Professional. Good-looking … and very lonely. Single black females in America.”

As she sat quietly considering all this there was a knock at the door.

She knew it was Lewis. He never rang the bell. He’d become adept at slipping inside the front door without being buzzed up.

She opened the door to find him holding flowers and a picnic basket and was overwhelmed by emotion. She took them from him with a smile and hugged him, then pulled him toward her and kissed him on the lips, blessing their first intimate communion in months.

“I guess you’re glad to see me,” Lewis said as he stepped inside.

“Very,” she replied.

She placed the roses in some fresh water in a vase in her bedroom. Then they made a little picnic in the living room and watched the game, wolfing down smoked salmon and chardonnay like hot dogs and beer, while moaning for New York.

At the end of the game, they sat together on the couch. She had a leg thrown over his and he had an arm draped around her shoulders.

“I came to talk seriously,” Lewis began. “You know that.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Sylvia, I love you.”

“I know, Lewis,” she replied, kissing him on the cheek. He took her face in his hands.

“Sylvia, you mean so much to me,” he said. “I want you back in my life. I want us to be together again. I’m not perfect. I know that. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been trying my best to win you back. And if I’ve failed I’ll just keep trying harder, because I refuse to let you go. If I have to cry and plead for your sympathy I don’t mind, cause you mean so much to me …” He couldn’t hold a straight face as he recited the lyrics of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” Sylvia laughed too.