Below my dare, I’d stapled my Lily Dogwalker business card. I didn’t hold out hope that Dash would take me up on the snowman o er, or try to call me ever, but I gured if he did want to get directly in touch with me again, the least I could do was not make him go through several of my relatives.

After my last entry in the notebook, I’d cut out and pasted a section of a page I’d photocopied of the Contemporary Poets reference book in Mrs. Basil E.’s parlor library.

Strand, Mark

[Blah blah blah biographical information, crossed out with Sharpie pen.]

We are reading the story of our lives

As though we were in it,

As though we had writ en it.

fifteen

–Dash–

December 28th

I woke up next to So a. At some point in the night, she’d turned away from me, but she’d let one hand linger, reaching back to rest on my own hand. A border of sunlight ringed the curtains of the hotel room, signaling morning. I felt her hand, felt our breathing. I felt lucky, grateful. The sound of tra c climbed from the street, mingled with parts of conversations. I looked at her neck, brushed back her hair to kiss it. She stirred. I wondered.

Our clothes had stayed on the whole time. We’d cuddled together, looking not for sex but comfort. We’d sailed to sleep together, with more ease than I ever would have imagined.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

POUND. POUND. POUND.

The door. Three pounds on the door.

A man’s voice. “Sofia? ¿Estás lista?”

Her hand grabbed for mine. Squeezed.

“Un minuto, Papa!” she called out.

As it happened, the maids at the Belvedere did a ne job of vacuuming, so when I hid under the bed, I was at acked by neither rats nor dust mites. Just the general fear of a vengeful father storming into a hotel room.

More knocking. Sofia headed for the door.

Too late, I realized my shoes were loll ygagging on the oor about an arm’s length away from me. As So a’s father lumbered in—he was a sizable man, roughly the shape of a school bus—I made a desperate grab, only to have my hand kicked away by So a’s bare feet. My shoes followed in quick succession—So a shooting them right into my face. I let out an involuntary cry of startled pain, which So a covered by telling her father loudly that she was almost ready to go.

If he noticed she was wearing yesterday’s clothes, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he came closer and closer to the bed. Before I could maneuver, he let his weight fall onto the mat ress, and I found myself cheek to cheek with the indentation of his sizable behind.

“¿Dónde está Mamá?” So a asked. When she bent down to pick up her shoes, she shot me a stern Stay put look. As if I had a choice. I was basically pinned to the floor, my forehead bleeding from being at acked by my own shoe.

“En ell vestíbulo, esperando.”

“¿Por qué no vas a esperar con ell a? Bajo en un segundo.”

I wasn’t really following this exchange, just praying it would be a quick one. Then the weight above me shifted, and So a’s father was once more floor-based. Suddenly the space under the bed seemed the size of a downtown loft. I wanted to roll over, just because I could.

As soon as her father was gone, Sofia climbed under the bed with me.

“That was a fun wake-up call, was it not?” she asked. Then she pushed back my hair to look at my forehead. “God, you’re hurt. How did that happen?”

“Bumped my head,” I replied. “It’s an occupational hazard, if your occupation happens to be sleeping over with ex-girlfriends.”

“Does that occupation pay well?”

“Clearly.” I made a move to kiss her—and hit my head again.

“Come on,” Sofia said, starting to slide away from me. “Let’s get you somewhere safer.” I stomach-crawled out after her, then went to the sink to clean myself up. Meanwhile, in the other room, she changed her clothes. I sneaked peeks in the closet mirror.

“I can see you as well as you can see me,” Sofia pointed out.

“Is that a problem?” I asked.

“Actually,” she said, lifting her shirt over her head, “no.”

I had to remind myself that her father was no doubt waiting for her. Now was not the time for canoodling, no mat er how much the canoodling impulse was striking.

A new shirt went on, and Sofia walked over to me, put ing her face next to mine in the bathroom mirror reflection.

“hello,” she said.

“hello,” I said.

“It was never this fun when we were actually going out, was it?” she asked.

“I assure you,” I replied, “it was never this fun.”

I knew she was leaving. I knew we were never going to date long-distance. I knew that we wouldn’t have been able to be like this back when we were dating, so there was no use in regret ing what hadn’t happened. I suspected that what happens in hotel rooms rarely lasts outside of them. I suspected that when something was a beginning and an ending at the same time, that meant it could only exist in the present.

And still. I wanted more than that.

And still. I wanted more than that.

“Let’s make plans,” I ventured.

And Sofia smiled and said, “No, let’s leave it to chance.”

It was snowing outside, anointing the air with a quiet wonder shared by all passersby. When I got back to my mother’s apartment, I was a mixture of giddy thrill-happiness and muddled gut-confusion—I didn’t want to leave anything regarding So a to chance, and at the same time I was enjoying this step away from it. I hummed my way into the bathroom, checked on my shoe-in icted wound, then headed to the kitchen, where I opened the refrigerator and found myself yogurtless. Quickly I bundled myself up in a striped hat and striped scarf and striped gloves—dressing for snow can be the keenest, most all owable kindergarten throwback—and traipsed down University and through Washington Square Park to the Morton Williams.