f she shuts her eyes and counts to twenty she'll feel him before she sees him. His hand on her bare neck.

'I been everywhere lookin for you, Rose.'

He likes her name. He likes to say it and hold it in his mouth. She has never felt that her name truly belonged to her before, until his voice made her as beautiful as a rose.

He'll come soon. If she holds her breath till it hurts. Count to a hundred. I'm coming. She clenches her fists, breathes in a deep breath and holds it until the darkness fizzes. But when she opens her eyes it's the same blackout. The rain splashes. If he doesn't come, if he can't come, if he's tried to get a message to her -

Or if he's somewhere else. Someplace else, he'd say. Stepping into step with someone else, someone else's body going soft and shivery against his.

'What'd you say your name was?'

'Frederick. Frederick Lafayette.'

'That's a funny name.'

'It ain't funny where I come from, ma'am.'

And the milky smile shows, like a baby's. And the way he calls a girl ma'am when he doesn't know her name. Maybe he already knows that people like to hear the words they would never put in their own mouths, maybe he already knows how the sweet formality of it marries with that smile. At first she thought he was one of those men who mean nothing by their talk. Later she understood that he was reserved, like her, but living in a crowd had taught him ways of getting along without getting close.

'Hey, how you doing?'

Is he doing all of that with someone else? Lucky it's dark so no one can see her face. Nobody's ever going to guess how much she wants him. She's had him now, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times, in parks and bus shelters and in her mind. Most of all in her mind. Out of all those hundreds, only a dozen or so in flesh and blood. He's in her mind, he won't go out of it. And deep down below all the doubts she knows she's got him too, at least for now. He can't help it any more than she can. She knows it when his voice flukes up and he sounds as if he's in pain. 'What you doing to me, Rose? You tell me what you call this.'