She was waiting at the meat department for the butcher to come out with her veal chops when she turned and saw the man standing next to her. Her heart leapt. It was a girl’s heart. She couldn’t explain what made her, even now, forty-six and twenty years married, want him. He was in a suit and tie and overcoat and his designer eyeglasses marked him as a man who loved jazz and art magazines. He went to the gym and pressed weights and his lovely sweat dripped down his neck. He couldn’t be a day over thirty-five. It was unkind of the universe to make a man so finely match her ideal of physical beauty and to place him a few feet from her at the moment she was trying to buy veal chops for her family. If she inched a foot closer to him, people passing by would think they were a couple. If she inched over, people would think they had a place in the city set high above the noise where music played across the open loft and the walls were hung with contemporary art. Maybe he had two kids, maybe he abused cocaine in club stalls—she didn’t know the first thing about him.
