I looked at him, feeling quite disarmed, though not threatened. Like people who blush easily but aren't ashamed of it, I knew better than to stifle this feeling, and let myself be swayed by it.

Or were we like people who have died before their time and are given a second chance by some minor deity, but with so many provisos that the new life feels like a deferred death?

We were alone together for three days, we knew no one in the city, I could be anyone, say anything, do anything. I felt like a war prisoner who's suddenly been released by an invading army and told that he can start heading home now, no forms to fill out, no debriefing, no questions asked, no buses, no gate passes, no clean clothes to stand in line for—just start walking.

Seeing him and thinking he'd join us for dinner tonight only to hear his peremptory Esco taught me there are certain wishes that must be clipped like wings off a thriving butterfly.

We made our way deeper into an extremely quiet alley, then through another, as if drawn through these unreal and sticky goblin lanes that seemed to lead to a different, nether realm you entered in a state of stupor and wonderment.

The thought washed over me like water on a flower shop window, like a soothing, cool lotion after you've showered and spent the whole day in the sun, loving the sun but loving the balsam more.

A restaurant overlooking a starlit night sprang to my imagination like something out of an illuminated manuscript from the late Middle Ages.

But the whole thing didn't go anywhere—though it never went away either. It just sat there, no past, no future, like a glass of wine filled to the rim but never drunk from.

I lunged out to grab the fruit from his hand, but with his other hand he caught hold of my wrist and squeezed it hard, as they do in movies, when one man forces another to let go of a knife.