“Some crazy bitch just grabbed my crotch and ran off,” he said into his iPhone like he was going to swallow it. But he’d been yammering so hard he never even noticed how her paper had blown up against his thigh and then flit off again just as she reached for it. I’d been watching her chase it all the way across the courtyard and I even once tried to stomp on it, but I just ended up looking like a Clydesdale horse. Poor girl seemed pretty desperate. If there’s one thing I can connect with, it’s desperation. I knew when I woke up this morning that this was going to be a critical day. For one thing, the sky looked worried with all the jet streams running across it. Secondly, I woke up with the inexplicable taste of butterscotch in my mouth. I hadn’t had a butterscotch since my grandfather used to feed them to me. Of course, he had his dentures then, whereas I would have to endure years of cavities. I really should have been more careful. Butterscotch is just an entry drug.

           Her paper (a Wedgwood blue) was nearly camouflaged against the sky when it swooped suddenly upward, and we both shielded our eyes from the sun, following its random flight around Hill Library. As I drew close to the girl, I could hear her gasp every time the paper approached the roofline of the library (her breath smelled like bubblegum—the gobby pink kind). Finally it settled flat against Patterson Hall’s brick façade, and she took off running again, but of course just as she stretched for it, it flit away once more. Caught in a sudden updraft, the paper disappeared entirely and she threw herself down on the cold ground.

           I stood over her for a moment, wondering if I should intrude at all, but I just felt this crazy compulsion. “March is really only good for flying kites,” I said finally, smiling as delicately as possible. I still had my work clothes on, and I tried to tame my wild tie from the wind. It seemed so weird to be off work in the middle of the afternoon.

           “I know,” she said so long and low it came out more like a moan. She didn’t even look up at me. Not that I cared. Even though I couldn’t see much of her face, the way her hair got caught in her eyelashes, I could tell she was all pink from both youth and exhaustion. Her cheeks were nearly lavender from the cold. It didn’t make any difference at all that I was gay; when older men approach younger women, it’s just totally sus (as they say).

           “Homework?” I asked.

           With her head down, she grabbed a huge, wet clod of grass and threw it. “Letter,” she said angrily.

           “Boyfriend?”

           She nodded and looked up at me with huge gluey eyes, “He was supposed to tell me where to meet him.” And then she started sobbing.

           “Oh,” I said softly. “Can’t you call him?” I’m made for moments like this. There’s a whole art to consolation. They just have to trust you’re being for real.

           “He’s Amish!” she screamed at me like I was an idiot. Her tears fell quickly and she made animal sounds from the middle of her throat. It endeared her to me even more.

           So I sat down on the grass beside her. Very gradually I felt two cold damp spots the size of dessert plates spread over my ass; it was already too late to do anything about it, so I just continued to wick the cold moisture from the earth. I couldn’t help but notice she could be really pretty if she wanted to. But my stomach gurgled because I hadn’t had lunch, and I looked longingly at the diner across the street. “I hate men problems more than anything. Aren’t they the worst?”

           She looked at me with her forehead so crinkled and cursive it practically spelt out WTF. It reminded me of the jet-lined sky I saw earlier that morning, and maybe I even said out loud the word FOREHEAD on my way to work. I never speak of it, but sometimes I can be a little psychic, and I couldn’t help but have this feeling that the girl and I had a connection on a deeper level. So I just kept right on talking, hoping that the connection would clarify itself: “My mistake is I keep dating petty guys. They break up with you for the dumbest shit, you know. This last guy, a himbo if you ever saw one, claimed I embarrassed him in front of his friends. We were all queued up for Weapons. Have you seen it? Well, me neither, it turns out, but the line went out past the marquee, and it started to rain and I had one of those collapsible umbrellas with me, just because I knew it was going to rain. Sometimes I just get this kind of drippy feeling. So I’m standing behind him while he’s going on and on with his friends about boutique fragrances, or something entirely frivolous; I wasn’t really paying attention. And I was fumbling around with the umbrella, but then I dropped it and it kinda fell onto the sidewalk between his shoes. It must have fallen against him, because he almost stepped on my hand when I bent over to pick it up and I accidentally depressed that button, you know, and well, damned if it didn’t shoot straight up and smack him in the balls. The worst part is he lunged forward just as the canopy deployed, and a rib poked him straight in the eye. Like slapstick hard. I kept jerking on the umbrella, but of course, all it did was perforate him more. I mean, what could I do? I guess I should have let go so he could pull it out from the front, but I just kept yanking it back between his legs like a freak. I don’t know why he couldn’t step over it. And, well, you get the picture. Umbrella destroyed. Relationship over. Suede shoes ruined. Weather always makes fools of us all. Maybe we should go inside somewhere. You want some coffee? Let’s go get some pie and coffee. My treat.” I had a total vision: BLUEBERRY. It overwhelmed me.

           “My God,” is all she said. She was still crying.

           “Where does he live? Your boyfriend?” I asked. I had a hunch, but the trick is to get them talking to you.

           She looked at me like she wanted to kill me, but I could see her nose was running and I fumbled around in my backpack. I think she said thank you when I gave her a tissue, but I’m really not sure. COBBLER, I thought for no reason at all.

           “Pennsylvania,” she said finally, wiping around her clammy nostrils.

           “And you met him on rumspringa!”

           She looked up at me, surprised. I can be very psychic sometimes. Amish boys send out pretty strong signals.

           “Why did he come all the way down to Raleigh, North Carolina?” I asked.

           “He had cousins. Here.”

           “Do you know where they live?”

           Here she started crying all over again. And she banged her fists against her purple thighs. I only just noticed she was wearing gym shorts and a tee. College kids are so dumb. I couldn’t help but notice her pointy nipples even though she was wearing a bra (also blue). GUMDROPS. Why don’t they make blue gumdrops?

           “Nooo,” she shouted so loud that other passersby looked up, and I wondered if they suspected me of something lecherous. I think I must have RLF: Resting Leacher Face. People always assume I’m some kind of dirty old man, and I’m really not most of the time. BLACK LEATHER GLOVES. Did I forget them in my work locker? Anyways, I’m only in my forties and I never make the first move unless I’m truly lonely. BELT BUCKLES. How they caught me and that new guy from the sock department knit together in the stock room, I’ll never know. He’d been hanging around my Lenox display in Fine China, blinking his saucer-sized eyes at me until I was entirely Wedgwood. It felt inevitable we’d get together on this particularly cold, windy March morning. It was just something I felt compelled to do, but when we were dismissed, he wouldn’t even look at me. PICASSO. ARTIST OF THE SIDE EYE.

           “We’d only meet at the club,” she said and kind of pointed over her shoulder with her chin to some indistinct location. “He liked the dancing and the music. All the lights and the fog machine. Feeling the beats through the floor. He’d never smoked pot before, so he wanted to try everything. This was all last spring when I’d taken a year off myself.” RED BUDS.

           “So, he just wanted to play the field then.”

           “No! He wanted to be with me, but then he thought he should go back home to Pennsylvania after all. He felt this longing for God, he said. Then he wrote me and said he made a mistake and he could probably find God in North Carolina. Somewhere. He wanted to come back. To me. He said he missed me like he was missing an arm or something.”

           “Oh, like a phantom love.” I can connect with that.

           “And I said okay because he said he wanted to marry me. That letter. That paper told me where I was supposed to meet him.”

           “Or maybe he changed his mind again. Men. One minute they’re all support hose, but then they go suddenly argyle like we’re just supposed to go along with it. Am I right?”

           She just wiped her nose hesitantly, like she was a little scared.

           “Won’t he know to go to the same address he sent the letter?”

           “It was a PO Box.”

           “Doesn’t he know you’re in school?”

           “I never told him because I didn’t want him to know I was so much older. Just a couple years. Okay, three. Four, tops. Plus, we were going to elope, so it didn’t seem…” Here, she let the air out of her sentence and started to shiver. I stood up and gave her my sport coat. Then I sank my fists down in my pants pockets. COFFEE.

           “You need to go inside before you catch your death. Let’s just go to that diner across the street and grab a slice of pie. I haven’t eaten, so…”

           She got up and brushed off her ass, “I can’t go in like this.”

           “We could go to Hooters instead if that would make you feel more comfortable.” I almost thought she was going to laugh but I guess she was just too numb. I could feel that in my bones. That numbness. If I hadn’t lost my job, I could take her shopping at the mall and buy her a new winter coat. Something dramatic with a high collar that could keep her ears warm and then maybe three buttons at the neck. I could take her to see Henry, my hairdresser, and he could like totally make her over. She wouldn’t believe it!

           But she begrudgingly followed me across the street where the traffic lights were swinging like church bells. I guess it was because of the cold, but she ran like a paper doll—real straight-legged and stiff. Note to self: Teach her how to model walk like a Clydesdale.

           When we got to the diner, we settled into a booth overlooking Hillsborough Street. The waiter first brought our coffee in those heavy white mugs of Buffalo China, but after he brought our pie (an inscrutably unctuous blueberry) she scrunched up her eyes and asked me why I was being so nice to her.

           “Look, you’re young enough to be my daughter and—”

           “Your daughter?! You’re gay!”

           “Well, I know that. I mean like, duh. But there was a time before I knew. Way back, they really didn’t tell you it was an option, you know. So, I’ve had—relations—here and there. And I’ve often wondered—hoped—” It was just this crazy BLUE feeling I had that there was a part of me out there in the world, a part that needed me. It was more than a BUTTERSCOTCH premonition, it was something that I needed to protect. A lost piece. A TENDER BUTTON. Like an unstitched hole in my soul. AN UNSPOKEN ECHO. And whenever I thought about it, I was filled with such a mysterious longing that I could just die. My ARGILE heart felt on fire, spitting diamonds of RED AND YELLOW, and my brain became all ASH. There was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

           “Oh my God. Are you crazy? I know who my dad is, you know, and it’s not you. What are you even doing hanging around campus?” She sounded angry. I knew this might happen all over again.

           “I was in the park across the way, and I just felt—like maybe I’d meet somebody—and I was just pulled this way.”

           “Pulled?”

           “Okay, blown.” And I no sooner said that when I saw out the window some big guy in a windbreaker peeling off a blue paper plastered against the windshield of his car. I gasped and pointed.

           “Oh-my-god,” she said in a quick streak before she was out the door, my sportcoat slapping her thighs. I watched her blather and then I saw him look at the paper and nod. When he handed it to her, she looked at it and started sobbing and then pressed it to her chest like a corsage. BLUE ROSES. She started to run back to campus, but then she turned around and smiled right at me.

           That’s my girl, I thought.

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