**This is really bugging me, so I’ll finish it up tonight.  Third and final verse follows. **

The day
She called up
and came to me
Covered in rain

            Watching the clothes spin around and around and around and around and around . . . woo, he was getting dizzy.  Rubbing his eyes he remapped what he wanted to have ready tonight.  It was their one-year anniversary and he was psyched. 

            He smiled to himself, starting to convince the others in the Laundromat that he was mildly insane.  It was pouring down rain when she showed up at his apartment.  She had called the night before, just to chat and laugh at really random things.  They had hung up after agreeing to maybe perhaps go get some coffee or something sometime. He had a mild case of the warm fuzzies, but it didn’t seem like anything really out of the ordinary.  The next night while he was watching The Life of Brian, the buzzer, well, buzzed.  He walked over in sock feet to the little intercom that he had painted in a fit of creativity.

            “Yeah?”

            “This Luke O’Connor?”

            “Yeah, that’s what the name plate says, unless those punks have been back.”  He leaned against the wall, waiting for the sales pitch or threat to prosecute against dropping water balloons on passersby, his favorite summer pastime. 

            “You work at the Gap, right?”

            “Unfortunately, yes.”

            “This is Lydia.  Can I come up? It’s pouring down rain.”

            Startled, he let her up and laughed when she came up, soaked to the bone.  She had looked up his address in the phone book on a whim.  She said it was either that or dye her hair pink and she didn’t think her employers would go for that.  They talked and laughed and he lent her a pair of pajama pants and a tee shirt, the first of many that she would wear, little did he know.  They finished watching the movie, as a waterfall streamed down the window, blurring the outside world.

And dinnertime shadowing
And as her clothes spun,
we spooned
And I knew I was through
When I said, "I love you"  

            He ended up cooking her dinner as they waited for her clothes to dry, draped near his space heater.  They talked and talked and when they had realized it was midnight, Luke was dizzy with infatuation.  Monty Python long over, they were watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which was on TV.  With a goofy grin on his face that was half astonishment and half delight, he blurted out, “I want to love you.”  She laughed at him at first, believing he was regurgitating the movie. 

            “Well, nobody’s gonna put me in a cage.” She giggled and wriggled her toes, burrowing down into the thick knit blanket that draped over them.  Luke blinked a bit and shook his head. 

            “No! I mean, I really think I love you . . .” He blushed and looked down, playing at the hem of the blanket, picking at fuzzy hairs. She blinked and blushed as well. There was an awkward moment before she tapped him on the shoulder and kissed him.

* * *

Friday evening,
we've been drinking

            Dinner was nice, and now they sat at a sticky table, slightly drunk and both giggly.  Cross-eyed, she watched her own lips as she pulled a cherry stem out of her mouth, tied in a loose knot.  She was so absurdly attractive, he kissed her lightly on her faintly cherry lips.  Lydia had been sucking down maraschino cherries and managed to knot three out of seven stems. 

2 AM,
I swear
I might propose

            He watched her, as dizzied by her eyes as he was by the washing machine.  Lips parted, he was on the edge of blurting out rivers of pretty words, about to try to charm her into marrying him, just so he could watch her every night, taking in the curves of her face, her soft skin, laughing eyes and slightly bent nose.  He wanted to drink in every freckle of her face every night, testing himself to see if he could remember every idiosyncrasy.  He wanted to kiss her ears as she watched a made for TV movie with skepticism and smell her hair, inhaling the faint smell of apples. 

but we close the tab
split a cab
and call each other
up when we get home

            She waved a slightly shaking finger at the waiter, asking for the check.  He closed his mouth with part reluctance, part relief.  He was a bit let down, unwilling to let this end.  They stood out on the curb, and he whistled for a cab.  She was falling asleep on his shoulder.  He eventually walked her to her door and made sure she made it up, waving at the newly lit window on the fourth floor.  He rode home in deep thought, turning ways around in his mind to win her over completely.

            They talked later into the night, till five AM.  They talked about nothing, until her voice fell off into silence and he had to yell into the receiver and tell her to go to bed.  He lay in his own bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what he should do, fantasizing about waking up every morning to the sight of her hair spilling over the pillow next to his, her eyes twitching to silent dreams.

falling asleep
to the sound
of sirens.

I've got a city love
I found it in Lydia.

From the battery
To the gallery
It's the kind of thing
you only see
In scented,
glossy magazines

            He slept through the day the next morning, refusing to go to work, calling in sick, his voice hoarse from sleep.  He lay in bed and drowsed, eventually eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs in front of bad daytime soap operas.  Later this evening they were going to Central Park and he relished the anticipation of the sight of green that wasn’t spray painted onto a wall.  Lying on his couch, he watched little raindrops splatter on his window and floated in a lazy bum way, wallowing in the warm feeling of love.

And I can't remember
life before her name.

**There! It’s over! And that went better than the first two chapters.  Good enough! Emer, was that long enough for you? :D **