She was coming out of the coffee shop with two coffees and neither one for him. She’d said don’t be jealous, Gunner. She’d said why are you always so jealous, Gunner? She’d said I can’t take your jealousy, Gunner, and that’s why I’m leaving you. Well maybe he was jealous, but now she was buying coffee for someone else so maybe there’d been a reason to be jealous after all, and maybe that’s why he was following her, to tell her this. She ran across the street. She was veritably skipping. Even though it was cold and wet and all in all pretty goddamn miserable outside, she was skipping, he was jealous and his feet were goddamn wet and freezing. Such be the perils of love.

It was getting late, growing dark, nearing dinnertime if it was an early dinner or at least time to go to the store for groceries, find a recipe, make reservations. She could never drink coffee this late and go to sleep, she always said. Even decaf, which still had a relative amount of caffeine in it, she’d say, and anyway at least enough to keep her from sleeping and there was always the risk they’d give her the non-decaffeinated coffee on accident, so she said this, said, “After two o’clock it’s only herbal tea or juice or water for me,” because even soda and black tea had too much caffeine for her. It was now five-thirty. He could see from across the street the bank clock under which she was now walking with her two coffees, forty degrees Fahrenheit. Which he thought could only mean she had no designs on sleeping tonight.

He saw her go into an apartment building, nice place, doorman in front holding open the door for her on account of her holding the two coffees and she said hello maybe, maybe thank you, though it was too far away for him to hear what she really said and this he only imagined her saying because she was polite, always had been, and he saw her lips moving. After she had gone in, the doorman closing the door after her, he crossed the street and walked up to the entrance and doorman.

“Nice place,” nodded Gunner. “Good location, near local amenities like coffee shops, grocery store, the arts, movie theaters.”

“It is,” said the doorman, looking askance.

“I say because I’m looking for a new place in the neighborhood you see, though I wanted to ask someone who maybe sees a bit more of the area than your average passerby what they think, and I imagine someone such as yourself would have a unique perspective into the true nature of the community.”

“I see some things,” said the doorman. “Been working here nigh on three years so I’ve seen some things I can tell you, oh sure.”

“I bet you have. I bet you have. Three years? That’s an awfully long time.”

“It is,” said the doorman. “It definitely is.”

“But I wonder,” continued Gunner, “as the veritable gatekeeper of such a fine and accommodated residence as this, how often do you really let just any old floozy in? That is, is the building especially known for the whorish proclivities of its residents—a brothel, if you will, cathouse, love hotel as they’re called in Japan—or is it just the occasional slut you allow inside?”

“Hey what’s your deal here?” demanded the doorman. “What are you on about now?”

“Well, you can’t really expect me to seek residence here if there are prostitutes coming and going all hours of the night now, can you? Using up all the hot water to wash their underthings, loosening the foundations with all that banging—and the noise! No sir, I’m a respectable man who needs his sleep!”

“Get out of here,” growled the doorman. “Go on. There’s no prostitutes here, what do you think? You think you’re a funny guy, is that it? You being funny?”

“No sir, and I don’t think it’s very funny at all,” he said and then walked away back across the street and took a seat outside a café within view of the doorman and the building. After several minutes the waiter inside realized his presence outside, which took longer than it might have under normal circumstances since it was now not only cold and wet outside but also dark and with the umbrellas on the tables all down which seemed especially ridiculous since it had started to rain again, came outside with a menu to tell him there were still seats available inside if he’d like to sit somewhere a little more comfortable.

“That’s all right,” said Gunner. “Though if you don’t mind I’d like to open the umbrella since it’s started raining, and when you have a chance if I could get a cup of coffee—no, make that a beer, and maybe a sandwich, a Reuben if you’ve got it.”

The waiter looked at him strangely but nodded, shrugged, asked, “Fries, soup or salad?”

“Fries,” said Gunner, and after the waiter had left again with the menu still tucked under his arm he reached up and opened the umbrella. This was better. Across the street, the doorman was still scowling at him. He scowled back. On the opposite table he saw a stack of ashtrays one piled on top of another, and he went over and brought one back to his table. He’d never smoked before but had bought a pack of cigarettes when he slipped into a convenience store earlier that afternoon when he thought maybe she’d spotted him, bought the closest thing he saw, a pack of cigarettes, a pack of Pall Mall’s, which he pulled out now. Years he’d never had the slightest desire to smoke but right now, right now with the cigarettes in his hand under an umbrella in the rain he thought why not? He didn’t usually drink either, but then there was the waiter coming back with his bottle of beer, so why the hell not? He asked the waiter for a light and when he returned with his Reuben sandwich and a book of matches, Gunner stuck a cigarette between his lips. He lit it, inhaled, coughed. He took a drink of beer and another smoke and coughed again, and a young woman walked by and asked if he could spare a cigarette.

“Of course,” he said and even offered her a match to light it.

“Do you mind if I ask why you’re sitting out here in the rain?” she asked.

“I don’t see why not,” he said. “Although you probably won’t believe my answer.”

She took a seat next to him. She was pretty and she had dark hair, sensibly dressed, nice smile, glasses, round face, a little overweight but certainly not fat, and pretty, though not quite as pretty as her who was beautiful, kept in the best shape, skin like milk and honey with a medicine cabinet filled with all kinds of creams and lotions and moisturizers, but still, pretty. “I was born with an abnormally high body temperature,” he said. “It’s too hot in there. I get a fever, my blood begins to boil, I see visions. I imagine there are people inside actually enjoying each other’s company. Couples having dinner and isn’t it nice and any bickering is always just about who gets the biggest bite of cake and it’s always you, never me. The waiters are genuinely friendly and the customers leave big tips and it’s all just too much you know when I come back outside and the visions fade.”

“Come on now,” she guffawed. “Abnormally high body temperature? You’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m not,” he shook his head. “It’s the truth. Die my heart and hope to cross,” he said. “On my grave mother,” he said.

“You’re a funny guy,” she said, “but I still don’t believe you. For one thing, you’re shivering. For another, what do you do when it gets warm outside?”

“I sit inside,” he said and took a bite of his sandwich. The bread was soggy from all the sauerkraut but not surprisingly from the rain since they were covered now. He moved the pickle to the side of the plate away from the sandwich and the fries and she watched him and asked, “Can I have your pickle?”

He didn’t say anything, not sure if he even nodded though he thinks now he must have since she just took it, careful not to touch his arm as she reached over and picked up the pickle and ate it. He heard it crunch. He said, “I suppose now I might as well ask why you’re sitting out in the rain.”

“Obviously I’m keeping you company,” she said through bites of pickle, as matter-of-factly as she had taken the pickle itself, and just as with the pickle he couldn’t or wouldn’t argue or protest because for one thing he didn’t especially like pickles and for another, he was happy for her company.

So it went that Gunner finished his sandwich and asked her name (Stella, and even though he tried his best to keep from doing it as long as possible, eventually couldn’t hold it anymore and belted out in fiery Marlon Brando fashion, “Stella!” laughing, both of them, she and him together). They ordered more drinks and sometime in the night the scowling doorman was replaced by another, not scowling or at least not scowling at Gunner.

They continued talking and as it happened he stopped comparing her to her and began comparing her to herself, which is to say compared the things she said at first to what she was saying now and what it meant to him and him and her together. There was no denying they had rapport. Whether or not they would have rapport tomorrow or any day after if they even ever saw each other again was an unknown, but after an afternoon searching for certainties Gunner welcomed the abyss.

“Do you live nearby?” she asked, reading his thoughts maybe or else catching him staring at the building across the street. “Because I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before and I thought I knew everyone in the neighborhood.”

“No,” he said. “I live far away. The other side of town in fact, and normally there’d be no reason at all to come around here but now I’m here I think I like it, might even decide to stay.”

“Well I like you,” she said, “so I’m not inviting you home if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Does that mean if you didn’t like me you would invite me home? Because there are things I can do to change your mind if it’s that, people I can introduce you to, bad jokes to make and according to some people I could just keep on talking and you’d come around before long.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I’ll let you walk me home instead,” and that’s what he did. Back across the street toward the building and the new doorman, and wouldn’t it have been a story if she’d walked past the doorman into the building or stopped right in front and said her goodnights? Well it would have though she didn’t, but Gunner winked at the doorman nonetheless. They stopped in front of her apartment several blocks away where she said, “I’ll let you kiss me on the cheek tonight,” which he did. “I’ll let you call me tomorrow if you like,” she said. “And next time I see you I’ll let you kiss me on the lips.”

“Okay,” he said. Goodnight they said to each other and she went upstairs to her apartment, to bed maybe since it was late or maybe a drink and a book, a bath, if she was feeling at all how Gunner felt, a cold bath. He walked back along the way he’d come and underneath the bank clock where it was twelve-thirty and ninety-eight degrees.