Maureen brought the absinthe, which we poured with water and orange. Later we poured it over ice. We lay down on the floor to the NIN SACD and let it rip the place wide open. Maureen danced. She stood at the convergence of the sound waves, undulating and helical to burn. I softened and sunk into my chair and then the floor. Felt all the roundness flatten and my mind float free.

Maureen dancing beautifully there.

I saw her celebrity face in all the lowlit places we've been. These memories dense and vivid, cased in plexiglass. We went to Radiohead together in 2001, which seems like forever ago. We go way back now, and I believe that means we go way forward now too.

I remembered first knowing her, where I knew her. The old brick building, our office. We worked together, as we do still. How odd how we met, I didn't even notice the point at which we became friends. Perhaps it's because I was in love then.

Love love love: With the light of the summer tumbling through the 20-foot tall windows and the lowlands of the city that was so often where we trysted. With art: the color and texture and form of everything and with being part of what seemed that tradition. That much being in love with love hurts.

I remembered the whimsy that all else had become, once I'd strapped myself in. Coincidence was elevated to serendipity, and I used that to justify playfully taunting the mathematician.

I don't think I ever told you about the mathematician, with my view of his doorway and his office from my office, where I watched him ever brush his long gray hair and sometimes kiss a woman who must have been, at least fleetingly, his. Or, he was hers, at least fleetingly—that's how he would have seen it. He wore only the scantest flip-flops, to which my coworker Nancy declared, "He better watch it, one of these days he's going to have a blow out!"

Then I began running into him everywhere: He was at the café where I was, in the store in some other part of town, at the bus stop in yet another part of town. On different days, at different times. Random.

Nancy and I orchestrated a recon mission to his building. We waited till he stepped out and then dashed down the stairs and across the street. I was giggly with the pleasure of this secretive nonsense, doubled-over and horsey with it. We went in, my giggles slipping up the walls of the entryway and echoing. We looked at the lobby directory to see if we could find out who he was. The door opened, we turned. It was him. Nancy said hi, he checked his mailbox. I swallowed everything. Nancy lapsed into drama: "This is where we put the mail, and upstairs is the UPS drop…" He got into the elevator. We took the stairs, me paroxysmal at the scandalously close call. And then at the top, there he was! Unlocking his door! Nancy: "I'm showing our new person where the UPS drop is." I was clinging to the wall, laughter gorging my cheeks. He nodded and went in. I burst. Nancy cool; never broke character all the way back to work.

That's how we learned that he's a mathematician.

And I don't think I ever told you how I devised a way to affect him without his knowing. I got hold of a sexy equation and came to work early one morning with chalk in hand; and when the sidewalk cleared, I scrawled it across his stoop and ran away to my building and my office with my view of his doorway and his office. I waited, and he did see it, the chalk. He rode up on his banana board in his flimsy flip-flops and paused, reading it before he walked in.

It was completely anticlimactic.

But, you can make a man think a thought, change his course slightly, without his knowing. How often this must happen.

I had—I have—my own name for him: Newton, which I know is meaningful to him, but it's not his name. I see him still, see him everywhere, from time to time. I never see anyone else with that kind of random regularity. I make sure to work that word into my conversation when he's near. He is self-absorbed enough that I know he would not remember me but would probably only think he's being seen. I count on that. He flinches a little though when hears it, as if greeted by a ghost, and he disregards it so.

A neighbor called and we turned down the music. Maureen felt green and it was late. Neither of us in any kind of shape to drive, we called Andrew, who was home with a cold and without a band, to give her a lift. She promised she would never barf on a black Volvo.