late.

Four is the number I reached when I counted down from one hundred for the second time while waiting for you three days ago. I stood in the vestibule of your apartment building, our meeting place, waiting like an impatient train passenger already late for work. Two others passed. The doors opened, slammed, opened, and slammed; then opened, slammed, opened, and slammed.

A kid in a black snowsuit whaled the outer door with a snowball. The glass, impregnated with metal rebar, did not crack. I scowled at him and he ran away from me. I am imposing but girlish -- a frightening prospect for a child craving motherness but satisfying with my substantial gaze to the child craving simple attention.

When the door opened and you entered the vestibule you greeted me with an annoying brain teaser, a trick of language. I marveled at your intelligence, despising your condescension. You are older than I. You regret being born first, and you resent me for the innocence that accompanies my youth.

You clutched my neck, from behind -- an affectionate gesture fraught with threatening strength. It was not an embrace, but an enclosure.

We left the building. We wandered up the street, vagrants.