"Will I see you again?" I asked, as his fingers stroked my face and kissed my salty lips with a tenderness that melted me. He nodded and smoothed my tangled hair.

"Are you ever going to speak to me?" I said, half-amused, half-frustrated that I still hadn't heard him speak. But he only smiled again. Confused, I gave him one final kiss good-bye, and then we parted as we'd come together, his finger on my lips, silencing me.

I left him in the half-finished foyer. On the way out, I caught sight of myself in the door: mad hair, bright eyes, flushed cheeks, covered all over in a chalky film of dust, and, oh, yes, a trace of semen on the corner of my mouth. I might have looked like a mess, but I'd never felt more alive or more beautiful. It was still only seven p.m. I walked home in the cold and dark of the early evening and spent the weekend torn between the joy of reliving that night in my head and the dread of it never happening again.

He must have worked all weekend, because when I went past the building site on Monday morning, it was no longer a building site at all. The tape was gone from the windows, the wires were embedded in smooth marble, and there were two potted bay trees on either side of the entrance, which gave the building an air of completion and inhabitancy. The construction firm's signs were gone and in their place was a polished brass plaque discreetly stating the residence of a firm of lawyers. To say I was disappointed was an understatement; I was horrified. I was filled with panic. Where was he? How was I going to see him again? Why hadn't I made him tell me his name? I didn't even know the name of the company he worked for. My mind went into free fall. I realized then that I never really believed the adventure had been a one-nighter but the start of something else. If only I'd known he was going away so soon, I wouldn't have showered, just to keep his smell on me. It was now clear that having experienced the real thing, fantasy would never again be enough.