“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Then you have to stop.”

“But I’m not doing anything.”

“How about some coffee, Victor? The letters are a bit deranged, don’t you think? And I know deranged, believe me. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m not sending any letters.”

“Just coffee, Victor. Please.”

That was the start, the first step in our version of the old-lovers’ tango. You meet again by chance, you meet by design. She’s thinking about you, he wants to make amends, she wonders why you’re writing her anonymous letters filled with hate. You deny it, although it sounds just then like a pretty good idea. You meet, slyly, surreptitiously, as if your meeting together like this is somehow indecent, as if you already know the way it will end. You ask how he’s been, you ask how’s her job, how’s his mother. You look good, she says.

“So do you,” I said. And she did, damn it.

Julia had been a slim, dark girl when she crushed my heart beneath the sole of her boot, and so pretty she’d been hard not to stare at. Glossy black hair, sly eyes, thin wrists, breasts like ripe tangerines, a feline curve to her lips that drew out startlingly indecent thoughts. She had been a walking explanation for the burqa; to see her in the flesh was to want to do all manner of things to her, slowly, over and again. And she had a surprising accessibility that made it all seem deliciously possible. It was that voice, sexy and impassive and sweet, like Honey West’s. She was easy to talk to, easy to flirt with, easy to kiss, easy to kid yourself that maybe you understood what was going on inside her pretty skull. But even so, you never lost the sense that she was forever holding something back. It was as if she carried in her heart a truth that could make everything perfect if only she would share it, though you sensed she never would.

At the Starbucks now, elbows atop the bare wooden table, she remained stunningly beautiful, but noticeably older and more prosperously dressed.