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Jen laughed. “Probably not. He’s a pretty private guy. Comes in here a lot, though I haven’t seen him lately. Doesn’t talk a lot to anyone. He keeps to himself.”

I drank the last of my coffee and considered getting up to take advantage of the bottomless refills. I’d have to walk right past him, and on the way back I’d get a full-on view of his face. Jen must’ve read my mind.

“He’s worth a peek,” she said. “God knows all of us girls in here have made a trip past him a few times. So has Carlos. Actually, I think Carlos is the only one he’s ever talked to.”

I laughed. “Yeah? Why? Does he like guys?”

“Who, Carlos?”

I was pretty sure Carlos was straight, judging by the way he checked out every woman’s ass when he thought they weren’t looking. “No. Dellasandro.”

“Oooh, girl,” Jen said again.

I liked the way she called me that, like we’d been friends for a long time instead of only a couple months. It had been hard moving here to Harrisburg. New job, new place, new life—the past supposedly left behind and yet never quite gone. Jen had been one of the first people I’d met, right here in the Mocha, and we’d fallen into friendship right away.

“Yes?” I studied him again.

Dellasandro licked his forefinger before using it to turn the page of his paper. It shouldn’t have been quite as sexy as it was. I was letting Jen’s excitement color my impression of him, which had been really too brief for it to be so intense. After all, I’d only had a glimpse of his face and had been staring at his back for less than fifteen minutes.

“You have to come over and watch his movies. You’ll see what I mean. Johnny Dellasandro’s like…a legend.”

“He can’t have been that much of a legend, since I’ve never heard of him.”

“Okay,” Jen amended. “A legend in a certain crowd. Artsy people.”

“I guess I’m not artsy enough.” I laughed, not taking offense. I’d been to the Museum of Modern Art a few times in New York City. I definitely wasn’t the target audience.

“That is a sad, sad shame. Really. I’m pretty sure watching Johnny Dellasandro movies ruined me for regular boys forever.”

“That’s not exactly a compliment,” I told her. “As if there is such a thing as a regular boy, which frankly I’m beginning to doubt.”

She laughed and dug again into her brownie with another glance over her shoulder. She lifted her fork, heavy with chocolaty goodness, in my direction. “Come over tonight. I have the entire DVD box-set collection, plus the earlier ones, and what I don’t have we can stream from Interflix.”

“Ooh, fancy.”

She grinned and bit off the brownie from her fork. “Girl, I will introduce you to some seriously good shit.”

“And he lives right here, huh?”

“I know, right?” Jen glanced over her shoulder one more time.

If Dellasandro had any idea we were so scrutinizing him, he didn’t show it. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to anyone, as a matter of fact. He read his paper and drank his coffee. He turned the pages one at a time, sometimes using a finger to scan down the print.

“I wasn’t sure it was him, you know? I came in here to the Mocha one morning and there he was. Johnny fucking Dellasandro.” Jen gave a happy, entirely infatuated sigh. “Girl, I seriously almost surfed out of here on a wave of my own come.”

I’d been drinking when she said that, and started laughing. A second later, choking when the coffee went into my lungs instead of my stomach. Coughing, gasping, eyes watering, I put my hands over my mouth to try and shield the noise, but it was impossible to be entirely quiet.

Jen laughed, too. “Hands up! Put your hands up! That stops coughing!”

My mom had always said the same thing. I managed to get one hand halfway up and the coughing eased. I’d earned a few curious looks, but none, thank God, from Dellasandro. “Warn me before you say something like that.”

She blinked innocently. “Like what? Wave of my own come?”

I laughed again, this time without the choking. “Yeah, that!”

“Trust me,” Jen said. “After you see his movies, you’ll understand what I mean.”

“Okay, fine. You have me convinced. And pathetically, I have no plans for tonight.”

“Girl, if not having plans on a Saturday night makes you a loser, I’m one, too. We can be losers together, eating ice cream and squeeing over old soft-core art movies.”

“Soft-core?” I looked past her to where Dellasandro had nearly finished his paper.

“You wait and see,” Jen said. “Full frontal, baby.”

“Oh, wow. No wonder he doesn’t want to talk to anyone here. If I were famous for dangling my dingle I might not want anyone to notice me, either.”

It was Jen’s turn to burst into laughter. Hers turned more heads than mine had, but still not Dellasandro’s. She drew a finger through the chocolate on her plate and licked it off.

“I don’t think that’s it. I mean, I don’t think he likes to brag about it or anything, but he’s not ashamed. Well, he shouldn’t be. He made art.” She was being serious. “I mean, for real. He and his friends were known as the Enclave. They’re credited with changing the way art movies were viewed by the general public. They made art movies that actually got shown in mainstream theaters. X-rated theaters, but even so.”

“Wow.” I didn’t know anything about art but that sounded impressive.

And there was something about him. Maybe it was the long black coat and the scarf, since I’m a sucker for men who know how to dress like they don’t care what they look like and yet manage to look damned good. Maybe it was the way he’d smelled of oranges as he passed me, not a scent I normally liked—in fact, one I despised because of the way it usually preceded a fugue. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the fugue itself, minor though it had been. Often after experiencing one I found the “real” world went brighter for a little while. Kind of intense. Somehow, even when the fugues were accompanied by hallucinations, coming out of them was even more intense. I hadn’t had one like that in a long time, hadn’t had even a hint of anything similar in this last one, but the feeling now was much the same.

“Emm?”

Startled, I realized Jen had been talking to me. I didn’t have a fugue to blame for my inattention. “Sorry.”

“So, tonight? I’ll make margaritas. We can get a pizza.” She paused, looking distraught. “That is sort of pathetic, huh?”

“You know what’s pathetic? Getting all dressed up and going to a bar hoping to get hit on by some loser in a striped shirt who smells like Polo.”

“You’re right. Striped shirts are so 2006.”

We laughed together. I’d gone out with Jen to the local bars a couple times. Striped shirts were still pretty popular, especially on young frat boys who liked to buy Jell-O shots from scantily clad girls because they hoped those girls would think they were playahs.

Jen glanced at her watch. “Crap. Gotta run. Meeting my brother to take our grandma out grocery shopping. She’s eighty-two and can’t see well enough to drive. She makes our mom crazy.”

I laughed again. “Good luck.”

“I love her, but she’s a handful. That’s why I need my brother to come along. See you tonight, my place. Around seven? We don’t want to start too late. Got a lot of movies to watch!”

I couldn’t imagine wanting to watch more than one or two of the films, but I nodded, anyway. “Sure. I’ll be there. I’ll bring dessert and some munchies.”

“Great. See you!” Jen stood and leaned in close to say, “Dare you to get a refill now! Quick, before he leaves.”

Dellasandro had folded his paper and stood. He was putting on his coat. I still couldn’t see his face.

“I dare you to casually wait until he leaves and you go out just after so he has to hold the door for you,” I said.

“Good plan,” she said. “Too bad I can’t just casually wait around for him. I have to dash. You do it.”

We both laughed and Jen headed out. I watched her go, then watched Dellasandro return his empty mug to the counter. With his paper tucked under his arm, he headed for the restroom in the back of the Mocha. It was a good time for me to get a refill, since I’d paid for them, but I wasn’t really in the mood for more coffee. I had no plans—the day stretched out before me with nothing to tempt me away from the Mocha, and yet I’d forgotten to bring something to read or even my computer to surf the Net. I had no reason to stay and a house full of unpacking and cleaning to finish. I probably had a message from my mom to return, too.

I put my own mug on the counter and let my lustful gaze roam over the pastries. I’d bake some brownies at home instead. They’d be better from scratch, anyway, even if the ones at the Mocha did come with a half-inch-thick layer of fudge frosting I had no idea how to replicate. My stomach rumbled despite the muffin I’d had. Not a good thing.

“Get you something?” This was Joy, one of the tersest people I’d ever met. She certainly didn’t live up to her name.

“No, thanks.” I hitched my purse higher on my shoulder, thinking I’d better head home and make myself an egg salad sandwich or something before I got hypoglycemic. Going without food not only made me cranky, it could tempt a fugue, and after the one this morning I wasn’t about to do anything to bring on another. Caffeine and sugar helped fend them off, but my empty stomach was effectively counterbalancing the oversweetened coffee.

Dellasandro reached the Mocha’s front door only seconds after I did. I’d pushed open the glass-fronted door, making the brass bell jingle, and felt someone behind me. I turned, one hand still holding the door so it wouldn’t swing shut, and there he was. Black coat, striped scarf, wheaten hair.

His eyes weren’t blue.

They were a deep green-brown hazel. And his face was perfect, even with the crinkles of time at the corners of his eyes, the glint of silver I could see now at his temples. I’d thought he was maybe in his late thirties, a few years older than me when I’d first seen him, though obviously his career in the seventies meant he was older than that. I wouldn’t have guessed it even now, knowing. His face was beautiful.

Johnny Dellasandro’s face was art.

And I let the door slam right in it.

“Jesus Christ,” he said as he stepped back.

His voice, pure New Yawk.

The door closed between us. Sun reflected off the glass, shielding him inside. I couldn’t see his face anymore, but I was pretty sure I’d just pissed him off.

I pulled on the handle as he pushed it open, the door’s sudden give making me stumble back a couple steps. “Oh, wow, I’m sorry!”

He didn’t even look at me, just shouldered past with a low, muttered curse I couldn’t quite make out. The edge of his paper hit my arm as he passed. Dellasandro didn’t pay any attention. The hem of his coat flapped in a sudden upswell of wind and I gasped, breathing in deep, and deeper.

The scent of oranges.

“Mom. Really, I’m fine.” I had to tell her this not because it made her worry less, but because if I didn’t say it, she’d definitely worry more. “I promise. Everything’s fine.”

“I wish you hadn’t moved so far away.” My mom’s voice on the other end of the phone sounded fretful. That was normal. When she started sounding anxious, I needed to worry.

“Forty minutes isn’t far at all. I’m closer to work now, and I have a great place.”

“In the city!”

“Oh, Mom.” I had to laugh, even though I knew it wouldn’t make her feel any better. “Harrisburg’s only technically a city.”

“And right downtown. You know I heard on the news there was a shooting just a few streets over from you.”

“Yeah? And there was a murder-suicide in Lebanon just last week,” I told her. “How far is that from you?”

My mom sighed. “Emm. Be serious.”

“I am serious. Mom, I’m thirty-one years old. It was time for me to do this.”

She sighed. “I guess you’re right. You can’t be my baby forever.”

“I haven’t been your baby for a really long time.”

“I’d just feel better if you weren’t alone. It was better when you and Tony—”

“Mom,” I said tightly. “Tony and I broke up for a long list of very good reasons, okay? Please stop bringing him up. You didn’t even like him that much.”

“Only because I didn’t think he could take good enough care of you.”

She’d been right about that, anyway. Not that I’d needed as much taking care of as she thought. But I didn’t want to talk about my ex-boyfriend with her. Not now, not ever.

“How’s Dad?” I asked instead, so she could talk about the other person in her life she worried about more than she had to.

“Oh, you know your dad. I keep telling him to get himself to the doctor and get checked out, but he just won’t do it. He’s fifty-nine now, you know.”

“You act like that’s ancient.”

“It’s not young,” my mom said.

I laughed and cradled the phone to my shoulder as I opened one of the large boxes I’d put in one of the unused bedrooms. I was unpacking books. I wanted to make this room my library and had set up and dusted off all my bookcases. Now I just needed to fill them. It was a task I knew I’d be glad I’d done after I finished but had managed to put off for months.

“What are you doing?” my mom said.

“Unpacking books.”

“Oh, be careful, Emm, you know that can kick up dust!”

“I don’t have asthma, Mom.” I pulled off the layer of newspaper I’d laid on top of the books. I’d packed them not in the order I’d arrange them on the shelves, but just so they’d fit best in the box. This one looked like it was mostly full of coffee table books I’d picked up at thrift stores or received as gifts. Books I always meant to read and yet never did.