"Spring, go get the zoo pictures from the bedroom, okay?"

Spring left the room and Diane spoke to me softly. "Dylan, I've really enjoyed seeing you and spending time with you. Spring really likes you. I was hoping, if it would work out, that maybe we could, you know..."

Are we in eighth grade again?

"... if we could see each other some more?"

I smiled and put my arm on her shoulder. "I really want us to. I know it's cheesy and all, but I'm going to miss having you two around. Besides, I was starting to like this stuff." I pointed to the leftover sandwich on Spring's plate.

At that point, Spring ran into the room with Diane's camera. For a girl who'd just lost her dinner, she seemed pretty happy. "Here!"

Diane turned on the camera and showed me a picture of Spring next to a penguin. Her eyes and mouth were wide because she'd never seen a real one before. Although she wouldn't admit it, I think she liked the penguins better than the ducks.

"That's a good shot," I said when Diane flipped to the next one. It was a picture of Diane and Spring in front of a curious llama. "Can I have a print of one of these for my office? Maybe another to hang on the fridge?"

"I'll make prints of the whole set if you want them."

"Of course I want them."

She handed me the camera to flip through the rest. This was when things started to get weird. Our fingers touched, and I said, "I'm going to miss you."

She took my hand and held it to her cheek. And then the strangest thing happened to me.

I was speechless.

The next night, I gave Diane and Spring housewarming presents. For a week, she had been living out of that old suitcase and a bunch of boxes she'd shipped to a UPS store in midtown. If she was going to do any travel for Barnes, she was going to need something a little more durable. For Spring, I thought I would get her something really special, something that would mark our time together. After dinner, we drank chocolate milk slowly and not too much while Diane reviewed the nutritional value of the elf cookies we were eating. I couldn't keep the secret any longer. "Close your eyes," I said.

"What?"

"Close your eyes."

Diane closed her eyes with a smile and Spring put her hands over her face. She peeked through her fingers.

"All the way, you. No peeking. Listen, I wanted to get you something..."

"You let us live here..."

"Doesn't count. Now open!"

Two presents sat on the floor.

"The big one is for you, Diane. And Spring, you get this one."

She tore into the small package with fervor.

"It's a duck!" she said when she pulled the stuffed animal out of its box.

"See the face?" I showed her. "It's a teddy bear in a duck suit. You don't have a Teddy and you love ducks... so now you have both."

She grabbed the Teddy Bear-Duck and hugged it to her chin. I was inordinately thrilled by the response.

Diane opened the package that held the new suitcase I'd bought her.

"It's great. You're just so thoughtful."

"It's not just a suitcase." I said, beginning the demonstration. "It's an Aspen. Ballistic nylon, ultra heavy gauge solid steel hardware, and a lifetime guarantee."

"It's beautiful, Dylan."

"And it's purple, well, eggplant, if we go by Spring's crayons." I demonstrated how easily it pulled and how the handle recessed into the casing for convenient travel just as the store clerk had done.

Diane took my hands. "I love it." She kissed me. Not on the cheek, and in front of her daughter. For a moment, I remembered Spring in the room. Then Diane's hand touched the back of my neck and I felt something scary. It wasn't the caress of her lips, but the hurt of letting her go.

Feeling her breath on my face, I opened my eyes. "I want to see you again."

"Me too."

Spring rolled her eyes and grabbed her new Teddy.

"How about tomorrow?" I said hopefully.

"Great. You can help me carry my stuff."

Chapter 5.

Not At All the Way I Pictured It The next few weeks were like taking a course in Everything That Had Been Going On Around Me While I Wasn't Paying Attention. Quiet dinners without Spring and antic ones with her, Bayswater Point State Park to show Spring the birds and try some trails, a bookshop tour of New York City, lots and lots of walking and talking and, of course, many soft nights after Spring had gone to sleep. I think this was when I started to fall in love with Diane. It's so hard to tell when love sneaks up on you especially when you're not really certain that you know what it means.

About a week after she moved into her new apartment, we made love for the first time since Chicago. It was fabulous, less athletic, and more sensual than I remembered. But that wasn't what made me think I was falling in love with her.

She bought me this book on Feng Shui. She said my apartment was in conflict with itself and that the vibes were traveling in circles. I had heard of Feng Shui, but I really didn't know what it was all about, or even how to pronounce it.

"Feng shwing?" I said.

"Not feng shwing. It's pronounced phung schway and literally means wind water, she said, touching my shoulder. "It has to do with living in harmony with our environment."

"I already do that. See? Chair and TV there, and the beer is in the fridge." I immediately chided myself for being a smartass. This was obviously important to her.

I flipped through a few pages of the book. Apparently, the art of Feng Shui is about ergonomic placement of energy: doors and windows that open the correct way, a certain fluidity of air around static objects, and taking down naked art.

"Close enough for now, Mr. Hunter." Diane said when I told her the conclusions I'd drawn from my reading. "But if you're going to keep your chair in front of the TV, at least you could be open to experimentation."

That sounded interesting. "Experimentation, huh?"

She smacked me on the arm. "Not that kind of experimentation. Well, maybe that kind, too."

Then she told me she wanted to add more soy to my diet.

Soy?

After the warning, she surprised me with mac and soy cheese and said that Spring loved it. I went along, but only semi-willingly. More than surrender, accepting soy especially tofu involves a unique vulnerability of the digestion mechanisms, or more eloquently, the willing suspension of distaste.

What the hell.

I asked her what she put tofu in and she informed me that it wasn't something you added to recipes. It was used to replace items in a recipe. In the next few days, I think I lost five pounds. Diane used tofu to substitute the ricotta in lasagna and the chicken in our stir-fry. She said the tofu adopted the flavor of the sauce and provided a "palatable and chewy substance." It absorbed things, all right. After two nights, I figured I could sculpt it into the shape of giant, maniacal slugs. After painting the eyes with red food coloring, I could set them in the houseplants on my windowsill to scare the pigeons.

I drew the line when, three days later, I was shriveling down to nothing and Diane used a blend of tofu and soy cheese in our grilled soy cheese sandwiches on organic whole wheat bread. Spring agreed. The concoction was no viable cheese substitute. After our loud protest, Diane agreed to reduce the aggressive tofu campaign.

Then I realized something. Just as she had failed to understand my diet was grounded in beef, turkey, and chicken, I had failed to understand Feng Shui and tofu were more than trends to her. They were as much a part of her as Spring was. Was the fact that I was beginning to understand this an indication that I was falling in love?

I was doing things I had never done before and doing them on the spur of the moment: Feng Shui and "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt;" Seitan and talking in bed for hours after making love. I even called in sick once just so we could take Spring to a midweek matinee. Spending time with Diane was like being on an exotic vacation; like a trip to Bangkok without the vaccinations.

And the kid? I was starting to enjoy Spring as someone more than just a member of a demographic group I needed to learn more about. At three and a half, she displayed certain lovable qualities that were hard to resist, like a blanket fresh from the dryer. Of course, when she sided with me in the tofu battles, that didn't hurt her chances, either.

On Halloween, we took Spring trick-or-treating in her building. Although I had cut out of work early something that led to at least one snide comment from a colleague about my losing my edge I was still running late. It didn't matter. Diane and Spring were even further behind.

"Where's your costume?" Diane said, looking a little disappointed, but not surprised.

"I'm a pack rat, can't you tell?" I pointed to my new Aspen eggplant-colored backpack with its ballistic nylon, ultra heavy gauge solid steel hardware, and lifetime guarantee.

"You told Spring you'd dress up..."

"I was running a little late. If she doesn't like the pack rat costume..." I reached into my pocket, "I can wear my sunglasses."

"Pack rat on vacation?"

"Nice guess."

Spring ran out from the bedroom and surprised me by jumping into my arms. She very nearly bowled me over and I was a little distracted by it for the next few minutes.

"Hi," she said, loudly.

"Hi to you, too." Spring had some whiskers drawn on her face. I turned to Diane. "Where's her costume?"

"She's going as you."

"Ha."

"Okay, wait. Close your eyes."

I heard Diane whisper to Spring but couldn't tell what they were saying.

"Open them!"

"Ta da!" they shouted. They were both wearing fake Groucho noses and glasses.

"Those are lovely," I said. "Does that mean you're ready to go?"

"We're not ready yet. Have something to drink and we'll be done in a few minutes." Diane escorted Spring back to the bathroom.

I wasn't surprised that they weren't ready. Actually, I had counted on it. When Diane and Spring went back into the bedroom, I slipped out her door, grabbed a box from around the corner and removed three pumpkins. I had cleaned them an hour before and still had orange goo under my fingernails to prove it. I set them on the counter and added a candle to each. Although the pumpkins were clean, this was hardly my best creative work. The faces were cute, but a little crooked.

Other than the drawings on the fridge, the pumpkins on the counter, and a laptop with a sticker touting Barnes, Inc., not much more about Diane's apartment had changed. The pumpkins added color to her place. When I looked at the three of them, the thought flashed that they resembled Jim, Hank, and me. I hadn't missed the boys the last few weeks, or the ladies at the Magenta Martini or even Laurel. I had thought about her a little before Diane and I had started to get serious, but not much after that. We'd smile at work, but I think she understood.

I considered my indifference toward Laurel to be further proof that I was in love with Diane. I had almost said the words to her twice. We were making love and it almost slipped out during, and then again after. For some reason that I didn't fully understand, I just lay there fighting the urge. Why was I fighting love?

Diane was unlike any woman I had ever known. After a week of thinking about telling her I loved her, I even pulled her picture out of my drawer at work and practiced. The picture looked good on my desk. As if it were a copy of Playboy, I had been sneaking peeks at it during the day. I decided to leave the picture on my desk.

If I were going to tell Diane I loved her, though, I didn't just want to blurt it out during or after sex. I wanted it to be special. Diane loved old movies, so I decided to tell her I loved her on the top of the Empire State Building. I'd pretend to be Cary Grant in that movie. To make sure she arrived, I planned to hold her hand until we reached the observation deck.

We didn't get there.

Although I had envisioned a quiet and romantic moment alone with Diane, she said that we had to take Spring because Spring would want to see the view. I decided to stay with my plan, but fate stepped in again. The elevator to the observation deck was closed for repairs and wouldn't open again until the next morning. Diane and Spring shrugged off the disappointment, but I skulked. "This is getting all screwed up," I said.

Diane offered me a patient smile. "It's no big deal. We'll come back some other time.

I stopped her by a water cooler and took her hands. She eyed me with curiosity, but didn't say anything.

"Diane, do you know that movie, A Night to Remember?"

"Yeah,"

"That's why I brought you and Spring here."

"Because of A Night to Remember?"

"Knowing how you like old movies, I wanted to be romantic and tell you..." For a moment, my eyes drifted. This was as personal as I had ever gotten with someone.

Diane made a sour face. "A Night to Remember?"

"Yeah,"

"That's the movie about the Titanic... with the iceberg?"

"I meant the one with Cary Grant."

"That's An Affair to Remember."

"Yeah, that's the one. "

Spring tugged at Diane's coat. "I don't feel so good."

I continued. "I wanted to take you to the top of the world, like in the movies...."