Angela pushed back his shaggy hair, falling over his not-quite-handsome face. His blue eyes sparkled like moonlight on the ocean. Everything about him was so perfect. She wanted to hold him tight and never let him go. 

“I want to know everything about you.” He whispered as he leaned down to capture her bottom lip. She pushed him back. 

“What did you say?” 

“I, umm … want to know everything about you?” His voice cracked. Light appeared through the pores of his skin. In an instant, he was gone—tiny pixels, color, and light fell to the ground and vanished. Her heart slowed, and she awoke from her dream, her soul heavy with unshed tears. When was this going to stop - this dream of the perfect man? 

Angela didn’t trust men. She had disappeared from her life to escape one. She didn’t fake her death, but with some planning, she skipped town and ran clear across the country to get away from him. Now, she lived under the radar, in a pokey little studio apartment that had seen better days forty years ago. But this man she dreamed about had found his way into her soul, filling her dreams and breaking her heart every morning when she woke to find he wasn’t there. 

      She didn’t know his name. He carried a brown leather attaché case and wore an expensive suit. He worked in the same office building she did, but without a name or some other details beyond his looks, finding him was nearly impossible. There were seventy-nine floors in that building and although some companies kept more than one floor, there were still many one-room offices hiding in the mazes of hallways and kiosks. She longed for the days when elevator operators ran people up and down all day. They knew everything and everyone. They could tell her his name and which floor he worked on. 

      “But alas,” she thought, “These are modern times.” Modern times, where it costs too much to have someone do something you could do yourself. Gone mostly were the telephone operators, elevator jockeys, maids, and gardeners. The importance was all on the bottom line. Make money—make more—make even more … 

It was the charge put forth to every man or woman in a suit and their rewards were … good boy and atta girl and sometimes a little extra in the pay envelope. 

      Angela went to work. She saw him step into the elevator, and the doors closed moments before she reached them. As usual, he did nothing to prevent that. He never pushed the “door open” button to allow her access. It was almost like he knew she wanted to meet him. She waited for the next car and rode up to the thirtieth floor in silence, wondering again about the shaggy-haired man who rode the same elevator. 

      At the end of another long day, weary from the rat race and looking forward to supper from a cardboard box, she sighed. She couldn’t wait to get home where she could escape to her comfort in a world of her own making—a softer world where time was of no consequence—where the air was warm and the sun beamed happily down on green grass and bountiful flowers. Her imaginary world was not unlike an air freshener commercial—light breezes and the assurance of perfection. Her perfect world, far away from the smog-filled streets where she lived. 

Home in her tiny apartment, Angela flung herself onto the bed and lay there looking at the cracks in the ceiling. She wondered, not for the first time, if she should paint them green and tie them together with leaves and flowers. They had grown little in the last few months, but they caused her concern - but only when she looked at them. When she wasn’t looking, she forgot them. She preferred to live in the moment and not worry that the roof might cave in and crush her. She rather hoped she would be long gone before that happened. 

Twenty minutes, she stayed there—thinking of him—her shaggy-hair man, and the little house in the suburbs where they would live with their blue-eyed cherub-like children. Sighing, she rose from her bed. Supper time. She pulled a frozen dinner from the freezer and tossed it in the microwave. Tonight, American Idol was on television and even though she hated Simon Cowell, she watched the show because she thought, deep down, he was sexy. 

As she rinsed her knife and fork under the faucet, she heard the knock on her door. “Not again.” She knew who it was. It would be Bertie Halvorson from next door wanting to have a cup of tea and a chat. She doesn’t mind the old woman, but there are days when Angela wished she would buy her own damn tea and leave her the hell alone. Pushing herself away from the counter, she invited her guest in. 

Bertie nattered away about her father and her husband and the rather soap opera life she’d lived. These are all stories Angela had heard hundreds of times. To hear Mrs. Halvorson tell it, her father was the biggest “mover and shaker” back in the day. “If it wasn’t for him, this city would be nothing more than a blink of an eye on the railroad to hell.” Bertie said again. “I wonder what life would have turned out like if Papa hadn’t hit the skids during the depression? I mean, he wouldn’t have walked out that fifth-story window for one thing, and then Mama wouldn’t have died of embarrassment like she did.” 

Angela fumed beneath her plastered-on smile. She thought Bertie’s father was a coward. He left a wife and three children penniless in a house mortgaged to the last brick. He was the king of rats! A weak man, who couldn’t face the humiliation of being knocked off his pedestal. She despised him as much as Bertie adored him. 

Necessity forced Bertie and her two sisters to go to work. Hettie, the eldest, got a job in a factory. Nellie, the middle girl, went to work at the telephone company, and Bertie—she took up the oldest profession. She became a thief. 

According to Bertie, she was good at it. She was a crackerjack cat burglar, and she made a fortune robbing from the rich. Angela had no proof that the old dear wasn’t what she claimed, but she also had no proof she was. She took the old woman’s stories at face value and so far, Bertie had never crossed wires and told her two different versions. 

Bertie got rich and eventually married a police officer, putting her wayward side behind her. The young couple did not live happily ever after in a small apartment a few blocks closer to the river. They had three kids and as life rolled out before them, disaster struck. Beatrice, their youngest child, died in a car accident. Bertie was driving. It destroyed the little family. Her marriage ended, her husband remarried, and she lost touch with the other two children. Everyone blamed her for the accident and Bertie blamed herself too. 

Financial ruin forced her to sell her lovely apartment, and thirty years ago, she moved into this shabby building. She doesn’t have much except her past—her stories of yesteryear that sustained her with the retelling. Both sisters have long passed, her children are gone from her life, and what friends she once had no longer come around. Her income was negligible; a small pension from her ex-husband put food on the table and paid her rent. She reminded Angela often how lonely she was before she’d moved in. For better or worse, Bertie had adopted her, and she looked forward to these evening chats, even if Angela did not. 

When Bertie left, Angela moved to the windows and reflected on her own life. She made a decent living and could probably afford to live somewhere nicer. But she found this tiny woe-begotten place when she left her husband, and she felt it was perhaps the best place to be—for now. 

She loved the view from the large transom windows. They provided a splendid view of the city as it spread out as far as her eye could see. The river gleamed like a silver thread in the dark, winding its way leisurely through the park six blocks away. She stood at the window, watching the traffic—mere orbs and streaks of red and gold floating along in various directions. 

And she wondered what he was doing, what he saw when he looked out his windows. She wondered what he was thinking. Might he be thinking of her? Was he alone or with someone? A jealous pang stabbed her heart, and she laughed at her foolishness. She had no claims on this man. He was merely a figment of her dreams and desires. He didn’t even know she was alive. 

Eventually, she climbed into bed, restless once more for her dreams—longing for them to whisk her away to a sandy beach, the salty sea, where a long-legged man with shaggy hair walked toward her. 

~  ~  ~ 

Across the street, the shaggy-haired man, standing in the shadows out of her view, he watched her as she stood at her window. He knew her name and where she worked, and he even knew where she came from. He’d followed her home months ago. She never even looked back, walking along without a single care of her surroundings. Renting an apartment across from hers, he watched every night. 

As always, the old woman came in. He noticed the bored expression on Angela’s face as the old woman talked. After she rinsed their cups, she stood at the window, looking out over the city. He could see the wistful expression of hopefulness and expectation on her face. He knew a lot about her. “I want to know everything about you.” He whispered as she turned from the window. “I want to know everything …”