• He was sitting at the breakfast table when it happened: she strode in, wearing her powder blue silk bathrobe and dropped a crumpled letter onto his plate, then left without saying another word; he looked at it for a moment, hesitatnt to pick it up and read it for fear of what it might say, and reflected on the day they'd met; it had been a sweet, simple day in mid-autumn, the kind of day that makes you want to rake leaves and bob for apples and kiss babies (except that he didn't like babies; at least, not really), and she was wearing a green dress, silhouetted slender and perfect against the oak tree that sat several yards from where he was working--he remembered that there were chains and dirt and broken hands involved, as he was trying to fix a swing set for his nephew and had dropped a rather large and heavy plank of wood onto the first four fingers of his left hand; cursing, he shook the injured limb wildly about in the air, and upon seeing his distress, the girl scurried over, full skirts flouncing in the wind, and he was reminded suddenly of Russian teacakes and Gershwin and home; when she took his ruined hand gently in one of her own and pulled the long, white ribbon from her dark hair with the other, he blushed and couldn't look her in the eye, because there were so many things going on in his mind that he felt as if he might drown in them; her dark, silky-looking eyes had faint circles beneath them, and her bangs hung ragged in her face; truly, the only put-together thing about her was that dress, and now, he noted, there were grass stains along the hem on one side; nevertheless, he let her fix him up and go on her way, and he thought about her all that day until he was leaving the old Georgian mansion to go home that evening and saw her standing there, leaning against the battered white picket fence at dusk, and she gave him an unabashed kiss on the cheek and another length of white satin with her number on it, and he'd called it the very next morning, having sat up all night wondering; and here they were, twining around in a precarious tete-a-tete; he opened the letter, and read her gracefully looped and slightly schizophrenic-looking script: "I'm leaving you for your best friend."