Carol was on her terrace when the man climbed down from the sky, his feet supported by foot-sized clouds. The street was empty. No gasping crowd seconded her amazement. She alone was left to wonder whether life, with its unending stretch of tedious repetitions, had finally loosened its rules.

She waved. He waved back, picked up his pace and ran to her, the clouds scurrying to stay beneath him. She lived on the 17th floor. His route was level now, his gait a bit stiff. Carol was sorry she hadn’t put on lipstick.

He bounded over the low wall as athletically as a man who, however obsessively he frequents the gym, is in his mid-seventies (as was she). To his credit, and certainly he deserved a prodigious amount of credit just for transcending gravity, he was not out of breath. Carol assumed his strolls through the sky had contributed to his healthy complexion. He was tall and broad chested, features she appreciated in a man, and she admired his taste—his well-fitting olive-green shirt and expensive gray pants. His shoes were wet. The clouds had been real. However unlikely, she hoped he was too.

“Are you an angel sent to oversee my future?” she asked, prepared to go with the flow. “Or is it just that I waved, and you responded? Don’t feel you have to answer.” She extended her hand. “Carol Rothschild.”

His grasp was firm and decidedly human. “Gordon Aron. And as anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m no angel. I’m just a surveyor, semi-retired. I sold the business and stayed on to consult.”

“Of course you did. And as part of your work you convince clouds to do your bidding. To save time or fuel?”

“Both I suppose.” He shrugged with such sweet modesty that Carol’s heart blazed. “It isn’t that hard.”

“For you.”

“Or anyone willing to put in the effort. By the way, it appears I live directly above you.”

“In 18 C?”

She considered mentioning that the dryers in the laundry room were broken, but why spoil a happy reprieve from an existence where clothes remained damp after they’d spun for hours? A man with kind eyes and an inviting smile had dropped down out of nowhere.

He glanced at his watch. It was sporty with a thick orange band. Possibly German, definitively rugged, the kind that would function at almost any altitude. “A bientôt,” he said and leapt to his terrace.

Carol’s first love was a man who, although he’d been only twenty-three when they’d met, had already been crushed by another woman’s desertion. He was Greek and he told Carol that while he’d been with Naomi, he’d been so happy he could have caught birds with his hands. Carol had not had this effect on him. In a fit of jealously, she’d rifled his possessions and found photos of his heartthrob, a girl with a plain flat face, stubby body and a diary (had he stolen it?) laden with self-pity. Carol was astonished that Naomi had caused such a wound. Still, lesson learned. Despite her awareness that heads turned when she passed, Carol had lost an important contest to the commonplace. Afterwards, her confidence damaged, when she chased after love it eluded her grasp. Or she became so overexcited in its presence, she laughed like a lunatic and frightened it away.

Now years after she’d resigned herself to a life lived alone she’d been given another chance, albeit one so farfetched she couldn’t mention it to her friends without seeming crazy. Still, she spent the first hour after meeting Gordon Aron on her couch smiling and shaking her head. Maybe there was a God. Carol was a sometime believer and perhaps as He’d done when the Jews had cried out to Him in Ancient Egypt, He’d peered into her heart and decided to help, hopefully in a pleasanter way than when He’d marched His people through the broiling desert.

A second hour went by without a word from Gordon. This silence meant nothing. She’d done nothing wrong. He was busy, less desperate than she was to launch a romance and if this opportunity called for patience, a substance she typically lacked, it was an encouraging sign of the man’s stability. He’d contact her when he had the time. He’d said so. A bientôt. See you soon. Although the word ‘soon’ was iffy—as soon as hell freezes over, as soon as pigs fly. But why fret? She didn’t have to stand like a wallflower and wait to be picked. She could invite him down for a neighborly drink. And if he refused? Unable to stomach the thought, she fled to the park and walked around the baseball fields to quell her anxiety until, exhausted, she collapsed on a bench, wishing he had her cellphone number. Was he still home or bounding from terrace to terrace establishing a harem...read more