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so young, she claimed.
    That being the case, Lydia affected the most cheerful impersonation of herself as possible for Delilah, it being successful enough to prevent any skillful probing, but a far cry from an actual cure for what she was coming down with.
    _____

    She made it to Friday, but the blond was still missing from Frank’s Place. Saturday, the same. No more speculation now, she knew without a doubt that she was in love with her because without a doubt she was heartsick.
    All throughout the following week a great black shadow hung over Lydia and by that Friday there remained no activity left which could promise any comfort or relief from it. The inexplicable disappearance was worse than anything Joe had put her through. It was almost impossible not to scream out loud.
    Moreover, she could tell that Delilah suspected her again and was once more growing concerned about her mood. There must be something I can do to get over this, she told herself. Something to alleviate the angst. But she couldn’t even bring herself to imagine what it could be.
    Twice she approached the waiter, tongue-tied but nevertheless prepared to ask about the woman. Both times she lost her confidence and bailed out without a word, cursing her cowardice all through the subsequent sleepless nights.
    She–whoever she was–was gone. And Lydia Beaumont–whoever she was–had been all wrong in judging the matter. She was wrong to have underestimated her feelings, wrong to try to wait out the attraction like it was an affliction she expected to recover from, wrong to hope it would eventually disappear without leaving a mark. There was a disappearance all right. She just hadn’t contemplated this kind of vanishing.
    As it was impossible in such closed quarters to escape from her friend’s oversight, Lydia seriously considered going to a hotel, but in the end was paralyzed by the idea of offending Delilah. And although the work was finally coming to completion there, she additionally berated herself for having disrupted her life by throwing herself out of her own apartment.
    This negativity was at last fully palpable. Lydia Beaumont was not herself again and Delilah knew why.
    She had seen the abandoned window seat the last few Fridays and the pall it had cast over Lydia. You didn’t have to be a psychotherapist to decipher the meaning of that.
    It was eccentric, not something Delilah would have thought she was capable of, but her tastes in lovers had always bordered on the exotic and she was not impetuous, certainly never fickle. There was, very likely, no way of undoing this.
    She pondered the matter in silence as she observed the suffering.
    _____

    So close on the heels of a broken heart, the last thing her friend needed was a full-blown case of love sickness, yet there it was, as plain as the olive in the martini she was having with Lydia at Frank’s Place Friday night. The woman at the window seat still unaccounted for and clearly not forgotten.
    Delilah watched Lydia going through the motions and letting workplace neophytes rub at her elbows. She watched her harpooning the olive in her drink, playing catch-and-release with it until it was finally mutilated, and then ordering another one, abandoning the first drink, otherwise untouched. She saw her clamp her teeth when she smiled, talking through them as if they had been wired shut. After about an hour of this performance she grabbed her by the arm and led her outside.
    “Let’s go home, Dame Beaumont.”
    They walked a few blocks without speaking.
    “I’m sure she’s on vacation, that’s all,” Delilah stated.
    Lydia disposed of it with a silent shrug and continued counting the cracks in the sidewalks, thinking of the spring and what on earth had taken it so long. It was nice to not have to walk home alone, she thought, and she shot Delilah a thankful glance, but declined to comment on her remark.
    “When I was a little girl–”
    “I am not a little girl, Del.”

    “I know