A cold Wednesday evening.

The leaves on the trees were missing or dead, but you couldn’t tell because of the cage of white lights surrounding the branches.

Thomas crossed the wide cobblestone road halfway. “Pietons traversez en 2 temps,” read the sign. A throng of pedestrians rushed past him as the second green light signaling it was okay to cross lit up. He found his attention locked at the end of the street. The path of white lights, suspended forty feet in the air, led to the warm glow of the Arc de Triomphe.

The light changed to red and he found himself trapped in the center of the street, as tiny electric cars sped past. But the Arc kept his gaze. A slab of concrete which held the pedestrian crossing sign upright seemed a welcome seat. Thomas crouched down, the joints in his legs cracking. He sat down on the cold, rough concrete and took a deep breath.

Another set of pedestrians walked across, stopped, and continued crossing.

He rubbed his gloved fingers together, trying to keep warm.

A distant street musician was playing a selection from Prokofiev on the flute. The audibility of it wavered with the amount of traffic, both automotive and bipedal.

Yet another group of pedestrians arrived. Thomas didn’t look up at any of them; just stared off at the distant monument, its intricate carvings quite visible even from a distance. He was entranced -- and even thought so himself. One person didn’t walk the other half.

“Fancy seeing you here,” an unmistakeable female voice said. He looked up and the woman’s face was obscured by straight black hair, as she was in the process of sitting on the concrete slab directly across from him.

Could it be? he wondered. The last time he saw Felicia was four years prior in a deli in Manhattan. He had ordered a submarine sandwich and the old woman behind the counter stuffed it so full, it was impossible to hold without spilling. Felicia happened to walk in and he offered her one half, which she declined, but sat with him while he ate as much as he could.

“See you later,” she had said afterwards, but he never did see her. And for four years, he wondered why she didn’t have anything to eat that afternoon.

She pushed the strands of hair behind her right ear, revealing six tiny hoop earrings. It was her.

“Where have you been?” asked Thomas.

“Oh, here and there,” she replied nonchalantly. “Where have you been?”

“Just there.”

She flashed a smile showing off crooked, yet perfectly white teeth. “And now you’re here.”

They sat in silence, traffic rushing past. Thomas caught himself staring at her mouth. The two front teeth overlapped a bit. And she was using one of them to bite her lower lip. White steam escaped through her parted lips as she exhaled, and he wanted so desperately to breathe it in.

And this was the same feeling of desperation and desire he felt the first time he saw her. It was at a party she hadn’t been invited to; apparently she told the doorman that “Joey” invited her, and it worked. Thomas was laughing at some other guest’s joke and noticed a cloud of smoke floating up towards the ceiling, which under any other circumstance would be a normal vision, but this venue had a very strict no-smoking policy. He followed the cloud down to its origin and found the jet-black haired beauty sucking on a pipe. He fixed his gaze on the stream of smoke leaving her lips and was at once overcome with the desire to possess her and was also terribly frightened at the same time.

Over the next year, their paths crossed several times. Yet the most intimate experience between the two was an attempt at sharing a sandwich, which lasted about thirty-five minutes, and involved very little dialogue.

And then again now, the speech was simple, and the words mostly unimportant. She was here for business, he for pleasure. Though he didn’t know what kind of business she was involved in, he didn’t ask. Yes, she thought it was a bit chilly today and no, he hadn’t seen the opera house yet.

Then just the sounds of cars.

In a sudden movement, she was upon him. She held the sides of his face with gloved hands, the coldness of the leather a shock to his warm skin, and a lovely contrast to the heat of her open mouth against his. And for an uncalculable amount of time, Thomas was in a state of euphoria, drowning himself in her scent and taste and texture.

A small group of Japanese tourists crossed to the middle of the road and snapped photos of each other with the Arc and the ferris wheel at Concorde in the backgrounds. They carefully stepped around the lovers and when they were finished, crossed to the other side of the road. Felicia and Thomas barely noticed, and more importantly, barely cared.

Felicia stood up, brushed off her jeans. She reached down and caressed Thomas’s eyebrows with two fingers.

“See you later,” she said.

Her boots made a sharp click against the cobblestone.