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Princess. One sip."
    "No. Really."
    He scooped some whipped cream on his spoon
and offered it across the table.
    "Oh, I am so going to eat that and
let you put whipped cream all over my nose."
    "Suit yourself." He swallowed the spoonful
himself and smacked his lips. "You're the one missing out. Not
me."
    She looked away from him, staring out at the
snowflakes that fell more rapidly now. "You live near here?" she
asked after a long pause.
    "Staten Island."
    Her head snapped around again to look at
him. "You have to get the ferry back then."
    "It's okay. Runs every half hour. Every hour
after 2AM."
    Her eyes narrowed. "So you came to Manhattan
on your day off to wait for me and take me to breakfast, not even
knowing if I'd say yes, and then you're going all the way back on a
cold ferry."
    "Yep."
    "Just for me?"
    "Hey, it ain't complicated, Princess. I say
what I think when I think it, and I do what I feel when I feel it.
Whatcha see is whatcha get."
     
    * * * *
     
    He was plowing through a plate of food as if
it was his first meal in days. And talking. The man could talk for
America. He threw questions at her.
    "So where does your family live? Here in the
city or are they still in Boston?"
    "There isn't anyone," she replied, carefully
stirring granola into her plain yoghurt.
    "What do you mean? There has to be
someone."
    She watched in amazement as yet another
pancake, lavishly adorned with glistening amber syrup, disappeared
between his lips. "My parents died in a plane accident when I was
eight," she muttered. "I lived with my grandmother after that. Then
I came here, of course, to go to school. I stayed with her on
holidays."
    "I'm sorry," he muttered. "About your
parents."
    What was there to say about that? She
usually avoided mentioning the plane accident. She could never
understand people pretending to be sorry, pretending to have
feelings for a couple they'd never known. "My grandmother died two
years ago. So now it's just me."
    "No brothers and sisters? No cousins?"
    "No." Lily was rather glad of it. Having
relatives one cared about meant that there could only be intense
sorrow when they were gone. People always left her.
    Now there was no one to buy Christmas
presents for. When the fireman described to her his trunk full of
presents, she'd felt a cloud descend over her head, dark and rainy.
She'd seen shoppers in the streets, their arms full of packages.
That would never be her. Good. Who cared? She'd buy a bottle of
really excellent wine for the concierge in her building, another
for the security guard. Some flowers for the costume mistress—
always wise to stay on her good side. Then she was done. Clean and
easy.
    Alone was tidier.
    She vividly remembered the stiff little
black dress and patent leather shoes she wore as she stood by her
parents' graves and listened to the droning prayers. How devastated
and frightened she'd felt, but had to hide it because she didn't
want people to see her cry. Her grandmother was a stoic lady, very
old fashioned when it came to holding one's feelings inside and not
making a "vulgar display". So Lily copied her grandmother and shed
her tears inside, where they had nowhere to go and built up into a
painful surge.
    Thank goodness her grandmother encouraged
her to throw everything she had into dance. The strict regime of
ballet took Lily away from the unpleasantness of real life and
taught her that even if she couldn't control anything else about
the world, she could control her own body.
    "Where did you go to school?" the chatty
fireman asked, slathering his bagel with thick cream cheese.
    "Well, I attended the NYBT School, which
meant three dance lessons a day and didn't leave a lot of time for
other subjects." She was boring herself with all this. Surely he
was bored too with this stilted conversation?
    Maybe not. He was looking at her, waiting
for more.
    "But for things like English and science and
mathematics I went to the Professional Childrens' School." She was
aware that she