If Giacomo hadn't reminded me of the time, I probably would have wandered through the streets with him until sunrise. As it was, we got back to the shelter just in time for me to join the rest of the volunteers. Don't ask me how Giacomo knew how late it was. As far as I could see, he didn't wear a watch. How could he have afforded one, anyway?

When we reached the alley where we had originally entered the maze of little streets, I wanted to stretch up on my toes to kiss him. I had been with him the whole afternoon and not gotten to kiss him once! But then we heard laughter from the front of the shelter, and quickly sprang apart. Luckily, the laughter wasn't directed at us. Apparently, one of the hobos that were gathering outside St. Christopher's had just told a very funny joke about a blond, a bald man and a can of sardines.

Giacomo reached out and cupped my face with his hand. “We will see each other soon, I promise.”

“We can't talk once we're inside, can we?” My voice was weak. I couldn't fathom how I was to stay away from him for one minute, let alone the entire evening!

“No.”

I made a face. It must have been a funny one, because he chuckled. I glared up at him.

“Scusi. I shouldn't laugh. It's just... you look like a child who's just been refused her favorite kind of candy.”

I tried not to let show how much his remark hurt me. You look like a child. I knew it! I knew that he was thinking of me as nothing but a child. In my mind, I went over the hours we had spent in each other's company. Not once had he tried to touch me in that special way or tried to kiss me. Not once had he done anything that a friend might not do. He wanted to see me, he had said. But did he place the same meaning on the words as I had? Perhaps I had read more into his words and actions than was actually there. Damn lepidoptera!

I bit down on my lip and looked down, so he wouldn't see the despair in my eyes. However, he noticed anyway.

“What's the matter?” he asked, stroking my cheek. I sighed. No, I couldn't have imagined everything. That look in his eyes... that had to be it. The real thing. Please let it be the real thing.

“Nothing,” I said, smiling up at him, happy again for a few short seconds. “You'd better go now.” Before I lose control, jump you and start kissing you all over.

“Yes.” Quickly, he looked up and down the alley. Then he leaned forward and gave me a quick peck on the top of my head. “Arrivederci, my Angel.”

“I don't speak Italian”, I muttered in weak protest. But he was already striding away, out of the alley. Seeing him step into the sunlight was like a revelation to me. He suddenly stooped, the look of self-assurance disappeared from his face. He was putting on a mantle – an aura of shabbiness and unimportance that had always surrounded him in the shelter. Until that moment I hadn't realized that in my presence, he had discarded it. That, more than anything else, more even than the warmth of his lips I still felt through my locks, made me happy.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

A few minutes later, I followed after him and entered St. Christopher's. The shelter was already packed with people. I headed straight for the kitchen and tried not to look anywhere else. Because if I were to catch sight of him, I wouldn't be able to help myself – I would smile. Probably I would get all doe-eyed and very possibly, I would try to fall into his arms in front of everybody.

So I kept my eyes down on my work. Work which suddenly didn't seem quite as relaxing and engrossing as usual. I got the first indication of the fact that I was a little absent-minded when Debby reminded me that usually, one doesn't make Orange juice out of apples. I looked down at the reamer in front of me and then examined the apple in my hand.

“You're right”, I agreed. “That's probably not a good idea.”

“Well, it's a novel idea”, Debby consoled me.

“Yep, but a crackpot one, too.”

“Is everything all right, Angela? You seem a little... distracted. And I noticed that you have been crying rather a lot lately...”

“All right?” I put down the apple. Oh, to hell with being cautious. I couldn't keep it in any longer! I put my arms around Debby and squeezed as if my life depended on it. “No, Debby. Everything's great. I really like it here. You'll never know how happy it makes me to able to be here and help all these people.”

She put her arms around me and laughed.

“Thanks. You're a sweet girl, Angela. I've never met a teenage girl so willing to give up her free time to help people. Usually all they think about is boys.”

“Well, um...”

“Which means, I supposed, that I'm a sweet girl, too,” she continued, a frown on her face. “Strange. Why do I feel like such an idiot then? I'm an altruist! A good person. That should make me feel good about myself, shouldn't it? So why am I thinking 'I should be out there hitting on some hotty?'”

She released me and laughed.

“Which means: the nice people aren't necessarily the lucky ones. Back to work, girl. We've got a job to do.”

“Um, yes, we have, I suppose.”

I tried not to blush too much while I concentrated on making orange juice out of oranges.

When I had squeezed the juice out of about 300 oranges and my arm was growing limp, serving time drew near, and I went to Debby to volunteer for making the homeless people's beds instead. She stared at me with wide eyes for a moment. “My oh my, you really are a little altruist, aren't you? Well, it's your own nose-amputation. See the door over there? Third from the left? That's the dorm room.”

My motives for volunteering were in fact, as you probably have already guessed, not all that altruistic. It was just that if I came face to face with Giacomo now, I was certain I wouldn't be able to stop myself from... well, I didn't know what I would do exactly, but not simply hand him his glass of Orange juice with a polite 'here you are', that's for sure. So I grasped at the only alternative before me. And I admit it: secretly I hoped that maybe, just maybe, I'd been wrong and Giacomo did sleep here. He showed so little of himself... I craved to see pieces of his life, however mundane. I really couldn't imagine what the place where he slept might look like. I had to find out, even if it did mean that I would have to have my nose amputated. It was much too turned-up for my taste anyway.

In the end, I had cause for both disappointment and relief. On the one hand, of course Giacomo didn't sleep here, or if he did, I didn't find anything to mark one of the mattresses as his, unless the pile of tattered playboys stuffed under one of the pillows belonged to him, which I fervently hoped wasn't the case. On the other, the mattresses and sheets didn't smell nearly as gross as I'd imagined. Compared with the stuff Cathy called perfume, they actually smelled like perfume.

I threw out whatever I presumed to be rubbish, and let me tell you, sometimes it wasn't easy to tell the difference between rubbish and personal possessions. Then I tried to emulate as best I could what I'd seen my mother do to my bed once. The end result didn't look nearly as neat and tidy as when she'd done it, but good enough for a first attempt. It took three quarters of an hour for some reluctant help to arrive, and by that time, I was nearly finished. “Hi,” I said, straightening and nodding towards Beth who had entered the room with Leila and Valerie in tow.

“Wow.” Beth looked around. “Looks like you hardly need our help.”

I smiled at her sweetly. I know a procrastinator when I see one. After all, I'd had ample opportunity to study a superb specimen every morning in the bathroom mirror. “Oh, I don't know,” I said cheerfully. “There are quite a few unmade beds left over there. Do you see?”

“Gosh! Yes, you're right. I didn't see those.”

Sure you didn't.

“Well, now you have. Let's get to work.”

And they did, though not very enthusiastically. Apparently, they would have preferred Cathy's perfume to the smell that permeated the room. For a moment, I let my mind wonder and imagined what the room in which Giacomo slept might smell like. I inhaled deeply. Oh, I could almost smell it... leather... a tiny bit of smoke, though not cigarette smoke, I was sure of that. And then there was that indescribable component, that special aroma... not what a panther smelled like, but what one would imagine a panther smelled like: dark majesty and strength, barely contained, likely to break free at any moment.

I inhaled again. I knew that the three women were staring at me suspiciously, but I didn't really care. Suddenly, the room smelled as sweet as any sweetshop, and I finished my work in record time. Then, I ran back into the kitchen/dining room again: Perhaps, just perhaps he would still be there... but he wasn't. I grabbed my backpack from the usual corner where I stashed it and called to Debby: “I'm off, okay? I've got to get home.”

She just nodded and waved at me, and I ran outside. Surely, surely he would have waited for me? He wouldn't just disappear?

But outside, too, he was nowhere to be seen. And then it hit me. My date! We hadn't actually agreed on a date. Oh, we'd agreed to date, but not agreed on a date for the date.

Damn! I knew that I tended to be a little confused in his presence, but how could I have forgotten that?! And, it dawned on me, we hadn't agreed on where to meet, either. So we would have a date, location unknown, time unknown. Great.

I stamped my foot. What was happening to me? Was I going insane? Anxiety welled up in me, mixed with anger. What would happen now? When would I see him again? Would I see him again at all? Perhaps he'd be offended if I didn't show up wherever it was that he expected me to show up, and would never speak to me again.

Not far away, I heard a church clock strike. Damn! I had to get home! Otherwise, my dad would ground me and I wouldn't even have a chance to find out whether Giacomo would be mad at me.

I zipped open my backpack and fumbled around for my purse. Money for the bus, yes, you needed to pay the guy in the bus to get home... but what if Giacomo wouldn't want to ever speak to me again?!

I was so Anxious that I almost didn't notice the yellow post-it note stuck to my purse. As I opened the purse, however, it fell off and fluttered to the ground. Frowning, I bent to pick it up. On the crinkled yellow paper only a few words were written in a small and elegant hand. A hand in which I had only seen a few scattered words written before, such as 'Miletus' and 'Lepidoptera'. A Hand I would recognize anywhere.

At the Lake

Golden Gate Park

Midnight

Midnight? How on earth was I supposed to get out of the house and to the Golden Gate Park at midnight? But I knew that that wasn't really an important question. Because even if on earth there wasn't a way, I would scour the rest of the universe for one. I had a date! A date with Giacomo!