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“Jonny!” she screamed, jumping up and down.
Jonny lifted his head and stopped in his tracks. The smile that spread across his face made Pandy gasp. It was, she realized, the smile of a man who wanted to marry her.
Ridiculous, she told herself. Nevertheless, she became childlike with the pure ecstasy of the moment, skidding clownishly across the snow to him. Jonny shook his head at her silliness, as if enchanted.
He held up his bags. “I was just headed to your place. Thought you might be getting hungry.”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded eagerly, her words blown away by the wind. Jonny dropped the bags, and then they were kissing. Pandy forgot about the snow and the wind and the cold, her entire being embodied in this ancient exchange. Soul recognized soul, and for a moment, she was sure she knew everything about him.
The kiss might have gone on forever, if not for the wind. The air screamed as it roared down Fifth Avenue gathering energy, and then hit the open space of the park like a giant wave.
“Fuck!” Jonny said as the wind tore them apart and sent them spinning backward.
“Get down!” Pandy shouted, tugging him to his knees. “Put your back to it with your hands over your head.”
There was another terrible blast, and then the air suddenly went still.
Pandy and Jonny rose to their feet, staring up at the sky in astonishment. The sun was flickering behind a heavy black cloud, turning it shades of an eerily beautiful iridescent green.
“Whoa!” Jonny said.
“Incredible, isn’t it?”
Their eyes widened as they took in each other’s appearance. They were both mortared in snow, covered head to toe like two plaster-of-Paris models.
Pandy began laughing. In the next second, Jonny was laughing, too; once they started, they couldn’t stop.
And then they both took a deep breath and came back to their senses.
Exhaling a reassuring cloud of steam, Jonny began picking up his bags of groceries. “Let’s go, Wallis,” he exhorted, tossing her one of the bags. Pandy caught it in her arms like a baby. It was heavy; possibly a ham. Or even a whole prosciutto.
Pandy smiled at the thought of the paper-thin pink flesh with its frosting of creamy fat. Jonny was a famous chef; he probably had whole prosciuttos lying around all over the place.
“You got anyone else I need to feed besides you?” Jonny called out.
“Henry,” Pandy said. “He probably doesn’t have a thing in his house.” Carefully she tucked the prosciutto—for it was a whole prosciutto after all—under her arm like a linebacker with a ball.
“He’s on Gay Street. Let’s pick him up and then go back to my place.” She hurried to catch up with Jonny, leading him past a redbrick wall that led to a tiny, curved street.
The snow was nearly to Pandy’s knees. Her feet felt the way up the small stoop of a three-story brick house with a shiny black door. She lifted the heavy brass knocker and banged three times.
Henry opened the door. He hadn’t been lying about the smoking jacket, Pandy noted, suddenly annoyed.
“Can I help you?” he asked drolly, eyeing Jonny, who was heaving behind her.
“Oh, come on, Henry. Move aside,” Pandy said. She pushed past him into the tiny kitchen. “The internet’s gone out. And Jonny has a prosciutto.”
“And lots of other food as well. We were going to go to Pandy’s place and I was going to cook. We came to pick you up,” Jonny said, in a voice that displayed his willingness to please.
“We didn’t want you to be alone,” Pandy added coyly.
“No. You didn’t want you to be alone.” Henry gave Jonny a strange look, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
“Come on, Henry,” Pandy said, grabbing Henry’s cashmere coat off the hook and handing it to him. “And you, too, Jonny. You need something on your head.”
“I insist,” Henry said, handing Jonny an old wool cap. “I refuse to be the only man wearing a hat,” he added.
Back at Pandy’s loft, they had a magnificent meal involving figs, tiny langoustines, and an herb-infused cheese soufflé that was so good, Pandy made Jonny promise to make it for her again.
