It wasn't that Laura Henry didn't feel the impact of the green Lincoln Continental as it hit her. She did feel it, but her mind was on other things. Rising into the air she noticed that the pavement over which she'd just crossed was cracked in an odd pattern which rather closely resembled the custom styled bathroom mosaic she had commissioned from that painter she'd been trying to sleep with for the past five weeks. Laura had arranged it with her boss so that she could be home during each and every one of the four days he'd worked on it, using up her last vacation day, a sick day and two personal emergencies in the process. But instead of the side by side earnest toil that Laura had expected would lead them into each other's arms, she'd found herself listening to him talk on the phone with other women while he troweled cementing compound. He had explained that his concentration was crucial, that he needed to be alone with the door shut in order to create, but when he'd pulled the phone in there she'd been too afraid she would blow her chances with him to protest. So instead she had lain on her bed listening to his voice echo hollowly through her apartment. "Acoustics, Laura, acoustics," her mother used to tell her when she would go to the toilet as a little girl, "throw some paper in there before you pee. Run the tap." Laura tripped the stretched out phone cord on purpose twice, and though the second time she succeeded in gaining Enrique's attention, when he'd stuck his head out the bathroom door he'd only told her to please watch her step or she might cut him off. She had laughed a light, bawdy laugh, but then couldn't think of anything witty and subtly sexual to back it up with, so he'd shut the door again.

Laura continued to rise, rolling around to the right which brought the Canal Street post office into view. It was still shrouded in scaffolding. It looked like the beginnings of a cocoon, or the first weavings on a spider's ambitious catch. Funny, she thought, upside-down, things take on altogether different aspects. They say that if you look at a harvest moon between your legs it no longer seems swollen on the horizon because you don't recognize things like houses and trees to compare with it. The post office was closed by now, but the box-holder's lobby windows were still lit. You could see parts of the murals on the walls of the place. She'd once kept a mailbox there, but after three years of getting nothing but catalogs for clothes she couldn't afford and late notices from her student loan collectors, she'd closed it without leaving a forwarding address. The mailbox at her apartment building now got stuffed with invitations to or announcements of her friends' weddings and babies and baby birthday parties and alarmingly round-numbered school reunions. Recently she'd gotten the first invitation to the next thing: a birthday roast. Myrna's new husband was turning 40. Laura didn't want to think about it.

The sky, Laura noticed as she rotated far enough to catch an excellent view of it without straining her neck at all, was quite blue. She realized she hadn't even looked at the sky in, what, months. Amazing how time can get away from you. It was being in that office all day, that's what it was. Laura had been working as an analyst in a rather large insurance firm for about two and a half years now, and her cubicle was a couple of layers away from any window. The weeks were made up of working late and collapsing after rushing home on the subway. And her weekends were taken up seeing friends, at restaurants, home for a video, at parties. She'd met Enrique at a party her neighbor Trish had dragged her to one Saturday night in the Spring. He was tall, wore only black, had rather full blonde hair—okay, it was teased and dyed. He was entirely not her type. She even suspected he'd changed his name to appear ethnic, an idea his hard waspy nose and boxish forehead shouted a convincing argument against. On top of that, his charming little accent slipped just a bit too often. Enrique was rather multi-cultural in and of himself. One had the impression that this was due to some key misunderstanding of the point of being earnest and correct Enrique had come across in school or among the semi-educated hipsters he hung out with. For the moment, however, it seemed to work for him, so he went with it.

Despite all this Laura had developed—consciously, and kiddingly developed—a full-blown, humorless crush on him. It had all started as cheap entertainment for Trish's sake. They'd been bored at this party. Some Australian friend of a friend turning thirty. Sitting in the farthest darkest corner the chipper Aussie's apartment could manage, Laura hunched into a lumpy armchair covered with a zippy sheet and Trish slumped on a similarly festive draped futon, they watched the party-goers from about pelvis height. Laura had begun giving a running commentary on the other guests: the refugee from the eighties with the acid-washed mini-skirt, red body suit and spike boots; Elvira's long lost cousin there with the bad boob job and the paste-on makeup; the cute jewish guy who is unafraid of his love for baseball to the degree that he can wear a flipped back cap at the same time as he wears his Yankees shirt in that thrown-on sort of look; and the walking contradiction of sagging agedness combined with the fad-slavish crushed velvet suction dress, or over-thirty-fives-ought-not-to-watch-MTV.

Then Enrique walked in. His entrance was so dramatized, so back-up musicked, so exquisitely self-conscious that Laura didn't need to say a word. He was a billboard of a person: you got it all in the time it took to check your fuel gauge, the rearview mirror, the left lane. Boom, bang, the message is home. Laura looked calmly at Trish and without the slightest bit of sarcasm pronounced, "I'm in love." Trish had to keep a hand clamped over her mouth, but it didn't stop her shaking with laughter. The two women spent the rest of the evening inconspicuously following him from room to room and trying to decide if the odd speech patterns they heard wafting over from him were Rumanian, Greek or Arabic.

Finally Sheila, the hostess, introduced them to him. "Enrique," she announced, for their sake but in his direction, "he's from Nicaragua." She pronounced the word the way earnest liberal reporters spit it out: Ni-chha-rrra-chhgua. Laura gave him a mild smile and glancing at Trish, turned squarely face him, or rather the middle of his chest which is about as high as she came on him. "Tell me," she asked him, "do you paint?" It was her guess.

"Why yes!" Enrique responded, his eyes growing charmingly round for a moment. He reached out with a meaty arm and scooped one of Laura's into his. "Can I get you to drink?" he said, "and I will be to telling you of my pointing." Laura winked over her shoulder at Trish, who gave her the "ok" with her fingers.

Laura's feet were swung straight up over her head. She seemed to be pivoting gently so that she began to catch sight of the other side of the street at the same time as she got a new angle on the cracked pavement, although by now the front of the Continental was covering most of it.

The green of the Continental, and the subtle sheen it gave off, this being an exceptionally sunny day, reminded her of the almost nuclear glow which seemed to emanate from Enrique's color contact lenses. Somehow, via her own kidding with herself, play-acting the smitten kitten, he'd kept her gaze there. He'd simply worked a hearty, though perhaps slightly unimaginative, seduction on her and when he asked her for her phone number at around 2:30 she wrote down her real one. She gave it to him and he overshot his reach, taking her hand. She let it linger in his warm grip until he let go.

On the way home in the taxi with Trish she explained she'd get some good sex and that would be the end of it. "After all, he's ridiculous in real life, but in bed he must be... Well," she said and she bobbed her head and stuck out a raised palm.

Trish agreed, but said, "Watch out, these things have a tendency to get under your skin," she laughed. "No, you know what I mean."

"Give me," Laura had said in her best mock-valley, "a to-tal break."

As her legs swung back around under her Laura realized she was probably in for another whole flip and so she relaxed into it and peered down Church Street. From this height she had a clear view of one of the twin towers and imagined she saw the glinting of the Harbor down at the end of the island. But she probably wasn't high enough for that. Not yet. Perhaps she would just continue to spiral higher and higher into the air. Enrique had called her. He called late one Friday afternoon and asked her if she would like to dine with him that night. Short notice, but Laura decided that on this one she didn't care if she appeared over-eager or lacking a social life: she agreed and took his address. He would cook for her.

His apartment, though small, was meticulously appointed. There were excellent mood lights, there were comfy pieces of furniture sized just right for two, there was an awe-inspiring sound system along with an enormous collection of CDs. And then there was, of course, the easel on which was carefully placed a single Enrique painting. "I concentrate on one thing at a time," he'd said staring deeply into her eyes. Later while he was in the bathroom she looked at it closely and noticed that it was covered with a fine film of dust.

Enrique made Pollo al Tomate mit Peanut Sauce, whose name and even culinary derivation Laura suspected mirrored the confusion in old Enrique's cultural heritage. He served it with a quite decent Italian wine. After they'd eaten, Enrique led her onto his fabric-draped rolled up futon/couch and settled them in with their glasses. Then he began to speak about authenticity, integrity and shared experience as it related to his art. Laura managed a whole lot of understanding "yeahp, yeahp, well of COURSE"s and even put in a few recitals of his earlier points to show her keenness and their shared sensibility.

Enrique looked at her finally, gave a big sigh and rounded his eyes in that sort of captivating, charming little way he had. "I've never met anybody like you," he said quietly, warmly. Laura smiled, but felt as if something were wrong, something a bit off. He was leaning back on his futon, not in the least near her. "I would like to see more of you," he had said without much of an accent.

"I'd like that," she'd said, but her voice had come out all wrong. Warbly and cracked. She cleared her throat and started to say something, but then stopped. Enrique had flipped a light on.

Laura told Trish she was in love and being tortured. Trish, generously, refrained from telling her friend she'd warned her. She tried to convince Laura that this was simply the illusion created by the unimportant passing over she was experiencing from this buffoon. Laura said, "Okay, so maybe that's true. Now what."

"Okay, point. You've got a point," Trish said. "But look, just keep in mind what a dufe he is and you'll....Yeah," she said as if convincing herself of something dubious, "you'll come to your senses. Time, you know?."

"He's not such a dufus," Laura tried.

"Meester Central American, slash Connecticut Republican, slash Earnest Painter slash Womanizer slash P.C.--"

"No, no, it's called Post-Modern. Uhm, he's Contemporary, you know?" Laura said, pleased with her solution.

"Look, it'd be that if he didn't have this rave about purity. His act might have worked if he'd had a better screenwriter--"

"I don't even care if he is stupid. If I could just sleep with him once," Laura said, "one time and I could get over this." But then she had stopped talking to Trish about it. Trish was beginning to glaze over and look a little sad whenever Enrique's name popped into their conversation. As if it were a decided thing. A named item. Filed.

Enrique was appearing less and less astounded with Laura's listening skills and made fewer invitations without a lot of hinting on her part. He seemed to be turning inward a little—as far as that was possible which was, admittedly, not a lot. On top of that, his accent had all but disappeared. He hardly ever called Laura, and was even beginning to claim his message machine was malfunctioning. During a period particularly dry of phone calls from him, she had commissioned the bathroom mosaic.

Laura was beginning to feel some breeze on her face. There might not have been wind; it could have been from her own movement through the air. She noticed that her bag had gotten away from her and was involved in its own spiral flight spilling a book here, a few pens there, some tampons, her walkman. Her hair had come loose from the barrette she'd stuck in it this morning. It seemed to be getting darker out and the dim and sparse lights on the surplus shops and stuffed accessory booths were beginning to blink on.

While Enrique worked in the bathroom, Laura lay on her bed. She listened to him talk on the phone. She heard him say the same things over and over to at least three different women. She heard this and she told him, inside, that it was okay. She told him she only wanted his touch, his mass, his scent, his temperature. He usually showed up right after 1:00 and stayed until just before 6:00. Laura even suspected that he didn't actually work the whole time he was on the phone. During particularly sensitive intervals in his conversations she noticed that the scraping noises and tinkling from his bag of tiles would stop.

After he left, Laura would sit in there on the toilet seat and just be with the thing. It was...it was the color of concrete. His method involved laying down varicolored tiles in a random, bursting sort of non-pattern and then working a layer of cement over it, allowing only spots and cracks of color to show through. It could have been deep. It was most definitely unattractive. On that Thursday, which made it—what—yesterday, Laura had uncorked her second bottle of wine leaning against the toilet. It wasn't terribly comfortable, but she'd felt good being in the bathroom. She didn't trust the rest of her apartment anymore, not really. She stared at the thing and it seemed to move a little. Not dramatically, just sort of back and forth, rocking a bit. Staring at his work, abandoned like this, unfinished, she began to understand that she would never see him again after he'd completed it and she'd paid him. He said perhaps four words to her a day. He would mumble a greeting as he came in, and then usually tell the floor in her bedroom that he would be leaving.

Laura concentrated. She tried to figure it all out. It was just one act. One afternoon from him. Nothing more. She thought he was afraid she would want more from him. Want his heart. Laura would concentrate on what it was about this wanting that made her feel so hollow, so diminished. She'd bestowed him with a power that left her wide open, while he seemed burdened with her watchfulness, her willingness.

Friday afternoon came. When Enrique rang her buzzer, Laura was already standing at the door. She'd been walking around her apartment. She'd had a drink. Enrique pushed the opened door to her apartment in, and without looking up at her, he shut it behind him and walked straight into her bathroom.

Laura spent the first hour he was there wondering whether she would actually have the nerve to do it. But she had another drink so it became more and more likely. More and more the only solution. Enrique didn't even bring the phone into the bathroom that day. He shut the door and there was a lot of quiet in there.

At four o'clock Laura got ready. She smoothed her sheets, she pulled the shades, she put on her make-out tape from college, she sprayed her hair up and back in a wind-blown—that sort of animal-look, she put on lipstick, she took off all her clothes and settled herself against the pillows arranging her duvet around her legs and torso, fluffing it up the way display tissue surrounds a gift in an advertisement. Then she called his name.

There seemed to be a halting in Laura's trajectory. The landscape stopped moving and lights seemed to burn more steadily, dully. Laura's hair slowly lay back down on her head, following gravity again. Her bag was on the ground. She was curved slightly and on one side, parallel to the earth. Laura began to fall down.

As soon as the door to her bathroom swung open, Laura knew she'd made a terrible, terrible mistake. She opened her mouth and gasped as if she were Enrique and he were some drunk laid out buck naked in tangled sheets for no clear reason.

Laura fell faster than she'd risen. Her hair lifted again and her coat and jacket let in cold air from below as she went. The Continental had moved forward far enough that the windshield glinted just beneath her. It looked like water. She'd fall into water. She could see the hands of the faceless driver stuck forward onto the steering wheel as she descended. It got darker.