This is not the kind of longing where you sit on a park bench in the rain, smoking cigarettes as the beads of water roll down your face. And this certainly isn't the kind where you sit cross-legged in front of the couch and lick butterscotch from the backs of spoons while friends clear away the empty tulip glasses. This is the kind where you wake up alone on a Saturday morning and lean over a pile of sheets to look out a space in the blinds. Shadows from the day's early light cover the courtyard below. Winter's barren tree branches are pointing up at you. For a moment, this morning seems just like the morning you stared out the window while she, stretching her arms over her head, was lying in the bed behind you. The wind that day was bending tree limbs downward as people below you struggled to push their way out of their front doors. "I have to laugh," you said, "all these people looking so intent on being somewhere else." And while you paused for a moment to watch them, her toes began to drag up the backs of your calves, beckoning you away from the window. When you turned, you saw her bare legs sliding out from the covers and moving like snakes over the sheets. Pulling lightly at the base of her covers you began to inch them downward, and for a few moments she clasped them firmly under her armpits, looking up at you slyly before letting them slip away. "I have to laugh," you said, leaning closer, "all those people down there with somewhere to go."