The Queen of Sheba

He appeared at the food co-op like an airplane. Dark fuselage composed of sharp angles, black ink on graphic paper, the snapping end of a whip breaking the sound barrier. He was wearing a bridge coat. In essence, a peacoat that extended to his thighs, six buttons in military rows, the shoulder line cut like the edge of a cliff. The man suited the coat well. The jaw was stark and the height a little more than six feet tall. Ever the seamstress’s daughter, she appreciated a man who knew how to pick a hemline that suited his body. One inch too high or too low, and she would have dismissed him as an idiot.

She stared at the peak lapels for a moment before settling on his face. He seemed overly focused on his task, which meant that he had noticed her as well. His hand was fleeting from one clementine to the next, pausing over the glossiest ones. She could tell he liked his fruit firm, their thick peels unmarred. Each time he leaned over the stand, she would catch a puff of cologne, sweet like the molding pomanders on her Christmas tree. Unlike him, she preferred her citrus thin-skinned, knowing from experience that they were juicier. She grabbed a plump one on top of the pile, peeled it, and thoughtfully chewed on the fruit.

I was right.

With her sticky hand, she stuck the remnants deep inside her pocket, where her fingers grazed the sharp edges of her house keys. They were sticky, too. For a moment, she watched people come and go in the produce aisle. As expected, there was a lot of fleece. Patagonia, North Face, REI. A few wool coats, too, the J. Crew kind. Decent price point, good structure. Over there, a man in a Canada Goose parka, his hood trimmed with coyote fur. A bold choice. She was fairly certain a third of the co-op staff were standing members of PETA. Behind the cashiers, the windows were caked with snow. The blizzard was still going strong and daylight was gray.

“My first winter coat, my own, and not a hand-me-down, was hot pink,” she told him later over Vietnamese coffee. “I was so proud of it I bought a matching lipstick color and wore it to class every day. I was twelve.”

He laughed at her anecdote, and her eyes strayed again to the front buttons of his coat. Everything was tucked away under the rigid pane of melton wool, the same kind of wool used in the crimson jackets for fox hunting. She licked the condensed milk off her spoon. Find the fox, skin the fox, get a new trim for your coat if you were into that kind of thing. Red on red on red.

His really was a beautiful garment. A work of architecture, angular yet fluid, designed to project power at ease. Had she been a cat, she would have scraped her nails up and down that rough fabric. It would have produced a wonderful, felty sound.

“My second coat,” she continued, “I asked my mother to make it for me because I had found this gorgeous rust-colored fabric. It ended up looking like a big Cheeto.”

This time when he laughed, she watched his mouth move, the stretching of his lips, the flattening of his tongue. White teeth, like good soldiers, in even rows, upright, gleaming whenever he laughed or smiled. The coat was not merely an illusion, she mused, even his bones were orderly. His mirth, perfectly timed, perfectly pitched.

“Do you like Berlioz?” she asked.

“Is that a band?”

“Composer. Symphonie fantastique.”

“I know Mozart. Maybe? Did he wear a wig?”

Laugh, teeth, soldiers, coat. The impeccable battalion of his person marched in unison.

“It’s stuck in my head,” she said. “I was at the Center of the Arts earlier.”

He nodded, shivering. They had been seated too close to the door by the hostess. Every time customers came inside the small restaurant, a cold gust of wind would blow his paper napkins off the table, and...