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little imps with attitude: windows placed strategically to suggest faces, rope bridges suspended between each pair suggesting dance partners who might burst into movement at any moment. Sturdy ladders twisted around and led inside each building up to a porthole, out of which a child could gleefully slide shrieking to the padded ground below. A protective, slightly raised circle of bleachers enclosed the playground like a hug.
    The project had been Ellie’s baby. Rob had been hearing about it as long as he had known her. He had seen her sketches, had heard her talk about the project, but she had wanted him to wait to see it until the playground was officially open and put toward its intended use. Kids now jumped and swung, clambered and climbed on the structures that had sprung from Ellie’s research and imagination, while their mothers, fathers, nannies, and siblings reclined on ergonomically designed benches that offered comfortable views of the entire park.
    “Wow. Baby, it’s amazing.” Rob’s admiration was genuine. She showed him around, delighted with his reaction, reminding him excitedly of things he had seen in the design phase and showing him how, now, they were manifest.
    Rob was suffused with love for her. She had put her mind and heart, time and energy, into creating this safe harbor. They found themselves kissing deeply, oblivious for a moment to the world around them. Then they parted lips, foreheads still touching, bodies close.
    “Let’s go.”

    They held hands tightly as they exited the park. Rob steered Ellie away from the three men walking none too steadily toward them. Well fed and sleek, with two-hundred-dollar haircuts and Brooks Brothers attire, the trio emitted an air of entitlement and a waft of lunchtime gin martinis. They were like a herd of fat cows, in the wholesale complacency of their own luxurious, cud-chewing existence. They pivoted to give Ellie a pathetically unsubtle and lascivious once-over twice.
    Then one of them, prematurely thinning hair and a jaunty polka-dotted silk pocket square, locked his gaze on Rob.
    “Kevin?” the man asked, incredulous.
    Rob looked directly at the man for the first time. For an instant Rob froze, his body stilled to a single heartbeat.
    “You’ve mistaken me for someone else,” Rob answered, trying to move past them. But the man was insistent. Blocked his path. His two companions stopped, waiting, looking, listening.
    “It’s me—Spencer. I never thought I’d see you again!”
    Spencer wavered on his feet, then lurched forward and tightly gripped Rob’s elbow, his fingers pinching.
    Spencer addressed his companions. “This is the guy!” His friends looked mystified. “You know. My best friend from back in the day. The one that I was just telling you about last week?”
    Rob pulled away from Spencer’s grasp. “Like I said, you’re making a mistake.” He draped his arm around Ellie’s shoulder, moving away.
    Spencer said in a stage whisper: “Hey, I get it! You don’t want me to say anything out loud, still on the run!” Then a happy drunken bellow, “But I know it’s you. What are the odds?” he asked his companions. “Isn’t that just the craziest thing?”
    Rob kept his arm around Ellie’s shoulder. They turned the corner.
    “What was that about?” Ellie asked.
    “I have no idea.”
    Rob’s mouth was tight, his face white.
    “Are you sure you didn’t know him?”

    “Of course.” Dismissively, he continued, “He was drunk. I just didn’t like his aggression.” Then, tenderly, “It worries me sometimes, when I think about how vulnerable you are…walking around the city by yourself. After all, it is my job to keep you safe, right?” He pulled her closer to him, and she snuggled in.
    Ellie accepted this explanation. Why shouldn’t she? She was loved, wholly loved, by a man who wanted to take care of her and who had put a ring on her finger to tell the whole world just that.
    They went home and fell on each other