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quick, and they didn’t need anything more because they dwelled in a bubble of passion.
    They met during her last semester of graduate school at Columbia. She was studying at the library, and at some point she looked up and saw a Japanese man sitting across from her, the desk light dancing in his thick glasses. His round face, the stubble encircling his soft, gentle lips. His eyes were playful, full of delight. He dressed well, with a blue-and-white striped suit coat, a white shirt, and no tie. That first electric charge when their hands brushed, reaching for the same book, the title of which she can’t recall. “Sumimasen,” he said. She told him in his language that she, too, was sorry, but not that sorry. It was completely out of character, and she was about to apologize again, earnestly, but his face lit up with the most glorious smile, a smile just for her.
    He was a chemist, in the United States on a full scholarship. He also spoke fluent French and loved Japanese literature and poetry.
    â€œI can help you with your Japanese,” he said, reaching over and touching her hair. That first gesture, so full of impulsive desire.
    They ended up at a hotel that first night. But he wasn’t wealthy and neither was she, and they both had dorm rooms and roommates, so their spot became the library basement, beneath the stairwell, a hidden storage room. No sign on the door, the room was musty and stuffed with discarded old chairs and tables covered in white sheets. At the level of the sidewalk, a dirty window let in murky light. They could hear footsteps above them and muffled voices, as if the world existed above their heads and they’d sunk, with all the other forgotten things, underwater.
    Though the door locked from the inside, they couldn’t be sure no one possessed a key, so they rarely exchanged words, rarely made a sound. There was that, the thrill of possibly getting caught. But also him, his hunger for her, the way he tasted her. And more surprising, her hunger for him. She didn’t know she had that inside, a consuming craving that once sated needed only moments to reignite. As the hour of their meeting approached, her entire body quivered with anticipation, as if every cell yearned for his body.
    Two lives, for months she led two lives, a studious, driven student, and in the dingy storage room, stretched out on the table, his hands and mouth electrifying her, she became something she’d never been before.
    Those early months of the courtship, he fervently pursued her, writing her a steady stream of haiku. She’d reach into her drawer and find one. Or open the refrigerator or a cupboard. Once she found one in her shoe. For the longest time, she carried one in her purse, Water in the brook/No chill in the soft spring air/ Time to wet our feet, along with a pair of his thin black socks. She loved him, and even if that love eventually faded, it never disappeared completely. Brigitte was wrong when she accused Hanne of never loving him, not loving anyone.
    Now she climbs the stairs to the second floor, where they were married. It’s as she remembered. Sunlight streams in through the large windows, onto the white marble floors, and the light bounces up, illuminating the white walls and ceiling. If such a thing as heaven exists, she thinks it should be like this–so light, so airy, except for the muffled sound of a man shouting, bringing her quickly back to earth. She opens a big wooden door and there he is, a short, squat man shaped like a bowling ball, bellowing into a microphone. Though she’d prefer a quieter place, rows of wooden pews are nearly empty, inviting her to rest her sore feet.
    In the front of the room, eleven men and women sit in a half circle, each with his or her own microphone, waiting for the squat man to end his tirade. City officials of some kind. She doesn’t follow local politics, nor does she intend to now. She has a bench to herself, she’s