La Traviata had been nothing short of mesmerizing.
“Did you really like it?” Cheryl said as we left the opera house.
“Are you kidding? It was the classic love story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy finds girl. Girl dies of consumption in the third act. It doesn’t get any more romantic than that.”
She took my arm, and we walked through the plaza and stopped in front of the Revson Fountain, one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks.
“Turn around,” she said.
I turned, and I was facing the opera house. It was like a cathedral with its crystal chandeliers lighting up the Chagall murals on the inside and the five soaring floor-to-ceiling arched windows on the outside. The fountain was putting on its own show with multicolored lighting effects and a perfectly choreographed water ballet.
“I take it back,” I said. “This is even more romantic than a girl dying of consumption.”
“People come from all over the world just to stand where we’re standing right now,” Cheryl said.
I turned to face her and put my arms around her waist. “It just might be the best place in all of New York for a first kiss.”
She leaned in even closer. “You may be right,” she whispered.
Our lips met and lingered while the water danced around us and covered us with a fine mist.
“I live right here on the Upper West Side,” Cheryl said. “Walking distance.”
“Would you like a police escort?”
“Definitely. Some of these operagoers look menacing.”
We walked uptown to Lincoln Towers, a sprawling complex of six high-rise apartment buildings on West End Avenue. It was yet another New York City neighborhood where most cops can’t afford to live.
“I got the condo. Fred got the bimbo,” she said, reading my mind.
We stood in the shadows, away from the bright lights of her lobby. I wrapped my arms around her. She was exotically beautiful, her skin was soft and warm, and the lingering traces of her perfume set every male hormone in my body on point.
We kissed. The second kiss was longer, sweeter, and even more electric than the first.
“Thank you,” she said. “I had a wonderful evening.”
“Me too. Except for the part where I didn’t get to pay for dinner.”
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll let you buy me breakfast tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I said. “Are you really sure you want to trek over to the East Side and have breakfast with a bunch of cops at Gerri’s Diner on a Sunday?”
“No,” she said, taking me by the hand and walking me toward the lobby. “I have a better idea.”
She certainly did. Much, much better.
But that’s a whole other story.