by Ken Goldman

You know that feeling you get when you're sucked into the engine of a turbo Boeing 747 just as it's getting revved up, and all at once your guts are yanked right through every pore of your body in a gelatinous goop? That's the way I felt when I first saw Toby Fishbein on the corner of 5th and Winthrop Street in a soaking downpour waiting for the 43 bus one stormy Friday last August. Her hair lay in wet ringlets over her nose and she looked like a soggy sheep dog. From that moment I knew that I could not live another minute without her.

"Would you like to come under my umbrella?" I asked, sharing the same puddle in which she stood.

She looked at me and wiped a wet strand of hair from her eyes. "But you don't have an umbrella."

"I have one at home," I said. "We could go get it."

Smooth.

"Listen," she added without a trace of a smile. "I'm cold and I'm wet, and if this is your attempt at a pick-up, I repeat, I'm cold and I'm wet."

Of course she was cold and wet. Any fool could see she was cold and wet. But I could play her game.

"Well, so am I! " I answered. "What are the chances of something like that happening to both of us? But I believe everything happens for a reason. Take this rain, for example. There's a kind of truth in the rain, don't you think? Your eye make-up is dripping into your nose and you look pretty awful spitting strands of hair out of your mouth. And forget personality. This is the real you. Admit it, you never would have been this obnoxious to me on a sunny day."

She looked at me as if I had just mugged her grandmother. "Listen. I really make it a point not to talk to psychopaths, regardless of weather conditions."

This was my cue that introductions were in order. I extended my hand, and she looked at it as if I had offered her a fistful of spiders. But I enjoy a challenge. "My name is Barry Blinderman, and if you tell me you're married or engaged I might have to throw myself in front of that bus you're about to miss," I said as I waved the driver on.

She spun around just in time to see the 43 bus pulling away on my signal, splashing a wall of water into her face as it went.

"Damn! Oh, damn! That's great! That's just perfect! There won't be another bus for an hour!" she said, spinning back toward me. "Thanks. Thanks a lot . . ."

"Barry," I repeated. "You're welcome. And you're . . .?"

". . . leaving!" she answered.

And so we went for coffee. Well, actually she went and I followed her. She ducked into this little coffee shop called Moxie's off Winthrop Avenue, the kind of place that had been constructed for the sole purpose of welcoming young lovers from out of the rain. After she had taken a few sips from her cup she calmed down enough to tell me her name was Toby Fishbein, that she really meant no disrespect, but that I was beginning to give her a headache and she could not be held responsible if suddenly she broke out screaming. She promised that if I would go away immediately she would not call for the police for at least three minutes after I had left.

I decided to make it easy for her. I called a nearby police officer over and instructed him that this woman at my table had made me an offer I simply could not accept and that she had a complaint she wanted to register.

It might have been raining like crazy outside, but when Toby smiled after I said that, inside Moxie's the sun shone brightly.

Of course some of that sunshine dispersed a little when Toby then asked the officer to escort me from our table. She politely declined his suggestion that she press charges. It didn't help at all when I offered to pay for his doughnut.

Just like Bogie and Bacall . . .

"It was nice talking with you," I called to Toby as the man in blue tugged at my elbow. "Can we have dinner together sometime?"

"When pigs learn to tap dance," she answered.

Then there is hope, I thought.

I believe in the power of love. I believe that if you love strongly enough and if your love is genuine and unwavering in its devotion, then eventually that love will be returned. That's what I believe. It's a pretty good theory, too, although so far it seems to work only with dogs.

Time is a slow mover when you're away from a loved one, and it seemed to come to a dead halt while we were apart. But I had waited long enough. I made the call.

"How did you get my number?" Toby asked when I rang her up ninety-three minutes after I had left her in the coffee shop. "It's unlisted! It's always been unlisted!"

"I know," I explained, "But I figured that if you took the 43 bus then you must live in Riverdale, and so I stopped into the Riverdale High School year book office on my way home and I checked all the year books from the last ten years. There you were, right in the class of '88. You know, those braces really seemed to do the trick . . ."