John and I first met in an aisle of a snack shop run by a blind man named Ray. By the time we got to the register, we were deep in conversation. Ray handed me my change and said, “That guy is smitten with you.” Embarrassed, John and I went our separate ways. The next morning I returned to the snack shop. “Thank God,” Ray muttered when I walked in. “Your new man has been standing by the juice for ten minutes. It don’t take that long to pick out juice.”
I was a twenty-three-year-old transplant who didn’t know anyone in Atlanta, having just moved there for a position in a federal agency. John was a year younger and still lived in his hometown forty miles outside the city, commuting to his job as an intern in the federal courts. We were young and naive, but our chemistry was immediate, powerful, and evident to everyone who knew us.
