Once I found myself waving goodbye to a girl I'd only met that day. She waved back and it was our first moment together. I walked around a strange city looking at flowers that looked like misspelled words in front of buildings I didn't recognize. I didn't mind, I was leaving that night. In a way, the city doesn't matter because if you've ever been somewhere new then it is all the same except the frosting is different.

She worked at a coffee shop downtown on a corner. One street was clean and lined with stores and the other was dirty and was taken up by a couple of automotive repair shops. The street was boring and nondescript. I'll remember it forever, or at least I'm too old to care. I was walking up that street because that's where it is. So many cities put streets lined with stores so you'll know where to go as if it were a yellow brick road. It makes the boring streets, the ones not highlighted on colorful maps with embellished landmarks, seem to be hidden for a reason. They border where it is and where they want it to be.

This coffee shop, which she later told me was owned by some 'crazy Italians' had a pretty smiling girl in it when I walked by. That was her. She was laughing at a joke I hadn't heard. I was on the wrong side of the clean windows. I rounded the corner to the good clean street and entered. I waited patiently as if I had money and finally I got to the front of the line. I told her I just wanted to meet her she was acting busy at an expresso machine. My girl smiled again, not sure what to say. I told her I wouldn't be there if I hadn't seen her smile. She smiled. All right, she said and told her busy friend she was going to take a break.

I put my heavy pack down next to us at the small circular table. She drank from an oversized cup and looked at me from behind it as a veil when she drank. I told her. She didn't believe me too much, or rather she needed proof. I showed her my journal. It had business cards from cities she'd never been in pasted inside. Drawings of trees she'd never seen and then one thing she did.

"That's a lamppost in Chinatown here, isn't it?" she asked, drinking in her veil.

"Yep. You wanna go to Montana?" I asked her. I looked right at her, it was my only chance.

She wasn't too sure about that but believed me. That was important. She told me she got off work in a couple hours and I should meet her at the library if I wanted to.

"We're going to the library?" I asked.

"Not to study," she smiled, and the most beautiful devil had a melting veil.

She wrote something down in my journal and hopped up to help the busy friend. She touched my shoulder as she walked past me and my pack.

It took me two hours to find the library. I wasn't really looking for it. I walked next to the embellished streets on the brown and boring streets. The roads weren't cobbled and threes seemed to be at a faster rate of losing leaves. Occasionally I sat to give my pack a rest. People would walk by looking for a place to give me change. I would just wave and quote some literary work they'd probably never read.

"I was a man who stood in symbolic relation to the culture and art of my age," I said once. It made the guy shake his head and put his hand and change back into his gray-slacked pocket.

I ate ice cream. I played on the swings and monkey bars. I played ball with kids in the park, all the time looking over a rover I would later see a sunset on.

The two hours went by like a birthday and she was walking up the steps of the large library as I saw her.

She drove me on streets she knew. They were off the path and she was not a good driver. Still though, I was happy to have a ride. Unfamiliar street signs flew above my head like strange-looking birds. The tall buildings were the same everywhere and became smaller as we got closer to the river. I know a spot, she said but that was obvious.

She knew a spot, that was for sure. It was right below my belly button and we watched the river move like an old train past us. She had a blanket and it was spread out in colors against the green. She had a boyfriend, she told my belly button. She laid her head there. I think she was waiting for me. She didn't wait long.

"You didn't come here to talk about your boyfriend."

"No, did you?" the devil asked. Her red hot face came up and kissed up. She opened her eyes to see how sin looked in someone else's eyes. I had a picture of her boyfriend being deflated, laying in the closet until blown up again. I didn't say that.

There was kissing and giggling as the river passed. It became darker and down the river the sun burned a hole right through the trees. We didn't say much during the sunset. She encouraged me to draw it and I did. I was tempted to put her head at the bottom of the drawing but I didn't. She liked the drawing and kissed me. She asked me questions about me and I told her. After awhile I asked her to go to Montana.

"I think you would look good in the Montana air."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I said I didn't know but it was definitely a compliment. She kissed my mouth for the compliment but I was torn about giving any more. I wasn't sure where the train station was but I did know it was far from the river.

"I have to catch a train in about three hours."

"That's plenty of time," she said.

The sky looked red and embering. It was being extinguished and the first star hung above the tree line. The girl was magical. She had knowledge in cosmic unspoken worlds. I laughed in the face of pleasure. She laughed like a devil. We laughed for the same reason but in different ways.

We laughed as we folded the blanket. I made a comment about washing it before she met another traveler. She kept laughing, and said something about never washing it. I didn't talk about Montana after that.

Dark and golden orange streets swept past us. Her radio didn't work and in the silence it was like we were holding our breaths through intersections. We drove past her work, on the good clean street side. It reflected the orange lights. She put her hand on my thigh. It was good.

At the train station we picnicked where the taxis wait for the lost. We ate hummus, carrots, pita, two iced teas and some fruit. It was romantic in a way. In a lot of ways actually, and we threw little carrots at each other, giggling again. We met a cabby who was from West Africa. I wanted to talk to him but I was with a girl. We laughed and he watched us from the end of the paper, stealing some of our good energy. I saw his smile as he flipped pages.

"Well, this is it," I told her. We were standing in front of tall silver train. It was taking me to a new place. She liked me for that, kissed me to prove it and whispered for me to remember the river. I told her I would and walked to the train. One foot up, I looked back. She was still there, waving. I hopped off the train, ripped a flower out of the planter that was between us. The roots and dirt dangled off it. The whole moment was perfect and ridiculous. I kissed her again, handed her the dirty flower. I walked back to the train and called out, "You were the best girlfriend I ever had!" A fat black woman put a white handkerchief to her mouth. It was the most romantic thing she'd ever seen but it made the two of us laugh.