[...] in announcing one of the last songs he said, “This is for the lonely lady in black,” and pointed straight at me. I raised my hand and waved a little in response. Our relationship had begun.

Sally and I often had nights like this when we just went out on the town; it could be just the two of us or we might make some calls to people who would join us as the night progressed, not looking for beer or music or conversation with all these strangers we kept running into but rather the feeling of a certain kind of freedom, and if we’d been other people who lived elsewhere we might have gone fishing in search of that same feeling, we might have jumped naked into the ocean and ended the night next to each other on a rocky beach, gazing at the horizon. [...]