Mario

She rode in the elevator in the company of a boy replete with black beret, a goatee, and a bulging bag slung over his right shoulder.

"Been thieving again, have you," she asked, and he said, "Yes." He shifted the bag to his other shoulder.

Later she found out he was Mario. She wrote him letters. They began in media res, as if they'd always known each other. She signed them with a silent "k."

He received the mystery untroubled. One night a duet burst into bloom beneath his window: Ave Mario. He lit a cigarette and basked. He did not know the singers: Mr. Wit and the Lady of Shalot. It hardly mattered, for they went by a dozen other names. They lived to elude each other. They ran a word harem out of their pockets and called themselves the secretaries of men's hearts.

He fell in with their crowd.