in Berlin, in 1904.  He's the son of the actress Ellen Terry; he's a theatre designer and impossible to work with.  He meets Isadora backstage that night, and they become lovers.

 

Magic Hour, Brooklyn.  The view from Jeffrey and Liza's garden in Cobble Hill, Gowanus Canal-adjacent.

 

The two of you are on the F train heading back to Brooklyn.  You are letting her play with your gameboy -- Tetrus? I don't know anything about these handheld computer games -- and she is promptly in the grip of it, trying to beat your score while you manage a banter no girl with any sense should be able to resist -- a juggling act of cool and detached, ironic and adoring, vulnerable and charmingly goofy -- but she keeps her head down, resisting, engrossed in the game, all thumb action. 

You are both young, and while her features are hidden beneath a knit cap pulled down low against you, you have that young New Yorker's classic Proletariat Worker look, shaved head and stubbled jaw and large observant eyes.  Not tall, but not letting it hold you back.  You have wit and charm enough for both of you, and untapped sources of determination.  You are sure of yourself.  Not afraid to look foolish.  You are the hot sexy version of the Travelocity Gnome. 

"We're at Jay Street," she murmurs without looking up.
"Why yes indeed we are," you say as though encouraging any sign of intelligence from this creature in your charge, "because they made the announcement in fact, which is lucky for you, with the not looking up and all and being so busy trying to beat my score thing going on."
She mumbles something you lean in helpfully to catch.
"Yes, I said I would let you try it," you answer.  "For, as I seem to recall, like, a minute, I said you could."
Another murmur.
"Apparently so," you reply.
She mumbles something else.  And then, with maybe a hint of surrender and admiration, "you're a genius," she says.

I have been feeling she's been giving you too much of a hard time, and so I can't help smiling.  Score.  You realize I've been listening.  You register my reaction.

"That was nice," you say to me, with a little bit of wonder -- ironic wonder -- attached.
I nod.
"Sweet," you suggest.
I nod again.  "It was sweet," I concur.
"Charming even," you ask and I agree with this interpretation as well.
"He heard what you said," you lean down to tell her, but she doesn't look up, too busy with the game and perhaps even a little more concentration now that you've brought in an audience.  Now that you're bringing in evidence.
"He heard what you said," you repeat.  "It was charming, kind, sweet." You list the qualities and look to me again for reinforcement.  There is a tiny movement from the knit cap next to you.  I nod again to show my support and even bunch the corners of my mouth up in a "gotta admit it, you're right" expression of concurrence.

As the train slows for Bergen Street, she peeks up surrepticiously.  Out of curiosity, to check me out.  She is small and delicate and smart and beautiful.  I mean she has that young glow of a Kate Beckinsale, and the big brown eyes of an Ann Hathaway, and everything else and I see what you've been seeing.  For a fraction of a second I see what you see.  I even get a glimpse of what she thinks when she looks at you.  Which she does then.  She looks at you, turning away from me and taking your hand in her little mittened one.  Giving you back your game.

It's a funny moment.  The sound of the announcement, all the sounds fall away and I see a lot of things shimmering, past and present, unwritten and yet to be and might have been, in the slowing of the train and the lights and the people and time itself is shifting, all of us getting ready for the next moment, the next appointment or place.  It's like getting a glimpse of something magical about to happen.

I want to tell you both to hold on to each other, to not give up and be brave and be happy.  He will be a jerk, I want to tell her, becuase I know you will, and I want to warn you what you must already know, that she will hold a piece of herself away from you, she will have secrets she will be afraid to share.  It could take years.  But it won't matter if you don't let it.  Just never let her go.

"Have a good night," you say, to be polite to a stranger you've allowed to share a little passing moment in your life.  I nod.  There is nothing I can say that will not sound strange.  You are every boy who's ever been in love, and she is every girl.  And you are both doing a terrific job, I want to say.  Just don't let anyone or anything stop you.  Not even each other. 

"It seems to me then," W. G. Sebald writes in "Austerlitz," "as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last... Might it not be that we have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time?"