She was tall and strong and yet lithe and nubile. Her waistline was smooth, elegant, feline. It was a joy to see her move, stretch. We were close to the MIT campus, lounging on the steps of familiar buildings. The weather was gorgeous as it can be only in dreams. At one point we sat in front of a door of a grocery shop that used to be a popular café, and an old woman working there asked us to leave. Which we did, like kids, without a word, without much ado.

She was of Montenegrin origin. I think it was her father who was from an old family from the coast of Montenegro. Although thoroughly American, she spoke the old language perfectly. From time to time, she would use an apt expression that often surprised me. I cannot be sure about her age, but she was twenty-six or twenty-seven. Approaching fifty-four, I was considerably older. She had a boyfriend, a young man roughly her age with beautiful golden hair, but it was clear she was deeply in love with me. Our age difference was not an issue for her, but we both knew it would be an issue for her father, her parents. I knew it would become an issue for her, too, years later.

We knew each other for a year or two, but this was the first time we openly talked about us as a couple. She was a student and I a teacher at MIT, which made it difficult to feel comfortable about feelings we felt for each other. This was the first time we did not avoid talking about love and marriage. Perhaps she was close to graduating, or I was close to leaving MIT. I am not sure about either of the two, though. At any rate, we were quite open about our behavior in public. I would hold her, caress her, and she would press herself against me, touch me here and there. I remember that she even touched my erect penis at some point when we were sitting in a shady place protected from view. I accepted her tender fingers as a sign of everlasting love rather than as something having to do with lovemaking, let alone sex. We were like one even though we had not made love yet. We knew we would make love soon, and I was already anticipating her body against mine. I could already feel her from the inside.

At some point she used a funny Montenegrin expression I had never heard before. “You let the hare into the house,” she said with approval, with appreciation. I must have said something that allowed for the possibility that we would move in together, get married, have a family. A wild idea was domesticated now that I had ventured it, let it out. We were on a new course. Our lives had suddenly changed. New vistas opened in front of us. Our happiness was complete although we knew there would be many complications on the way. One of them was that I was double her age. This is something she apparently could not care less about, but I knew she eventually would consider it, experience it, start worrying about it herself. Her father, her parents, would make sure of that.

Few dreams are as blissful as this one had been. Relishing the present, we felt the future on our skins, in our veins. Loving each other without remainder, we suspended all disbelief for the time being. The bliss was nearly complete, nearly perfect. Except for our age—that is, her oblivion to our considerable age difference. Deep in my heart, I knew this was a problem we could not neglect for too long.