We stood on 3rd Avenue, the snow sheeting down, and I wondered how anybody could think about getting naked in this weather. Sandi and I stood on the movie line, like other couples swathed in layer after layer of clothing that almost kept the biting wind from raising goosebumps on us. Gloves, scarves, boots, hats, zipped-up coats and parkas, sweaters, and thick plaid shirts erased any evidence of sexual differentiation. We stamped our feet, stuck our hands deeper into our pockets and prayed the line would start moving faster than the frostbite that, I was sure, was rendering my fingers useless even before I got them into her panties.

Clouds of steaming breath rose into the Saturday darkness. “I hope the Chinese food’s keeping you warm,” I said over the top of my scarf, my breath leaving a damp spot on the edge (I wondered what other damp spots were nearby. Jiminy Christmas I was hornier than usual. Had Sandy slipped something into my General Tsao’s Chicken when I was in the men’s room? Maybe it was her perfume).

“Oh, that wore off a long time ago. I’m relying on internal combustion at this point,” she said, only her eyes visible beneath the mummy-like wrapping.

We’d had two dates so far. We started gingerly, with a get-acquainted lunch after I answered her ad in New York magazine and she called me back. We met at a TGI Friday’s in the lobby of the Empire State Building. We shared the usual first-lunch chit-chat: Her insurance job, my journalism job, my aren’t the rents outrageous, she was nervous about her parents moving to Boca Raton, what’d you major in, where do you go for Passover, isn’t it marvelous we both like off-off-Broadway theater? And we both liked Saturday Night Live. A lot.

“The highlight of my social life in college was Saturday Night Live,” I said. “I had a little nine-inch Panasonic portable TV my mom gave me. My friends and I would sit around and watch it. This is back in the John Belushi days.”

“I love that show!” she said. “Gilda Radner was my favorite. It’s too bad so many of the funny people left.”

“Yeah. You want to know how hard up we were for a sex life at Princeton?” I asked.

“You developed Jane Curtin fantasies?”

“No! We’d count the tampon ads. That constituted our sex lives. Pretty sick, huh?”

“Were you wild and crazy guys?”

“Frustrated and horny. We just wanted to have girlfriends.”

“I would have been your girlfriend, Danny,” she said. Was this a tease? I couldn’t tell. “I bet we would have had fun.”

I edged back in my chair. Talking about girlfriends already? I wanted to edge sex into the conversation, but something a little more serious came up. On a first lunch date!

The next Saturday, we had an early dinner then a movie, coffee and hot apple pie, then a walk to her E. 53rd Street apartment building for more coffee. I quietly scanned her studio lingering debris of a boyfriend, but saw no aftershave bottles or copies of Sports Illustrated in the magazine basket by the pull-down bed. A “Cosmopoliteddy” poster – a teddy bear on a mock Cosmo cover — lent a daffy touch. At midnight we stood in the front door, half in, half out. We embraced, her in a sweater, me in my leather jacket still unzipped before I headed down to the cold, cold subways for the downtown train to Brooklyn. As we pulled apart she noticed a tentpole in my blue jeans.

“You did have a good time, didn’t you?” Sandy said, her voice a blend of a purr and petulance.

“Can’t you tell?” I grinned, pulling her closer again.

“You’ll give me good dreams.”

“Wet dreams, I hope.”

“Naughty boy. Don’t let any Brooklyn girls grab you.”

“All for you my sweet.”

I swooned as the train clanked downtown. Frigid New Yorkers flipped through the early edition of the “Times” and avoided eye contact. A stinky bum snored and sputtered in the corner. I didn’t notice — I was looking backward to Sandi’s apartment. I could feel the curve of her body against my sweater, her perfume, holding her a foot away and looking into those hazel eyes ringed in delicate mascara. I hadn’t had sex – with a woman, anyway – in over six months. I longed for the warmth, the smells, the shock of a new body before the damned complications and emotions cluttered the pure physical sensation. I liked Sandi, with her Cosmo Girl lifestyle and the Long Island honk of a voice, combined with a driving career sense. Maybe, I thought, I could manage the relationship, keep it simmering on “like a lot” without slipping a notch into “love and live together.” Not yet, anyway.

At work on Monday my email binged with a message from Sandi.