On our special date in 1978, Bim eagerly unlocks the door to his newly rented Greenwich Village studio. Mick and Keith waft from the stereo. Bim drops my coat on the futon and points me towards the rocking chair across the brick fireplace. Above my wine glass rim I catch the same sparkle in his eyes that greeted me upon pick-up at my family’s Briarwood apartment. We toast, and I watch him light a log. Voila! “The flames are so even!” I gasp. Bim laughs with pride. The new 24-hour Korean deli on Hudson sells Duraflame instead of wood. “You don’t have to rub two sticks together or something?” Who knows about fireplaces in the tropics anyway? Flames ignite, quickly, with a single strike of a match.

Over the six months since our introductions at a Brooklyn house party, Bim and I have grown close. On weekends we shoot hoops at Cunningham Park. On weekdays we lunch by the Equitable Life Assurance Company where we both work, and chat after hours on one of the stone benches overlooking Rockefeller Center’s skating rink. About everything and anything.

The fire crackles.

“I have a plan!” Bim leans close. “Move to the Village, check. Quit day job, drive a cab, check. Enter Columbia night school, check. Get in at a top law school at 29, Wall Street at 34, make some real money. Buy a penthouse along Central Park...”

“Ay, naku!” I cup his cheek and smile, happily for him, for us.

“I’m not done yet! Retire early, move back to the Philippines with an American degree and earn US dollars! You want to go back, too, right?”

“Huh? And quit my glamorous insurance job?” Two years, tops! I announced to my weeping Manila cousins before boarding TWA bound for New York. I couldn’t imagine a permanent home away from my birthplace.

“My plan is fool-proof!” He is so sure. Though I saw him first, was attracted to him first; his lanky build sexily framed with John Lennon spectacles and buttoned-down Brooks Brothers under soft blue cashmere. His smiling countenance exuded confidence in fluent English and Pilipino—importantly, his values fit Dad’s top directive: Only date a Filipino. Not like that Jose Rizal guy, a national hero who married a colonizing Spaniard.

I pre-emptively asked him out. Bim is a great listener, carries no judgment. With Bim I talk nonstop. Laugh a lot. He said yes to an exclusive relationship; but called a week later to break it off; by the lobby elevator banks: “I think we should take time to cool off.” Shocked, I moped for a few hours before he rang me up. “Can we go on a date?” that is, if and when I wasn’t feeling too pissed off at him, he asked. When I agreed to meet again, Bim explained he was uncomfortable with the idea of being the pursued and had to act to reverse that dynamic.

“You should consider moving out.” he repositions the iron screen, as we watch flames engulf the three-hour log. A transfer of deep warmth overtakes my body. For a Filipina, leaving family before marriage was a radical no-no; but Bim unfailingly excites my spirits. “Hungry?” He clinks my glass. “Let’s try the sushi place down the block. Are you with me in my plan?”

“In with what? Raw fish?” My taste buds have ventured into uncooked fish territory since Bim took me out for Japanese food midtown; apparently a similar garden restaurant sprouted downtown. Just wash down each morsel with white wine. Lots of white wine. “What about the fire?”

“The restaurant’s right down the block.” Bim hears me and reappears from the bathroom with a bucket to douse the fire. But smoke slowly fills the room, and Bim takes to tong to chop the burning log. The fireplace remains fully aglow.

I rush to open windows, coughing. “This fire won’t quit!” He is shouting. My hands flail to divert the smoke.

Bim rematerializes through the haze. With a piece of cardboard he scoops fiery chunks he then drops into bath water. With tong he pokes to drown the lit pieces.

I nearly choke from smoke; laughing; stupefied. A sea of little flames float on tub water. “Break it up! Break it up!

“Damn it! Damn it!” With the same cardboard, Bim skims the fiery water and, without pausing flushes the chemical flames down down into New York City’s underbelly.

Tired and disheveled but undeterred, we don our coats and stand for a few minutes to inhale cool air in front of 323 West 4th Street. The sound of screeching tires and fire sirens have given way to downtown’s Saturday revelry. We walk the cobbled night streets hand-in-hand, kiss and cuddle; in search of sushi.