Her face had a hardness so stiff one believed it was soft. The boy had always wanted to touch the stone statue that stood immovable in front of the World Bank building. Without his conscious awareness, she had come to occupy all his thoughts. He did not understand the emotion that he always felt while standing there. Whenever he looked up at her figure, though, it would take all his boyish strength to look away. The statue was of a girl. Just a simple girl. She had a wreath on her head, a skirt perpetually flowing in imaginary winds, and her leg bent backward as if she were about to leap. Yet it was her mouth that had lingered in his mind. She was concentrating on something that brought her joy. Her mouth was upturned. Not in a full smile, but in the shadow of one. It was the promise of a smile.

He was a man now, so he quickly averted his eyes. He was there for a job at the bank, and he knew that for a man to love a statue was ridiculous. When people had asked him why he chose to study finance, he said “To be a banker.” They pushed. He shrugged. He had no answer for his love of banks. It simply felt right, like going home after a trek around the world. It would not be until his middle years that he finally identified the source of his love for that bank.

The boy was tall but not imposing, lean but not skinny, with two long lines that curved from the top of his forehead down in a backwards L. The lines crashed at the tip of his chin, causing a slight protrusion like a newly forming volcano. Women seemed to think his face handsome, and his chin cute. But he rarely noticed. Upon reaching the front of the bank, his long neck bent backwards to stare up at the high rise building he was about to enter. This was a good day, he told himself.

He had been repeating that mantra over and over again since he awoke that morning. After repeating it once more, he could feel the statue’s eyes boring into the back of his skull. He peeked behind him and then he turned his back on the young girl and entered the marble atrium.

Here he felt that he was leaving something behind. A bead of sweat fell from his forehead. He wiped it away with his sleeve. And then, realizing his folly he skittishly peered at all the blank visages bustling over the marble floors of the bank. Behind him the glass door opened and closed like some indefatigable automaton. Everyone was watching what he would do. Or so the boy thought.

He had been repeating that mantra over and over again since he awoke that morning.

At this moment, he knew he should be running. He should leave this marble and glass fortress and escape before it was too late. This could not be his life. It belonged to the statue. Just move nearer to her, he told himself. All will be well. All will be right.

Lifting his head up, he saw the girl. He lost his balance. Her raven black hair curved around the white of her ear. The moment she saw him, she smiled. It was not the promise of a smile, but a full blossomed one. It was the smile not of strangers, but of bedmates first waking to greet one another. Her face was not a hardness that appeared soft, but a softness he knew to be very real.

As he approached the girl who sat behind the front desk, he moved further away from the statue. It would not be until many years later that he would realize something important in that first moment when he saw her. In that moment nothing else existed, all he could think about was the girl smiling at him. Had someone told him that in growing up, we must leave something behind, he would have scoffed. But years later, he would have grinned in agreement.

And at that very moment, behind the marble walls, behind the glass doors, over the concrete steps, near the stream of water in the well, stood the statue of a young girl. And approaching her was a young boy who could not stop staring at her.

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