David got off the city bus as sunrise broke through the neighborhood trees. He walked three blocks to his apartment, past the billboard proselytizing ‘See Something, Say Something.’

More out of habit than concern, David picked up trash along the way: newspapers, leaflets, fast food wrappers, a half-empty milkshake cup that was oozing onto the sidewalk. He collected till his hands were full and then pitched it all in the apartment complex dumpster.

“Hey! There’s somebody in here!” a young woman’s voice shrieked from inside the container. David jumped.

Over the rim popped a pretty bleached blonde, splattered with milkshake.

“Sorry!” David was momentarily stunned. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

She wiped the emulsion off her cheek.

David stared at her, trying to form words, but his mouth was paralyzed. Her deep brown eyes were beautiful, beckoning, indescribably sensuous. She puckered her lips.

“Yeah, well….how could you?”

David agreed he could have never expected to meet her, and certainly not like this. But how could he tell her? Words failed him.

She used a discarded t-shirt to wipe the chocolate mess from her hair. “Long story short: My roommate dumped my phone in the trash. I can’t find it.”

David watched her lips shaping and forming words. Rich, red lips that massaged the vowels and caressed the consonants the girl created with her tongue. David simply stood there.

She looked at him helplessly, orphaned in a steel box of rubbish. “Help me?”

She was talking to him. He was supposed to say something. He shuddered out of his stupor and his mind raced, deciding whether to say something, kiss her, or run like hell. He can’t kiss her, that would be wrong. He can’t run, that would be wrong. He should say something, but he didn’t know what. Finally he stepped up to the side of the dumpster and began to climb in.

She stopped him. “No!” David froze.

She leaned over the side. “Call my number,” the girl said as if it was an invitation to come to her place for drinks after dinner and a movie. Of course, David thought, I’ll call you. He reached for his phone and stared at the keypad, then stopped not knowing what number to call.

She wrapped her fingers around his phone, brushing his hand, and took control. She disappeared into the dumpster and a moment later David heard a ringtone, the theme from Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, muffled among the trash bags. And then suddenly louder as the girl must have unearthed her phone. And then the music surrounded him as she popped out of the container and landed a breath away from where he stood.

She was a few inches shorter than David, slender, and yet luxuriously shaped. Her clothes didn’t drape over her curves, they embraced them. He never would have stood this close to anyone, especially someone he didn’t know, but he couldn’t move.

She held out David’s cellphone for him to take. He mechanically accepted, peering into her eyes, unable to say anything.

She thanked him. He nodded.

She spoke again. “You rock.” It was a kiss! Her mouth, the way it formed the words, the way it puckered and invited him, it was the most sensuous kiss David had ever felt. His entire body flushed from her embrace. And yet she hadn’t physically touched him.

Then she turned and disappeared. Like an extraordinary dream.