-
nicole: that girl's gonna be all right.
-

I am cranky. We're standing in line, an Italian-style line, in the Venice Marco Polo Airport (really), and I'm cranky. There is a couple standing in front of us cooing at their baby, who is so well swaddled she's hardly visible.

The baby drools. The mother wipes it off her chin with a casual flick and I shudder. Babies. I have never been convinced of the useful nature of babies. I don't exclude myself from that- I've seen all the tapes, and mostly I chewed on chairs. And Dad's foot, on one memorable occasion.

The couple continues to babble nonsense and offer up their fingers for chewing. All I have to say is, if that little bambina has a pair of chompers like yours truly, this is not going to end well. I give Anne a look that says, I will adopt an eighteen-year-old. Anne gives me a look that says, That is not one of your better ideas.

Then I get that feeling. You know the one.

We glance over and she's looking at me. The baby. She has red hair that curls a little over her forehead, and that milky pale baby skin. She looks at me like she can't believe her eyes. I uneasily shift mine around.

She stares at me and I look back, with all the self-consciousness that I have never managed to unlearn. I've just finished reminding myself that I'm cranky and I don't like babies when her little pink mouth breaks open, and she gives me a smile which I have never seen the likes of before or since. It was comparable to the sun rising. Her tiny eyes crinkled, still holding mine, and for a second I could imagine what she would look like when she was thirty. She reached over her mother's shoulder.

Without thinking, I gave her my finger. Her fist closed around it and she laughed, an absolutely lovely sound. Her mom smiled and said in a thick London accent, Look, love, she likes you.

I eventually retrieved my finger, but I forgot to ask for my heart back. Oh well. She can add it to her collection.

Anyway, ever since then I've had a good feeling about people in general.