I'll wear a rose: John og Marias første møde

John Blanchard stood at Grand Central Station studying the crowds. People leaving, people arriving, people waiting, like himself, to meet someone.

He was looking for the girl he loved but whose face he did not know, the girl wearing the rose. He had become interested in her a year ago when they began chatting on the web. He liked the things she wrote and the way she wrote them. They got to know each other through their regular chats.

A romance was starting. John asked her to scan in a photograph of herself, but she always refused. She felt that if he really loved her, her appearance wasn’t important.

Now his job had brought him to New York and they had arranged to meet at 7 pm at Grand Central Station.

“You’ll recognize me,” she had written, “by the red rose I’ll be waiting on my jacket.” So now here he was looking for a girl whose heart he loved but whose face he had never seen ...

He was waiting, and waiting, and waiting. He was waiting in a very long time!

He was staring right in the air. He was thinking. He wondered if she ever came. He hoped so. Why wouldn’t she, he could see it on the way she wrote that she would come. She would be there, he knew it.