Do you remember being a child and doing something bad and then having some adult berate you and say: One day God will punish you for that. As if the Big Dude is sitting high above us just waiting for that prime moment when he can meddle in you life. He has his lightning bolt all drawn and ready to send right into your heart at that peak moment, just when all self-congratulatory and smug, you say to yourself: Man, it doesn't get any better than this.

As if He has nothing better to do than to slap you back down to earth. Flat down on your face. Does He have a grin stretched from ear to ear when he does it?

Do you think He actually waits there, between world crises like fires and floods and holes in the ozone layer and civil wars thinking: Ah, Nikita is looking happy now. I think it's time I punished her for stealing Alice Martin's crayons in grade three.

I don't know, but if the world is run according to the way I think it is, I must have done something bloody awful to deserve this. Sometimes I wish it had never happened between Michael and me. Sometimes I wish that he had simply turned his back on me and just turned me down flat. He was good at that. He ignored me and my crazed behaviour for all those years. I think the moment Michael finally looked at me with his heart in his eyes and said: Kita, I love you, the Big Dude just slapped his knee and laughed. A big belly laugh that just rumbled the old heavens.

I mean, Michael held out for so damned long. And then poof, he wanted me. And he pursued me and he won me and now he's been taken away. I call that divine intervention of some sort.

Maybe God's idea of a joke. But then I've always thought that love is one of God's jokes. He invented it with Adam and Eve, but he never did get the bugs out of it.

I sound bitter. Okay, I'm whining. Maybe a little. I know having him love me was worth the wait and worth whatever little time we actually had, but is it worth this grinding pain? This pain we both endure now every time we are in the same room knowing we may never be together again.

He told me he will find a way. He told me to be patient. I want to believe him, I really do, but I've got this pessimistic streak a mile wide and I don't see it changing any time soon.

I could have been okay without him, so I tell myself. I could have tried to just go on and pretend and yearn and dream. I would never have known what it was like to wake up in the middle of the night and have him there, a solid, warm presence beside me in the bed, his legs tangled with mine, his arm over my hip. I would never have known what Michael looked like in the morning all dewy eyed and rested, waking me up with a kiss and something more if there was time and if we happened to be in the mood. Not knowing would have been better. I never imagined it would be so right, so perfect. I never imagined what it would be like to really lose him.

Twenty-eight days of perfect cohabitational bliss with Michael. Okay amend that to twenty-one because he spent about a week of that being Operations and that was not exactly blissful because for the most part he was brooding and engrossed in Section problems. And then there were the last days that Ops and Mad Maddie were ragging on him. I do not even want to go into what he was likely feeling when he found himself demoted and the lengths he went to in order to hide his torment from me. He was putting up a brave front, trying to pretend that everything would work out. It was draining for both of us, a strain on the nerves and our fragile bond. But even so, even then, there were moments of pure joy, of happiness I could never have imagined.

Little things.

It was the little things that made me feel so blessed. No, he didn't bring me armfuls of roses and spread the petals on the bed so we might make love amongst them. We didn't celebrate with champagne and caviar. But there are things which will stand out in my mind, like eating cookie-dough ice cream together on the couch, or the gentle caress of his hand on my shoulder or the warm, whisper of his breath on my skin.

There was this one perfect day, though, that stands out in my mind, a day filled with wonder. We'd had such a good time. He had cooked this fabulous dinner and I was cleaning up. He called me out to the balcony. It was a very clear, warm night. He handed me a glass of wine and while we were star gazing we saw this fiery red streak just shoot across the sky. He said it was his first time seeing a shooting star. I'd never seen a shooting star either and after it was over and long after that star had burnt itself out, we were still smiling with the joy of seeing it, of having been together when it happened.

" Don't they mean luck or something. Like finding a four leaf clover or a penny ? " I asked.

" Could be. I've never seen one before. We'll call it lucky, if you like." He took my hand in his and turned it over, pressing his kiss into the palm. He sounded sad, as if somehow we aren't quite entitled to claim any extra luck. Every day we are lucky to be in one piece.

I will never forget that shooting star. I'll probably never see one again.

Happiness doesn't come easily to me and when it does I'm hesitant to grab at it just in case I might crush it to a powder in my eagerness. But I was happy, so happy for those few days I wanted to dance in the clouds. Just having him just touch my face or stroke my eyebrow with his thumb or my cheek with the back of his hand was enough to put me into seventh heaven. He was with me and doing all those things I'd dreamed of him doing. I had always wanted to be on the receiving end of one of those rare smiles or a smouldering look from his green eyes. I think if they named a stormy sea after those eyes I would have cheerfully drowned in it.

For about twenty-one days he was mine. And I almost let myself believe in it. That it could be permanent.

I hadn't known he was so demonstrative, so affectionate. For someone so reserved and quiet he is quite the sensualist. It took me some time just to get used to the idea that he wanted to touch my face and stare into my eyes. I found that really hard at first, that he actually wanted to cuddle and to talk about any silly thing, or nothing at all. I really didn't know how to behave. I would walk past his chair sometimes and he'd pull me down into his lap and just grin at me with his perfect nose one centimetre from mine.

I'd wonder what I should do. What did he mean by it? Did he just want sex? I was woefully ignorant of the language of love and sex, how to tell the two apart, because in my mind they had always been two very perplexing things. I know the difference now.

I told you before I don't know that much about men or what they want from women. When my mother's boyfriends started acting frisky, pinching her bottom or that kind of stuff that made her shriek with glee, I usually would get sent to my room. And gladly. I usually felt angry and confused and I'd get a stomach ache. And then I'd have to listen to the moans and the bedsprings creaking. I hated that slap and tickle stuff.

The first time Michael came up behind me and hugged me I just stiffened and waited in shock, not knowing quite how to relax and be myself with him. I felt his arms wrap around my waist, clasping loosely over my stomach. I felt his breath in my hair and his lips near my ear. I was so good and so right. It just seemed so weird, more like dreaming. " I love the way you smell, Kita. I've wanted to hold you all day," he said. And I could only take a deep breath and nod and just thank all of my lucky shooting stars that I had found this man..

It wasn't the first time that I just wanted to cry with relief that we were finally somewhere together alone. It was so much to comprehend.

I was so surprised that just holding me would never be a waste of time for him, that he'd just want to hold me for the sake of doing it, of being close. In Section he is economical in every aspect. Quick thinking, brutally honest, spare in his speech and his movements. He never speaks with his hands at Section. His handsome face never lights from within as it does when we are alone.

The blank stare is an act. A very good one.

But in private he takes my breath away. He's adorable. In private he was rarely the controlled, controlling, taciturn man I know from Section. It is like two people live simultaneously in that gorgeous body. Know that I respect and admire the meticulous, at times ruthless man he is at Section. That man is my leader, my protector and my friend. I would kill for him or die for him, but I can't say that I like him all that much.

But that man at Section is theirs, not mine. He is a thick wall that Michael has built around himself, an armed fortress. I have not quite figured out how to separate myself the way he has done: maybe I never will. Maybe that's why I am not as good an operative as he. Maybe that's why I bring the pain of what we do at Section into myself and take it as my own. I will never be able to deflect it as well as he does.

I guess that is why I was so surprised and frightened when he said that he didn't care what they thought. That he would fight them at their own game. That none of it really mattered any more, not his position or his power. For him to say that I was more to him than they are was more than a romantic revelation. It was also something I think he'd fooled himself into believing for my sake. He does care, it does matter and that is why he went back. But there were other reasons, too. He did it for me and the others who depend on him and for that reason I and my fellow operatives will, perhaps, live another day and for that I am grateful.

My Michael is different than the man who went back to them. I adore his sweet, sexy, rather demanding and generous nature. That man was my lover and he is the Michael I long to know again. He is the Michael who gives himself to me so sweetly. That Michael gave me his soul and his heart and it is he who haunts my dreams.

I remember the day of the shooting star because that was the last day that things were good for us, the day before it began to end, when Madeline made her power play. We rose late that day and went to the market. We ate fresh bagels and cream cheese and walked around buying stuff for dinner, searching for free-range chicken eggs because he likes the colour of the yolks. I made a remark about bugs as food being not much better than corn and hormones. He laughed and gave me that look that says: You're a big goof, Kita, but I love you anyway.

I was walking beside him and other girls were giving him the eye because they always do. I think I was getting pretty used to it. He says I get looked at by guys but I never even notice that. I felt like saying: Do you see a line of men beating down my door? Everyone stares at him even old, old ladies with purple hair. Babies in grocery carts stop crying and break into huge, happy smiles when he walks by. He is just so beautiful to look at.

We walked on the pier, holding hands, saying nothing, just watching the seagulls and looking at the boats. We bought a fish and watched the fisherman gut it and took it home for dinner which he cooked in my kitchen, though he says mine is a magazine kitchen and not a place to cook. I agreed with him and told him that I ate mostly takeout or popcorn anyway before he came along. I told him he was going to make me fat if he didn't cool it with the French cuisine. He just grinned and said he'd like me any old way I looked. I thought that was totally cool of him.

It was hot that night and I had a bath and went to bed wearing a long tee-shirt. He came later after watching CNN and was in the shower. I was trying to read but mostly daydreaming about him and having seen that shooting star, when this huge fat gypsy moth started flapping around my face making that clicking, whirring sound. I hate them. I think that I can smell the mustiness of their wings, hear their little jaws chewing. I would rather face a terrorist with a machine gun than a moth. There is just something so gross about them, the brown dust that comes off their fat bodies, the huge eyes painted on their wings. And if you kill them they leave brown moth juice and that gray powder everywhere. It is indelibly there on the ceiling, the moth's imprint, until you paint it away. I threw my book across the room and started batting at the damn thing, jumping up and down my bed. swearing and trying to send it back out the window.

And then he came into the room with one of my hot pink towels wrapped around his lean hips. He was wet and beautiful and that colour made him look like a six-foot strawberry popsicle. I wanted to lick him all over. He made me forget all about my moth terror. Like he makes me forget everything that once upon a time seemed important.

I realised right there, while standing on my bed staring down at him, that I had settled into a perfectly comfortable little routine. In two weeks or so he had thoroughly invaded my life, every aspect of it. He had changed me completely. I would never, ever look at anything the same way again because I had allowed myself to believe that he was mine, that this was all real, that I could keep him close to me.

But it wasn't real and it would never be real and for the very first time he was the one who didn't seem to be accepting that our relationship had to be sanctioned by Section to ever go anywhere. Every time I brought it up, that we would have to pay the piper, he'd sort of wave it away like I had that stupid moth. Better than facing it, I suppose.

He wasn't really mine. I have always known that. Why did I allow myself to forget that when I knew that I would only hurt more because of it? What the hell was I going to do when they made him choose between us. Me or his position Section? Had he planned anything for us in the future? Or was he like me, living day by day, too scared to really make plans? Behaving a little like moths and shooting stars, fragile things in a world where the future really doesn't exist.

I took one more swing at the gypsy moth and it fell, landing in the palm of my hand. The mark on the ceiling was large and sooty-black. The moth's wings fluttered slightly against my trembling fingers and it was as if I could feel the moment its tiny heartbeat ebbed away. The moth was incredibly light for its fatness. The colours of its wings beautiful, peacock-like, ethereal. It was struggling to leave but too broken to do so.

I just looked at Michael and then the moth and something welled up in my chest, making my eyes and throat burn, making me want to cry.

" What are you doing? "

I just shook my head , swallowed a sob, climbed off the bed and walked to the bathroom. I dropped the moth in the toilet and flushed it down and then washed the stains off my hands. I looked at my red eyes and my trembling lips in the mirror. You are such a fool, I wanted to tell that red-eyed girl. Do you ever learn anything?

" Nikita?"

"I'm okay," I said, opening the door. " It was a good day. I'm just sorry it's over. Ever see moth balls? " I asked.

His brows knit together. " Yes, I have."

"How'd you get their little legs apart? " I just went sat on the bed and lowered my head, staring at my curled bare toes. I could feel him smiling. He likes everything about me that I hate, even my lame sense of humour and my big feet. Go figure.

"Do you always cry when you kill bugs? " He sat down next to me, still wearing the hot pink towel, picked up a hank of my hair that I had allowed to fall as a face-hiding curtain and pushed it over my shoulder.

" No. Not always. I'll bet the poor damn thing didn't fly in here knowing that his whole life was going to end at that moment."

I looked into his eyes, the starry points his wet lashes formed, the droplets that gathered in his beard, the way his hair formed loose waves. His shoulder was wide and hard and comforting against my back. I could feel the heat that radiated from him. I knew that when he was gone I would miss him as I would a part of my own body.

" Michael? "

" Yes, my love ? "

"This was the best day I can ever remember having. Since as far back as it goes." Two fat tears plopped onto my pale knees.

He said, " We didn't do much."

"We didn't have to. "

"I think sometimes that I must seem old and boring to you. I hate clubs. I only like to stay at home."

Old? He worried about seeming old?

"I like to be at home, too, if it's with you. I think I'm past the club scene. Been in one too many of them for work." I bit my lip. " I don't want to go back to work tomorrow. I wish I could just run. Just grab your hand and run. Do you ever feel that way? "

"Yes. I feel that way. I don't see it happening right at the moment."

"They're watching us, aren't they. Everything we do. Every word we say." I looked at him then. He was lost in thought.

Something clouded over in his eyes. He's been avoiding this, too. Pretending that days like the one we had today could be the norm. " I don't want to talk about Section."

I nodded. " I know. I know that there's a lot you don't like to talk about. But I think we're just building a nice little castle in the air, Michael."

"Maybe. Let's make it thick and strong so they can't storm it then." His hand was still playing in my hair. " And we'll be the king and queen."

"I like the knight and his lady better."

"Anything you want. You have my protection, then, Kita. You have my allegiance and my love, my lady. Does that sound too sappy? " He gave me a shy grin.

"No, it doesn't."

"This knight would like permission to kiss his lady."

I smiled at him. " The knight can have permission to do what ever he wants. " He pulled me into his arms and kissed the tears away. His kissed every sad thought I'd had away. Such a noble knight.

I lay here now alone, remembering, a goofy little smile on my face, my back propped up with pillows as I write this. There is still a black smear on the ceiling reminding me of the fleeting nature and the beauty of gypsy moths and shooting stars and castles in the air.

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