Sam Johnston gingerly stretched his legs to their full length, eyes shut tight against the morning.

“Sam? You awake?”

Sam responded with silence. With any luck, his wife would give up and let him sleep a few more minutes.

But the undeterred Stella tried again, louder.

“Sam, honey? You awake?”

He grunted in assent. As a rule, Sam didn’t use words until he got his teeth in his mouth and a good half-cup of coffee in his system.

It’s Thursday, Sam,” Stella sang out. She threw back the covers and pushed her feet into furry pink slippers. “Coffee in five minutes.”

It had always been this way with Stella, almost always. She was one of those fortunate souls who greeted each new day as if it were Christmas morning. But even on Christmas, even as a kid, Sam had to be dragged bleary-eyed to the living room where he stared uninterruptedly at the overstuffed stockings for a full ten minutes before joining in. He wasn’t what you call a grump—just a slow starter.

Sam cradled his coffee mug and blinked against the happy stream of Stella’s words.

“It’s Thursday, Sam. Freda’s gonna take me to Cherry Creek to get a new lipstick for tonight. It’s OK if I get a new lipstick, isn’t it? We talked about it Monday, remember? Then we’ll stop off at the grocery. Do you want anything special from the grocery? How about some of them apples you like? What are they called?”

“Braeburns.”

“Oh, yes, Braeburns. You want some?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t forget. It’s Thursday. We’re still going, right? You won’t forget?”

“No, Stella. I won’t forget.”

“Well, you never have forgotten, have you, my Sammy?”

Teeth in, coffee mug half empty, Sam smiled as Stella kissed the top of his head and set down two plates. She circled the table twice, nudged a sleepy orange tabby off her chair and sat down across from Sam.

“Thank you, good Lord, for this food and a bed to sleep in,” Sam prayed, “and for this good woman to share them with.”

He was a slow starter, but every bit as good-hearted as his cheerful wife—once he got going. Mostly, once past the first ten minutes of the day, Sam was a grateful man.

***

Sam recalled the autumn of 1961, when he was 39 and Breakfast at Tiffany’s was playing at The Rustic. That was the autumn he met Stella. She was a smiley little thing, full of laughter that burst forth with the delicacy of champagne bubbles.

She worked at the drug store next to The Rustic. He’d seen her nearly every day on her lunch break, examining the “Coming Soon” posters with her peanut-butter-and-raspberry-jam-sandwich and a lemon Coke.

Of course, he didn’t know then exactly what she was eating. That would come later. Nevertheless, he did know Stella was the girl he would have married if he hadn’t already been a confirmed bachelor.

He couldn’t say why he knew this. Stella didn’t have the glamorous movie star looks that had him dreaming in the projector room of his parents’ theater from the time he was 13. (He would always remember the magical moment when he first saw Francis Langford sing “I’m in the Mood for Love” in Every Night at Eight.)

Stella didn’t look like she’d make much of a wife, either. Too small and fragile looking. Her hands were soft and dimpled like a baby’s, as if she’d never washed a dish or carried a grocery bag.

He’d just stand and watch her, sometimes, if her lunch break came when he happened to be cleaning the lobby or stocking the refreshment counter. She never saw him, though. She probably never even thought about the workings of a movie theater, never imagined anyone would be inside in the daytime.

Stella stared at those posters the way the kids used to gather around the “Circus Coming to Town” posters. But she never came to see the movies, not at The Rustic, anyway. Sam knew this because he worked the box office from Memorial Day to Thanksgiving that year while his parents toured the United states in their Airstream trailer.

***

By early September in 1961, Sam’s Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule revolved around Stella’s lunch break. Foolish for a middle-aged bachelor to be so taken by a silly young woman. But he couldn’t help it. Moreover, what harm was there in studying an interesting female face and figure from time to time?

And there wouldn’t have been any harm either, if it had stayed that way. Sam would have been content just to glimpse Stella through the window for those few minutes a day. An old dog in puppy love, he didn’t need anything more.

But the first Thursday noon that she failed to show, Sam realized that he couldn’t do with anything less, either.

At 12:05, he redusted the candy case. At 12:13, he reswept the lobby. At 12:48, he rearranged the snack center, again. By 1:22, his fingertips had grown cold, and a tight-fisted pressure in his chest shortened his breath and made him dizzy.

Sam had been educated by Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Don Ameche and Judy Garland. He was no fool. There was only one possible diagnosis. At 39, he’d finally caught the business end of Cupid’s Arrow.

Sam didn’t eat dinner that night. It was the first meal he’d skipped since having the stomach flu in the 7th grade. He didn’t fall asleep until 4:33 AM that Friday, only to awaken a scant two hours later. Every cliched movie line about love ricocheted through his head and did damage to his body.

Confirmed bachelor or not, Sam had no choice but to win Stella. But what if she didn’t come back?

He waited for the kitchen clock to read 12:03 before making his way downstairs to the theater lobby, praying a familiar golden-brown head would be in the window and dreading the same with equal intensity.

She was there, wide-eyed with wonder before the new postings. Sam marched through the lobby and out the front door, fully armed for the task at hand. Then, with the stuttering confidence of Jimmy Stewart, he stepped before the woman who had captured his heart—and washed the window.

“Ohhh, do you work here?” she said, stepping back to give him room.

“Yup,” said Sam, eyes on the window.

And so it began.

***

Three weeks into his first real romance, Sam had formed and rejected countless plans by which he would win his girl’s love. If only he had a cape to sweep across a puddle… if only he had a foreign accent or a white horse… if only he could dance or sing…

Until he came up with something better, he stuck with his original plan: Every day at noon, he washed the window as she smiled at the posters and ate her lunch. It might have continued thus forever, if it hadn’t been for Thursdays. She never showed up on Thursdays anymore.

It had occurred to Sam that her work schedule might have changed. Only when he peeked through the drugstore window one Thursday, he could see a girl who resembled her sitting at the counter. A girl who pinched bits from a peanut butter sandwich and looked exactly the way his love interest would look if she were the most heartbroken girl in the world.

After that, Sam’s obsession grew to alarming proportions. Why didn’t she come to the theater on Thursdays? Why, on that day, was she—a girl so clearly made for smiling—not smiling? Something must be done. But what?

Sam’s big chance came one Friday when she stood before the “Coming Soon” poster and sighed.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” she said.

Sam streaked the window. Could she be speaking to him? Of course. Who else?

He fumbled desperately, and unsuccessfully, for the right response.

“Would ya like to see it?” he said at last.

Her eyes never left the poster. “That wouldn’t be possible,” she said, and walked away.

Over the years, Sam came to find out that so many things would not be possible with Stella. Not possible to wear red on Tuesdays, for instance. Not possible to visit a zoo or sit on grass. Not possible to pet a yellow dog, despite the fact that she loved animals of all kinds.

New restrictions and requirements popped up all the time. None of the many doctors they’d seen were able to decipher the complicated system by which Stella lived. Once Stella said a thing was not possible, she couldn’t be made to see otherwise. Only one person had ever been able to bend even one of her rules. This is why, since 1961, Sam counted himself a lucky man.

***

A man better acquainted with the ways of real women (as opposed to movie star women) might have tried to coax this young lady into going to a movie she so clearly wanted to see. But Sam took her at her word.

Every spare moment from that Friday when she said she couldn’t see the film to the following Tuesday, Sam watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s himself. He studied every line, every character, every location, and prop.

When Tuesday found Stella staring longingly once more at the Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster, Sam was prepared. After one final swipe with the squeegee, he stood before her, eyes riveted to the poster.

“A taxicab drives up a deserted New York City street and pulls up beside a marble block building,” he began. “Tiffany and company is carved over the entry…”

Stella smiled at the poster image of Holly Golightly. She smiled at Holly’s long black dress, the orange cat on her shoulder, and the two background figures kissing in the rain until Sam stopped talking and looked at his watch.

Eyes still on the poster, she asked, “Will you tell me more tomorrow?”

“I suppose I could,” he replied, his heart beating fiercely.

That Wednesday at noon, they stood side by side once more. She was smiling like a child and he was again weaving his cinematic spell. Neither, even once, turned their heads or eyes from the window. When her break ended, he had yet to reach the final scene.

“Will you tell me the rest,” she asked, “on Friday?

“I’d surely like to, but I can’t,” he said, staring at his feet. “The next show gets posted Friday.”

She was silent. She understood this kind of logic. He couldn’t finish describing one film in front of a poster for a different film.

“I could tell you the ending tomorrow,” Sam offered.

“That’s Thursday,” she said.

Sam knew the direction of her life, and his too, would be determined by the next few minutes. He couldn’t say why it had become imperative that she come back to the theater on Thursdays, but this one goal had eclipsed all others in Sam’s life.

Afraid to move, afraid even a breath would send her away, Sam offered the best he had. “If you come back tomorrow,” he said, “I promise I’ll tell you the ending.”

She stood before the poster with aching stillness. “Men break promises on Thursdays,” she said, and the light faded about her.

Ah-hah! A glimpse into her mysterious Thursday absences. Some foolish man had broken her heart. Suddenly, the way was clear. Sam wasn’t suave like Cary Grant or dashing like Errol Flynn. He surely couldn’t sing like Bing Crosby or make a girl laugh with the buffoonery of Bob Hope. Nevertheless, he was steady. He was a man of his word. He was exactly the kind of man this little lady needed.

“What if I told you I’d give you Breakfast at Tiffany’s tomorrow,” Sam ventured, still not daring to look at her, and every Thursday from now on?”

She looked skyward.

Sam waited.

She eyed her black leather flats.

Sam waited.

At last, she turned to him and smiled.

Under the power of that smile, Sam adhered to the sidewalk as the woman he loved headed back to work. He would have called out to her except he didn’t know her name.

***

Sam and Stella unpacked the groceries, including the requested Braeburns. And when Stella mysteriously hid the Cherry Creek bag in the folds of her sweater, he held his smile until she’d left the kitchen. His wife couldn’t wait to try on her new lipstick.

At Tasha’s steakhouse that night, Sam tenderly escorted his wife twice around her favorite table, then sat beside her and waited for the lady violinist to come near. “Could ya play “Moon River?” he asked.

“Of course, Mr. Johnston,” she said, just as she had said every Thursday for the last four years. As the first notes slid from the instrument, Stella reached for Sam’s hand. He looked at her dear, radiant face and silently blessed the violinist.

And Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer.

And Truman Capote.

Most of all, he blessed Charles and Gertie Johnston for raising their boy to keep his word, whatever the obstacles along the way.

He thought back to other Thursdays, hundreds of them. There was the Thursday he’d surprised Stella with a gift of a typewriter ribbon—that wasn’t so hard. Another Thursday, he’d brought home the orange tabby cat from the animal shelter—she’d named him “Cat,” of course. Then there were the Portuguese language tapes and the time he led Stella into an alley during a rainstorm, just so he could kiss her. And on many a Thursday since 1998, when they’d opened a branch in Denver, Sam and Stella could be found sharing a Danish before the Tiffany’s at Cherry Creek shopping center.

Thursday after Thursday, he gave Stella a touch of that story about crazy lovable, vulnerable Holly Golightly, a girl, like Stella, who’d invented her own life.

On the Thursday Stella turned 23, Sam had gone so far as to hide her engagement ring—a genuine Tiffany diamond—in a box of cracker Jack.

***

Still, to Sam, the best Thursday would always be October 12th, 1961, when he’d stood waiting in front of the Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster. He had been there a full 40 minutes, foolishly hoping the crazy girl from the drugstore would come to hear him tell her the end of the story.

Probably best if she didn’t show, anyhow, he thought, hope fading as the minute hand crept toward the next hour.

By 11:59, he had almost convinced himself that he was relieved she hadn’t come. Almost. But when he turned to the lobby and saw her coming toward him, he nearly fell to his knees. This, in a way, would have been appropriate, considering what Stella had in mind.

“My name is Stella, sir,” she said, “and if you’re a man who can keep a promise, I’ll gladly consent to marry you.”

One might wonder what kind of woman would say such a thing to a relative stranger. There were a number of things nobody could ever figure out when it came to Stella. She was complicated, to say the least. Some would say she was difficult, impossible even. But to Sam, she would always be a mysterious treasure, worth any price. He had no regrets.

In 45 years, he’d never missed a Thursday.