Timing.

I am often amused at the timing of the cosmos. A text message innocently appeared upon the screen of my phone. Area code 646, Manhattan. Please don't ask me why I know that. I was in the parking lot of the grocery store, squinting at the sun that had suddenly reemerged from its seven day hiatus, bracing myself against the cold that indicated that, yes, winter or some semblance of it had definitely arrived. Lunch time at the grocery store is the only safe time to go. Just little grannies with their canes and hungry high school students lined up at the deli, being raucous and loud in the way that people aged sixteen usually are. If you happen to fancy perusing the vegetable selection at 5:30p.m. on a weekday, you would have to be willing to fight soccer moms for parking spaces and shove aside the oblivious young professionals, deadened by the nine to five and desperate for lean cuisines. Weekend grocery shopping would entail enduring destitute college students price comparing canned goods.

I was fumbling with my purse, over stuffed with god knows what I deemed to be essential every day items and a shopping cart that had seen better days. Of course, I had to pick that one.

"Hey Lindsay. Is this still ur #?"

Oh, I just love text speak and the butchering of the English language. This, among other thoughts like, "who the fuck do I know in New York?" and "do I have a new stalker?" cycled through my head.

In case it could be someone I actually liked, I coyly responded "Well, I suppose it would depend on who is asking".

It was my male model friend who is named after a country. For simplicities sake let's call him Denmark.

As I idly pushed the cart down the aisle, memories from the last time I saw him flickered by like a movie without sound. It was November 2006, I was downtown with the ex-convict and his friends at a bar that just opened. We were outside at the ice bar, by the way, a terrible idea for Minneapolis, and it was freezing. I was commiserating with our waitress who had some sort of tiny black crushed velvet outfit on. Her lips were blue, her hands were shaking. The ex-convict sauntered over, the devious smile across his face. He whispered a proposition into my ear and pointed to a girl at the next table over. We had a little fight which involved me saying something like "Are you kidding me, she is hideous and fat". Hopefully she didn't hear me because I didn't mean to insult her, I was just startled by this suggestion which seemed to come from nowhere. The ex-convict rather enthusiastically tried to convince me that I owed him. I was furious, a state of emotion that I rarely approach. Mr. Denmark grabbed my hand and started walking away, I didn't protest. We passed through a door and were standing on a quiet street on the backside of the bar, the music gone, the lights no longer spastically reflecting off of iced over surfaces.

I started laughing, probably uncontrollably but I can't remember exactly. We traded stories about the ex-convict and laughed more as we aimlessly wandered the cold streets at 2:00a.m. to find his car. Somehow we ended up at diner, talking about life's greatest mysteries and eating pancakes until sunrise. Then he took me home. He didn't try to make a move, he didn't try to come inside and that was it.

And then there was today when he told me he had just finished production on a film that he wrote about how he and I fell in love and lived happily ever after. He asked if I might want to know more about it. We have a date on Halloween.