I may have told this story before. I probably have. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately while reading of fairlywell's escapades. So, in honor of fairlywell and her born again romance, I am giving it to you one more time.

We met by phone.

One day, my friend S. said, "This guy came into my office and I gave him your number. I hope you don�t mind." My friend S. is forever trying to set people up. She's actually quite good at it, with several marriages to her credit, including my own.

I was alarmed at first -- "this guy came into my office?" She's handing out my number to total strangers? But S., a singer in the operetta company that I occasionally conducted, thought it was sexy that I conducted. "Why aren't you dating anyone?" I looked at my rehearsal and work and study schedules and wondered what I could be missing.

A few days later, there were several messages on my answering machine. I pressed the flashing button and listened to the first one, a hilarious rambling meditation on my first name. The machine cut him off. But he called back. Twice. The third time he left his number.

I listened to the messages several times. Then I did what any sensible single girl would do when trying to determine whether a potential date is criminally insane. I called my best friend who, conveniently, lived across the hall from me. Together we had the whole floor of our entry. "Meet me on the fire escape." That was where we did all our important talking. She showed up with a packet of cigarettes � dunhills were our preferred brand. We figured if we bought expensive cigarettes then we wouldn't smoke too much � and the empty diet Coke can we used as an ashtray.

"You've got to hear this." She walked in my kitchen and she, too, listened several times to the answering machine. We adjourned to the fire escape to discuss it. We agreed: I should call.

It took me a day or two to work up the nerve. We met at a cafe down the street. I wanted to get there early because I hate finding them. I want them to find me. But I was late. I had to run from a colloquium on campus that was being given by my undergraduate advisor and my mentor. The question period ran over and I didn't have time to say goodbyes. I arrived pink-cheeked from the October air in my favorite blue cardigan, the one I bought in Paris. We made pleasant small talk and then walked for a while through dusky piles of leaves to another cafe for ice cream. Somewhere during this process, I lost my house keys. We spent the second half of the evening retracing our steps, rifling through piles of dried leaves. I never found them.

It is the one and only time I have ever lost my keys for more than a short period.

My friend, however, had keys and was waiting at home for the report. We watched him leave from her window over the entryway door. "How was it?"

"Promising."

* * * * *

He called a day or two later. He had tickets to Swan Lake. Would I like to go?

I found out later that he knew nothing about ballet. But he wanted to go anyway.

We watched from my friend's window as he rang the buzzer.

"He's wearing a suit!" she said, impressed. His tie was covered in stars. I sprinted across the hall to answer the buzzer. He had picked me up in his brother's car. His own had been recently stolen and totalled. He still has the odometer sitting on a shelf in his office, its mileage frozen in time. The tickets were in the front row of the balcony of the Auditorium Theater. It was spectacular. Afterwards we decided to cross the highway for Greek Food and cheap wine. We walked back to the parking lot, the kind where you parked everyone in and left your keys in the ignition. It was then that he discovered he'd locked the doors with the keys inside. We tried and tried to get the car open as the people behind us waited and waited. Eventually a homeless man offered to help us for $10. He had the car open in about three seconds. We gave him $20 and he disappeared. Upon arrival, we drank a lot of wine. He still hasn't forgotten this night. It is one of his greatest embarrassments. I instead puzzle over the fact that our first two meetings both involved missing keys. Surely that was some kind of sign of something. But was it a good omen? Or a bad?

* * * * *

I picked the next meeting as a counterpoint to his choice: an animation festival and bowling. We signed the bowling roster as Serbia and Croatia and I embarrassed myself thoroughly.

* * * * *
And that was the beginning. It continued for some time, through concerts and movies. There were odd moments, as when he misguidedly brought his hostile ex-girlfriend to a performance of mine. But it was mostly happy. But then I could tell it wasn�t and I wasn't sure why. It was nearly a year into it now. I had just returned from my brother's wedding, to which I didn't invite him because I wasn't sure what was happening and he said he didn't want to go anyway. Another friend was getting married in Chicago the following weekend and he was supposed to come with me. A couple of days before, some friends and I took her to Six Flags for her bachelorette party. We spent a day talking and laughing in the hot sun and I won an enormous stuffed animal in a ring toss that I brought home and installed in his room. But something was wrong. He went to bed. I stayed up late in his kitchen reading Paul Auster's Leviathan, a salve against whatever wounds had mysteriously appeared. I read until I finished the book, 3 a.m., because I didn't want to borrow it. In the morning, he said he thought he'd had enough. I angrily swept my belongings out of his medicine cabinet. �Don't do that! You can get them later,� he said, distraught. But I knew I didn't want to be back. I removed everything and left, leaving only the stuffed animal behind. It was his. I didn�t want to see it again. And maybe I wanted him to have to look at it and remember.

* * * *

The next day, I scoured the paper looking at the apartment listings. I needed a change. I wanted to go somewhere, some other part of the city, be some other person. I made an appointment for that afternoon. The person at the other end of the line called back an hour later to see if I could switch my appointment time so he could show me through at the same time as another person. I agreed.

* * * * *
As I walked up the block, I was already pretty sure I didn't want the place. There was something bereft about it. It breathed neglect. Further down the sidewalk I saw a familiar head and gait. It couldn't be. It was.

We greeted each other awkwardly, even more awkwardly when we realized that we were looking at the same apartment together. It was a horrible place, dirty, depressing, with a snarling dog lunging at us from behind a delicate baby gate. But we really weren�t paying much attention. It was all unsettling.

Afterwards we thanked the landlord and he asked me to have a drink. I hesitated but agreed. We headed to a bar nearby, mostly deserted at 2:30 on a weekday afternoon. It was courteous and short. That was the last I saw of him for six months, although the encounter left me reeling for weeks. Some coincidences are unforgivable.

* * * * *

Nearly six months later, shortly before Christmas, the phone calls began. I ignored them at first. But they kept coming. Never insistent. Finally, as he was leaving a message saying that he had a small Christmas present for me, I picked up. �What do you want?� �I want to bring you something.� �Why?� He didn't know. But I said okay.

He brought me a recording of a band he liked. It was a good recording, but not good enough to divulge all the meanings I tried to read into it. I was dating someone else by now. Two people, actually. One was a nice, smart architect who was a deplorably bad kisser. The other was a friend who probably should have stayed that way, one of those pure animal attractions where you knew that there really wasn't enough commonality to back things up.

He asked me to dinner. I said no. He asked again. I said maybe. He called again after Christmas and we made plans. "Just to talk," I warned. But my heart wasn't in the rest of my engagements. I tried to stand my ground. But he was persuasive. We went to dinner and I ate a garlicky bowl of broccoli and shells while he asked me questions and convinced me he had changed. I still didn't trust him, but we went back to my apartment anyway, taking our leftovers with us where they comingled in my refrigerator. My friend and neighbor came over the next morning to get the full story and caught him leaving. That was the whole story right there. It took us a while to get the train back on the tracks, but it hasn't derailed since. That was thirteen years ago. Or maybe it was last week.

* * * * *
Fairlywell said, "It's not nearly as fun to rag on the breakups that left a mark." The scars from that one lasted a long time, but are faded now, lost in a sea of Italian food and family reunions, of silk dresses and baby�s diapers, spilled glasses of wine, newspapers left too long on the rainy stoop, a set of abandoned keys rusting in the dirt, and words, words, words -- on paper, hanging in the air. But some chapters bear revision, some poems need to be reworked. A little editing and fine tuning can change the whole story sometimes. I marvel at how much.

[Second entry. Click back if you missed AJ's own obsession with words. It�s a much more reasonable length. I promise.]

8 people said it like they meant it