I hastily agree to meet her, and when I put the phone down I realize that, in my rush, I’ve failed to nail down every last detail. Variables like these make me uneasy, like a box of dropped tacks. Fifteen minutes later–fifteen? Or did she say fifty? I’m leaning against the alcove wall next to the ticket kiosk and I can feel their eyes on me. I don’t know if I’m in the right place–there are several theatres along this main stretch–and it shows on my face. Was it today? Maybe she said on the fifteenth, a Saturday. It would make a lot more sense than a Wednesday. Who meets anyone on Wednesdays? Extroverts, that’s who. Freaks.

It’s disappointing to think that I could be lost and don’t even know it yet. If lost is a state of mind then I became lost just as I was hanging up the phone. Americans are cruel to lost folk – they eat them up hungrily, like we were little wandering morsels.

Will she show? Another variable: Maybe she is lost, and we’ll both be waiting outside our respective theatres. The more I think about it the harder it is for me to remember how to look casual. I feel conspicuous. My arms hang like ornaments on the tree after the presents have already been opened. I’m making the other people nervous now too – some ticket holders ask me if I’m waiting for the movie, and I break into a sweat and gulp for air. I hate myself vicariously through them.

What I need is a story. Something I can tell myself that will give me a reason to be standing there. If I believe it I will look confident, even if I don’t actually tell people what my reason is. I’m a plain-clothes surveyor, balding quickly now. I’m a social anthropologist, and my shirt is missing two buttons. I’m studying kiosks for my architecture class, and plus I think I may be going blind. Each of the lies I fabricate is paired with a time-worn anxiety, and the reason is that a part of me gets off on the angst. All these comfortable people around me, who would want to be like them anyway? I’m falling apart over here and I find it preferable.

When I finally do see her approaching from down the block I realize that I’ve had my story all along: I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing here. Agreeing to meet someone, true though it may be, actually affords me little in the way of justification. No, for me it’s every tedious, sundry possibility between myself and reality that provides context. Otherwise I suppose I would just take everything at face value.

Freaks.