I guess it's true - you're more likely to run into people you know if you can bring yourself to leave your house.
The backstory goes along these lines:
I am invited to friend-of-friend's nearby housewarming in late 1998, where for various reasons I instantly develop a severe crush on one of the new roommates and am casually befriended by another. Exhausting my allotment of hostly party conversation, I retreat to the hall before the house's sole washroom and compose poems all night long. Desperately needing an excuse to be able to return and further interject myself into these amazing bohemians' lives, I arrange for my Super Grover to be semi-permanently installed in the residence, giving me an excuse to stop by any time and check up on him, and his keepers in the process. I make efforts to walk by the house when passing through the neighbourhood and end up successfully milking the housewarming contact to four or five subsequent visits, where I end up seeing more of my new friend and less of my new crush. Disaster strikes - the owner of the property does something quasi-legal involving the lease and its inhabitants are scattered to the winds. I continue to stumble across the friend in unexpected places (at the WTO protests in Seattle, for instance) but neither the crush nor Super Grover are ever heard from again.
Today was one of these stumblings.
I notice his passage but not who he is - someone on rollerblades is gliding along and next to me. My gaze rises from skate to knee to waist to torso and terminates at the head, where he has a smile waiting for me.
The story he has for me goes like this: while cleaning up to move out he finds the trapdoor in the other room he'd forgotten about - always curious as to where it led but never having opened it, he takes this final opportunity and is disappointed to find it leads nowhere but a dead-end storage nook. In memory of ancient stonecutters of ages yore, he fashions a pouch from red velvet, fills it with marbles and secretes it in the trapdoor'd space before closing it and leaving the property as a surprise for possible future inhabitants.
A year later the property remains empty and he is informed that it is slated for demolition/development, not refurbishment or rehabitation. Upset as to the likely-obscure fate of his whimsical gift he secures entry to the vacant building and recovers the hitherto undisturbed bag.
I now have a marble.
in our last episode... | p_i-logs | and then, all of a sudden...