Fernander.

Hello again.

I am one of you again, mi hombres. I’m a working girl. Hey, know what hurts when you haven’t spent much time in an office over the past two years?

Work does.

This morning, I watched the sun rise over St. Paul as I sat in traffic. I realized in a couple weeks it’ll be daylight savings, and I’ll have been at work for a full hour before the sun has even thought of showing its face. That’s OK, because I can’t see outside from where I sit, anyway.

But this is a good thing. The project goes til around Thanksgiving. My co-contractors are cool. There’s a Starbucks 5 minutes away (I couldn’t hope for a Dunn Brothers, because they haven’t ventured out into the suburbs much yet). Dragging my ass out of bed at 5am is probably good for my health, or something. Tonight, I go to start my free trial membership at the gym, because my lake-walking days are over, at least until next spring.

So, rather than bore you with work life, which is not as much a novelty to you as it is to me, I will tell you a story instead.

Last night, Heather and I went out the New Delhi to celebrate my last day of freedom¹ for two months. A few minutes after ordering, our server brought over a handful of toothpicks and the stub from a check. He told me to pick one, so I grabbed a toothpick. He gave Heather the little piece of paper, whispering that it was a love note, and not to show me. He arranged the six toothpicks in front of me in two triangles, and told me to make four triangles of the same size, by moving only three toothpicks.

I hunched over and stared at my toothpicks. Heather read her note and looked thoughtful. I was still puzzling over the toothpicks when our food arrived, and I was mad because it was one of those brainteasers that you get a hundred times over the course of your life and always manage to forget the solution to. The server brought the other half of the check and wrote two more puzzles on the back: a set of nine dots in a square, which Heather was supposed to connect using only four lines, without lifting the pen; and a circle with a dot in the middle for me, which I was also supposed to draw without lifting the pen.

We grimaced at our puzzles until he reappeared and gathered them all up, telling us the food was getting cold.

We ate. I stared at the toothpicks. He finally came over and asked if I’d ever been to Egypt. Of course, the answer was a pyramid. I am stupid. Heather showed me her love note, which is the classic:

Then I was really upset, because we had just talked about it, and I knew I had heard the answer. Our waiter brought over a little origami frog, and made it hop across the table. We begged for hints on the puzzles. Occasionally, he’d tell us something, and then we’d solve them. We connected the dots, and drew the circle with the dot in the center. We still couldn’t figure out the riddle. Then he made me fold a $20 bill so that we could see the twin towers on fire. Then we had to find the key on a dollar bill. And a spider web. And a mushroom. We were in hysterics.

Every so often, we’d look up and wonder why nobody else in the restaurant got to play games. They were all dining as usual, while we were having the time of our lives. In the midst of all the games, we learned our waiter’s story. He grew up in Goa, India, which had been a Portuguese colony. He was a professional soccer player until the age of 26, when he injured his knee. He had travelled all over the world, including Russia, Portugal, and ‘to kiss the place where Jesus was born, and to lift the cross. It was so heavy!’ He had worked for an airline that flew all over the Caribbean. He lived in Houston for a while, didn’t like it, so he moved here. Why, we’re not sure. I asked him how long he’d been in Minneapolis. 10 weeks, he replied. Heather and I jumped. “It snows here, you know!” we said. He replied, “That is why I need someone to keep me warm over the winter!”

And then we knew why we got the games, and nobody else did. Why he kept running his hand down Heather’s back, and pinching her thigh. Why he gave us passes to a gentleman’s club, and made us origami animals. He was putting the moves on my girlfriend.

He stopped by again to ask if we were Christian. We both said no. He asked if we had read the Bible. Heather had, so he quizzed her on her knowledge. When he walked away again, I got up to go to the bathroom. Heather said, “Don’t leave me alone!!” When I came back, he was leaning over the table talking to her. As I sat down, she was exclaming, “I don’t really want to be married!” He brought us dessert, even though we told him not to. We had been there for two hours, so we told him we had to get going. Heather went to go use the bathroom, and we said goodbye.

Out on the street, she told me he had followed her to the bathroom and given her his phone number, and asked for hers. We waited until we got to the car to unfold his note and discover his name:

Fernander.

My question to you is, how could you not marry a man named Fernander? I’ll let you know when they’ve set a date. I’m going to make an awesome maid of honor. Even if I do refuse to wear a dress, I’ll look mighty fine in my new too-baggy pants.

Jenni