Criminy, I just responded to that guy who collect-called me. It's just practice. I have permission to practice. It's allowed. Never mind by whom, it just is.

I miss Marty. I used to work with this guy Marty at the coffee place where I worked part-time a few years ago. He was 25 and easily the most well-read person I have ever known. He read constantly, and his knowledge of music and cartoons verged on encyclopedic. He moved here from Oklahoma, and he had Buddy Holly glasses and wild hair. He got all his clothes at thrift shops and he drank way, way too much. I, of course, loved him.

We used to mock-fight over the Chicago Tribune crossword puzzle, and he would try to read over my shoulder and tell me the answers while I worked on it. Once he looked over my puzzle while I was washing dishes in the back, and when I came back he started dropping broad hints: "So, Schmance, I was thinking about such-and-such today. And you know, it's not so much an EPIC as it is a SAGA. Though they both have four letters." Smartass.

He would say to me, frequently, "You're my favorite."

He took care of J for me a couple of times, and J thought Marty was just great. Marty would talk to me about everything, including the girl who really broke his heart. He loved her, she loved him, and she had a live-in boyfriend. She wouldn't leave her boyfriend, even though he had cheated on her, but she would drink with Marty frequently and they would end up making out on her couch while her boyfriend was at work. It was awful.

When I left the coffee place to look for a full-time job, we all went out for drinks. After a couple of gin-and-tonics Marty sat down next to me, took my hand in his, and announced to everyone that he loved me and I was his favorite. He said that if we had gone to high school together we would have married ages ago, and we'd be living in Kansas City with our children, totally in love and devoted to each other. Then he kissed me a few times and told everyone again how much he loved me.

Of course he never meant any of that. It was, as they say, the gin talking.

I got a full-time job and never got to see anybody from the coffee place any more, and then they all quit anyway for various reasons. Marty acquired a girlfriend, and the last time I saw him he said, "We're in love!" He left the coffee place for a job in an office somewhere, and started talking about going back to school to finish his B.A., and we all kind of marveled at how Marty was getting everything together.

Then today, this guy at work e-mailed me to ask me to do something for him and he ended the e-mail with, "You're my favorite."

Yeah.

It would be so nice to hear that and know that, this time, it's true.

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