I walked around the lake listening to The Shins. I thought that if I happened to run into Mickey, and he happened to ask me what I was listening to (which he almost certainly would because that is exactly the kind of thing he is interested in) I would say “The Shins,” and it would be implied that I had been thinking of him while walking around the lake, because he had given me my first Shins album, and we had listened to it together frequently. It would be an overt implication, maybe possible only because of the psychic connection I had always felt we had.
Mickey called me before the first track on the album ended, before I had even reached the part of the lake where I usually sit and watch ducks for a few minutes before opening my sketchbook. Given that we hadn’t talked on the phone recently or talked much in any capacity in the last few months, it was safe to assume he had taken a few minutes to decide to call me before he pressed ‘send’ on his phone and the call went through, the same couple of minutes wherein I had been contemplating our accidental meeting at the lake and our hypothetical conversation about The Shins that would subtly but powerfully suggest that I had been thinking about him. In any case, it proved my point about our psychic connection.
“Hello? Mickey?”
I heard faint, muffled rustling of fabric and a long, intentional sniff.
“Mickey,” I said quietly, understanding that I had been pocket-dialed. I listened to the interior of his pocket or hand or backpack or whatever for almost a minute before realizing that he would be able to see the duration of this call, and hung up.
When I hung up my phone started playing The Shins again, only my earphones weren’t plugged in anymore so the music came from the phone’s speaker. I was mortified at the fact that the context of my music choice would not be understood by those around me at the lake, even though the only people around were two handyman-looking people and a group of ducks.