Serendiptiy

Café Henri is one of my favorite city haunts. I've been there more times than I can count and I like to think I could find the place even if I were blindfolded. (Right. I like to think a lot of things.) But the point is, I know how to get there.

So. Last Thursday, I was meeting Christie there for dinner. I walked across Bleecker and, as I was fully half an hour early -- and it was a pleasant spring evening -- I sat on a bench at Father Demo Square to read a little of Jonathan's Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. (I was going to provide a link here for you, but I just read the Wikipedia review and wish I hadn't -- it was something of a spoiler.)

SO ANYWAY. At the appropriate time, I closed the book on Oskar and his quest, and began to walk to the restaurant. Only somehow, I walked the wrong way. "How is this possible?!" I wondered. And I was more than a little chagrined, since a phone call to Christie confirmed that she was sitting at a table waiting for me. I confirmed the address. . . it was, in fact, exactly where I believed it to be.

And then, something odd happened. It's hard to describe, but my neck began to prickle and my little interior voice said, quite loudly, "Look up. Look up, NOW." And, though I can't explain why, I knew what I would see even before my eyes began to sweep upward: I was standing in front of the Bedford Street residence of Edna St. Vincent Millay . . . the very spot where I had left Foer's main character, Oskar, only moments before.

"Wow! Pretty cool!" Suddenly, getting lost in familiar territory didn't seem like a bad thing at all. I back-tracked and found the restaurant without further incident.

I told Christie (and if you followed the link you know she is a fellow writer, and a gifted one at that) and she said, "Wow! Pretty cool!" (Or something very much like that!) "What are you reading?"

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

"Deb! That's what I'm reading!!"

Wow. Very, very cool!

That, my friends, is what I call a Breadcrumb moment! Now tell me one of yours . . . (C'mon . . . don't make me beg! Just spill it!!)