No. 11
Just as I was about to answer, I was side-swiped. Deliberately. It was the kind of move I'd seen linebackers make on TV at football games.

"It's you again." It was the ticket taker in the lobby who'd stopped me before on my way in.

"Why'd you do that?"

"You want to talk about it?"

"Yeah." I bulked up my chest with a few quick breaths.

"Hey, man. I don't know about you, but I'm working this morning." He dismissed me and Lulu to the area outside the theater.

"You know that guy?" she asked.

"Not really," I said. "Maybe he needs to do stuff like that to keep his job interesting."

"I wouldn't want to be a ticket-taker," she agreed, and ransacked her purse. She pulled out a tube of chapstick, and ran it over a nasty red bump on her arm. I must've looked puzzled because she said, "It's got lot of vitamin E oil."

"So where do you want to go?" I sized up my partner in the daylight.

"Coffee?" she ventured.

"Sure." We walked down the street where I knew the whereabouts of a cafe that had decent coffee and sold day-old croissants for half the price. Heated up in a microwave, you couldn't tell the difference. In fact, I thought it was pretty decent of the owners to be up front about the freshness of their merchandise. These days, it was hard to know when someone was running a line or a stale roll your way. Except I'd prided myself in knowing the difference.

"You live around here?"

"Yeah," I said, and refrained from any further details. I couldn't be too sure about Lulu. I mean she seemed like an okay girl, but how was I supposed to know she wasn't some plant with runners that would somehow choke me? Let's face it. I've always had problems with personal relationships particularly with women. I can admire them from a distance. But it's the up close and personal that gets me every time. On the other hand, I make a point of taking help where I find it. It's not like I didn't want a social life. Everyone was so busy doing stuff all the time that didn't have any connection to my life. Really, I'm just a family kind of guy who's afraid of commitment.

"So d'you always carry a video camera around with you?" I asked Lulu once we were seated at the table, each set up with our own cup of coffee and croissant.

"I'm thinking of going back to school. Film school," she said. "There's no more money in tech."

She had a point there, but I'd had my fill of studying and writing papers, and couldn't imagine anything less I wanted to do than to go back to school. Right now, it was tech or nothing.

"I'm thinking working with you around this mass movement thing, I can shoot good footage. I need to get a scholarship and the competition is tough."

I took a gulp of coffee and looked at the glass coffee mugs lined up in a row above the espresso machine, and the light reflected on the wall.

"So tell me about this mass movement thing."

"It has something to do with Prowlie."

"Prowlie?"

"Someone you wouldn't know."

She tore end end of her croissant and washed it down with coffee. "You know I think that was pretty gutsy what you did today."

"You did?"

"Sure, most guys I know would never take that kind of risk."

I reassured her, "I've never done anything like that before."

"Just what I thought. I figured you needed a partner in crime."

"I'm not about anything illegal."

"Hey man, it's just a figure of speech." She folded her arms on the table. "So what's the plan?"

I took a deep breath. "I don't really have one."