Some time ago now, years ago!, I was communicating with A Girl From The Internet Who Lived In Los Angeles. Maybe I was in LA when this was happening, or maybe it was a little while after, when I got back to Oakland. I don’t know! Her name was just “K” and god knows she sure did never tell me what they stood for, if anything! At any rate, yes, she lived in LA, and I lived in Oakland. We lived almost 400 miles away from each other. We talked for months, maybe half a year. Somehow, somehow, her best friends were my neighbors on Mead Avenue in Ghosttown. We wouldn’t know that until much later though—wouldn’t know that until the day I accidentally met her.

AS IT HAPPENS: My neighbors came into Donut Farm one morning. They were there to eat breakfast. They said hello to me and I sat them by the window. They were with a girl—were with K! She and I were both “uhhhhhhhhhh”ing in real time, right there in Donut Farm, because we recognized each other in that vague sort of way!

“You know who I am, yeah?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I work here, man.”

She’d come from LA, she said, to visit her friends, who also happened to be my nextdoor neighbors, and who were nice people. I went to their bonfires every now and then.

When they were leaving, K asked me to take a picture of everyone standing by the big pink donut outside. She handed me a disposable camera and I took this:

She sent me this picture a month later. That’s her on the far right. I never saw her again.

(P.S. I know there are a few of you fools out there in the dark thinking to yourself, that this is such a Ryan story, and yeah OK, I know you’re thinking it, because you’ve said that exact sentence to me before! Well! Love y’all~~)