Me and the Russian

So last week I ran into a Russian guy at a bookstore.

Sounds spyish, doesn't it?

I promise I don't work for the CIA.

In fact, looking back, maybe he worked for the KGB. He had his eyes on me in the magazine section. I was flipping through mags at the neighborhood Borders and had spent a good 15 minutes or so looking through a special edition of Communication Arts magazine. At $24 a pop, scanning it for free was all I could afford. I saw the white-headed, middle-aged guy in my peripheral. He was browsing like me. I thought nothing of it.

After I had my fill of magazines, I turned and started to walk off. That's when I noticed his eyes jump back on me. I smiled my friendly hi-stranger-in-a-bookstore smile as I walked away. That's when he stopped me.

When he spoke, his first few sentences sounded like unknown phrases dispatched in a thick foreign tongue. I couldn't digest it, except for the fact it sounded eager.  It made me feel overwhelmed - until he started making sense.

English language. How I love you.

The man asked if I was an artist. After all, I was looking in the arts section of the magazine racks.

"No, no," I said. "I'm a student."

"A student? Oh," he said, as if he just lost out on a prize in a game show - like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" - an easy question that people mess up on; They get hung up on a trick answer.

"I'm studying advertising," I told him.

He told me he was an artist who has been laid off twice this year. He has been living with his daughter in Atlanta ever since.

"The economy," he said. "Who would have predicted this?"

That's when I noticed a little gap in his front two teeth - just like mine. For a moment, I felt like I knew his whole childhood. Maybe it was as awkwardly interesting as mine.

I love international people. I had to ask where he was from, to which he replied Russia. Land of the cold freezing winters Russia.

We chatted for a minute more about art and Florida before he said goodbye.

I wished him good luck on the job hunt.

As I wandered up the bookstore stairs, I wondered if I would run into a mysterious man in the Mysteries section. You know - tall and handsome. The kind you read about in books.