the one involving a federal investigator

So, I have said it many times: my life is a circus. And not just in the great and wonderful land of Romania. Been waiting to post this one until it was sure the police would not be calling, but as it seems we are in the safezone, to you all I present: the one involving a federal investigator.

About five weeks ago I was sitting in a coffee shop, early in the morning, skyping with that guy I like. Mostly a normal morning apart from trying to pay the cashier in RON. I'd been there about an hour, headphones in, when I realized the guy next to me had asked me a question several times. Pulled out a headphone, looked at him attentively.

I'm sorry?

Would you like a coffee?

Oh no thank you, I don't like coffee.

He had been smiling politely when he made the offer and as soon as I declined, his face dropped just like that metaphor you read sometimes about an egg or butter sliding off someone's face. Anyway his face altogether changed. But I thought nothing of it, typed a dumb joke about it into the skype window and then carried on with my conversation.

Twenty minutes later a woman with a badge (guess we're tense shifting) walks up to me and hands me this note and tells me to just read it. It's folded, so I look up and ask if everything's okay, she assures me it is, but to just read it. So I open it, pictured below:



For those of you too lazy to read backwards, apologies, I am too lazy to figure out how to flip it. Anyway it says that she is a federal investigator and tells me not to leave the store alone, she has noticed the conversation between me and the gentleman across from me.

I look up and the woman is gone. No idea where she's disappeared to. Start typing a bajillion miles an hour on skype explaining what's going on. An employee then comes up and asks me if I'm okay, I assure him that I am, that I had no idea there was a even a problem, inform him that I'm to stay put until I've got a way to leave, etc.

Except that's the thing. This is before I've gotten a phone and I've got no real way to call anyone. So I tweet the Colombiana a private message with the essentials enough to send her into panic at work (ie hey this weird thing just happened involving a federal investigator, I'm trapped at PCJ, maybe swing by and escort me out over lunch), but otherwise am not bothered enough to not go on talking on skype. However, over the next half hour, I begin to realize, okay, there's something serious going on here.

The gentleman in question--by the way, I had assumed since he looked younger than me and was dressed like a college student that he was in fact a college student--starts to talk pretty loudly to himself, something about the military, something about shooting somebody in the knee. Intense stuff. A few minutes go by, and then.

Then. All of a sudden he starts smacking himself in the face really hard, his glasses go flying, he jumps up from the table and coffee splashes everywhere, gets up in the faces of both men next to me and screams I'VE GOT A HIT ON YOU, turns back around and grabs his coffee, slings it everywhere, shouts that he did that on purpose and stomps out.

Meanwhile I haven't left the table for three hours and have really got to pee, got scared which made it worse, still wondering if I'm able to leave--really wanna leave--and if it's safe, if dude who stormed out is okay, if the two old men are okay, all meanwhile skypefriend gets to watch and not be able to do anything. And still little way to contact the outside world. So glad this happened in public.

Anyway, the rest is that the employees made a copy of the note and eventually I got too antsy to wait on being walked out and booked it out of there doing laps of the parking lot first. So for everyone expecting this sort of thing to happen in Eastern Europe, good old Wilmywood got there first.