text: And now flying in the door.
  
  Judging by the multiple baskets of fries, I am clearly not the first to arrive, which is personally disappointing and possible only because I had to stop and reload my metro card. A circumstance that was not only annoying, but time-consuming and ridiculously old-fashioned. I know somewhere there's already an app for that. And they, whoever they are, need to get on it.
  
  But despite my delay, upon arrival I find I am not the only one who had their plans summarily interrupted by this alert. As I slide into the booth, Ari is texting she will get here as soon as she and Marcus are done with some investor meeting. Vikram— in a genuinely unguarded, and ridiculously unlikely, moment— actually snarls, which I have to say is kind of cute coming from him. And funny.
  
  And then forgotten.
  
  Because there will be no time for teasing, taunting, or torturing.
  
  The suddenly sphinxlike royal Flynn awaits. He has tucked himself in the rear of the booth, giving him use of both the booth back and the wall, so even as he is reclining he is gaining posturing leverage, all while staring directly at me, his enigmatic half grin on full display, his hands clasped behind his head, just waiting for me to pick up what he is throwing down.
  
  I look over at Imani, then back to Vikram, then back to Jimmy. Full Force Focus. Satisfied, his hands unclasp as he leans forward and picks up his phone, which had been positioned face down on the table. Now, using his thumb and index fingers to hold the edges of his phone, he places his elbows on the table, and painfully slowly inches them forward, as though his screen is zooming toward me. Well, zooming via the world's most exaggerated, slowest-motion process ever. And then—
  
  Then, I am Lost to the Wow.
  
  Holy Moly, Batman. The Flynn did it. He found it. And even from this distance I know it is a ridiculously good find. Which, considering I have invested only about, I don't know, a gazillion hours of my life battling these stupid, asinine contagions, seems revoltingly unfair.
  
  And Jimmy Flynn knows it. "Hey Sid," the phone inches closer, "read it and weep."
  
  I reach; he snatches it away. What are we, three? At least Imani has the decency to roll her eyes and slap him on the shoulder.
  
  Hey, I know it's not much, but I happen to like a display of solidarity— when it's with me.
  
  But I get it, loud and clear. His royal smugness is in control. Carpe diem, Mr. Flynn. I give him the slightest of head bobs. Seize your day.
  
  And with that, I get myself botoxicated, which involves plastering on my fake smile while I open my eyes so wide they force my forehead to tighten right into my scalp, and sit just a touch forward. Now ready, I give a sweep with my open-palmed hand.
  
  The table is his.
  
  "So Sid." Jimmy deliberately moves his face-down phone, this time just far enough to be out of my reach, and begins to tell, or shall we say exaggerate and embellish, his story. "There I was, cruising around at Level Forty-One, or was it Forty-Two? Hmmmm. Let me think for just a second."
  
  Flynn is now pausing, taking time to make his thoughtful, scowly face while the fingers of his right hand begin to pop up, providing a fake count as a companion to his annoying chatter.
  
  "Football practice. Math homework. English paper. No, I was right. Only Forty-One. And as I cruised, I was at plotting how I could best level up yet again before hitting the sack, when I espied what one might call unusual activity."
  
  Oh yeah. He is going to milk this moment for everything he can. Can't actually say I blame him. I might as well self-medicate with some grease. My hand locates the nearest basket of fries.
  
  "I pulled up and studied it for just a brief moment when I realized there was a game afoot."
  
  Afoot? Really? He gets to use afoot? I am equal parts annoyed at him and annoyed at me. So I am totally annoyed. Which allows my botoxication to desert me, and my barely hidden snarkitude to penetrate rapidly through my hastily crafted mask.
  
  Suddenly Jimmy leans in and is now talking like a really bad Sean Connery or something, "Ay lassie, afoot. Picture if you will, an attempt to conquer the beastly plague what guards the cave, but not for a single brave player. Nay. There were three of them, using each other to spin the plague before it could unleash. It was clever. But the plague was faster."
  
  Now because we (that would be you and I) are now old, rather dear friends, I will summarize what took me nearly thirty minutes of blow-by-blow, incredibly badly accented event-telling, to absorb.
  
  Jimmy managed to get himself into the cave by working as a wingman to another player. And because Vikram has been there and done that, we all knew this particular cave is one of the few places in this game where, when you defeat a certain viral combo outbreak, it lets you "sign" your accomplishment. And to the best of our knowledge, between our trying to monitor the global chat and such, the last player in, and thus owner of the "signature," had been the holder of the SwHypo.
  
  So Jimmy crashes in on this guy's tail and grabs a screenshot of said signature from the cave wall before the tailed-into-the-cave-dude overwrites it, putting his own name up. Which, as soon as he does, releases some new antidotes not generally available, so it's a pretty big moment, and not one where you, the interloper, can really say, "hey, mind not signing that while I get some additional pics for just a sec?"
  
  Okay, now you are up to speed. And thankfully, Jimmy has finished embellishing every bell and whistle and can now reveal the cave signature picture on his phone to an appropriate round of oohs and ahhs.
  
  So I'm not sure what anyone else was expecting, but I was hoping it was going to be something like Frank12 or MarySue3.
  
  Nope. No such luck.
  
  "Hey, handsome stranger ..."
  
  As Ari's hello registers, Vikram turns around for what will be at least two minutes before there is a break for air, which means the audience attention is now fractured and I motion to Jimmy to pass the phone directly to me.
  
  And I see ...well ...a Chinese symbol. Like the kind you see on one of those game tile things. "Come on guys, it's a what-do-you-call-it?" I know this. They have those tournaments in Bryant Park. Think Sid. Think. Mah-jongg. That's it. "It's a mah-jongg tile."
  
  A rather blurry mah-jongg tile, which means if you take your two fingers and enlarge it, you only make it worse.
  
  I try squinting. Useless. I release my fingers, get up and let Ari into the booth, pass the phone to her and Vikram, never breaking eye contact with The Flynn.
  
  Who in turn shrugs. "Hey, I don't know. It's a screen grab; focus should have been fine."
  
  Fair enough. And the Chinese makes sense. I wondered why whoever this was has no letters in their user name. Only numbers and symbols. I assumed this was someone playing incognito. But if the thief is using a foreign language keyboard, like Chinese, it wouldn't have the English alphabet on it. And that fits much better.
  
  Or, it could be whoever it is has a thing for random numbers.
  
  Okay, back to the tile. I swivel right to our Princess of Languages, Imani, who is caught playing with her necklace in her mouth, zip-lining its charm back and forth.
  
  "Oh no. Do not be looking at me." Imani's chain drops as her eyebrow raises. "I already said I haven't got a clue. For starters, I do not play mah-jongg and there are, I think, five Chinese languages, of which I speak maybe two dozen words of Mandarin. And speaking two dozen words is nowhere near the same thing as being able to read the symbols."
  
  And while we're digesting that, even before I know I am thinking it, I say, to my utter disbelief, "What about the twincesses?"
  
  Really. That actually just came out of my mouth. Ew.
  
  If Ari saw the shiver of disgust, she kindly paid it no mind. "Won't help. At least I don't think it will. They don't really speak very much Chinese."
  
  Now something about this strikes me as puzzling, starting with how does she know that, but before I can start grilling her, Imani interrupts. "Look, forward me the pic and I'll send it to Fenny."
  
  Which we do. Which, in turn, releases me to return to what would have been my topic at hand, Hey Ari, how do you know the twincesses don't read Chinese? But yet again, before I can ask, we are interrupted, this time by our waitress who leans across the table, bringing a large cherry Coke to Ari.
  
  Ari takes the paper off the straw, swirls the ice twice, takes a sip, looks up and demands, "I hate to interrupt this moment, but I need to know something. I need to know why it is men think that when they walk in a room and you are introduced and they say, wow, beauty and brains, there is somehow a compliment in that?"
  
  The silence is deafening. Uncomfortable. Fidgety.
  
  I know I got nothing, because she's right. But more than that, I don't think I ever stopped to think about how hard it must sometimes be to be Ari.
  
  I think we are all slightly relieved when the Facts of Life theme song ping pierces the silence. The "you take the good, you take the bad" ring is suddenly like the best ring ever.
  
  And Imani gives a little nervous laugh. "Hey, she was my boarding school mate," and checks her phone, upon which she gives a squeal. "Oh my god, Fenny's actually here. In the city. Can meet us at nine o'clock." And with that, she looks around, "Where?"
  
  Which is how we, as in Imani and me, find ourselves huddling outside a building, + stack of books + 2, code text for the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building aka the NY Public Library.
  
  And because Ari was "in no mood" and Vik wasn't leaving her, and Jimmy protested he was too far behind and we could just catch him up later, it was just the two of us left to shiver and peer down into the night.
  
  As another gust of wind blows, I find myself taking cover by the library lion sculptures, heading for the one named Fortitude on the north side, less because I know which way the wind blows, but just guessing Fortitude will be more useful than the one named Patience.