Dear Andrew Sean Greer

Dear Andrew Sean Greer,

You broke my heart.  Ever since I got my most recent bookstore gig, I've fantasized that you would someday come in.  And I would recognize your delicate features and adorable strawberry hair.  You'd be dressed like a professor, all corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches.  You'd be so shy and timid wanting to sign your own books.  And I would shriek and run to you, tell you how much I love Max Tivoli, how I saw you read when all those old ladies got pissed it wasn't a nonfiction book about a boy aging backwards.  I would be miraculously wearing my cute green dress with pockets and not my unflattering bookstore sweatshirt I wear every other day.  And even though you might be gay and/or married in real life, in fantasy life you would ask me to show you around Portland and you would fall in love with me and try to woo me, but I would already be in love with you.  

Now, dear Andrew, I usually pride myself on being so far from psychic that I can plan on it.  It's a great comfort when I'm worried about someone being late--because honestly what are they odds they're in a ditch somewhere and I'm thinking that as it happens!  Not likely.  But in fantasy life, my lack of psychic abilities is a little sad.  So, oh!  What a tease you are!  You and your mean agent!  On a Tuesday, a few weeks back, when I was dressed in my unflattering sweatshirt, she called the bookstore to ask if we had your books.  My dear, but crush-ignorant co-worker told her how many we had and hung up.  In the name of professional communication, he nonchalantly told me your agent might bring you by to sign books.  

"Andrew Sean Greer?!" I squealed.  

"You're a fan, I take it?" he asked in such an unexcited way.  Fan??  

"I have a crush on him!" I blurted out to him and all my teasing customers.  "I've even imagined him coming to the store!  I can't believe it!" 

You, Andrew, are the only author besides Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida I've dreamt of coming into the store.  And I've met a lot of authors.  And Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida are a couple, so it doesn't count the same way.  

We spent every spare moment for the rest of the day online trying to figure out if you were gay or married.  I made plans to run home at my break to get your books: The Confessions of Max Tivoli, How It Was for Me, The Path of Minor Planets, The Story of a Marriage, I have them all!  I practiced saying "Tivoli."  TIvoli.  TivOli.  TivolI.  

My shift ended at 6:00.  

You hadn't come.  

You were reading at Powell's at 7:30 and I had to meet with potential roommates at 8:00.  I went to my meeting.  They were nice.  I guess.  But at 9:00 I booked it to Powell's.  I'm not proud of it.  I knew I'd missed you, but I had to check.  Maybe you were browsing the blue room....  Your books were already in the autographed section.  I struggled to keep my head from falling like Charlie Brown, and went home.  

So I guess I really am not psychic.  I should have planned on that.  

Now I hope you never knew it was a possibility to come to my bookstore.  I hope it was just your agent leading me on, and not you, dear Andrew.  

And I still hope you're not gay.  

-Your adoring fan