Tobin texted me at 8:47 a.m. to say he'd been doing "research."
This should have been my first warning. It was 48 degrees outside and I was still in bed and he was already on his phone acquiring knowledge, which is never a good sign with Tobin. The second warning came when he pulled up to Breese Stevens Field in a waxed canvas chore coat with the collar turned up, looking like he'd been cast as "autumn" in a regional commercial, and said, before even saying hello, "I've been tracking fall trend velocity."
"Trend velocity," I said.
"It's a thing." He held up his phone. There was a TikTok open. "People's outerwear choices are basically a personality diagnostic at this point. I've been studying the data."
The data, I would come to learn, was four videos and a Reddit thread.
Breese Stevens was already filling up by the time we got our wristbands — the cider fest crowd doing that very specific Madison thing of dressing for 48 degrees and 65 degrees simultaneously, layered and optimistic. Tobin surveyed the field like a naturalist who had arrived at the watering hole with a clipboard.
"Okay," he said. "Her." He pointed discreetly, badly, at a woman in a sherpa-lined denim jacket carrying a canvas tote with a lighthouse on it. "Dry cider. Definitely going as a cottagecore witch for Halloween. Probably just got out of a long-term relationship."
The woman turned. It was my friend Priya. She is married to a structural engineer named Dom, has two kids, and the tote was from a hotel in Door County where they'd celebrated their anniversary. She ordered a hopped cider with a side of cheese curds and then waved at me warmly.
Tobin did not recalibrate.
"He," he said, pivoting forty-five degrees, "flannel over a quarter-zip, definitely a Spotted Cow guy who wandered in, probably dressing as a lumberjack." The man was our friend Knox, who I knew for a fact was planning to go as the Succession logo for Halloween, was an extremely committed cider person, and had actually emailed the fest's organizers about their apple sourcing. Knox ordered a dry-hopped farmhouse and immediately started talking to someone about Breese Stevens' new permanent stage plans, which, classic Knox.
"These are not hits," I said.
"It's a sample size issue," Tobin said seriously. "I need more reps."
He got more reps. He told a man in a quilted vest he was "definitely here on a third date," and the man laughed and pointed to the woman next to him, who was his mother. He told a woman with a reusable bag from the Dane County Farmers' Market that she was "peak solitary autumn girlie, no offense" and she said "I'm here with my whole book club" and gestured behind her at eleven women who had just returned from the cider line. He looked at a teenager in an oversized hoodie and said "graphic tee under there, going as something ironic for Halloween, recently downloaded BeReal" and the kid said he was fourteen, his mom was somewhere near the food trucks, and he was going as a Minecraft Creeper because it was his little brother's favorite.
Tobin wrote something in his phone's notes app after each one. Adjusting the model, apparently.
Here is the thing about Tobin, though, and why I am not actually mad about any of this: at one point he handed me his chore coat because the wind had picked up off the field, and I put it on without thinking, and he looked at me for a second and said, "Okay, I actually can't read you at all. You're the one variable I didn't account for," and he was smiling when he said it, and it was annoyingly sincere, and we stayed until the last pour of the afternoon.
On the drive home he said he thought the model just needed a few more weekends of fieldwork to really prove out.
I said I'd think about it.
The chore coat is in my apartment. I haven't given it back yet.