Here is what Theo told me on Thursday: "I found this thing. It's very low-key. We'll walk around, maybe grab food, be home by eight-thirty."
Here is what Theo did not tell me: that he had been researching Northside Saturday Night since approximately April, that he had a mental map of every participating block, and that "maybe grab food" was a phrase so structurally dishonest it should be submitted to a linguistics department for study.
I want to be clear that I like Northside Saturday Night. I like it a lot, actually. I like that North Linn Street turns into a thing you can just walk down slowly, and I like that it feels like Iowa City doing its earnest best to be a neighborhood instead of just a place to park near bars. It's good. The whole Northside Outside concept is good. None of what follows is a complaint about the event itself.
The complaint is about Theo.
We left our apartment at 5:44. The event started at six. I was wearing a light jacket because it was still cool and gray in that particular Friday-gray way, where the sky hasn't committed to anything, and Theo told me I would be warm soon. He said this with the confidence of a man who has studied meteorological data and also maybe owns a compass.
He had a route.
I discovered the route when he steered us away from the most direct path "to see the Luna's Tacos situation first." The Luna's Tacos situation turned out to mean he wanted to walk past it before doubling back to Northside Saturday Night proper, which is a thing someone does when they have a plan they have not disclosed to their companion.
I said: "Did you make an itinerary?"
He said: "I didn't write it down."
I said: "Theo."
He said: "There are just a few places I want to check in a specific order, it's not an itinerary, an itinerary has times."
Reader, he had times. I found out about the times incrementally, over the next ninety minutes, each time he said something like "okay we should probably head to the Zoetic block now because it gets crowded" or "the thing at Public Space One is better earlier." These are not the statements of a man who is just wandering. These are the statements of a man who has been living inside a private event schedule and simply forgot to mention it to the person he lives with.
The night was genuinely wonderful. The air warmed up, just like Theo had promised in a tone that suggested personal credit. There were people everywhere doing that early-May thing where everyone seems slightly amazed they're outside again and not entirely sure how to act about it. Someone near us was explaining the Day Party festival to a friend with the kind of enthusiasm that suggests they had also done their homework. Theo overheard this and nodded, privately vindicated, because apparently knowing about local arts events is a team sport he is always winning.
We got food. We stopped at two different spots, one of which Theo described as "the one I wanted to check" like he was a critic with a column. I had a very good time. My jacket came off around 6:40, which Theo noted.
We were home at 8:47.
I said: "You said eight-thirty."
He said: "We were basically done at eight-thirty, we just kept going."
This is the thing about Theo. He will plan an entire evening, refuse to call it a plan, execute it with the quiet precision of someone running a festival logistics operation, and then at the end describe the whole thing as having "just happened." Like the night was a pleasant accident. Like he wasn't standing on a sidewalk on Linn Street in early May with what I can only describe as a look of itinerary satisfaction.
I love him. He is a menace in the specific way of someone who wants you to have a great time and has done all the work to ensure it but will not under any circumstances admit that he did.
Next week he mentioned something about a walk. "Very casual," he said. "We'll just see where we end up."
I have started stretching in advance.