Here is what I know about Stellan: he is a deeply optimistic person in a world that does not always reward optimism, and nowhere is this more evident than in his relationship with weather.
We have lived in New Haven for three years. He has not once correctly assessed a New Haven April.
This morning he came downstairs in a linen blazer. Not a jacket. Not a rain jacket. Not even the fleece he owns but considers "too try-hard." A linen blazer, the color of oatmeal, which he was wearing over a single shirt, as if the forecast were something that happened to other people.
"It's going to hit sixty-seven today," he said, which is technically true and also completely beside the point.
I pointed to the window. It was misting in that specific New Haven way where it's not quite raining but you will absolutely be wet in three minutes. The sky was doing that thing where it looks like a ceiling. He looked at the window for a moment with the focused attention of someone who believes he can negotiate with atmospheric conditions through eye contact.
"That's morning weather," he said. "It'll clear."
I want to be clear: he had no basis for this. He had not checked a forecast. He does not have a barometer. He has vibes, and today the vibes were telling him linen.
We were meeting his friend Pembrook for coffee, which Stellan had also planned, including the location — a place downtown near the Shops at Yale, which he had picked based on a walk-by three weeks ago. He had not looked up if they were open Sundays. They were not open Sundays.
We stood on the sidewalk in the mist. The linen blazer was beginning to understand what had happened to it. Stellan was consulting his phone with the expression of someone who has just discovered that the world is organized differently than he thought.
"Okay there's another place," he said. "Like four blocks."
It was six blocks. The four-block estimate is, I have learned, load-bearing in the sense that it gets you moving, and then reality handles the rest.
By block three he put his arm around me, which was either affection or an attempt to share warmth. I accepted it as both. By block five the linen blazer was a different, darker shade of oatmeal. By block six we were standing under an awning while Stellan squinted at his phone and said, "Okay so this one closes at two," and it was 1:52.
Pembrook, it turned out, had simply gone to a diner on Chapel Street and ordered coffee and was texting us periodic updates about the hash browns. He had been there for twenty-five minutes. He had made no plan and executed it perfectly.
We got to the diner and I peeled off my rain jacket and Stellan sat down across from Pembrook looking like a man who had survived something, which I suppose technically he had.
"You look wet," Pembrook said.
"It's dying down out there," Stellan said.
Pembrook and I made eye contact. We did not say anything. This is a thing that happens now.
Here is the part that gets me every time, the part I can never quite stay annoyed through: when the coffee came, Stellan wrapped both hands around the mug and looked out the window at the drizzle and the gray Yale buildings and the people walking past in the appropriate layers, and he smiled like this was exactly where he meant to end up.
"Okay," he said, "this is great."
And it was. The diner was warm. The coffee was good. Pembrook was working through the hash browns with professional dedication. Outside, the mist was doing its mist thing, and in a few hours it probably would clear, and Stellan would reference this as evidence that he'd been right about the weather.
The linen blazer is hanging over the radiator now. I don't know if it's going to be okay.
Stellan is already talking about the Maifest on the twenty-fifth. He thinks it's an outdoor event. He is planning, I assume, based on vibes.
I have started checking the forecast for both of us.