Milo had a plan. This is always how it starts. He had a plan, he had consulted his phone, and he had the specific energy of a man who believes the day is already his.
The plan was: farmers market, then the new coffee place on Winnebago Street he'd seen someone mention online, then maybe a film festival thing if we were "feeling it," and back before noon because he had a thing. The plan was presented to me at 8:47 a.m. while I was still holding my mug with both hands like it was a life raft. I said sure. I have learned that "sure" is load-bearing in this relationship.
We left without jackets because it was 57 degrees and he said, and I am quoting directly, "the air feels ambitious." I want to be clear that I own a jacket. I own several. They were all inside.
The farmers market was genuinely wonderful. This is important to acknowledge. The square was doing its first real outdoor Saturday energy of the season — tote bags, kids, someone playing something on a violin — and Milo bought a jar of honey from a woman who explained the bees to him for six minutes while he nodded with total sincerity. He carried the honey the rest of the morning like a small trophy. I ate half a cheese sample and felt like everything was going to be fine.
Then we went to find the coffee place.
The coffee place on Winnebago was, according to the post Milo had screenshotted and now could not relocate, "opening in April." It was April. It was also, as we discovered standing in front of a very quiet storefront with a paper sign taped inside the window, not open. The sign said COMING SOON. The sign had been there a while.
Milo looked at the sign. He looked at his phone. He looked at the sign again with the expression of a man recalibrating.
"I think it's a soft launch situation," he said.
I asked what that meant, practically speaking.
"It means they're open but, like, selectively."
The door was locked. The lights were off. There was no one inside. A pigeon walked past us with more purpose than we had.
By this point the temperature had done exactly what April promised and climbed into something actually lovely — that particular Madison mid-morning where the light goes warm and you think, okay, I understand why people live here — but we had also walked six blocks out of our way and I was experiencing what I can only describe as pre-coffee clarity, which is not a pleasant state.
Milo found us a different coffee shop three blocks away. He located it by walking until he smelled espresso, which is a method that I will admit worked. We sat outside. He was very cheerful about the detour, the way he is always cheerful about the detours, the way he somehow treats every deviation from the plan as evidence that the plan was good, actually, because look where we ended up.
We had to walk back along John Nolen, which has a whole new traffic pattern now, and Milo explained the construction to me using information he was generating in real time. "It's a flow optimization thing," he said, gesturing at a cone. I do not know where he gets this. I don't think he knows either. A bus went by on a rerouted path and he watched it like it personally confirmed his point.
On the walk home, he mentioned that he'd seen there was a Mock Walk happening on State Street Saturdays, where you go around collecting free mocktails, and had I seen that? And did I want to do it next week?
I said I thought it was only through April 25.
He said: "Perfect, we have time, I'll look into it."
I want to be clear that I will go. I will absolutely go. I will stand outside another storefront with him while he consults his phone and decides it's a soft launch situation, and I will drink whatever mocktail we find, and the honey from the bees he learned too much about will be on our counter at home and it will be very good honey.
The air outside was 71 degrees by the time we got back. It had made good on its promises after all.
He had not.
But the day was genuinely nice. That's the thing about Milo. The day is always, somehow, genuinely nice.