He Said He Was a Pilot. He Was Gary From the Sunglasses Kiosk.

His profile said Captain. First officer for a major airline, actually, but he rounded up, and I get that, we all round up. The pictures showed him in the uniform, aviators on, standing in front of a jet with that confident little half smile. Six foot two. Loved travel, obviously. Flew to Tokyo basically weekly.

His name was, he said, Julian.

We talked for three weeks before meeting. He could not always respond quickly -- flying, you understand -- and he would send messages like "just landed in Zurich, thinking of you" at odd hours. It was romantic. It was a long-haul kind of courtship. I told my friends I was seeing a pilot and I watched their faces do the thing faces do.

We agreed to meet at a wine bar. I got there and scanned the room for six foot two and aviators. Nothing. I texted, "I'm here, back corner." A man stood up from a booth about fifteen feet away and my stomach performed a maneuver.

He was, being generous, five foot six. He was easily fifteen years older than the photos. And he was wearing a polo shirt with a small embroidered logo that said, and I read it twice, "SunGlass Hut -- Ask Me About Polarized."

"Julian?" I said.

"Gary, actually," he said. "Julian's my middle name. Kind of."

Kind of.

I sat down. I want a medal for sitting down. And over the next forty minutes the story unspooled like a cheap sweater. He was not a pilot. He had never been a pilot. The photos were of a man named, he thought, some guy, I found them on a pilot forum. He worked at a sunglasses kiosk in the Eastgate mall, the middle one near the pretzel place. He had never been to Zurich. The furthest he had traveled recently was a bachelor party in Reno, which he mentioned unprompted, as if it helped.