And here she was again, that girl-slash-woman from a few months ago, coming down the path. He hadn’t really called her or anything after that initial meeting—he gave her a number, of course, but it was to his agent-slash-manager and after a few weeks she’d stopped ringing—so this was probably going to be a bit awkward. There were a couple of options, of course, and they all seemed to run through his mind simultaneously:

1. ACT LIKE YOU DON’T KNOW HER. Now, this was probably the lamest and most desperate of the possibilities, but he gave it a quick mulling over. In this scenario, he wouldn’t avert his eyes or look the other way—pretending that his nonexistent dog had run down the hill or something, which he had resorted to on occasion—or turn around and start jogging in the other direction. Oh no, that would be way too much work for a girl-slash-woman like this. In this case, he’d simply keep going and make eye contact and see if she remembered him. He had the sun to his back so it was possible that she wouldn’t be able to make him out clearly, but he couldn’t rely on that. If she did look at him—smiling or scowling or seething—he’d have to play dumb through to the end. Rarely would anyone actually stop and confront him; no, this approach usually only led to a dirty look or a whispered curse to a friend-slash-acquaintance as the girl-slash-woman in question walked off. No big deal. So, all in all, this was actually a pretty decent option and not nearly as lame or desperate as he had first felt it to be.

2. ACKNOWLEDGE HER BUT KEEP IT LIGHT. This one was obviously a touch harder to pull off and took a deeper commitment to the situation than perhaps he was willing to make at this time. In this sequence, he would make contact first and give a friendly wave-slash-smile, thereby rendering her attack mute. He wouldn’t call her by name—he couldn’t swear that she had ever told it to him in the first place—but utilize his earlier theory by pitching right in with a “Hi!” or “How’s it going?” They could then make some light chatter-slash-banter about the weather and a few auditions that she’d gone on and didn’t get, that sort of thing, until he casually dropped in a yawn and said, “Well, hey, I better get going.” This was tricky, of course, because the worst case was that she might ask him what he was doing over the weekend or did he need her number or something, but he’d seen this used very effectively by himself and others in the right situation. Usually with the more passive kinds of girls-slash-women, of which she seemed right on the cusp of being.