small world, after all

I don't believe I've mentioned this fact, but I was married. And divorced. AND annulled (he wanted to marry a Catholic girl). We had no children, I moved to St. Louis, he stayed in Illinois - end of story.
Sitting on our back porch last night, David mentioned that he would like to make a list of 20 friends that he hadn't seen in years and try to get in touch with them. I told him that the hardest thing for me to get used to after I moved to St. Louis was going through an entire day without seeing at least one person I knew. Part of that was being new in town, part was coming from a small town where you couldn't step outside your door without running into someone - the brother of your best friend in grade school, a second cousin twice removed, the lady you paid your water bill to at the Village Hall - the possibilities were endless.
It was 1997. I was dating a fella named Brian, a local musician. He knew everyone. If he didn't, they knew him. My theory was that the world was really very small and that people could turn up in the most unexpected places. Brian's theory was that if you were in enough places you were bound to run into the same people over and over again, like a big pinball game.
A Canadian friend named Victor had an old buddy of his in town for a visit and invited Brian and me to go out on the town with them. After an enormous sushi feast at Seki in U City where several bottles of sake were consumed, we decided that some sort of caffeinated nightcap was in order - an effort to be perky drunks, I suppose. It was a beautiful June evening. We wandered up the street to Riddle's and grabbed a table on the sidewalk. We were all laughing and chatting when I happened to glance to my right. There, not two tables away were my ex-husband, the woman he left me for and the best man at our wedding. They were staring at me incredulously, with a hint of fear in their eyes.
Armed with the knowledge that I was out with 3 men and having a good hair night combined with the superhero powers of sake, I excused myself and ambled over to their table. They were so relieved to see me smiling, they almost hugged me. Best Man stared at me stonily (he never liked me for some reason - I privately thought he was a tight ass). After exaggerating the glamouressness of my big-city life for a bit, I mentioned that I had better get back to my dates.
When I sat back down, Brian said, "You knew them? Who was that?" When I told him, they all craned their necks trying to get a better look but the table was deserted. There was still a puff of smoke in the air. It almost looked as if the Road Runner had been there.
Now, what are the odds that my ex-husband would drive from Illinois to hang out in U City on exactly the same night that I ended up there? Sure, I could read my ex like a book. Best Man from Fairfield, IL was in town and Ex took him to what he thought of as the hippest part of St. Louis to impress him. I thought it was an amazing coincidence, but Brian stuck to his "pinball person" theory.
I haven't run into an unexpected person from my past for quite awhile.
Brian would probably say I need to get out more.