Craig.

Jamison has a man crush on my neighbor Craig. He gets giddy whenever he sees the guy pop his head out of his back door when we're out chilling on my deck. "Is Craig a part of this story?" is the only thing Jamison wanted to know when I called him ready to tell an extremely enthusiastic tale about something that happened when I was cooking a frozen pizza two nights ago. And the only guaranteed character he has in mind for a TV show he wants to write together is, you guessed it, Craig.

Craig is probably in his 40's. I'm not quite positive about that. He lives in the apartment complex about three feet from the outside wall of my Embassy Suites of efficiencies spot. He's always got a five o'clock shadow, and about 80 percent of the time, Craig is dressed in tennis clothes: the high socks pushed down to just medium length, with lots of wrinkles and fold ups are my favorite part.

Here was how my first encounter with Craig went:

Me: (walking out my front door)

Craig: (walking to his car, which is parked in front of my front door) "Is that incense you got burning in there?"

Me: "Yeah." (thinking he likes the smell and is going to compliment me with the standard Austin reply of "right on.")

Craig: "Yeah not my favorite."

Me: (wondering if he ever smelled this place before I moved in, and which he'd prefer if given the option) "Oh."

It's Craig. He tells new neighbors that he doesn't like their taste in smell. (Now that would be a hard sentence for a non-native speaker to understand.)

Craig drives two cars: one is a boring minivan. The other is freaking incredible. It's an old school Volvo that looks like a Jeston's car. Dark green, from the 70's, with a big, bubbly back windshield. Ninety-eight percent of the time, it just sits in the grass beside the dumpster in front of the building. But sometimes he drives it. When I found out the car was Craig's, I wasn't surprised.

"Yeah man, I see you've been getting a lot of free stuff on my list," Craig said tonight during one of his patented, pop-out/pop-in maneuvers he pulls from the steps abutting his back door, while we were on the deck. Craig is so good at timing those things perfectly: he never lingers awkwardly, and he never gives the brief "elevator hello." These pop-out/pop-in's average about two minutes in length, I'd say if forced to guess. The "Craig's" list joke was perfect for a two minute Craig performance. "I'll be sure to leave you the bill for my services."

Craig also loves to say "Looks like a party." He's the no-incense guy, he's the tennis clothes guy, but he's also the "Looks like a party" guy. I'm pretty sure he's said it every time Jamison has come over. We're chilling on the deck, Craig walks out, and wait, let me guess:

"Looks like a party..!"

(I want to petition to whatever committee decides these things that we need a compromise punctuation mark that straddles the line of the period and the exclamation point. How do we indicate excitement? But not like "WHOOO! LOOKS LIKE A PARTY!!" excitement. The kind of "I'm acting excited, but I'm actually quite relaxed" tone of voice.)

Jamison and I are standing out on the front porch the other day, and Craig is in his kitchen, watching. Jamison notices him and whispers, "Craig!" I turn. Craig is drinking coffee and looking at me through his screen.

"Hi Craig," I say.

"Looks like a party," he answers.

And he did it again tonight. And Jamison was happy.