"I Swear Every Word of This is True..."

From time to time, I find myself in a situation, looking around, thinking, "Is this the beginning of a Penthouse Letter?"

Some situations just lend themselves to it. For example, the time the hot female plumber showed up and told me she was there to clean out my pipe.

OK, so the plumber thing never happened, but stuff like that does. Tonight was one of those nights. Don't worry - nothing sexual happened, so don't fear I'm about to gross you out.

The girlfriend wasn't around; she had a work thing this evening, and would be gone all night. I was left home alone, and I decided to do some laundry.

On the way back from the laundry room down the hall, I realized I'd left the keys in the apartment and locked myself out. Awesome.

Trip to the front desk. Bribe the guy to lend me the landlord copy of my key without charging me the big landlord fee. Run upstairs and get my own keys.

When I got back down to the ground floor, I jogged back to the front desk - in a hurry to finish the bribe transaction. On the way, a fairly attractive girl stopped me.

Now, were this a Penthouse letter, I'd tell you how incredibly hot this girl was. I'd say things like "perfect tits" and all that. But, this is my "seems like a penthouse letter" story, so I'll say this: she was attractive to the point where if people really wrote Penthouse letters and I were one of them, I could make such exaggerations without getting laughed at too much by anyone who saw her.

One Penthouse Letters kind of thing I would not have to exaggerate: she spoke with a Russian accent. Sexy. Because of this, I'm going to call this woman Natasha. And you have to say it out loud in something like a half-whisper. Natasha.

She asked me if the hallway I was coming from was the south building of my apartment complex. I replied quite politely that it was, and resumed my jog to the front desk to remit the key and said bribe.

From the front desk, content with my having averted financial and laundry disaster, I began to stroll back to my apartment from the lobby, where I saw, from afar, Natasha entering the elevator.

I entered another elevator a minute or two later. Halfway up to my floor, the door opened. Not paying attention, and being the only one in there, I almost stepped out, thinking it was my floor. I was stopped by almost running headlong into, you guessed it, Natasha.

She got in to the elevator. I was going up, but she was going down. Sorry, had to say it. She hit the button for the first floor, but as the elevator was still going up to my floor, she and I got to spend another 30 seconds together.

I asked her if she was ever going to make it to her destination, in a manner that seemed to me handsomely witty, and probably seemed to her totally asinine.

She laughed and smiled, and said she thought she might be in the wrong apartment complex altogether.

I explained that there is another complex one block away, set up like mine, and politely gave her directions.

Don't get me wrong, at this point, I was still just being nice, and seriously was not thinking anything sexual about this woman. I have two friends who will say, here, that I'm lying. Eat me; I am not.

But then, as I stepped out of the elevator, thinking my helpful directions would be the last of it, Natasha took a step toward me. I don't know why, but she did, and I began to have that dawning realization that I was in a Penthouse Letter-type situation.

She continued the conversation for another minute, saying something about this place looking different than one she'd been to before. But she was looking directly at me. In my eyes. Having just taken a step forward toward me. It was weird.

This is where all the freaky stuff happens in Penthouse Letters. But since this is real life, this is where I said, "Well, good luck. Have a nice evening."

Could I, though, have said something to convince her to come back to my apartment? Would it have taken much? I don't know. Since I'm not a believer in the truth of Penthouse Letters or similar stories told to me by friends, I wasn't about to test it out.

Then again, who knows? Maybe one well-placed line, like, "I'm in apartment - - - , if you need a place to stop and rest as you find your way," might have done it. Maybe "wanna come down the hall and get it on?" might have done it. As I said, I don't know, because I wasn't about to try. I guess that's why nothing even approaching the craziness of a Penthouse Letter has ever happened to me.