Here's how he did it:

So I board the plane (USAir flight 673, non stop service to Philadelphia) and start walking to the back to find seat 23d. Let's see... 20.. 21.. 22.. solid wall. No, that can't be right. 20.. 21.. 22.. wall. "Um, excuse me, but my boarding pass says I'm in seat 23d, and there's this big wall here.."

It turns out that the USAir folks accidentally booked a few phantom rows worth of seats, somehow thinking this was a longer aircraft.

Now, since what I had to do was timed out practically to the minute (I had to get to Philadelphia, drive to the suburbs, pick up the ring, drive back to the city, and finally get her apartment ready all before Paige came home from work) I was a little worried. I told the stewardess that I really, really, really, no kidding, (really), had to be on this flight. No luck, and she told me I had to go and talk with the nice folks outside.

Leaving all my bags and flowers behind (in the possibly naive hope they wouldn't just fly away with them), I went and joined the growing throng of confused and seatless passengers. I told my (by now familiar) tale of woe, which prompted all the married folks in the group to tell their engagement tales, which kept us all busy for a while. I learned that FedEx won't ship an engagement ring (but UPS will), and other such salient bits of information.

I was becoming uncomfortably aware that if the plane pulled away from the gate that all my flowers and various other supplies were going to go to Philadelphia and propose without me.

One woman thought it was all the most romantic thing ever, and assured me I'd make it to Philadelphia (presumably on the strength of this romanticism). As it turns out, she was right — shortly afterwards the boarding people announced that there were seven of us who hadn't wandered away to find other transportation and it just so happened there were seven spare seats.

We seven got back on the plane and found our new seats above the row 22 cutoff. Apparently, word had spread in my absence and by this point, every single person in the rear of the plane knew why I was going to Philadelphia.

We flew. I spent the time making paper roses (I taught the woman sitting across from me how, and she made one for herself), and thinking of things to tell Paige so she wouldn't suspect anything (or worse - try to pick me up at the airport!) My steady sweetie is a wonderful, sweet and generous woman, but for this particular trip, being picked up at the airport would be a distinct problem. She's also smart as a whip, so anything I told her had to be pretty darn believable.

Landing an hour and a half later, I gathered all my paper roses and managed to stem the tide of deplaning passengers to get my bag out of the overhead compartment. As I debated the best way to extricate the box of real roses from the teeming tide, I heard a shout: "You can't forget these!". My friends in the rear of the plane came through - one by one, they handed the box from person to person, up the aisle to me. As I left the plane, the stewardesses lined up applauded.

I hopped in a taxi, made it to the city, got in my car, drove out to the suburbs, picked up the ring (one of the women at the jewelers said I had a widest smile she had ever seen), and sped back to the city.

I should stop and turn things over to Paige here. It seems she did suspect, and actually wrote her suspicions down to prove it to me later. Free tip for aspiring engagement sneaks out there — if you always call with flight information, not calling (remember — I was terrified she would try and pick me up) looks odd.

Not only did I suspect, I recorded it in my Pilot at about 10 in the morning so that I would have proof that I had in fact guessed that something was up. The truth is, by being so careful not to talk to me, he gave himself away. I called the office no less than three times, I called his apartment at least twice. No answer. And no calls back — very unlike him.

The whole day I was on pins and needles. Is he doing this today? Am I getting myself all worked up over nothing? At one point I actually said to my friend Nanette that I might not be in over the weekend — we were working on a huge project that had a completely unrealistic deadline — because if I was right and he was proposing, we would have to drive up to North Jersey to see David's parents.

As the afternoon went on and I hadn't heard from him, I went from nervous to neurotic. Where the hell was he? Why hadn't he called? I didn't know he was afraid to call because he thought that I would leave the office to come and get him. He had been deliberately cryptic on the subject of his plane's arrival for that very reason. I had already told him that I didn't have the time to go get him at the airport and he would have to take a taxi (I know, I know. Some girlfriend I turned out to be. But we really were on an impossible deadline). The longer I hadn't heard, the more concerned I was that something dire had happened.

Of course, he was busy trying to get the ring in time before I came home and ruined the surprise. And then he finally called and left me a message that he was in the taxi on the way to my apartment. Then 20 minutes later he called again, still from the "taxi" with some wacky story about how they scheduled him on the wrong seat on the plane. So I went back to Nanette and said I figured that he wasn't proposing after all.

But, I was walking around thinking about how it doesn't take that long to get to my apartment from the airport. I was very suspicious that he was actually calling me from the car.

Seven o'clock rolls around and he calls again to ask me when I'm coming home. I said I didn't know...everything was taking longer than it should and the client kept making changes and then changing things back...and on top of that it was raining. So I asked him if he would come and get me.

This is the point where he gives things away, sort of. He told me that his car doesn't do well in the rain (which was true, but still) and couldn't I just take a taxi? I said okay, and he asked me a couple of times if it was all right — and he sounded nervous. Hmmmmm.

Somewhere around then a fight broke out among three of my team members. I watched them go at each other like it was a B movie. And I thought to myself, there's a really good chance that he's sitting at home waiting to propose. Do I really want to waste time getting to him for this? The answer was easy. I packed my bag, shut down the computer, and said goodbye over my shoulder as I raced out the door onto Market Street.

I stood there in the pouring rain for several minutes. Hundreds of perfectly empty cabs streamed by me and refused to pick me up. I literally stood out in the middle of the street, yelling "What's the matter, am I invisible?" until finally one of them slowed down enough for me to grab onto the passenger side back door and not let go.

When I got to the building, I walked across the lobby slowly, thinking that when I crossed it again, I could be engaged to David. This thing that I had been wanting could finally happen. And I knew in my heart that it wasn't really "could." I knew it was going to happen.

When the elevator door opened, there on the floor leading up to my door was a line of red roses and white tulips and paper roses. I started following it, then thought of my neighbors. So I went back to the elevator and picked up every flower on the way to my partly open door. David had heard the elevator door open, and was sitting there, wondering what was taking so long. I pushed open the door, and there was another line of flowers, leading straight up to the sofa. He was sitting there, clutching the ring box and looking a little grey. I walked up to him with this bunch of flowers. He got down on one knee and said "You're my best friend and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?"

I won't tell you how this one ends. I'd hate to ruin the surprise.