Hello Stranger(10)

Wait—at my building? Coming up? Wasn’t he in Singapore?

You’re not in Singapore? I texted.

I’m back.

Oh, no. He wasn’t coming up. I’d been pretending to be successful in front of him for years. No way was I letting him see the truth of my life.

I’ll come down, I texted.

I need to talk to you. Privately.

Wait right there.

Before he could argue, I leapt into action. He was not coming up here.

I was already ready for bed. It had been that kind of a day. But I swung on my favorite batik-print cotton robe—once my mom’s—kicked on some fuzzy slippers, and then headed toward the top-floor hallway looking, shall we say, not exactly ready for prime time.

I slipped into the elevator just before the doors closed and only noticed when I turned around that there was someone else in there with me.

I could see nothing but his back and the back of his baseball cap, but that was enough.

He slouched against the front corner, facing away, leaning hard into that corner, like it was the only thing holding him up. He was wearing a vintage 1950s-style bowling jacket like hipsters love to find when they’re thrifting. But he didn’t seem like a hipster. And the jacket didn’t seem all that vintage, either. More like a new version of an old jacket?

Who did that?

I was about to ask him to press Lobby for me when I realized that one, he’d already pressed it, and two, he was busy talking on the phone.

“Oh, my god, she’s so fat,” he said then to his phone, with a definite vibe like he had no idea I was there. “I thought she had to be pregnant, but no. She’s just unbelievably obese.”

I felt my face make an Umm—what? frown.

“Seriously,” he went on, “her whole side of the bed was sagging. Fifty-fifty she broke the springs. Belly fat for the Guinness book, I swear. And she does that thing where she breathes like she’s choking. It’s hilarious.”

Hilarious? What the hell kind of conversation was this?

He went on. “Another one-night stand. Big mistake. Huge mistake. She shredded the sheets. Those nails. Not even kidding—I might really need stitches. But what was I supposed to do? She threw up in my entryway.”

Okay. Now he really had my attention.

“I know,” he went on, voice still at full volume. “But then five minutes later, she’s dry-humping me again—just like in the parking garage. I think I pulled a hamstring.” He tapped his head against the elevator wall. “I tried to kick her out of bed,” he said next, “but she just kept coming back. And oh god, she’s a moaner.”

This must be the worst conversation I’d ever overheard. Who talked like this? I hate admitting to being this naive, but it had never even occurred to me that conversations this awful even happened.

Who was this guy? What a weasel.

I looked him up and down for identifying details. But there wasn’t much to go on with him facing away, slumped in the corner like that. His hair was brownish. His height was tallish. The only distinctive thing about him was that bowling jacket. Red and white with cursive stitching.

He was still talking. “Yeah, I got home from work and she’s still in the bed. So now it’s a two-night stand. And last night, she did that thing where she planted her fat ass right in the middle of the mattress and then she rolled on top of my face. I almost suffocated, I swear—under a mountain of blubber.”

“A mountain of blubber”???

Did I really just hear that?

I was baldly, openly staring at the back of this guy’s weaselly, nondescript baseball cap now.

What the hell? Who even thought those things about a person they’d just spent the night with, much less said them out loud?

As we approached the first floor, just as I was thinking this conversation couldn’t possibly get any more appalling, the Weasel added, “I got some pictures while she was sleeping. I’ll text them to you. Oh, and there’s a video. Sound up for that one. You’ve never heard snoring like that in your life. Go ahead and post them all.”

With that, the doors slid open and he slid out, still talking, without ever noticing I was behind him.

Holy shit.

I stepped out, too, but I slowed to an astonished stop just outside the doors.

This right here was why I hadn’t dated anyone since Ezra. This was why I spent Saturday nights at home with Peanut. Just the fact that men like this existed.

What had I just overheard? Was that unbelievable douchebag texting pictures of some poor unconscious lady to his friends? “Post them”?! What did “go ahead and post them” mean? Did he have some kind of website where he lured women back to his apartment and filmed them? Wasn’t that illegal? Should I call the police and report a—A…? A morally repugnant person in the vicinity?

Or should I go find this guy’s apartment, bang on his door, rescue this woman—who had clearly just made the worst one-night-stand decision of her life—and lend her a fuzzy sweater, make her some tea, and give her a little TED Talk on Bad Men and How to Spot Them?

I was still undecided when—speaking of men who made you lose your faith in men—I felt something clamp my elbow and turned to see my dad. But not so much his face as the back of his head, because he was already dragging me off toward—where? The street, maybe?

“Hey!” I said in protest, like he’d forgotten his manners.