Hello Stranger(79)

Useless. Joe’s body language stayed blank.

“And calling,” I added. God, now I sounded like Lucinda.

Joe just stood there.

At last I generated an interrogative: “Have you been sick?”

And at last, a response: “No.”

“Have you been … out of town?”

“No. But I’m leaving now.”

“You’re leaving town? Now?” I glanced down at his suitcase. “Right now?”

“Yes.”

I regrouped. “Do you happen to remember”—I felt a hitch in my throat—“that you were going to be my date to my art show tonight?”

Joe looked away, like he couldn’t stand the sight of me. The face might be unreadable, but the body language was unmistakable.

What on earth had I done to him?

Or maybe I hadn’t done anything.

Sometimes when I’m watching a movie and there’s a simple Big Misunderstanding between two people—he thinks she’s a space alien or something—I want to shout, “Just talk to each other!”

But of course nothing in real life is ever simple like that.

Every real human interaction is made up of a million tiny moving pieces. Not a simple one-note situation: a symphony of cues to read and decipher and evaluate and pay attention to.

It’s a wonder we ever get anything straight at all.

And of course for me, for most of my life, the number one go-to for deciphering any human interaction was facial expressions.

Which I couldn’t even see.

So this conversation was destined to fail from the start.

But I still had to try.

I took a step closer, wanting to get really clear. “I guess the date’s not happening now?”

Joe gazed off at some far point on the horizon.

“That’s right, right? You’re not coming with me to this thing? Even though you said you would?”

Nothing from Joe.

“I guess I’m just really nervous to go by myself,” I went on, feeling my voice waver a little. “I don’t want to go at all. But I have to go, you know? My painting. My life goals. And even though the portrait is not what they want, for sure—so I’m one hundred percent guaranteed to come in dead last—I suspect it might actually really be good. In an ugly duckling kind of way. Plus, there’s a good chance my horrible family will show up and make things a hundred times worse. And I’m going to have to do it all genuinely, totally alone.”

I held my breath for a second, trying to steady myself.

I never, ever asked for help. And if Joe’s behavior the past four days had made anything clear, he was in no mood to give it.

But I wasn’t asking for him, I realized.

This wasn’t about his answer. This was about my question.

And mustering the courage to ask it.

“The thing is,” I said then, my voice feeling like a balloon I might lose hold of. “The thing is … I’m scared to go alone. And I don’t know why, but it feels like you’re the only person I can say that to. You’re the only person I want to say that to. I just want so badly to have somebody with me. Anybody. And so I just have to ask if you might stay tonight. Despite everything.” I took a step closer, like that might seal the deal. “Can you postpone your plans,” I asked, “and come with me?”

If there was any hope for us at all, he’d sense my desperation—how badly I really, truly needed him—and rescue me this one last time.

But he didn’t.

He kept his face turned toward the horizon. “Are you asking me to be your anybody?”

“I guess that’s one way to put it.”

Now, at last, he turned toward me. “I’m not going to be anybody for you, Sadie. And I don’t want to see the portrait. And I don’t know why you think I’d care about any of this.”

But I shook my head. “I don’t understand what happened.”

I could feel a flash of anger in his expression like fire. “Really?” he said. “I don’t understand it, either, to be honest. But here we are.”

I took a deep breath. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”

But Joe shook his head like sorry was the most useless word in the world.

Worse than useless, even. Insulting.

He turned to leave. Then he stopped and turned halfway back.

“I’m moving out, by the way,” he said then. “So stop coming by my place. And stop calling me. And for god’s sake … stop texting.”





Twenty-Five


THE FIRST INSULT of the art show—before all the injuries—was placement.

I arrived at the gallery to find my portrait hung in the worst conceivable spot—half under a staircase, fully at the back, right near the bathrooms, under an exposed air-conditioning vent that was literally dripping into a bucket. There was a moldy smell to the area—not to mention a tinge of Lysol.

You’d think that a bright, airy, recently renovated art gallery wouldn’t have a dank corner—but you’d be wrong.

And that’s where they stuck me.

At the art gallery equivalent of a restaurant’s sucker table.

Worst of all, the spot was hard to get to, but because of the U-shaped layout of the gallery, it was easy to see. Everybody entering the building could get a full view of my indefensibly tragic situation.