ANYWAY, THAT’S HOW I wound up walking out of the Bean Street Coffee’s ladies’ room in a wet, coffee-stained, clingy-in-all-the-wrong- places outfit—and running smack into Joe.
Except for a second I wasn’t sure it was Joe.
Because he wasn’t wearing his bowling jacket.
So all I knew for a second was that a man—some kind of man—walked up to me and said, “What the hell happened to you?”
I smiled like I knew him and said, “Coffeetastrophe,” and then I made chitchat warmly and enthusiastically while quietly deducing who he was.
It didn’t take that long. Just a few seconds. The hipster glasses and the floppy hair were kind of a dead giveaway, once I got my bearings.
“Where’s your bowling jacket?” I asked then as confirmation—aware of the one percent chance he’d have no idea what I was talking about.
“Gave it the night off,” Joe said.
“How’s your back?” I asked, for two-factor authentication. “Magically healed.”
Mystery solved. Officially Joe.
“Should we get some dinner?” Joe asked next.
I nodded. That sounded like a perfect thing to do. Getting stood up could really make a person hungry. “Would you like to change first?” Joe asked next.
I nodded again.
And suddenly things just felt … better.
If you’d asked me at the apex of my getting-stood-up misery how this day was going to end, I’d have answered with a cuss-word-laden version of “not good.”
But doing something nice for a stranger made me feel better. Running into Joe—and recognizing him sans bowling jacket—made me feel better. The prospect of eating a nice dinner made me feel better. Even, if I’m honest, the memory of having told Parker to fuck off made me feel better.
Huh. I could feel better. That felt like news.
Dr. Nicole had been insisting it could happen all along. But I’d never believed her.
Had she been right?
Maybe life was full of surprises. Maybe disappointments could turn out to be blessings. Maybe tonight would end up being fun, after all.
 |
OR MAYBE NOT.
Because when we made it up to the rooftop so I could change, Sue, whose heart was absolutely in the right place but who could not seem to comprehend even the tiniest aspect of what this face-blindness situation was like for me … was throwing me a surprise party.
“Surprise!” Sue shouted when she saw Joe and me cresting the spiral stairs. Then her shoulders dropped at the sight of my coffee-drenched clothes, and she asked, just like Joe had, “What the hell happened to you?”
I felt my whole body go tense. There were fifty people on my rooftop, at least. Bulb lights. Music. Beer. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a party,” Sue said. “Duh.” “You’re hosting a party? Here?”
“It’s the party we never got to have. You know. When you had your brain thingy.”
I glanced at Joe, who was standing attentively beside me. I hadn’t told him about my brain thingy.
“We’re celebrating,” Sue said when I couldn’t find any words. “You remember celebrating?”
“I mean, I remember it,” I said. The way you remember the stone age. Or the dinosaurs. They existed. Once. “But, I mean…” I tried to figure out how to protest something that was clearly already happening. “A surprise party?”
“It wasn’t meant to be a surprise, exactly. You just weren’t here when we arrived. It never even occurred to me that you might leave the house.”
“I leave the house,” I said. “Not voluntarily.”
“Sue…” I said, astonished at the Grand Canyon–size distance between how she thought I’d feel about this forced party and how I actually felt.
“Where were you, anyway?” she asked.
“I had a date,” I said, glancing over at Joe. But dancing had broken out across the roof, and he was watching one of Sue’s friends do the worm.
That’s when Sue whispered into my ear, “With the vet?” I nodded.
So then she whispered, “How’d it go?”
I shook my head. And then flared my nostrils. And then gave her a thumbs-down.
“Okay,” Sue said, swinging around to steer me by the shoulders toward the beer coolers. “Let’s table that. You’ve got a rooftop full of people here to celebrate with you.”
“What are we celebrating, again?” I asked.
“Hello? The North American Portrait Society? Top ten finalist? You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
I hadn’t forgotten. Of course. But I suddenly noticed how important timing was when it came to things like celebrating. Yes, we’d been about to celebrate the finalist thing a thousand years ago, before my life fell apart.
But then … my life fell apart.
Was it fair to say I just didn’t feel much like celebrating anything these days? I loved Sue so much, my extroverted friend. And I loved that she was trying. But what on earth about nonconsensually bringing fifty people into the vicinity of a person with sudden face-blindness felt like a good idea?
Not to mention, my mom’s birthday. But I hadn’t told Sue about that. “You like parties!” Sue said.
“I like parties,” I corrected, “when I know the people at them. I do not
like parties full of strangers.”
“Literally no one here is a stranger,” Sue said. Then she pointed at a group of faceless guys standing around the beer coolers. “That’s Stephan,” she said, running down the line. “And that’s Colin. And that’s Ryan. And that’s Zach and André, and oh—”
“‘Oh’ what?”
“Oh,” Sue said. “It looks like Ezra showed up.” “You invited Ezra?”
Sue coughed in indignation. “Of course not. Somebody must’ve brought him.”
Great. One of the people here was my ex-boyfriend. But I had no idea which one.
“At least you showed up with some eye candy on your arm.” “Eye candy?” I asked. Did Joe qualify as eye candy?
“You know,” Sue said, nodding in Joe’s direction. “Your male prostitute.”
Guess so.
“I might have been wrong about that,” I said.
Sue let her gaze linger. “Maybe he should be,” she said with appreciation. “He could make a killing.”
“Sue,” I said. “Let’s focus. This is a problem.” “What?”
“The party! The people! My ex roaming loose!” “Why?” she said. “Everybody here loves you.” “But I can’t recognize anyone.”
“They won’t care.”
“They will care, Sue. They will think it’s super weird when they’re talking to me and I have no idea who they are.”
“Then let’s just tell them what’s going on with you.” “NO!” I choked out.
“You don’t want to tell them?”
I leaned closer. “Never. I never want to tell anyone.” “Why not?” Sue asked.
“It’s humiliating.”
“Why? It’s not your fault.”
“Trust me. Having your brain malfunction is humiliating.” “If you say so.”
But Sue was realizing now that she hadn’t exactly thought this through. “Look,” I said. “The only people in the entire world who know about
this are you and my dad and Lucinda … and Parker.” “Parker knows?”
“Lucinda told her.”
“Then it’s not a secret anymore. She’ll tell everyone.” “Not yet. I think she’s enjoying lording it over me.” “But she will.”
“Maybe it’ll fix itself before then.”
Sue sighed. “Okay,” she said then. “Here’s the plan. First, you’re going to change out of those wet clothes.”
“No argument there.”
“And then just stick close to me. Whenever anyone talks to us, I’ll say their name right away, so you’ve got it.”
That wasn’t a bad idea. “That could work,” I said. “It’ll totally work.”
“Just promise me,” I said then, holding out my hand so we could shake on it, “that you won’t leave my side.”
“I promise,” Sue said, pumping my hand up and down, “that I will never ever leave your side.”
|
GUESS WHAT?
She left my side.
Not on purpose. She just got dragged away.
I went into the bathroom to change, and I never saw her again.
I was left alone, as Picasso-faced person after Picasso-faced person came up to me and forced me to Sherlock Holmes one theory after another about who I was talking to.
Looking back, I could have just left.
I could have found Joe’s floppy hair and hipster glasses and steered him off to feed me that meal he’d promised. But he was lost in the faceless crowd, too—and all attempts to search for him got intercepted by faceless people hugging me, until I wound up making way-too-friendly chitchat with my ex-boyfriend for five solid minutes before realizing who he was.
All to say, the situation snowballed.
Before I even really saw it coming, I was having a panic attack out behind the utility room.
At least I think it was a panic attack.
Is it a panic attack when your entire body is utterly hijacked by … panic?
And you get dizzy? And you sweat and have the chills at the same time? And your heart pounds and your chest hurts and your hands go cold? And you can’t catch your breath? And you feel like you’re dying? And you collapse to your knees in a dark corner and press your forehead to the concrete to try to make the world stop spinning?
Is that a panic attack? ’Cause that was me.
And I sure as hell wasn’t celebrating.
I have no idea how long I’d been there, trying not to pass out, when I heard a voice say, “Are you having a panic attack?”
So of course I said, “No.”
“You look like you’re … not okay.”
Not okay? That was just insulting. Okay was my whole thing. “I am always okay,” I said, to set the record straight. And then, when the person didn’t accept that and leave, I said, “I’m fine.” Then, my voice muffled against the concrete, I added, “I’m good.”
“You don’t look good.”
This wasn’t Parker, was it? She never missed a chance for an insult. But no—of course not. It was a man’s voice. One, as usual, I couldn’t recognize.
“Identify yourself, please,” I said into the roof.
A rustling beside me as whoever it was sat down. “It’s your pal, Joe,” the voice said, closer and softer now.
“Hi, Joe.” For a second, knowing it was him made me feel palpably better. But then it occurred to me to wonder if he might be filming this moment for later blackmail, and I felt worse again.
“I’m no psychiatrist,” Joe said then, “but I’ve seen a lot of panic attacks. And this kind of looks like that.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. I was always fine—whether I was fine or not. “Okay,” Joe said. “A friend of mine—who clearly had a totally different
thing from you—used to find it helpful for me to pat her back in moments that were nothing at all like this.”
“I’m not having a panic attack,” I said. “Great,” Joe said. “Neither am I.”
“So I don’t need you to pat my back.”
“Cool. You don’t need it.” A long pause while he let that settle. “But we could just do it for fun.”
“Fine,” I said, too busy dying to fight.
And then he really did it. I felt a hand settle between my shoulders, and then I felt it slide down my spine till it reached my lower back, then lift up a second, and appear again back up at the shoulders.
He was basically petting me like I was a dog. But, ugh. Okay. It felt nice.
If I weren’t feeling so nauseous, I might be struggling with all my cognitive dissonance about Joe. My first impression had been so unbelievably bad. But many of the impressions that followed had been good. Had that first impression been wrong? Or was he just hiding all the bad stuff really well to my face?
I guess I’d just have to take it one panic attack at a time.
“The fact that you don’t want me to help you,” Joe said, “really makes me want to help you.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“It totally is. It’s the reason my wife left me.” Then he corrected: “One of them.”
I admit that got me. “Your wife left you because you were helpful?” “Yep.”
“I’m no wife, but that doesn’t seem like a thing wives normally complain about.”
“I am, apparently, too helpful. Problematically helpful. To sum up our many arguments: I help everybody all the time without discretion. Old ladies. Cub Scouts. Mangy cats. I have no helping filter.”
“But isn’t that a good thing?”
“She also thought I was a bad tipper.” “Why?”
“Because I gave everybody twenties. Hotel maids. Valets. Everybody.” “Okay, Daddy Warbucks. I’m with the wife on that one.”
“She felt it was a compulsion. Being too nice.”
I guess she’d never heard him say the word blubber.
“And it impacted her quality of life. Negatively.”
“I’m trying to imagine exactly how helpful you’d have to be for a non- insane woman to divorce you over it.”
“There were a few other reasons,” Joe said.
“Are you pathologically helpful? Did you give someone your car? Or, like, a vital organ?”
“Not yet,” Joe said.
“My last boyfriend was the opposite of helpful,” I said. “Your way is better.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I’m probably a good friend for you,” I said. “Because I never need help.”
“That’s a relief,” Joe said, continuing to stroke my back in a hypnotizing rhythm and kindly allowing me to ignore the irony.
I admit: It was relaxing.
After a while, he said, “My friend who had a completely different thing from you used to breathe while I did this, and it helped her a lot.”
“I don’t need to breathe, thank you,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” Joe said. But then he added, “Deep breaths are super healthy for you, though—even if you’re totally fine. I might take a few myself. Just to improve my already stellar health.”
And with that, Joe sucked in a big, loud breath, held it for about three seconds, and then blew it back out. “So refreshing,” he said then. “My grandma does this every day, and she just turned a hundred.”
He kept breathing like that, and what can I say? Peer pressure. I joined him.
We did about ten rounds, and then, I’m not going to lie: I did feel better. Less dizzy. Less nauseated. Less sweaty.
“My friend’s totally different thing used to pass after about twenty minutes,” Joe said then.
“I don’t think my thing is going to pass until this party ends,” I said.
“Ah,” Joe said. Then, a second later, like he’d had an idea, he said, “Are you okay here on your own for a minute?”
“I am now—and will continue to always be—one hundred percent okay,” I insisted, forehead still pressed to the concrete.
“Be right back then,” Joe said.
A few minutes later, I heard a chunk noise—just as the music cut out and it seemed like my dark corner got darker. Then I heard the ambient
sound of a puzzled crowd. Then I heard Joe’s voice. “Power outage, guys. Looks like the party’s over.”
Oh god, he was my hero.
Just knowing they were leaving drained the stress from my body.
By the time Joe came back, I was sitting up, leaning against the brick wall, breathing. Like a pro.
“Did you just flip the breaker and pretend there was a power outage?” I asked.
“Yep,” Joe said.
“And everybody went home?” I asked. “Yep.”
“And then you came back to check on me?” Joe shrugged, like, Obviously.
“Did you worry at all that the darkness might freak me out?” “Nah,” Joe said. “We’ve got the moon.”
I looked up and saw it for the first time. It was brighter than I’d realized. “I guess we do.”
It occurred to me then that I might have to start altering some of my opinions about Joe. Next I asked, “And once the coast is clear, are you going to take me out for that dinner you promised?”
But Joe just shook his head. “No.”
I felt a flash of disappointment. “You’re not?”
“Nope,” Joe confirmed then, turning back to the moon. “Because I already ordered us a pizza.”
