Celia Lieberman is alarmingly calm and composed when I collect her.
There’s no big scene. No deafening displays of Lieberman family dysfunction, no embarrassing personal confessions, no vows of vengeance. No, strangely it’s all sweetness and sunshine, hugs and kisses.
“Goodnight, Mummy,” Celia Lieberman chirps, exchanging air pecks with Gayle in the front doorway. “Goodnight, Daddy Dearest. Don’t wait up!” she trills, fondly patting Harvey on his bald head. “Come along, lackey,” she says airily to me. I tag after her to the Prius, maintaining a wary distance, certain I’m the victim of a ruse that could well end in my violent death.
“Oh, Harvey,” Gayle sighs loudly after us, holding his hand. “It’s the youth we never had.”
“Only better,” he glows. “Because we don’t have to go through it.”
---
“I just want you to know this wasn’t my doing. It was my parents’ idea and I’ve decided to humor the poor, deluded darlings,” Celia Lieberman says as we begin our night’s journey together. “Hang a left at the corner.”
Celia Lieberman’s in this ugly-ass grannyish plaid number that ends mid-calf and starts at a neckline that is actually at the neck. She switches on the radio and turns the volume way up. Me, I’m on edge, I’m expecting the anvil to drop at any moment on my head—I’m finding Celia Lieberman’s civility that chilling.
“Woo!” Celia Lieberman sticks her head out her open window. “TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE! YEAH, BABY!”
“You’re in a surprisingly fine mood,” I observe when she pops back inside, keeping her fixed in my field of vision at all times.
“Yes, I am!”
“Dare I ask why?”
“I got in Early Decision to Stanford.”
The news slams into me out of left field like a ton of bricks. I mean, I’m completely blindsided. The shock’s so great that I veer out of our lane into the opposite one right in the path of onrushing traffic. A chorus of horns yanks me back in the nick of time and I wheel us sharply to safety. But it’s a close call and we’re both rattled.
“Jesus, you trying to get us both killed?”
“You got in Early Decision to Stanford?” I croak, gulping down air. Stanford! You know how Columbia’s acceptance rate is in the high sevens? Well, Stanford’s is even more impossible. Try low fives. That’s lower than even Harvard’s, the lowest in the country, probably in the whole world. And that’s not 5 percent of just-anybodies applying, but 5 percent of the very best and brightest, the ultra-achievers who have the stats and muscle to think they might actually have a realistic shot. I mean, to these jokers, schools like Columbia, Penn, and Northwestern are Safeties. But even supersmart, well-prepped, and well-connected as they are, most don’t get in. 95 percent will be crushed like bugs on a speeding windshield.
Celia Lieberman got in Early Decision to Stanford! It’s amazing to me that I could know anyone who got into Stanford. But Celia Lieberman? With the way she dresses? Stanford! Somehow it’s the ultimate cosmic joke on me.
“How could you already hear?” I bray, refusing to believe. “It’s the middle of November, and no one hears back until at least the first week of December!”
“Well, I did. Almost a week ago,” she says, smiling broadly, bopping to the music.
With my increased marginality thanks to my Personal Essay, I won’t hear from Columbia until the last possible second, like the late, late dog days of December when they can’t put it off anymore and then who knows what I’ll hear? Stanford. Fuck. Celia Lieberman!
“Do you know what this means?” grins Celia Lieberman.
“That your SATs were astronomical?” I squeak.
“No, it means that, come September 15, I’ll be more than three thousand miles away from my goddamn parents. That’s why I picked it!”
---
Green Meadow Country Club’s the size of a small principality and just about what you’d expect from a private playground for the mega-wealthy, only much more so. I pull up the Prius behind a caravan of arriving Audis, Infinitis, and Benzes. A parking guy in a uniform with epaulets swiftly opens Celia’s door. She prances out, pumping her hips and fists, howling.
“PARTY ON! LET’S ROCK, DUDES!!!”
The valet looks at her and then at me. I give the keys to the thoroughly startled fellow, along with an explanation since I feel he’s owed one.
“She just got in Early Decision to Stanford.”
We’re directed through the glittering lobby into a vast ballroom with high ceilings right out of some sort of English palace. There, beneath the crystal chandeliers, in their natural habitat you might say, in full regalia and glory, are the crème de la crème of Green Meadow Country Prep teenage society. The girls beautiful, sophisticated, thin; the boys tall, trim, handsome. Future shot-callers, string-pullers, movers, shakers. Dancing, laughing, joking. And why not? I would be too.
“God, I hate attractive, well-adjusted people, don’t you?” Celia Lieberman says. “Oh, almost forgot, you’re one of them.”
But I’m not, not by at least twenty turnpike exits. Then, like a vision, I spot the birthday girl herself from across the room. Shelby, in a short, sheer clingy dress with pronounced nipple outlines, gliding our direction through the crush.
“Listen, Celia, one thing . . . ,” I whisper to Celia Lieberman. “I kinda sorta told Shelby that I live in the City.”
Celia Lieberman turns to me questioningly. “Why in hell would you kinda sorta say that?”
“I, uh, didn’t think it’d look good for your image to be with somebody from Pritchard, New Jersey,” I stammer, increasingly nervous as Shelby nears.
Even though I look away, Celia Lieberman can see right through me. “Oh, how very considerate of you.”
“Just play along, okay?” I plead.
“God, you are such a phony!” she marvels.
Then Shelby’s upon us in beat to the throbbing music, overwhelming in her perfection. “Hey guys, you made it! I was hoping you would!”
“Thanks,” yells back Celia Lieberman. “I can’t believe you invited me!”
“Oh, it wasn’t you I was inviting!” Shelby hollers back, shooting a smoldering look past her. I turn around. Again it has to be me by process of elimination. Thankful for my continued unexplainable good fortune, I return Shelby’s look with the most meaning I can muster. I can see the whole sordid scenario slowly dawning on Celia Lieberman as she realizes she’s been had. Been used by both Shelby and me for our own selfish devices. I cringe like the sleazeball I am, certain that my cover is about to be blown.
“Celia, you don’t mind if I grab Brooks for a dance, do you?” Shelby asks, slipping her creamy arm through my clammy one.
“He’s all yours.” Celia Lieberman pinches my cheek really hard. “The poor boy could use some exercise after the long commute from the City.”
Blinking back tears of acute pain, I mouth a fervid “Thank you” to her as I’m led away.
“I’ll be in the bathroom throwing up,” Celia Lieberman remarks after us, instantly causing both me and Shelby to whip around back at her, freaked.
“Just kidding,” Celia Lieberman laughs, this time the one to do the leaving.
“That Celia Lieberman has such an interesting sense of humor,” Shelby notes, watching her go.
“Yeah, she’s a regular laugh-fest.” I rotate my jaw, the sensation just returning to the left side of my face where Celia Lieberman pinched it. “But enough about her. Shall we dance?”
Shelby knows all the moves and then some that can’t be taught. Smooth and sensuous, she coolly anticipates my every thrust and gyration and ups the ante with a few provocations of her own. Coming close, but never quite touching, we ride the cresting waves of electronic music washing over us. Her emerald cat’s eyes fix on me, teasing, taunting. I want to grab her, devour her, consume her. I lust for her, for all this.
“So how’s it going with Celia Lieberman?” she calls above the din.
“Couldn’t be better!” I shout back, the music masking my bitterness. “She just got in Early Decision to Stanford!”
Shelby loses a step and we bump into each other. Stanford. Even she, she who has everything, is impressed. And envious.
“Nice!” she shouts.
Just the thought of Stanford and Celia Lieberman in the same sentence clause puts a damper on my disposition.
“Let’s not talk about Celia Lieberman!” I holler. “Let’s talk about you!”
Suddenly, I do a double take. For there, behind Shelby at the buffet table, gnawing on a giant lobster claw in each fat fist, is goddamn Burdette, of the blubbery Pritchard High starting front line, the first domino that started them all. My eyes jut out like in a cartoon, my throat goes dry. Before I’m discovered, I swiftly pull Shelby by the hips toward me and spin us dizzily around, deploying her as a visual shield.
“Boy,” she gasps, taken by surprise but not displeased. “And here I’ve been thinking you weren’t the type that messed around.”
My heart’s pounding like a bass drum as I furtively peer over Shelby’s bare shoulder at the buffet. Burdette’s no longer there. There’s no sight of him anywhere. Maybe it was just an illusion, I reason, a hallucination brought on by surging hormones, which mine definitely are since Shelby’s twirled around in my arms and is rubbing her tight little ass softly against my bulging groin. Can this really be happening?
“So, uh, how’s it feel to be eighteen?” I wheeze, trying to keep it together.
“Great!” she smiles, turning to face me again. “Now I can legally vote and fuck!”
This should get my attention in a major way, but it doesn’t because it is goddamn Burdette at eleven o’clock, double-dipping like the pig he is at the chocolate fountain. Again I swing Shelby around.
“That is great!” I exclaim, my brain misfiring on all cylinders, trying to plot escape.
“Which?” Shelby asks, confused. “Voting or fucking?”
“Fucking, then voting! Thanks for the dance!”
I dash off, leaving her high and dry. It’s a full-tilt disaster.
---
Scrambling about, I spy Celia Lieberman coming out of the women’s room, followed by Cassie.
“You must really put out,” Cassie says after once more appraising Celia Lieberman’s woeful outfit, trying to figure out the appeal. I motion urgently at Celia Lieberman, who sees me.
“Oh, I do,” Celia Lieberman proclaims loudly for my benefit. “I’m a total slut.”
“Really?” Cassie’s mouth drops, incredulous.
I’m trying to be cool and wait for their inane conversation to finish, but the risk of public exposure is just too immediate.
“C’mon, we’re leaving!” I command, tugging Celia Lieberman by the hand.
“But we just got here,” she protests.
“I can’t wait!”
I drag her away. Cassie’s floored, thinking the worst as usual.
“Man!” I hear her whistle to herself.
I rapidly steer Celia Lieberman to the front door. When we’re out of sight of Cassie, she pulls free of me.
“Hey, what’s with the caveman routine? You and the duchess have a spat?”
“No, I just had a close encounter with the cousin of my first client!”
She looks at me, still not getting it. “So?”
“So he arranged it. He knows what I do!”
The color drains from Celia Lieberman’s badly made-up face as she registers the potential implications, all catastrophic.
“I’ll get my coat!” she yelps.
“Meet you at the car!”
We dart off in separate directions. Ducking and pivoting like a tailback, I charge through the crowd. Just as I detect a sliver of daylight between me and the front door, my path’s blocked by the blond hulking form of Tommy. He bunches up my tie and pulls down, cutting off my wind. Way, way pissed.
“Listen, maggot, nobody disses Tommy Fallick and gets away with it!”
Tommy what? Could my ears, like everything else, be deceiving me?
“I beg your pardon,” I sputter, unwinding from his grip.
“No one poaches in Tommy Fallick’s personal preserve!”
“Your last name is Phallic?”
I’m intrigued, despite the extreme precariousness of my situation. Phallic. Adjective. Of, relating to, or resembling an erect penis. As in, what a dick. My night, indeed my year, has been made. Tommy Phallic! So pithy, so apt. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help smiling ear to ear.
“With an “F,” Tommy burns. “F-A-double-L-I-C-K!”
“Even so, you’d think your family would have changed it,” I guffaw, losing control. “A long time ago.”
Just as Penis lunges to throttle me, I catch a glimpse of Burdette again and bolt. Outside, I ambush the same parking guy as before, shaking him desperately by the collar.
“Blue Prius! And for the love of Christ, hurry!”
He takes off like a rocket, whether to retrieve my vehicle or call the cops, I don’t know. I dart behind the shelter of a large Grecian urn, but alas, I’m a moment too late.
“Rattigan?”
I freeze. It’s over. Cringing, I poke out my head, which Burdette, behemoth that he is, immediately clamps in a crushing headlock. He chews on a leg of something in one hand as he smothers me under his sweaty armpit.
“Sack of shit!” he booms. “Thought it was you!”
I squirm and claw in his stinking death-hold, kicking in midair. My eyes begin to loll back from the stench and lack of oxygen. I’m rapidly losing consciousness.
“I . . . can’t . . . breathe . . .”
Burdette releases me but comes up with new abuse by heartily pounding my back. I almost collapse beneath the repeated blows.
“Hey, Burdette, what an unpleasant surprise,” I say, nimbly slipping from his reach. “What are you doing here?”
“This Shelby chick went to camp in France or some shit with some honey I’m trying to bang. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Just getting off!”
The Prius skids in front of us. I open the front door for Celia, who tears past and dives inside. Interlocking both hands, I club Burdette as hard as I can in the gut. He crumples in half. Tossing the valet guy a fiver from my bankroll, I clamber behind the wheel and floor the battery. As we slink off in a clean getaway, I watch Burdette’s hunched-over, shrinking figure in the rearview mirror.
“Go for it!” Burdette shouts after me, grinning. “Sack of shit!”
---
For the next twenty minutes or so, we drive in somber silence. Public exposure would have been ruinous for us both, but much more for Celia Lieberman, who, if word got out she had to pay to get it, so to speak, would be a social pariah, Early Decision to Stanford not withstanding. Me, because if Shelby ever knew who and what I really am, it’d be over before it could start, which it damn near had. She’d been in my arms, looked me right in the eyes, talked of fucking. The biggest come-on in history by the most desirable girl on the planet. And I’d given her the brush-off. It’s all too tragic. I think if Celia Lieberman weren’t there to gloat, I’d actually cry.
“Now what?” she asks.
“Now, you go home and I go drown my sorrows in copious amounts of cheap alcohol,” I grunt.
“What sorrows?”
Try never having Shelby Pace when I maybe might have. Try never knowing if it could have really happened. Try almost hoping that Shelby had just been a cock tease and toying with me and that it couldn’t have really happened. Because if it could have really happened, which deep down I think it could have, well, I honestly can’t imagine what it would have been like being with a girl like that. But I’m fairly damn sure it would have been beyond fucking amazing. I can’t go on, it’s just too painful. Indeed my sense of loss is so vast and voluminous that I’m pretty much incapable of expression.
“Not that it matters anymore,” I do manage to say. “But thanks for not letting on to Shelby about me back there.”
“No worries,” Celia Lieberman shrugs. “When it comes to Shelby Pace, all guys are idiots. You can’t help yourselves.”
Somehow I blame her. Somehow I blame Celia Lieberman for everything wrong in my life. If I could, I’d blame her for nuclear proliferation, world hunger, and the continued lack of decent health care. I know it’s irrational. For Celia Lieberman, Celia Lieberman has behaved impeccably, even admirably. But the fact remains that if it weren’t for Celia Lieberman, I never would have set eyes on the sublime experience that might have been Shelby Pace. And I’d be much, much better off if I hadn’t.
“It’s nine sixteen,” chatters Celia Lieberman, oblivious to my demoralized state. “After my last social triumph, you can’t take me home for at least another three hours minimum. The parental units would be all over me.”
“You shouldn’t put down your folks all the time,” I say, supremely annoyed. “They’re only wrecking your life because they care. I mean, at least they want what they think’s best for you.”
“Oh, and yours don’t?”
No, Celia Lieberman, they don’t. One took off right after I was born and the other doesn’t give a shit about anything, least of all me. But they don’t know about stuff like that in Green Meadow, where all the parents have the time and the means to be overly invested in their offspring. But it’s hopeless to try to explain, she’s hopeless, they all are, so I don’t bother.
Changing the subject, I ask, “What would you be doing at nine sixteen on a Saturday night if it weren’t for your parents?”
A bowling alley. It’s the last place I’d ever predict Celia Lieberman would take me. I can’t remember the last time I was in a bowling alley and now I remember why. I don’t know if it’s the heady aroma of moldy shoes, stale beer, and rancid food, or the migraine-producing clang and clatter of balls rolling and pins toppling, or the sensory overload of crisscrossing lasers and flashing fluorescence, or all of the above that is such a turn-off. No, bowling’s not really my bag; that plus that I really suck at it, which I find secretly both infuriating and humiliating. Thankfully Celia Lieberman hasn’t taken me to the lanes to bowl—or to the snack lounge or the bar—because I follow her past them to the game room at the very rear of the circus of wholesome family fun.
I stumble into abrupt pitch blackness. As my vision slowly adjusts, I discern the arcade’s overrun with obnoxious brats, which, by definition, qualifies as anyone more than six months younger than me. Screaming and shouting for no apparent reason, gathered in shadowy clusters at various vibrating multimedia units. I turn to see Celia Lieberman pretending to play foosball at one end of a long, chipped table.
“Isn’t he dreamy?” she sighs, face rapt, staring ahead, twirling and jerking sundry knobs and handles ineffectually. I strain to see through the dim chaos.
She’s referring to a tall, prematurely balding string bean who’s pulverizing a little girl in what I recognize as Bludgeon XIII, the newest, most extreme edition of an especially vile, exploitative, totally reprehensible video game in which I’ve been known to more than occasionally indulge.
“That guy?” I look at him, then back at her, then at him again. Surely Celia Lieberman cannot be serious.
“Franklin Riggs,” she breathes. “Just got in Early Action to Caltech.”
“That guy?” Jesus, I think, everybody’s getting in everywhere.
Franklin sadistically finishes off the little girl, pummeling her video self into a bloody welter of severed limbs, squirting arteries, and spurting organs until there are no virtual body parts left to lop off or obliterate. Triumphant, Franklin holds out his palm for payment.
“Fork it over, punk,” he crows. Charming lad.
“We’re in the Chess Club together,” Celia Lieberman continues, all radiant. “He’s president. I’m secretary-treasurer.”
I look again at Franklin Riggs. Besides no hair, he has no chin. Caltech not withstanding, I just don’t see it. The little girl forks over what must be an entire month’s allowance to him. Franklin mercilessly pockets every last cent.
“Next victim!” he sneers.
An even smaller boy takes the little girl’s place.
“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” I comment, at my most diplomatic.
“He barely acknowledges I exist,” Celia Lieberman says dejectedly, giving up all pretense of playing foosball. She waves to Franklin, demonstrating to me.
“Hey, Franklin!” she smiles brightly.
Franklin, aglow in electronic gore, merely contorts in a sickly grimace by way of response.
“Yeah,” I say. “I see what you mean.”
---
Back in the Prius, Celia Lieberman declares she’s ravenous and there’s still another hour to kill so we strap on the feed bag at an ancient diner she knows about, which she says no one else from Green Meadow Country Prep ever goes to. I can believe it ’cause the place is kind of a dump, the kind of place you’d find in Pritchard. Great chow, not so big on the décor and ambience. After the deprivations I’ve suffered, a double cheeseburger and chocolate shake go down easy.
“So tell me about your parents,” says Celia Lieberman, seated in the booth across from me. “They can’t be worse than mine.”
“Parent. My mom’s out of the picture,” I answer, chomping into greasy goodness. “It’s just me and Charlie.”
“You call your dad by his first name?” Celia Lieberman’s already plowed through her—of course—veggie omelet, hash browns, and toast in record time. I can see her greedily eyeing my fries.
“Charlie’s not much of a dad. Not much of anything really.” Celia Lieberman helps herself to my fries. Without asking. “Listen, forget what I said. Your parents are messed up, okay? I guess everybody’s are.”
“What does Charlie do?” asks Celia Lieberman, now grabbing my fries by the handful.
“Mostly he gets high and reads comic books. But when he’s not doing that, he delivers the mail.” I’m very particular about my fries. You see, I parcel out my fries so there are always still some left after I’ve finished the rest of my repast. Fries are like dessert to me. The tiny reward I’ve saved for myself. How so like Celia Lieberman to spoil my treat. Suddenly, I reach the breaking point, thwacking her hand hard with a spoon.
“Order your own fries,” I snarl.
“Hey, that really smarts!” Celia Lieberman complains, rubbing the sting out.
“Good,” I say. “It was meant to.”
Celia Lieberman watches me eat for a while. I take my own sweet time.
“Your dad’s a mailman?” she asks, picking up the thread. It’s almost amusing that the idea is so out there for her. That the mailman, the butcher, the tailor, all the little people who make life so convenient might have kids of their own. So, just for the hell of it, I decide to blow her mind.
“Oh, it gets better. He’s a mailman who went to Harvard.”
“Your dad’s a mailman who went to Harvard?” Her mind is blown.
“He wasn’t always a mailman. Before I came along, Charlie was an up-and-coming young novelist.”
I know, impossible to believe, but it’s true. Before I was born, Charlie had actually been somebody, had actually accomplished something of actual note.
“I’ve never met a novelist,” remarks Celia Lieberman. “Doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, too many dentists, but no novelists.”
“Skies of Stone by Charles Rattigan,” I inform her. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone about Charlie’s semi-illustrious past. There has never been anybody who it might matter to. “The New York Times named it one of the top ten new works of fiction in 1995.”
“So then what happened?”
“Then 1996 happened, then ’97 and ’98. Nothing happened. Then I happened.”
The subject’s a bummer. Because I don’t know what happened. Was it me that happened? Was I the reason that Charlie lost the talent and drive or whatever gift he once had? “Listen, can we talk about something else?”
“Is that why you do this—take money for being a stand-in?” Celia Lieberman persists. “To get away from him?”
I stop eating, my appetite suddenly gone. Charlie’s a riddle that I’ll never solve. And though it pains me to admit it, Celia Lieberman has articulated something I’m just realizing that I’ve long felt but never quite faced up to.
“You know, I’ve never thought of it that way, but I probably am.”
“Amazing. We have something in common after all.” She eyes my fries again. “Are you through with those?”
Defeated, I push my plate toward her. She digs in without shame.
“Actually, I’m trying to save money to go to Columbia.”
“You have to pay for college yourself?”
“If I get in, which Charlie actively hopes I don’t,” I say gruffly. “Most likely he’s gonna get his wish. My cumes are still twenty-five points below the median. And my Personal Essay’s a train wreck.”
Celia Lieberman’s expression softens, seeing a new side of me, a side I make it a rule not to show, but I figure I’m never going to see her again so why not spill my guts a little?
“Anyway, this, as you call it, beats the hell out of getting paid minimum wage at a sub shop.”
“I’ve never met anyone my age who works for minimum wage,” Celia Lieberman muses. “Actually, I’ve never met anyone my age who works, period.”
Not a single one? Can it really be? Although it’s what I expect, somehow it’s still beyond comprehension.
“Well, they do in Pritchard,” I laugh bleakly.
---
The drive back is silent. Celia Lieberman’s questions have churned up stuff I do my best not to think about because thinking about things doesn’t change anything. Charlie’s still a bum and I’m still on my own. I’m at a fork in the road. And if I can’t hop on the train hurling by, I’m never getting my ass out of Pritchard. As for Celia Lieberman, I have no clue what she’s thinking, which is normal because I never do. But I do know she’s thinking about something because she hasn’t made a peep for a good ten miles.
“You know anyone with pull at Columbia?” asks Celia Lieberman out of the blue.
“Are you kidding?” I answer. “I don’t even know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone.”
“Are you great at anything?” she inquires. “Any talents you’re keeping hidden? Sports? Music? Computers?”
“I’ve got nothing special going for me,” I report mournfully. “Actually, if I was Columbia, I wouldn’t take me either.”
“My uncle’s a professor there in the physics department,” Celia Lieberman states.
“For real?” A physics professor isn’t exactly what I have at the top of my wish list of connections, especially when I have no intention of ever again taking a physics class. I’m hoping more along the lines of a nationally elected public official or prize-winning somebody or other or just your basic filthy-rich alum. But hey, a professor at Columbia. It’s a fingerhold, something, better than nothing.
“Uncle Max. Mommy Dearest’s older brother. But they haven’t spoken for years.”
Great, just when I’d really psyched myself up about the guy. Just my luck.
“But I think he’s still speaking to me,” Celia Lieberman adds. “I bet I could arrange an interview if you think that’d help. He’s a bit of a crank.”
I’m sure he is, I think.
“I don’t care if he’s a serial killer, I’ll take anything,” I say, but not believing she’ll follow through. People never do.
We slow to a stop, having reached the Lieberman abode. I pull up the Prius in the driveway beside the Beast. Celia Lieberman gets out. I do too.
“You don’t have to walk me to the door,” she says. “My parents aren’t home to make a scene.”
“They aren’t?”
“They went into the City. Pops is getting some big-deal award for saving the life of some president of some West African country. They’re being put up in a penthouse at the Plaza.”
The whole night she’s been telling me we have to stay out all night because of her parents and now it turns out they’re not even around to invade her privacy? Are you shitting me? Why, that little stinker! I glare at her in mute outrage.
“Might as well get them their money’s worth,” she smiles innocently. “Speaking of which . . .” Snapping open her purse, she pulls out a thick folded envelope filled with cash. “Paid in full plus a little something extra.”
She tosses the wad underhanded at me. I snag it.
“We’ll be in touch,” she says, strolling to the door.
But I know we won’t.