I just walk away now, without a word or a look? Or should I wait to lower the boom until he’s driven me back to the library for my car? Or—and this option makes me feel morally terrible and warm between my legs at the same time—should I go back to his place and fuck him one more time before I end things?
“I’m not a doctor,” I whisper, looking at Weber across the bent figure of the woman. I tell him with my eyes that he has really messed up. I can see that he doesn’t understand why. My expression takes him by surprise, and I enjoy a feeling of triumph. He looks ridiculous, crouching beside the picnic table with an ice cream cone in each hand. I reach out and take the chocolate cone.
The woman rises up slowly between us. Her long hair pulls back off her face, and when I catch sight of her profile, I grow dizzy. She looks at Weber.
She says, “My life is not turning out the way it’s supposed to.”
He shrugs, as if that isn’t an odd and presumptuous thing for one stranger to say to another. “How do you know how your life was supposed to turn out? Would you like an ice cream?” He holds out the vanilla cone.
This brings the tears on again, but more quietly this time. She cannot wipe them away fast enough. “I already had three banana splits,” she says. “I can feel my hips growing wider.”
“I ate six cones once on a dare,” Weber says. He takes a lick of the vanilla ice cream, and I focus on hating the sight of his big fat pink tongue. He is the one who continually gets me into these situations. First I am faced with the fact that he’s been having conversations about God knows what with my family, and now this. Now her.
“I failed an exam,” she says, “and this important man at work doesn’t like me. I don’t know why, I’ve tried everything—asking questions, being helpful, staying late and coming in early—but he just doesn’t like me. It’s so big there, and I get lost, and it’s too hard to focus on what’s supposed to be . . . oh, I don’t know. For hours this morning I hated myself. And I’m so tired.” She cries into balled-up fists.
“You just need some sleep,” Weber says, in his calm voice. “You hit the nail on the head right there. Look, I’m a fireman, and I know that adrenaline can only take you so far. The mind needs rest. Go home and chill out. I promise that you’ll have better perspective tomorrow.”
“A fireman,” she says. “That sounds nice. So simple.” She peers up and seems to take in the sight of Weber for the first time. “You look like a fireman,” she says, as if that’s a compliment.
Weber puffs up at this. He gives a big grin.
You idiot, I think. You haven’t put out anything bigger than an oven fire in three years.
I study the girl’s face, wrinkled and wet. I know Weber’s lame advice to rest won’t work. I feel sick deep inside. I hear myself say, “Don’t listen to him.”
They both turn to me. I watch Belinda’s expression freeze and then harden. “Lila,” she says.
“Maybe it’s supposed to be really hard,” I say. “Maybe it’s not supposed to be fun or fulfilling. Maybe it’s called work because it is.”
I am standing now, a few steps from the picnic bench. “Lila,” Weber says. “What are you doing?”
What I’m doing is remembering standing with my grandmother in the hospital after her car accident. She held my hand, and her skin was fine, and papery-soft. I can feel this, her hand pressed to mine.
“Do you even go to school anymore?” Belinda asks. “Someone said you were sick. Why haven’t you returned my calls?”
“You two know each other?” Weber asks.
My grandmother leaned toward me at the hospital and said, “Who said becoming a doctor was going to be easy?” She had known. She had been telling me not that I was a quitter, but that I needed to do what was hard. That I needed to push forward.
I am careful not to look at Weber. I focus on Belinda. I focus on staying frozen inside. I say, “You should get ahold of yourself. You’re a mess.”
Belinda seems to make an effort. Her shoulders tighten. She stops crying. Her face is shiny with moisture. “You were sitting there this whole time?” she