Page 101 of Hello Stranger

But—what?

My mind paged frantically through the possibilities. Had she pretended to faint again? Had she begged him to come kill a cockroach? Maybe her toilet was clogged and he was helpfully plunging it for her, like a gentleman?

Ugh. Ridiculous.

I couldn’t even convince myself.

While I waited for it to make sense, Parker’s hairless cat, of all things, wandered into the stairwell, as if pets were allowed to roam the halls at will. It appraised me petulantly for a minute, and then it walked right up to me, turning as it did to back up and lift its tail. I leapt away within seconds of getting peed on.

How had it come to this?

One thing was for certain: The pleasant, Joe-infused buzz I’d been feeling all morning? It stopped buzzing.

THE DAY WASdownhill from there, if you can believe it.

I mean, by the end, this day made burned toast seem adorable.

Hiding in the stairwell made me late, so I cut it a little close with the crosswalk light. I made it across, but a guy who I inconvenienced for three seconds decided to roll down his car window, shoot the bird at me, and shout, “Fuck you!” before flooring it and tearing off.

I glared after him, like,Really, sir? Wasn’t that just a little much?

He was clearly doomed to a life of rage and disappointment.

But it still kind of smarted, I admit.

Next, I climbed into my waiting Uber and, trying to multitask, checked the comments on my Etsy shop on the ride—only to discover the hands-down meanest review of my work I’d ever beheld.

I took a screenshot for posterity:

These portraits are an insult to the art world. Banal, trite, and cheesy to the max, this is “art” I can’t unsee. Seriously. My eyes are burning. Trash like this is the reason humanity is doomed to hell.

Okay. Whoa.

You can’t please everybody. I get that. But “doomed to hell”?

I mean, ArtWeenie911 clearly had some issues. The level of his or her viciousness toward pleasant, smiling, fairly photorealistic portraits of people from all walks of life was… a bit extreme?

I tried not to take it to heart. For all I know, ArtWeenie911 was a troll bot. Sent to sow discord in…what?The barely-making-ends-meet online portrait painting community?

Maybe not.

I was two for two with random acts of douchiness today.

Not counting the Joe-in-pajamas incident. By far the douchiest of all.

On the heels of that, after spending several cold hours in a medical gown in waiting rooms and various imaging scanners, I got a totally unhelpful report that showed no reduction in the edema—and then I was told again to “just be patient.”

Which of course I would. Because what choice did I have?

But how much time and money did I waste just to be instructed to do what I was already doing? There was “no change” in my situation? I could’ve told you that.

I’d been hoping against hope for a last-minute disappearance of the swelling. A lifetime of movies with underdog champions had primed me to expect that I’d find a way to triumph just in the nick of time.

But that wasn’t happening.

Not to mention all day long I was getting stalked by Lucinda, who insisted she needed to speak with me “urgently” about “a matter of great concern.”

Texts and phone calls I ignored, of course.

---