Page 130 of Hello Stranger

And then, right there near the streetlamp by the crosswalk, as if the decision to give up had called forth some kind of magic from the universe, I saw him.

Joe. In his bowling jacket and his glasses. Coming out of our building. With a suitcase.

“Hey!” I shouted, my body walking toward him without my brain’s permission.

My Uber pulled up as I was walking away.

“Hey!” I called again.

Joe looked up, took in the sight of me in by far the fanciest getup any of us had ever seen, and held very still.

If I had wanted him to whistle or ogle or tell me I looked great—or even longed against longing for some kind of shift in his body language at the pleasure of seeing me—I would’ve been sorely disappointed.

The man was a total statue.

Fortunately, I didn’t want any of that. I just wanted to confront him.

I’d been having imaginary confrontations with him for days, of course. Where had he been? What was going on? Who the hell did he think he was?

But once it was really happening? I panicked.

For a second, no words came out at all. Finally, I managed: “I’ve been texting you.”

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: asymphonyof 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.

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