Page 74 of Hello Stranger

“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 wordblubber.

“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 youpathologicallyhelpful? Did you give someone yourcar? 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.

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