Sue sighed. “Okay,” she said then. “Here’s the plan. First, you’re going to change out of those wet clothes.”
“No argument there.”
“And then just stick close to me. Whenever anyone talks to us, I’ll say their name right away, so you’ve got it.”
That wasn’t a bad idea. “That could work,” I said.
“It’ll totally work.”
“Just promise me,” I said then, holding out my hand so we could shake on it, “that you won’t leave my side.”
“I promise,” Sue said, pumping my hand up and down, “that I will never ever leave your side.”
* * *
GUESS WHAT?
She left my side.
Not on purpose. She just got dragged away.
I went into the bathroom to change, and I never saw her again.
I was left alone, as Picasso-faced person after Picasso-faced person came up to me and forced me to Sherlock Holmes one theory after another about who I was talking to.
Looking back, I could have just left.
I could have found Joe’s floppy hair and hipster glasses and steered him off to feed me that meal he’d promised. But he was lost in the faceless crowd, too—and all attempts to search for him got intercepted by faceless people hugging me, until I wound up making way-too-friendly chitchat with my ex-boyfriend for five solid minutes before realizing who he was.
All to say, the situation snowballed.
Before I even really saw it coming, I was having a panic attack out behind the utility room.
At least I think it was a panic attack.
Is it a panic attack when your entire body is utterly hijacked by … panic?
And you get dizzy? And you sweat and have the chills at the same time? And your heart pounds and your chest hurts and your hands go cold? And you can’t catch your breath? And you feel like you’re dying? And you collapse to your knees in a dark corner and press your forehead to the concrete to try to make the world stop spinning?
Is that a panic attack?
’Cause that was me.
And I sure as hell wasn’t celebrating.
I have no idea how long I’d been there, trying not to pass out, when I heard a voice say, “Are you having a panic attack?”
So of course I said, “No.”
“You look like you’re … not okay.”
Not okay? That was just insulting. Okay was my whole thing. “I am always okay,” I said, to set the record straight. And then, when the person didn’t accept that and leave, I said, “I’m fine.” Then, my voice muffled against the concrete, I added, “I’m good.”
“You don’t look good.”
This wasn’t Parker, was it? She never missed a chance for an insult. But no—of course not. It was a man’s voice. One, as usual, I couldn’t recognize.
“Identify yourself, please,” I said into the roof.
A rustling beside me as whoever it was sat down. “It’s your pal, Joe,” the voice said, closer and softer now.
“Hi, Joe.” For a second, knowing it was him made me feel palpably better. But then it occurred to me to wonder if he might be filming this moment for later blackmail, and I felt worse again.
“I’m no psychiatrist,” Joe said then, “but I’ve seen a lot of panic attacks. And this kind of looks like that.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. I was always fine—whether I was fine or not.
“Okay,” Joe said. “A friend of mine—who clearly had a totally different thing from you—used to find it helpful for me to pat her back in moments that were nothing at all like this.”
“I’m not having a panic attack,” I said.
“Great,” Joe said. “Neither am I.”
“So I don’t need you to pat my back.”
“Cool. You don’t need it.” A long pause while he let that settle. “But we could just do it for fun.”
“Fine,” I said, too busy dying to fight.
And then he really did it. I felt a hand settle between my shoulders, and then I felt it slide down my spine till it reached my lower back, then lift up a second, and appear again back up at the shoulders.
He was basically petting me like I was a dog.
But, ugh. Okay. It felt nice.
If I weren’t feeling so nauseous, I might be struggling with all my cognitive dissonance about Joe. My first impression had been so unbelievably bad. But many of the impressions that followed had been good. Had that first impression been wrong? Or was he just hiding all the bad stuff really well to my face?
I guess I’d just have to take it one panic attack at a time.
“The fact that you don’t want me to help you,” Joe said, “really makes me want to help you.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“It totally is. It’s the reason my wife left me.” Then he corrected: “One of them.”
I admit that got me. “Your wife left you because you were helpful?”
“Yep.”
“I’m no wife, but that doesn’t seem like a thing wives normally complain about.”
“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 word blubber.
“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 you pathologically helpful? Did you give someone your car? 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?”