I shook my head, and even though anger still lurked on my side of the table, the images had stopped. I was still upset, but salvaging lunch seemed like a faint possibility then. I even unrolled my linen napkin and draped it across my thighs. Then Jimmy returned and asked if we were ready to order. I motioned to Carolyn.

“I’m not ready yet,” she said, leading Jimmy to walk away. And then she bore into me, her eyes filled with such ferocity that they lifted me up and hurled me well beyond my original point of irritability. My anger not only returned, but in reaction to Carolyn’s defiance, it had grown stronger, bringing back all the images that had riled me so badly in the first place.

“I don’t want to keep defending myself over my ex. I never ask about your past. I don’t even mention the letters from your father. Everyone has a past. Everyone wishes they could change certain aspects of it. Everyone makes mistakes. I’m sick of being beaten up over mine. It’s like you’re trying to punish me for it.”

“Oh give me a break. You act like I bring it up every goddamn day.”

“You do!” she said in the whiny, high-pitched voice she always used when angry.

“Well, Carolyn, if that’s how you feel, then fuck you,” I said, and without another word, I stood and threw my napkin onto the table. She didn’t try stopping me, which is of course what I had wanted, and instead sat silently in her chair, giving me no choice but to swipe my jacket and leave.

I only vaguely knew how to get back to the train. I walked up Ohio, turned down Wabash. My phone rang. It was Carolyn. I hit the ignore button and turned it off. Five minutes later, I turned it back on and checked my voicemail. She hadn’t left a message. I turned it off again, found the train, went down the stairs and waited in anger.

All the seats were taken when the train arrived. I turned my phone back on but I was underground and wouldn’t emerge for ten or fifteen minutes, which frustrated me further. I remembered a fight my parents once had when my mother still worked at the bar. My father was home and she had called. I wasn’t sure what was happening on her end of the line but my father was screaming into his, then he told her to go fuck herself and slammed down the phone. She called right back and he ripped the phone from the wall to silence its maddening ring. Five minutes later, after he had calmed a bit, he tried fixing it but he couldn’t, because it was broken. Then he started cursing the busted phone as though he had nothing to do with it himself.