“Me too,” she says as she pulls out another pencil, this time from the box, and gives Dora a pink sun. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

“What do you suggest?” I ask. “Coloring books?” I hear the sarcasm in my voice and instantly feel ashamed, but Mary seems unfazed.

“Nah,” she says. “Colorin’s my way. Everybody’s gotta find their own way to be alone in this world.”

“I had a plan,” I say as a large truck goes rumbling by and a passing teenager throws his empty Coke can into the gutter.

“What kinda plan?”

“The kinda plan that I thought would help me handle being alone, I guess,” I say with a sigh. “It’s been sort of a big focus for me. It’s a very, very detailed plan. But it’s gotten complicated. So complicated I can barely tell what’s going on anymore or who’s doing what. It literally makes my head spin.”

“That’s good,” Mary says mildly as she pulls out a lavender pencil.

“That’s good?”

“Sure. When your head’s spinnin’ you forget about being lonely . . . Too busy being dizzy, I imagine. If you just focus on the emptiness it’ll swallow you up just like it was a big black hole.”

A big black hole . . . Yes, that’s what loneliness is. I’m a little surprised by the wisdom of Mary’s insights, but then, unhappy, lonely people usually make the best philosophers. Happy people usually try not to see people like Mary. They pass them on the street without so much as a cursory glance as they rush home to their loved ones. But Mary sees everyone. She doesn’t have the luxury of blinders, so it makes sense that she might have a better grasp of what life really is and what it isn’t.

“Ever think about being a therapist, Mary?” I ask absently.

Mary smiles as she colors in the earth beneath Dora’s feet. “I’d rather be a lobster catcher. That lobster last night was good.”

I laugh, pull my wallet out, and hand her a twenty and a ten.

“What’s this for?” she asks politely, but she does snatch the money from my hand.

“For the therapy session,” I say as I get to my feet. “And for Red Lobster.”

I walk the last block home mulling it all over. Although I know Mary’s right about every distraction being a blessing, I can’t help but think that these are blessings I could do without. I actually feel cheated. It’s as if I had spent all of 2007 coming up with a plan to destroy Lehman Brothers only to find out that they had decided to implode themselves. Clearly Travis and Lander are going to tear each other to shreds with or without me, which gives the desired result, but without any of the satisfaction.