“Of course you can,” the girl said, reaching a hand into her purse. She went on talking to the man, who I also didn’t recognize. “Here. So, yeah, after term ends I’m flying out, but the surgery doesn’t happen for another couple weeks. It’s nice that I was able to get someone in the Bay Area, I guess, you know, right by my parents’ place in SF. And I told myself that I’d do another dissertation chapter in that time, ‘cause I’m gonna be, you know, recovering for the next month after that. I have it all planned out, I have all the sources arranged. It’s just a matter of putting words on paper.”

Surgery. Oh, got it. If her face hadn’t given her away, her voice would have. You could tell that it was a distinct choice on her part to keep the tenor and male resonance, but make the most of it nevertheless. Silky and bright and utterly distinctive.

“I feel that,” the guy said. “I mean, not in the sense where I’m getting my face peeled back in two months. The putting words on paper part.”

“Yeah? How’s the novel coming along?”

Something about how the guy talked about FFS irritated me. The way he emphasized the word peeled. I wanted to shove him, or say something cutting and appropriate.

“Are you going to Dr. Thomas?” I blurted out. That was the wrong thing to say, but I could recover from that.

“Wow, clocked,” she said, blowing a cloud of smoke directly at me. “Yes, I am.”

“I had a consult with him last year. I’m on his waitlist,” I lied.

“Nice. I mean, half the girls I know went to him,” she said. “He’s got a good reputation.”

“On that note, shouldn’t you be not smoking?” the guy next to her said.

“Ugh! I have another month before I need to stop. I’m tapering off.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh. Arabelle. Bella.”

Arabelle. Jesus Christ.

“Veronica,” I said.

“I’m Dustin,” said the guy.

“Congrats on the surgery,” I said.

That was wrong too. “Congrats.” As if it was a raise or something. There’s no formal etiquette for this stuff, but you always know when you mess it up.

“Thank you,” Arabelle said in a way that evinced zero gratitude.

She was looking at me with an amused smirk on her face that made me inwardly flinch a little. It was thrilling to meet someone else who seemed genuinely indifferent to the polite atmosphere of solidarity “we” are supposed to have, but I did wish she made an effort to talk to me. We probably weren’t that different, although as I looked her up and down again I realized that she was wearing like, at minimum, fifteen hundred dollars worth of clothes while talking about writing a dissertation.