My life was a farce.

“Actually, it’s not interesting.”

“Oh.”

“A lot of indexing. Fact-checking. Repagination.”

Was I trying to repel him or was it just happening by accident?

“And what about you?” I asked, quickly looking to change the subject.

“I worked on Wall Street for almost fifteen years,” he started. “Merrill Lynch. Morgan Stanley. Arbitrage, bond trader, hedge fund manager before I left. The money was good but I got tired of working eighteen-hour days and eating pad thai at my desk every night at midnight. I hate pad thai. It’s so—” he looked around for a second or two, trying to find the right word—“so nothing. Everybody always made such a big deal over pad thai. ‘Ooooh, pad thai this and pad thai that!’ But I mean, can I just say? It’s just noodles!” He paused, took a breath, collected himself. “Anyway, I quit my job, took my money, and moved away. I’m an English teacher now.”

“Really,” I said. What a coincidence. But then I considered the time of day and day of the week we were having this conversation: Weren’t schoolteachers supposed to be in school teaching right now? Either he was lying or playing hooky.

“I’m on spring break this week,” he said, as if reading my suspicious mind, which, I’ve been told, isn’t that difficult to do: my overarching eyebrow, generalized look of mistrust, disgust are usually dead giveaways.

“Public or private school?”

“Private.”

“Which one?”

“I used to be at Sidwell Friends.”

“Sure. I’ve heard of it,” I said.

“Chelsea Clinton went there.”

“I know.”

“Of course you would.”

He nodded. “Now I’m at a different school.”

I nodded.

“What do you teach?”

“Ninth and tenth grade.”

I winced. “Fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds,” I said. “Now that’s a tough age.”

“You have no idea.”

“Really.”

“They test you, torment you, lie all the time.”

I raised an eyebrow. Maybe I should switch to law school.

“For instance, I spent my whole first week refusing to make them hot chocolate in the afternoon.”

“Hot chocolate?”

“Hot chocolate. It seems the teacher I had replaced liked to have a little snack time in order to—” he was using his hands quite a bit here, as if to explicate something that was clearly inexplicable.

“Infantilize them?” Having only gone to public schools myself, I doubted I would ever understand the mentality of the private school child.

“Exactly,” he said.

“Unbelievable.”

“Then, because I refused to serve a hot beverage, a group of parents complained: they felt I was being too hard on their children, and were concerned and afraid that my class wasn’t fun enough. I mean, sometimes life isn’t supposed to be fun.” He shook his head, seemingly disgusted. “Anyway, now I bring candy to school—huge bags of those miniature Mr. Goodbars and Krackels and Hershey’s Kisses that I buy at Costco. I give them out for reading contests, quizzes, anything. Just so I don’t get fired.”

He laughed; then I laughed. I loved that he wasn’t one of those newfangled adults who went on and on about the wonders and preciousness of extremely badly behaved children.