I scurried down the stairs, grabbed my coat and bag from the bedroom, and ran outside.

Chapter 4

When I got out, I checked my phone. Two missed calls from my mother. What I wanted was to go to Pilz Bar, but I had to go to my parents’ first, at least for a little bit. I couldn’t risk it—the fallout. It would make it more bearable, knowing I could stop by Pilz on my way home. Even if the bartender wasn’t there, someone would be; someone always was.

I took the M86 bus across town. The Upper West Side was quiet and dark, the park a series of inkblots. I wondered if the anorexic man was still trudging through on his lonely jog. In my mind I saw his skinny muscles twitching and a hot wind of sadness blew through me. I wanted to hold his skeletal frame, rock him back and forth and say, Shh, shh, into his ear. It was an impulse I’d had as a teacher, seeing my students in pain: to curve myself around them, to make them mine. One student, a week prior, had come into class with splotchy eyes, and halfway through—overcome by a fresh wave of sadness about whatever was haunting her—she had spent minutes digging around in her backpack to mask her tears. All through the class, I’d tried to catch her eye, so I could mouth, Are you okay? Not only had I failed to do so, but I’d been so distracted by my mission, by the thick haze of her distress, that it had been difficult for me to focus on the other students. Over and over, I’d caught myself nodding in a rhythmic trance, insensate to what they were saying, and had had to snap myself back into the room. Afterward, I’d called her to my desk, and once the other students had left I’d touched her elbow and asked if she was all right. But she had only nodded and walked away, leaving me aching and hollow. That night, I had drafted and then deleted a dozen emails to her, struggling not to ask if she was okay. I had managed not to, and the next day, she was restored, it seemed. I’d felt abandoned; the feeling returned to me now, in recollecting. I looked out the bus window, then turned my focus to my reflection, there against the darkening landscape. Hi, friend—but I wasn’t a friend, was I. Again, I imagined holding the anorexic man in my arms, soothing him—but then I pictured his face vacant and ghastly against my shoulder, his eyes unseeing, pointed toward nothing. This frightened and then incensed me, his ingratitude, and instead I pictured throwing his bony frame into the woods, his limbs splayed out in flight, his body falling to the ground with a thud. His legs like kindling, I would light them on fire.