He cleared his throat, in preparation for Vader voice. “I—uh.” His eyes went pleadingly to Janine and her coworker, who were clearly a bit backed up today. Nothing for it, then. He’d have to answer.

“I believe I spoke to her yesterday,” he said, which was a lie. He didn’t believe it; he knew it. But feigning a vague memory about it seemed like the right move, especially because beside him, Gerald Abraham had the energy of a coiled spring.

“Hmm,” Abraham said, but that definitely wasn’t going to be the end of it. Will braced himself. “Did she happen to mention our recent date?”

Will opened his mouth, then closed it. Janine, please, he thought. Throw the coffee in my face, anything.

Janine did not look back at him.

“She did not mention a date, no. We only talked about my unit.” He thought of Nora and her recent laughing admission over this word, and shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “My rental property, I mean.”

“Ah, yes. On our date,” Abraham said, really leaning into his preferred conversation topic, “Sally mentioned that it’s gone more smoothly for you recently.”

I can turn this around, Will thought, seizing on Donny’s apartment like it was a lifeline. The irony did not escape him. “Very smoothly. My next tenant is actually a fourth-year medical student from—”

“Sushi,” Abraham said. “That was Sally’s choice.”

Will suppressed a sigh. “Good idea, to let her choose.”

“I thought so. However.”

Janine had forsaken him entirely. Maybe she threw away his mug back there. He would never look at his telephone in line again.

“I have asked her to dinner tomorrow, and she said she’s still deciding.”

“Right, well—”

“Usually, when Sally says she is deciding something, she has already decided that the answer is no.”

Janine approached the counter with Will’s now-full mug, and he tried not to leap forward in relief. But when he turned back, Gerald Abraham was standing in the exact same spot, waiting.

And then he reached up and smoothed his lapel.

Damn, Will thought.

“Dr. Abraham,” he said quietly, though it wasn’t as if the volume of Abraham’s own voice indicated a desire for discretion on the matters of his of his marital problems. “I’m not sure I’m the best person to be talking to about this. I’ve never been married, and—”

“You will be,” said Abraham, because he never let Will finish a sentence. And also because he always interrupted him with deeply uncomfortable statements.

“No, I—”

“You’re the type people want to marry,” Abraham interrupted again. Still uncomfortably.

“Gerald,” Will said, taking a chance that this never-before-attempted first-name deployment would either prevent further interruptions or make his boss mad enough to end this conversation. “Given that you have in fact been married I’d say you’re the type, too.”