54 THENEWYORKER, APRIL 18, 2022
of all your friends?” He wasn’t criticiz-
ing; he was just curious.
“Theoretically, if I wanted to, is there
some sort of time limit? Like, if you’ve
been friends with someone since college,
do you have to keep being friends with
them when you’re thirty-one?”
“I’ve never heard of that.. .,” he said
carefully.
“Never mind,” she said. She suddenly
saw that she was not going to get rid
of her friends, even if she wanted to;
she just wouldn’t have had the cour-
age. She would simply have to hide her
life from them.
After they made love again, Angela
went downstairs to look for his cat, Lucy.
Lucy was sitting on the arm of the gray
couch, and it watched her as she ap-
proached: the cat seemed to back up
without moving.
“Hi, Lucy,” she said, slowly moving
closer, hoping the cat would confirm
that she was a good person, but the
cat made a sudden decision and leaped
from the couch’s arm.
T
he next day, back at work, Agnes,
Marla, and Junie stood around
the coffee maker with Angela. The day
hadn’t started yet, it wouldn’t start for
another ten minutes, and they were all
having their morning chat. They were
talking about their romantic lives. Agnes
was planning her wedding. Junie had
just broken up with someone, and Marla
was single as usual. Angela decided to
tell them that she was dating one of
the bank’s customers, a Mr. Thomas
Swisher. Did any of them know him?
If they didn’t know him, she told her-
self, don’t assume he’s a ghost.
“I do,” Agnes said. “He’s a very nice
and dapper man.”
“Anyway, he’s my boyfriend. But he
has two other girlfriends as well.”
Agnes made a disapproving face.
“I knew you’d disapprove,” said An-
gela, “and that’s why I waited so long to
tell you!” She realized that she had said
this last thing with a shout.
“How long have you been seeing
him for?” Agnes asked.
“A month.”
“A month is not a very long time,”
said Marla, who was a bit jealous.
“A month is longer than she usually
dates someone for,” Junie pointed out.
Then it was time to get to their sta-
tions, and that was the end of the con-
versation, and Thomas Swisher was
never again discussed at work. Angela
didn’t bring him up because the conver-
sation had upset her; Agnes because if
she brought him up she knew she’d have
to disapprove, and this would cause a
rift; Marla because she didn’t like think-
ing about anybody having a good time
with a man; Junie because she forgot.
The next day, Thomas came in, and
although Angela was working, her three
friends were not; instead, her co-work-
ers were an older woman and two men,
none of whom knew about their rela-
tionship. Thomas said, “I have come to
close my account, O.K.?”
Angela treated him very profession-
ally. In the bank’s script, tellers were sup-
posed to ask why, but she wasn’t sure
he would know that she was saying
lines from a script, so she skipped all
the questions and just made him sign
the papers and gave him his remain-
ing cash—six hundred dollars—and
treated him as she would have a com-
plete stranger, and he treated her like he
had never seen her before, either. She
didn’t know if this was his way of break-
ing up with her or not. But it was not,
for that night he called her, and they
went out to dinner, and she was so re-
lieved and happy that she just laughed
and squirmed in her chair as though
she were being newly born into love.
“Why are you acting so strangely?”
he asked.
“I thought you broke up with me
today!”
He frowned. He didn’t like being
misunderstood. “No... ”
“So, exactly!” she said, and smiled
and giggled the rest of the night.T
he next day, she woke up with a bit
of a fever. She had been seeing him
too often, dining out too much, drink-
ing and smoking, worrying and letting
her emotions go all sorts of places, and
she felt repulsed with herself, and re-
pulsed with how she had been living.
What was she doing, dating such an
old man, even if he made her happy?
Was she really setting herself up for a
whole life of happiness this way? She
felt impatient with herself, and com-
pared herself with her friends, who—
though anxious all the time—were at
least putting the pieces in place for de-cades of happiness, while here she was,
messing everything up by being drawn
in by someone who didn’t have decades
to live, who had two other girlfriends,
and who clearly didn’t know how to act
or else he wouldn’t have closed his bank
account that way, or even closed it at all.
She really hated Tom, and his superior
ways, and the way he brought his son
and friends around, to show off how
much better he was than them. This was
completely unbecoming, and undigni-
fied, and she’d probably only thought he
was dignified because he dressed so well.
She then began to replay the whole af-
fair, but with him wearing sneakers and a
baseball cap and an ugly sweatshirt that
he got for free in a gift bag and baggy
jeans, and suddenly whatever beautiful
qualities she had seen just blew right off
him like dust off a horse—a horse run-
ning wildly from its stall. Who did he
think he was, naming his son after him-
self—one of the most pompous things
a human could do?
Of course, Angela just had a fever,
that’s why she was feeling this way, and
was having all of these dark and negative
thoughts, but in her typically rushed and
hurried way she took advantage of de-
spising him to call him up and tell him
that she thought it would be best if his
only girlfriends were Lolly and what-
ever the other one’s name was, and not
herself. Thomas was genuinely disap-
pointed. He liked her, and not only be-
cause he was a calm person who took ev-
erything as it was. There was something
about her he truly liked. Could he say
what it was? Not really. If she had asked
him, would he have been able to come
up with something convincing? Well,
but she didn’t ask him. She hung up the
phone, and felt a tremendous elation, a
great happiness, and a total sense of her
youth and freedom rushing through her
again. She had gone through something
and had come out the other end, and she
was completely intact, none of it mattered
anyway, he was just one man, some old
man, someone she would never have to
see again because he had closed his ac-
count, and she felt thankful, and grate-
ful, and lucky. She had just a little fever
for the next few days, but in the end she
was completely fine. NEWYORKER.COM
Sheila Heti on the rush and the fear of youth.