She periodically takes weekend trips with an older sister who lives an hour to thenorth and works for the chamber of commerce. The sister never caught “the art bug,” asmy friend calls it. Her parents are still living: mom sounds like a piece of work and dad hasa history of medical problems. When he goes, I somehow don’t imagine my little optimistcrying much about it. I see her spending more time alone, taking days to answer emails,keeping a void expression on her face, wearing her glasses in public.She’s irregular about her eating, which I tell her isn’t healthy, though I’m one totalk. A Chinese takeout on the first floor of her building stays open late, and she creepsdown three or four nights a week in her slippers and pajamas to order lo mein and wontonsoup. She doesn’t call ahead but prefers to wait the seven minutes it takes for the man to put her order together. A map of her neighborhood hangs by the door for the delivery boysto check on their way out, and it gives her something to look at. The boys swing in and outon their bicycles, and when it rains they wear green ponchos that cover themselves, their bikes, and however many bags of takeout riding on their handlebars. She once wrote ahumor piece about a white woman who tries getting a job at a Chinese restaurant and feelsrejected and discriminated against when she’s not hired, but someone in her writingworkshop found it offensive so she put it away.Overall she likes the people in her workshop, and even the ones who can beinsensitive at times only bother her a little. It’s good to hear the unvarnished truth everynow and then, she says, though often she doesn’t know what to do with their advice.“Should I burn it?” she asks, hoping for laughs. Her teacher suggested she try writing astory from a male perspective, just to switch things up a bit, so that night she took out the piece she’d been working on and changed all the “she’s” to “he’s.”“It’s still not working,” she told me over the phone, “and now I’ll have to lose thescene at the women’s health center. There’s at least three big laughs in that scene. Didn’tyou tell me you liked it? You said it was funny, you said you laughed your head off.Those are some good lines in there. Am I wrong? Am I totally delusional, beyond-the- bend crazy?”She takes my energy, though I don’t dislike her. I want to send her off on a great
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