Going Outside Is Bad

I was forced to spend 15 minutes outside of the house today, because I do not own a printer or a cigarette dispensary, and it could not have been a worse experience. First I had to go to the copy shop, which is about 9 square feet large and was occupied by a young woman on her cell phone who is 1) on new pills for her “wheat allergy.”

Also and 2) she is concerned that sometimes, when her boyfriend shows her things in his email, she can clearly see that he is writing to his ex-girlfriend and is she just not supposed to talk about this with him, or should she bring it up, and is that okay, or what is the deal, and why is he doing that anyway? I did feel some concern for her a little, I must say.

Immediately thereafter, during a trip to the deli, the guy behind the counter told me that he’d thought I’d looked kind of fat recently, because, he presumed, I’d quit smoking, but now that I was buying cigarettes again, I was clearly smoking and also, not coincidentally, I was looking quite grand and also thinner. Do you wonder why there are so many ridiculous-seeming novels with these people in them set in New York? It is because that is what it is really like outside.