I met V late in high school. She was smart and cute and I thought she might be the one. Or anyways I thought that she was smart and cute and that I was so so single and so why not. We had no chemistry though and, as it turned out, not even so many things to talk about together. We went on exactly one date, to a bookstore.
She called me as I was walking out of a gray, squat office building the summer before my sophomore year of college. It was the kind of building where the cubicle walls look like carpet and the carpet looked like concrete, and it was raining outside. By that time I'd already found myself another girl, broken up, slept with a third who wore a pair of my khakis to our high school reunion, and gotten back together with the second.
V was crying on the phone. She explained that she was really sorry but could I please give her a lift to her boyfriend's house. She had to either break up with him or talk him out of killing himself, or both; it was hard to tell exactly what over the phone. She didn't know who else to call. I waited outside for her, in the car. What else could I do? We got back to her house in time for her to run up the steps and quickly shut the door, just before her father pulled into the driveway.
She called later to thank me, but I didn't see her again after that.
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