I Take You Read Free Page A

Why?”
    “I never use the toilet after some old lady.”
    “Seniors,” I say. “They’re so tidy.”
    “They’re filthy sluts,” she informs me.
    I slap her leg. “Lola, you crack me up!”
    “What do they give a shit about STDs? They’re basically dead! My great-aunt Rita, she’s eighty-four? She’s got a colostomy bag, and, like, rickets? Had gonorrhea three times!”
    “Poor lady!” I say.
    Lola snorts. “Auntie Rita ain’t no lady, honey.”
    Will sticks some kind of bran muffin from hell in my face. “Why don’t you try to eat something?”
    Looking at it makes my stomach churn all over again. “I don’t think I can.”
    “One bite?”
    I take one bite, to please him.
    “He’s a keeper,” Lola announces. “He’s a prize.”
    I rest my head on his shoulder. “I know.”
    “Mine impregnified a stripper at his father’s bachelor party,” she continues.
    “Wait,” I say. “His
father’s
bachelor party?”
    “Fourth marriage,” Lola explains.
    “Sounds like my family. Was this before you guys met, or …?”
    “Nah. Benny and me been together since high school. But he made it up to me. See?” She shows me her engagement ring.
    “Beautiful,” I say.
    “Big-ass,” she agrees.
    “What happened to the baby?”
    “Cordelia’s almost three,” Lola tells me. “So cute! Gonna be the flower girl.” She picks up her phone. “Lemme see if I got a picture.”
    We have a layover in Miami. Our plane to Key West is smaller, and the rows have only two seats. I have no one to talk to but Will, and his nose is buried in a book.
    I nudge him. “What are you reading about?”
    “Epictetus,” he says, not looking up.
    “The suburb of Cleveland?”
    Will turns a page. “That’s the one.”
    I nudge him again. “I’m bored. Talk to me.”
    “Why don’t you read a book?”
    “I’m not
that
bored. Tell me about Epictetus.”
    He closes his book and adjusts his glasses. “He was an ancient philosopher. A Stoic. He was born into slavery in the first century AD, in what’s now Turkey. But he lived most of his life in Rome and Greece.”
    I snuggle into my seat. I love listening to Will talk about his intellectual interests. He’s so adorably precise and methodical. Long, complicated sentences roll right out of him. It’s kind of like being engaged to an audiobook.
    I pick up one of his hands and start to play with it.
    “Epictetus believed that our capacity for choice is our greatest strength and the source of our freedom. It allows us to recognize the very limited number of things in life that are within our actual control.” I like Will’s hands. They’re strong and calloused—from all his fieldwork, I guess. He’s got long fingers with big knuckles. Bony wrists. I hold one of my hands up and compare them, palm to palm.
    He breaks off midsentence. “Are you trying to distract me?”
    “Of course not!” I let go of his hand. “Why, is it working?”
    “Always.” He smiles down at me. “Where were we?”
    “Choice. Freedom. Control.”
    “Right.” He collects his thoughts. “Epictetus believed that all human suffering is the result of our futile attempts to control things that are not within our power to control. Our bodies, our possessions. External events. Other people.”
    “Epictetus was anti-suffering?” I say. “What a coincidence—
I’m
anti-suffering!”
    “Only by renouncing our desires and attachments can we obtain a measure of inner peace and live in harmony with the universe.”
    “I’m
really
thirsty,” I say. “Would you mind renouncing your attachment to that orange juice on your tray?”
    “Why don’t I renounce it onto your head?”
    “I don’t think that would be harmonious with the universe, Will.”
    “True,” he agrees. “But it would provide me with some much-needed inner peace.”
    By the time we land in Key West I’m feeling a thousand times better.I spot Mom the instant we walk into the terminal. She’s leaning against a wall