“Thank you,” she muttered. “That was… kind.”
Just then, something in her bag lit up, followed by a loud, upbeat American voice.
“You’re welcome, Andrea. Yeah, so—just to be clear? What you’re describing isn’t actuallykind. It’s more like a maladaptive caretaking pattern rooted in anxious attachment. If you want, I can explain that a bit more?”
Did she have her therapist on speed dial? It didn’t seem like the optimal time for a consult, to be honest.
Her head snapped down to her bag. “Oh my God. What—?”
The voice boomed brighter, seemingly delighted. “Yeah, I totally get that. It’s really hard to notice our own patterns sometimes, right? But just so you know, that doesn’t make youbroken, Andrea. It makes youhuman. Would you like meto create a list of behaviors to look out for, so you can work on them?”
She plunged a hand into the bag and began digging. “Oh no—”
“Well, yeah, actually,” the voice continued, too smooth, too confident. “And calling those patterns ‘kind’ is a cognitive distortion. What you’re describing is more like boundary erosion mixed with hyper-responsibility, which we chatted about earlier. I can unpack that with you now. Just say the word.”
The woman squeaked, her bag rustling as she pulled and pushed at the contents. If I could have closed my ears, I would have, but they remained there, open, rudely intruding into her private life.
“But great news. These repetitive behavioral loops, driven by low self-worth and conflict avoidance, arehighly treatable.This is fantastic progress. If you like, I can—”
“Oh my God! Shut up. Shutup—”
Her palms pressed down over the speaker, and the phone crackled, then chirped back, muffled but relentlessly perky. “Absolutely, Andrea. I’ll go quiet now.”
A beat.
“Whenever you’re ready to keep exploring those attachment patterns, just say‘Hey, Voice Chat’and I’ll be here to support you.”
Another horrible, eager little chirp. “You’re doing so great.”
The bag wriggled faintly under her hands like it wanted to add more.
“Chat later if you’d like.”
She finally managed to smother the phone with both hands, and the bag went quiet. In my peripheral vision, I could see her, eyes glued to the floor, breathing hard through her nose.
I nodded calmly, as though motivational ambushes from handbags were a daily occurrence.
“And I thought myfatherwas judgmental,” I said, keeping my eyes straight ahead.
Silence.
When I glanced down to my right, she was staring at me, mouth open—was that shock? Fury? Then she started to laugh.
Thank God.
“Oh. You heard that then?” She straightened her mouth, suddenly serious.
“Heard what?” I turned back to her. God, she was gorgeous. Not a lot of women could get away with hair like that—half fallen out of whatever she’d tried to do with it this morning, sticking up at odd angles like it was trying to escape. She looked like she’d been in a fight with a hedge. And lost.
“Nothing,” she said. Her eyes stayed on mine a fraction too long before she turned back to face front.
I looked at the doors again, pretending to study the graffiti. Apparently, she was doing the same.
“Good,” I replied. “Glad we cleared that up.”
“Cleared what up?”
“Exactly.”
