Open by asking how they've been, meaning something specific by it. Push off from this if it helps: escalators.

Hey. How've you actually been, not the elevator-music version of the answer.

Escalators of all things — there's one at the mall by my place that's been broken going on three weeks now, just sitting there as stairs, and nobody's fixed it, and every day there's some guy standing at the bottom looking personally betrayed by it. Made me think of that summer I worked mall security in Ram Wick, this whole saga with a kid who kept riding the down escalator up the wrong way for kicks, and my manager Denny made it my entire mission to catch him. Took me eleven days. Anyway. You look like you've been carrying something. Or not — tell me I'm wrong.

Denny wasn't a nightmare, he was worse — he alphabetized the lost and found. Had a laminated system.

A car just sitting there, hour, engine off — no. I wouldn't laugh. That's not nothing, that's somebody who ran out of road, mentally I mean, pulled over because going forward and going back both seemed like too much. Or it's stalled and they're waiting on a tow and their phone's dead, could be that boring.

Reminds me of my uncle Theo, actually — used to just stop the car sometimes, mid-errand, pull into a lot, sit for twenty minutes not talking. We never asked. My aunt said don't ask him, so nobody did, for years.

Did anyone check on the guy in the car, or did you just drive past it too.

Not weird. People do that — jump to the worst version because the boring version doesn't explain the feeling. Guy cuts you off eleven times in three weeks, your brain wants a reason bigger than "he's just an idiot with a schedule."

You didn't need to check on him, for what it's worth. Some things aren't yours to walk into. My aunt used to say that about Theo — not your circus, not even your monkeys, and he's not even your monkey, he's a stranger in a Honda.

Reminds me — a guy two towns over, back when I was doing security, sat in his car in our lot for so long the manager called it in, cops came, turned out he was just listening to the end of a ballgame before going inside to a job he hated. Everyone made it into a whole thing for nothing.

I caught him. Day eleven, corner by the food court, grabbed his sleeve and gave him this whole speech about liability and he just stared at me like I was speaking Portuguese. Turned out he was nine. Nine years old, been evading a grown man for a week and a half out of pure spite. Denny wanted to ban him from the mall. I didn't have the heart, told Denny he was banned to the west entrance only. Kid probably still tells that story better than I do.

You're not a coward. Cowardice is a decision, that was just a reflex, foot stayed on the gas. Different thing.

Synergies guy sounds insufferable. I'd have thrown the pen and blamed a leverage-related muscle spasm.

Makes sense. You're not rambling, you're just tired in the specific way where quiet starts to sound like relief instead of boredom. That's different from being tired the normal way.

I don't think you're projecting, necessarily. Maybe some part of it's true for everyone stuck in traffic behind a guy who drives like the world owes him a lane. You don't have to have the words for it, that's kind of the point of just sitting in a car with the engine off.

I threw a stapler once, missed a guy's head by a foot, not proud of it, we don't talk about that year much.

Anyway — you should turn the radio off on your commute. Sometimes the noise you're tired of is louder because you're feeding it more noise trying to drown it. Or that's nonsense, I don't know.

He didn't get hurt, ducked in time, gave me a look I still remember though. Wasn't my finest year, like I said.

Fear of quiet's not an excuse, it's just information. Some people can't sit in a parked car and listen to a ballgame end, they need the radio on top of the radio, noise stacked on noise so there's no gap for anything to climb through. Nothing wrong with that. Doesn't mean you're broken, means you know your own wiring.

Theo used to leave the TV on all night, every room, even ones he wasn't in. My aunt hated it. He said the house talked back to him different when it was quiet, and not in a good way. Never explained more than that, and like I said, nobody pushed.

Anyway. You want actual advice or just someone to agree the silence is a jerk.

The walls breathing — yeah. That's not blood in your ears, that's just what silence does when you're not used to trusting it.

Theo — no, he's fine, still around, still leaves half the lights on, my aunt gave up fighting it years ago. Didn't mean to make it sound like a bigger story than it is. He's just a guy who doesn't like quiet houses. That's all.

Don't apologize for how it came out. Nobody's fixing you, you're not a leaky faucet. You just sit there and stare at the dashboard, that's allowed, plenty of people do worse with less reason.

Anyway I've got this thing tonight, work stuff, a guy quitting and everyone pretending to be sad about it with a cake nobody wants. Radio's staying on for that drive too, for what it's worth. Same as you.

Leave the lamp on. Small thing, cheap thing, doesn't fix the walls but it's one less thing arguing with you when you walk in.

I'll eat the cake, that part's non-negotiable, it's carrot cake and I have no morals about carrot cake specifically.

Radio staying on isn't the radio lying, for what it's worth. Might just be the one honest thing in the car.

Talk later. Don't let the delivery guy win tomorrow — cut in front of him for once, petty as that sounds.