Stella’s about to get into line at her favorite coffee shop in the mall when she hears yelling. “What the hell,” a man's voice shouts, his voice echoing through the vapid, stale air. “Did you think I would say?”

  The people in front of her in line go silent. One woman cranes her neck around to find the source; a young couple in their twenties whisper to one another and look around. But Stella doesn’t have to look. She knows instinctively where it is – behind her by a bath and beauty shop. She knows by the cadence of his voice, the thickness of the tone, even the sound of his silent footsteps. To her, they are as loud as an elephant’s.

  Just as she suspected, a man wearing a faded Pink Floyd tee-shirt is screaming at a woman walking next to him. She has brown curly hair and is wearing a thick, shapeless cardigan that falls down to her ankles. “Harry, just calm down,” she tells him, her teeth clenched. “Please.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!” he screams. “You just don’t listen. You don’t listen! You never have and that’s the problem with you!”

  Of course, they get in line right behind Stella. Her whole body reacts in an instant; bile fills her throat and her head pounds. Deep breaths, she tells herself. In and out. She tries to imagine sitting on a beach with a pina colada in her hand, listening to the soothing sounds of the wind through palm trees. But the guy keeps yelling right into her neck, oblivious to everyone around him.

  The woman mutters, “Quiet down. Everyone’s staring.”

  “I don’t care!” he shouts. His spit hits the back of Stella’s neck, hot and disgusting. “Maybe I wouldn’t be upset if you didn’t make me mad! This is all your fault, just like always.”

  “Harry, I –“

  “You know what? I’m done.” He darts out of line, breathing heavily. Once he’s right next to them, he reaches out to her, as if to slap her, but his arm gets caught in the tangle of her purse. Stella wonders how he is at home if he’s like this in a public place, and the thought makes her queasy. “You know what? I’m moving out. You’ve pissed me off long enough!”

  “No! We can work this out!” the woman wails.

  “Lady, let him go,” a guy in line says. He’s about Stella’s age and has brown curly hair, his eyes framed by nerdy glasses. Didn’t she always say she would intervene if someone went through what she had? Why isn’t she? Her brain rushes, moves, stops, and starts again. It’s only been six months since she moved out of Dan’s house – leaving everything behind – but clearly, she’s not over it.

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  “You stay out of it!” Harry shouts.

  The woman keeps crying, her shoulders shaking. “Call security,” someone barks, but security is suddenly already there already, somehow. There are two guys, one short, one tall, both wearing black uniforms and shiny black badges on their breast pockets. They grab Harry and force him over to a wall. The woman cries even harder. Before she realizes what she’s doing, Stella has her arm around the woman’s shoulder, which feels like a bird’s wing.

  “Take a deep breath,” Stella tells her, but the woman is crying too hard to even hear. Glenn is swearing at the guards now, his words coming out quick and sharp. A small crowd has gathered around him.

  “Shut up!” one of the guards says. “Stay still and this will be easier.”

  “You’re infringing on my free will!” Harry shouts. “Get the hell off of me!”

  Stella wasn’t even going to come here today. She only did so she could get out of her apartment for just a little while, to distract herself, to be around people. To eat something other than the same frozen dinner that she had night after night, alone. To feel human again. But this? This was exactly what she didn’t need. She pulls the woman away from the line, from Harry, from the crowd, directing her into the women’s room.

  “Get down!” Stella hears, and she thinks it’s the cops, coming to join the security guards. She pushes the woman firmly behind the door, slams it behind them, dampens a wad of paper towels, and hands them to her. The woman turns on the faucet and drinks thirstily from the tap, her mouth open like a fish. When she’s done, she wipes her chin with her palm and says, “I am so, so sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about!” Stella says. “That guy’s a monster.”

  The woman stiffens. “He’s my husband.”

  “Okay. Your husband’s a monster.”

  “He just overreacts sometimes,” the woman says, staring at her eyes in the mirror. She doesn’t blink. “He’ll get through it and be back to himself again.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Stella says, her voice catching in her throat. “He’s going to jail. Where he should be. “

  The woman says quietly, “You just don’t know.”

  “I do know. Sadly, but I do.”

  “No. You don’t know Harry. He’s had a tough life.” The woman looks down at the ground, then up at Stella. “There are reasons that he is the way he is.”

  “I don’t care what his reasons are,” Stella says. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. No grown man – no grown anyone – should act the way he was acting. Especially like this, in a public space. What’s he like at home?”

  The woman flinches. “I mean…”

  “There’s your answer.”

  “What’s the question?”

  Stella reaches into her purse, pulls out an old piece of junk mail, and scribbles her name and number on it. She thrusts it toward the woman and she takes it, looking down, reading Stella’s name slowly, like she’s absorbing it. “We don’t know each other, but I think I know you,” Stella says. “Trust me. The best thing you can do is get out, and now.”

  The woman nods silently, tucking the piece of paper into her own purse. Then she walks into a stall, closing the door silently behind her. Stella hears her crying again, but she doesn’t say anything else. She walks out of the bathroom, out into the mall, past Harry – who is now being escorted out by three officers – and into the parking lot. When she gets to her car, she feels it. Before she can stop herself, she retches, barfing right next to the driver’s side.