Monday, November 2, 2026
On her third trip around the block, Mrs. Levin stopped saying sorry to the parked cars.
“That's better,” Willa said.
“I still feel sorry.”
“You can feel anything you want. Just don't invite them into a conversation.”
Mrs. Levin loosened one finger from the wheel. Seventy-two years old, widowed in April, she had brought a learner's permit and a manila folder containing every letter the driving school had ever sent her. Her husband had driven them both for forty-nine years. In the first lesson, she had explained that as though Willa might be able to arrange a different husband.
The car crept past a plumber's van. Willa watched the side clearance in her extra mirror and kept her own foot near the brake.
“He used to take me to the supermarket on Tuesday.”
“Where would you go on a Monday?”
Mrs. Levin considered this.
“The supermarket.”
“Sure. Start wild.”
They made the corner without touching the curb. Willa kept her pleasure quiet; at the last lesson Mrs. Levin had responded to congratulations by letting go of the wheel to clasp her hands. Today she only breathed out through her nose.
“I could go when I needed something.”
“You could.”
“One lemon.”
“Very wasteful. We'll have to report it.”
Mrs. Levin laughed, a tiny surprised sound, and then drove another block.
At the end of the lesson she wanted to pay for the next one in cash. Willa explained that the office took the money. Mrs. Levin took out the folder to find the number, and Willa waited while she put her finger on it herself.
Willa ate a cheese sandwich in the parked car, balancing her phone on the wheel. A message had come from Beth: Call Mom. It's work. Not a thing.
Underneath it, sent three minutes later: Well obviously it's a thing but it's real work.
Willa called her sister.
“How many weekends?” she asked.
“One evening.”
“Does she need somebody to tell her her luggage isn't heavy?”
“Opening act. Bellwether. Twenty minutes.”
The cheese had stuck to the roof of Willa's mouth. She picked it free with her tongue.
“Who dropped out?”
“Nobody.”
“Beth.”
“The producer asked about an opener. Mom said you.”
Beyond the windshield, Mrs. Levin stood by a bus stop. She had her folder hugged against her chest. Willa wanted to get out and drive her home, which would be a poor way of teaching her to drive.
“Does the producer know I do stand-up?”
“Mae's seen your set.”
“Which set?”
“Ask her. Ask Mom. I'm not being the phone.”
Willa looked down at the sandwich. One flattened edge had slipped into the open wrapper.
“It's paid?”
“Yes.”
“Actual money or a wonderful platform?”
“Call her.”
The next lesson was a licensed man who hadn't driven in twelve years. He was forty-three, wore a suit, and said he was here because his wife was unreasonable. Willa asked what he wanted to get out of the hour.
“Confidence.”
“Anything more specific?”
He looked at the steering wheel as if she had deliberately asked him a difficult question.
“Just get it back.”
They practiced pulling away from the curb. The man checked every mirror several times, then waited through a perfectly good gap. After the third car had gone past, he looked at Willa.
“You could have gone,” she said. “There's another one coming.”
“You didn't say.”
“I won't always be here.”
He smiled briefly, as though that were a flirtation. She smiled back with her mouth shut. At the school she had learned to do that. Her amused face could seem to mean more things than she intended.
When he finally moved out, his foot went hard on the gas. Her brake caught them before the bumper of the car ahead. They sat in the space that remained.
“I haven't driven in twelve years,” he said.
“I know. That's why we're here.”
His hands were shaking. Willa waited until he could talk about something besides the mistake. He had driven all the way to California once, he told her. He had done it alone, before he was married.
“That's a long way,” she said.
“I didn't think about it.”
“Maybe just think about the next block.”
By the end of the lesson he had brought them around that block four times and could pull over without Willa touching her brake. He sat with his hands still on the wheel after the engine was off.
“Better?” she asked.
He nodded. Then he said, “Don't put the first part in your act.”
Willa hadn't told him about the act.
“My wife looked you up,” he explained.
“I don't put students in it.”
“The car stuff.”
“I put me in it.”
He appeared to accept the distinction. As he got out, he bent to say, “My wife likes your mother.”
It was easier to say thanks than ask him to explain why he had told her.
Back at the office, Willa handed in the keys and waited for Luis to finish a call. He had a yellow pad in front of him with names written down one edge and times crossed out beside them. She could hear somebody through the receiver saying, But she's free on Saturday. Luis drew another line.
“Any chance you want a block later this month?” he asked after he hung up.
“How much later?”
“End of the month into December. Five days, maybe six. Nadine's going to see her granddaughter. Not the one in Delaware, the other one. I knew this once.”
“Put me down as interested.”
“That's not a thing I can write.”
“Put me down in pencil.”
He touched the pad with his pen. “Very advanced pencil.”
She checked her own schedule, asked him to hold off until she knew about a family thing, and went to change in the bathroom. The fluorescent light came on in two stages. In the mirror she looked younger until the second tube lit.
Her black stage shirt had dried with one sleeve twisted. She wet the cuff, squeezed it straight, and held it under the hand dryer. Her phone was in her bag. She didn't take it out to call Jo. She could keep the offer another hour without finding out it was for a charity event, or the fee included finding the charity, or her mother had decided Willa would make the perfect surprise for somebody's birthday.
On the bus to Rafi's she watched a woman type a message, delete it, and type again. The woman had long white nails and was making a genuine effort to use them. Willa got her notebook out and wrote: Nails like putting mittens on your fingertips. She put a line through mittens. Closer to tiny ski equipment. No.
The woman turned the phone face down in her lap and looked out the window. Her lower lip trembled. Willa closed the notebook.
At Rafi's, the first comic asked if she had any gum. He was new, wearing the wristwatch he would keep checking throughout his set. Willa gave him a piece and told him the light would come from the far side of the bar.
“You're Jo Harker's daughter, right?”
“Yes.”
“Cool.”
He waited as if there were a next part Willa could supply.
“Have a good set,” she said.
Rafi was carrying a case of beer through the doorway. Willa held the door with her shoulder.
“Did he ask you to call her?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Give him time. He's got a tight five on his uncle's prostate. The man's ready.”
She smiled and followed him in. This room had accepted her slowly enough that she believed it. Rafi had let her host on a Tuesday when she'd been doing comedy for six months. He'd told her to stop doing the voice she'd thought a female comic should have. She had been furious, gone home, heard it in a recording, and been more furious. He still brought it up if she became sentimental about him.
He put the beer down.
“Your seven's still seven?”
“Of course.”
“Then why'd you say it like that?”
“Because the eighth minute's very good.”
“Give me that one first.”
That night at Rafi's showcase, Willa stood between a fake brick wall and a television showing a basketball game without sound. The two men directly under it looked up whenever the rest of the room laughed, then down again when they found they had missed something. Willa had been paid forty dollars for seven minutes and could eat the fries the bartender had put on a side plate. She had already eaten half.
“I teach adults to drive,” she said. “Adults are harder because they've had time to develop a philosophy. A sixteen-year-old says, Which one's the brake? A forty-year-old says, I've never really believed in stopping.”
The bartender leaned forward on her elbows.
“People think I spend the day yelling, Brake. Mostly I say, What information is the arrow giving us? I didn't know I'd become the host of a very slow children's program. Can you find the truck? Excellent. Now let's not go inside it.”
One of the basketball men looked at her. She moved away from the stool.
“The car has an extra brake on my side. That's why people pay us. They want a woman in the passenger seat with an actual brake. My last boyfriend just gave me feelings.”
She let the laugh finish. The last boyfriend had been a perfectly reasonable man with a houseplant she had killed. It didn't matter here.
“They all have the same question. When will I feel confident? And I have to say, Have you seen the people who feel confident? Confidence is that man making a left turn with a mattress on his roof and one hand up there, like he's holding his hat on. That's a person with incredible faith in himself. And a wet mattress.”
The man beneath the television put down his beer.
She finished on a piece about a student who insisted on calling the navigation voice “that other woman,” then walked off to Rafi holding two fingers in the air: two minutes over. He gave her the cash folded around a toothpick.
“Mattress,” he said. “Keep that. Lose the thing about the cones getting a union.”
“I love the cones.”
“Marry one. Don't make us watch.”
In the bathroom, Willa counted the money although she knew what was there. Someone had written BE NICE on the mirror in red lipstick, or something designed to look like lipstick and stay on forever. She called her mother.
Jo answered with, “You've found out I have work. Suddenly I exist.”
“Beth said you wanted me to open.”
“I do. Come eat tomorrow.”
“What's the fee?”
“Hello, sweetheart. How lovely to hear your voice.”
“Hello. What's the fee?”
Jo laughed. Not the phone laugh, which she gave strangers, the little one Willa could hear beginning in her nose.
“Good,” Jo said. “Six thousand.”
For a moment the bathroom fan was the only sound.
“Dollars?” Willa said.
“No, the little bears. Bring a bag.”