Vanessa's picking up Julio from school when she's accosted by another mother, whose son levels an accusation at Julio: "He pushed me down in the bathroom and tried to take my Yu-Gi-Oh backpack." Vanessa denies it, and she fires a bunch of pushy, leading questions at Julio, who clearly knows better than to tell the truth. The other kid gets more and more vociferous and Julio finally says, "So what? It was just a stupid game." Vanessa wilts under the other mother's smug look.
Billy sits at the lunch counter of a diner, looking cleaned up and a whole lot less twitchy. He's still got his beard, but it's nicely trimmed, and he may have even gotten a haircut. Claire comes in and sits on the stool next to his, and he smiles and thanks her for coming. He announces that he's back on his meds. Claire sits there like she's waiting for something more, and asks, "Is there a specific reason you couldn't tell me that on the phone?" ["Because he's lying? Was it just me who thought that?" -- Sars] Billy says he needed to see Claire to get some closure. "Should we order?" he says, opening his menu, but Claire shuts that down. "Is that it?" she asks. "Have we achieved closure?" Billy says yeah, and Claire gets ready to go. Billy stops her, and she sits there blinking angrily at him. "I just want you to know that I still care about you," he says. Claire says she knows, and actually makes him ask if she still cares about him. Claire admits she does, "but we're broken up now." Billy asks for a hug. Claire reluctantly agrees, and Billy hangs on for her way too long, until she pushes away and heads out, declining his offer to walk her to her car. He says he'll stick around and have a piece of pie. Claire demonstrates what a negative amount of interest looks like as she leaves him sitting there looking forlorn. Smart move, there, Billy, because on the continuum of things Claire finds attractive in a man, there's borderline crazy at one end, and there's needy and desperate waaaaaaay at the other.









Comments