Lisa beat her fingers against the steering wheel, harder, lighter, harder, to the tempo of the violins.

“You can totally hear how every pop star, ever, has ripped off some element of this shit,” Shane gestured to the stereo. “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

“I think The Smiths sang that, didn’t they?”

“Whoever. They got it from Shakespeare or something. It’s all been done.”

She turned volume down. Shane audibly inflated his chest and exhaled invisible cigarette smoke. The traffic flirted with moving but wouldn’t commit.

“So fucking stressful.” He looked to Lisa, then out his window. “I can’t even have a bad day without someone asking if I took my meds. People have bad days. Crazy people can have bad days, you know. It’s legal, now.”

“I was ruling out worst possible scenarios,” she said, waving a car into her lane. “And hoping for an easy solution.”

“Like pills would fix everything.”

“Yes. If the problem was a lack of pills, then yes, pills would fix everything.”

“The problem is people. No matter how many pills I take, people are still assholes.”

“It’s your reaction to the assholes that’s at issue. We all have to deal with assholes, believe me.”

“Nice.”

“I think the silver lining is that you were there for such a short period of time, there’s no point in even including it on your résumé. No need to explain anything to anyone. Did I miss the exit?” She looked in the rear view mirror. “I missed the exit.”

“Guess you’ll have to get off at the next one and circle around,” Shane told her as he rifled through the center console, looking for a different CD.

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