After that, Nathaniel kept calling. Sometimes it was about a tie, sometimes a shirt, sometimes a pair of shoes. The calls were so relentless and so pointless that I stopped picking up altogether, stopped responding to his texts, and resolved to delete and block him the moment I had the divorce decree in hand.
I was busy pulling together the paperwork for the fellowship, and Ryan cornered me more than once in the meantime, always with some variation of the same message: Nathaniel was in bad shape, I should go see him, or Clara had been let go from the firm, as if any of that was supposed to change something.
I had never had much patience for Nathaniel's drinking buddies. "If he's not doing well, take him to a doctor," I told Ryan. "I'm not a miracle cure."
A few words from his friends we
