The story goes roughly like this: Girl meets boy in chat room, agrees to meet downtown for coffee. And does, and after three minutes of coffee can see it’s not good. The story goes like such stories do. Girl’s got to ditch boy but can’t simply snub him outright; he’s not for her, but he’s human, and not stupid, either. What’s more, he isn’t ugly, has what you’d call middling good looks, with a kind of weird dark charisma, despite the clothes: he spent eighteen months in the army, was discharged for ambiguous reasons, and still wears mainly khaki. So girl not only suffers the droning self-centered barrage but says well, OK, yes, she’ll join him for dinner, and get this, hops in his minivan in the freezing parking garage (boy has no children, no trade, not even a job), leaving her own car there on level three, trusting the universe to protect her, as it must, asking herself why in God’s name does she do these things that she does.