When certain people talk to you, you shouldn’t say anything encouraging back. You really shouldn’t say anything at all. Stan was one of those people. Stan often spoke to women. He spoke to women at bus stops and in waiting-rooms and in lifts. He especially liked speaking to women in lifts, if there were just the two of them. He’d press the stop button and the lift would stick between floors. He’d had some of his best conversations in lifts. Women liked talking to Stan. He knew that for a fact, because they always told him so. When he let the doors slide back, he always asked whether they’d
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