Broken Pieces--Part 2

My forlorn friend came by last week on a leaden rainy day. The sky was low and dark; leaves littered the sidewalk like dead things. He sat in my living room sipping a cup of Earl Grey, staring at the vacant lot behind my yard. "No deer," he said. "Usually you see them this season. I wonder where they went?"
The deer had been there yesterday, munching my azaleas' branches. Their coats were shiny from the rain. When I went out back to chase them away, they levitated over my fence and vanished.
He said, "Lets go for a walk. It's not really cold. You can use the exercise."
We found a trail that ran along the Potomac River, climbed down an embankment and stood on the shore. We skipped stones for a while, he more skillfully, and we watched a large tree trunk float by and get caught on rocks. It created a small island in the rapidly moving waters. The river was high, eerily quiet.
"You know what I think?" he said.
I shook my head.
"I think she was trying to tell me good-bye from the moment we met. We broke up a half-a-dozen times and it was always her. Fark."
My friend is trying not to swear, and 'fark' has become a staple of his vocabulary.
"And then she'd come back and we'd have a few good days, and then she'd be gone again."
I shrugged. I'm trying to give up on giving advice. I've noticed how ready I am with easy and meaningless wisdom and realizing that such facile astutness is really just a lack of respect. There's nothing I can say to make my friend feel better.
His shoes are soaked, the bottoms of his jeans are wet and I notice he's not wearing socks. I bite back fatherly advice on dry clothing and pneumonia.
He says, "Lets go eat something." It's not a request.
He wants to go to a buffet. I hate buffets, but the one he mentions is nearby and cheap. We pay, fill our trays with a cornucopia of very cooked meats, fish, pasta and starch, boiled vegetables and salad. He picks at his food.
The place is a haven for the lonely, the old, the parentless, the fixed budgeters who eat once a day, the badly bewigged. He says, "There is not a single normal person here..."
It smells of rain and galoshes. The conversation is muted; I wonder what I'm doing here--I always overeat in places like this and feel terrible afterwards.
My friend gets three deserts and a cup of decaf. "Fark. I already bought her Christmas present. How stupid is that? Who the hell buys a Christmas present in October?"
"You were hoping to see her during the holidays. That's normal. You can probably return it, buy something nice for yourself."
Damn. I just gave advice. "Or something," I add.
He shrugs. "Yeah, I'll do that."
But he won't. He'll stuff it in the back of a closet and try to forget it's there, and one day he'll rediscover it and freshen the sadness.
"You through?"
I nod.
"Fark," he says. "Now I'm depressed and stuffed! I hate feeling like that! Why'd you let us come here?"
I shrug. No advice. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."