I was sitting here with dictionaries and papers all over the table—no, but, really, all over the table, such that there is not so much space for anything else, and the kettle is hanging out on the floor by my feet—doing a massive panic read on Cambridge Ritualists, and anthropological theory and criticism, and Argonauts of the Western Pacific, when K. called, and it’d been one of those days for her when boys are crap and work is crap and, oh, it’s all just crap crap craaaap; and the thing is, I almost never long to be nineteen again, but tonight on the phone with K. it was all, “And it’d be so great if we lived in the same dorm right now, ’cause that’d mean that we’d be right now standing in the common kitchen making brownies, and then we’d take them out of the oven while they’re still a little gooey, and then you could take half the tray downstairs to the rec room and watch ‘Working Girl,’ and I could go up to my room and read my bloody Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, and then when your movie was done you could come upstairs and say, ‘Okay, two hours up, time for a break,’ and, oh, god, it’d just be great.”