“I hope you weren’t waiting long, Henri. I’m workshopping a play at the new Highline Theater House and rehearsal ran over,” she says, and then snorts, laughing at her statement. “Well, ran dramatic, I should say! Two of my actors are married and came in with such bad energy this morning. I didn’t know they were together when I cast them, believe you me—and short story long, the whole thing turned into group therapy for two hours. They’ve been having problems. Of the bedroom kind.” Her voice turns into a conspiratorial whisper on that last statement, and she mimics zipping her lips shut.

“Oh, um.” I didn’t have a prepared segue for that vaguely inappropriate soliloquy. “Did you manage to get back on track?”

“Nope! We’re well behind schedule now,” she says, and then laughs again. “You’re Haitian, right? I was in Port-au-Prince ten years ago for research on a project.”

“My parents are Haitian immigrants, but I was born here. I think that makes me first generation, or is it second? I can never tell.”

Another laugh. This one was predicted. “You’re the first gen. Me too. Now take a breath.”

I make a show of exhaling. She laughs again.

Truth be told, I’m nowhere as nervous as I’m making myself out to be. But performing a bit of anxiety can be an endearing quality to some adults. If nobody likes to be fawned over, a lot of people respond positively to having created butterflies in someone else’s stomach. They want to calm you down.

Donielle Kempf tells me about her life growing up in Jersey City. Her multiple siblings, attending public school and then community college, graduating in six years instead of four since she had a child and needed to work the entire time. “And then I applied to the Columbia Master of Fine Arts program. It was the only place for me—I knew it in my bones. I could taste it. I refreshed my in-box every ten minutes for two months.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. “I can relate.”

She gives a wistful sigh. “Then it turned out that was only thing number five of a million more things I would go on to also really, really want with every fiber of my body. You never stop wanting, y’know? That’s the human condition.”

The Haltiwanger Hunger, indeed.

“But enough about me!” she says, throwing a glance at her phone, placed on the table, clock showing. “Henri Haltiwanger. Bright, Haitian American, child of immigrants, what else?”

I Smile.