“Define alive.”

“Fair.”

“Nothing ever changes in Ann Arbor,” Lara said.

“Isn’t that the truth,” Alexis said.

“Are you still working at the archive?”

“Mmhm. It’s part of my thesis now, I guess.”

“I forgot if you told me about that.”

“It’s just the same stuff I’ve been telling you forever, probably. The involvement of lesbians in ACT UP organizing work, economies of care surrounding the AIDS crisis, all that. It’s gone from just being literary to, like, actually approximating a historical project.”

“Any conclusions yet?”

“Nah. I have some suspicions, but I’m still pretty early on. Are you working on anything interesting? You’re still a philosophy major, right?”

“No, I switched into English so I could do a thesis.”

“That’s exciting. What’s your topic?”

“Henry James. Postmodern bullshit. Y’know.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Alexis said, twirling a strand of her silky blonde hair. “I don’t mean to lead with work.”

Lara noticed a man looking at them over the top of his laptop. When she looked at him his eyes returned to his screen.

She could have imagined it. Even if she hadn’t, she thought, you can’t try to find something behind every sideways look directed at you. You’ll go crazy.

She turned back to Alexis, who said, “Everything ok?”

“Yeah,” Lara said. “Sorry, I thought I saw someone I knew.”

“That will happen,” Alexis said. “You know who I ran into the other day?”

“Who?”

“Moira O’Neil. We were in line for the same thing. I didn’t know she was in New York.”

Lara shifted uncomfortably in her seat, looked down at the table.

“I didn’t know that either,” she said. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s ok. She’s gotten a lot less, you know, unpredictable. Holding down a job at MacMillan and everything. Do you still talk to her at all?”

“No.”

“I don’t know what you ever saw in her. She had this doltish boyfriend in tow, some finance guy who was acting super standoffish.”

“Sure,” Lara said, clenching and unclenching her hand under the table.

“Now that I’m more like, visibly queer,” Alexis said, “I’m discovering this new thing where guys feel threatened by me in some way.”

“I know that feeling,” Lara said. “Boyfriend is a precarious position to be in.”

“They all seem to think so,” Alexis said.

“My friend’s boyfriend just proposed to her,” Lara said.

“Is that good or bad?”

“Mixed,” Lara said. “He asked during finals week. She was kind of mad at him for asking? Last I heard, she told him she’d have an answer when he got back from Minnesota.”

“Promising.”

“The weird thing is,” Lara said, “she’s brilliant, and confident, and gorgeous, and throws great parties. She can read Ancient Greek and French, she’s probably gonna go to Columbia or Yale or wherever for grad school. He’s just like, a middling engineering student.”

“Maybe he’s great in bed,” Alexis said. “Did you ever, like, ask her about this?”