“Sometimes in the US we call how you’re acting ‘coming in hot,’ ” Ayanna said.

“I like that.” Matthias took the offered drink from her. “Whenever I come to universities, all people want to do is fight. They think a sign of immense stupidity is to believe anything at all. Universities want people to spend so much time thinking about thinking, the only thing they end up believing in is thinking. They shouldn’t exist. They’re making people worse.”

Everything he said sounded rehearsed to Ayanna. Even the way he smiled self-consciously while finishing that last sentence felt calculated.

“I don’t want to fight with you.” She had shown up ready to, but listening to him spout off, Ayanna was already bored. It was ridiculous to her to fight about universities, about learning. It was weird to her to see someone so young doing oldhead talking points. Conservative kids she knew weren’t arguing against universities, they were arguing against affirmative action, saying things about the quality of education and how it should be governed by a free marketplace, or talking about how they often felt prosecuted or punished for their beliefs by their power-tripping graduate-student instructors. Ayanna wasn’t interested in those fights either, because they never felt like building understandings, they just felt like a game of Liberty Chicken—each complaint escalating toward the ugly math of trying to figure out whose freedoms were truly being curtailed. She could not understand how someone who believed he was blessed by God, was making money going around touching people, wanted to play those games too.

Ayanna made eye contact with him and asked a question she hadn’t planned on asking. “What do you think the doors are?”

“No one’s ever asked me that directly.” He tapped the table, gazed into the distance. “I think they weigh your soul. In ancient Egypt, they believed your heart’s weight was impacted by all your actions during your life. And the Egyptians were on the right track. Our souls change shape, color, and texture based on the things we do in this world. The doors know, and they give out gifts and punishments in return.”

On the café table, someone had written in Sharpie Stephen King is a CIA plant. The baristas were still acting like they were main characters in an indie movie, no one had ever had so much fun pouring low-fat lattes. Ayanna’s hands were shaking, and she put them on her lap under the table. Behind her, it sounded like someone was trying to lay down an ultimatum. “I told you I loved you six months ago,” the girl kept saying, “and you said ‘thanks.’ ”

“I can’t tell what you’re thinking,” Matthias said.