There are times when a journalist only knows in retrospect, through a close inspection of the transcript, that a cohesive story will emerge. And then there are times like this, when even in the moment the journalist knows what the story will be, as though written in advance.

I glanced at the recorder. The white spokes turned.

When our time ran out, I paid for her burger and she volunteered the invitation I’d hoped for.

“Come to Retreat,” she said. “Don’t just write up what you have and what you saw in Arcade. I pushed my bosses, and they’ve authorized me to let you observe the trial, step by step.”

We shook hands. Dr. Kriss popped in the iPod earbuds. I thanked her, told her I’d be there, definitely.

She said, “We’re going to make a great story together.”

THE TRIAL

1.

“In those months immediately after 9/11,” I tell the journalist from Vice, “you could sometimes observe an unusual ceasefire with the Bush administration, even in the offices of the Bystander, where everyone voted Gore, maybe Nader. The guy who’d spoken of nothing but butterfly ballots all year was silenced when Bush threw the opening pitch at Yankee Stadium and delivered a perfect strike.”

She’s asked what it was like at the magazine in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and first I want her to understand this weird interlude. She looks like she was still in junior high in September 2001, so her entire political education was conditioned by the bald rapaciousness of the Bush years. It might be impossible for her to grasp those tender in-between months, after the attacks and before the invasion, when the world actually liked us, pitied us, and wanted us to heal. Can she imagine the goodwill we enjoyed then, so much that it was almost as if the world had forgotten Vietnam? Looking back, I’m reminded of those fugitive minutes after the first plane hit, when everyone thought it was an accident, like it had a chance to be an accident until the second plane soared into the picture.

In January 2002, I tell her, I watched the State of the Union Address with my colleagues at the Bystander office. The squandering of international goodwill was swift and truly American. After praising the troops in Afghanistan and pledging that terrorists wouldn’t escape, Bush addressed a broader enemy.

“Our cause is just,” we watched him say. “And it continues.”

Continues?

The jaw of war gaped open, and suddenly it wasn’t just about terrorists, but states—the Axis of Evil.

“After that night,” I say, “Iraq seemed like all anyone talked about.”