“No, it isn’t. But now we’re leaving postmodernism, right? Changing it. It’s a good time for artists. You can take advantage of the open space left by the death of postmodernism, and the absence of any replacement. Help to shape what comes next, maybe. I like being a part of that.”

Jim laughs. “You’re ambitious!”

“Sure.” She looks at him briefly; mostly she watches the table when she talks. “Everyone’s ambitious, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“But you—aren’t you?”

“Ah.” Jim laughs again, uncomfortable. “Yeah, I guess so.” Of course he is! But if he says so, doesn’t it underline his lack of accomplishment, his lack of effort? It isn’t something that he likes to talk about.

She nods, watching the table again. “Everyone is, I think. If they can’t admit it, they’re scared somehow.”

A bit of mind-reading, there! And Jim hears himself say, “Yeah, it scares me, actually.”

“Sure. But you admitted it anyway, didn’t you.”

“I guess so.” Jim grins. “I’d like to see some of your work.”

“Sure. And maybe I can read some of yours.”

Stab of fear. “It’s terrible.”

She smiles at the table. “That’s what they all say. Uh-oh, look. They’re closing the place.”

“Of course, it’s eleven!” They laugh.

They gather their things and leave. As they walk under the light in the entryway Jim notices how wild looking she is. Hair unbrushed, sweater poorly knitted, she really is strange looking. Couldn’t be more out of fashion if she tried. Jim supposes that’s the point, but still …

“We should do this again,” he says. She’s looking off at the ground, maybe checking out the way ground bulbs underlight the shrubbery edging the quad. It is a weird effect. Ha—here’s Jim seeing things, all of a sudden.

“Sure,” she says indifferently. “Our classes end the same time.”

He walks her to her car. “Thursday, then?”

“Sure. Or whenever.”

“Okay. See you.” Jim gets in his car and drives off, thinking of things they have talked about. Is he really ambitious? And if so, for what? You want to make a difference, he thinks. You want to change America! In the writing, in the resistance work, in the teaching, in everything you do! To change America, whoah—you can’t get much more grandiose than that. Remarkable, then, how lazy he is, and what a huge gap there is between his desires and his achievements! Big sigh. But there, look at that string of headlights snaking along the shore of Rattlesnake Reservoir, reflected in the black water as a whole curved sequence of squiggly S-blurs …

It’s a question of vision.

Chapter 37

37