Roger snapped open the briefcase and pulled out a wad of papers, most of them smudged with food and coffee stains, many covered in comments written in absurdly large script. Desmond tried to get a glimpse into Roger’s briefcase to see what else he was carrying around. He remembered Roger telling him he was a math major, although it could have been biology. It always happened that his interest in a student’s personal life spiked if she or he turned in a coherent piece of work. Up to that point, they tended to form a pleasant blur in his mind. He saw what looked like a row of pill bottles before Roger snapped the briefcase shut.

It was hard to make out all of the long, garbled speech that followed, but it sounded as if most of the students had found the story unfocused, boring, and pointless. (What else could “poless” mean in this context?) Most shockingly of all, almost everyone had commented that they “dinna baleeit.” How was it possible that they didn’t believe this straightforward vignette when no one had balked at perky Esther Feldman’s claims that she’d been brought up in a dark closet for the first six years of her life, or at Bill Moretti’s story about his grandmother being sold into white slavery? No one had doubted the veracity of the two students who wrote supposedly autobiographical stories about helping their parents commit suicide, one with a shotgun. Helping your brother climb a tree was the one thing they found lacking in credibility?

“You have to decide for yourself if any of this criticism rings true for you, Roger, but my advice would be to ignore it and keep writing.”

“I’mga reryeit. Maygima quawralegic.”

Desmond looked at his watch. He wasn’t going to change his mind about meeting up with Brian, but this conversation was enough to make him wish he had so little pride and so few scruples that he could. “A quadriplegic?”

“Yayayaya. Moramatic.”

Had he said romantic or dramatic? At this point, it didn’t seem to matter much. Desmond was clearly swimming against such a strong current of opinion, he was destined to drown anyway, so why not relax and enjoy the scenery as he was pulled out to sea. Roger’s generation had fact and fiction so thoroughly confused, there was no point in trying to make a distinction. Old television shows were accepted as historical documents and carefully staged and scripted media events were considered “real life” dramas. When faced with a scrap of genuine emotion, it was easier to fall back on cynicism.

“That’s an interesting idea, Roger. Unexpected. Romantic, dramatic. Excellent.”

“Yathinso?”

“Yes, I do think so. And why not do something really believable while you’re at it and make him the world’s youngest quadriplegic IV drug user with HIV, hepatitis C, and ADD.”