“He’s twenty,” Jane said, “meaning he was raised in a completely different culture from the one we know, so you and I have no basis for judging his intelligence. He might as well be a different species. Within ten years, he’ll be ruling the world with his computer and media talents and we’ll be extinct. We think in terms of pages, he thinks in terms of screens—computer, TV, movie. And therein lies the future.”

Desmond supposed there was some truth to this, and yet what fascinated him about Tim, and about so many of the students in their late teens and early twenties he’d taught over the years, was that for all their computer savvy and sophistication, for all the cultural advantages and freedoms they’d been handed growing up in a time of peace and prosperity and sexual liberation, they seemed, in most emotional ways, to be right back in the 1950s, obsessing about a Saturday night date or an unreturned phone call, a crush or a crisis of insignificant proportions. If anything could save the human race for another couple of generations—unlikely, but not impossible—it wouldn’t be advances in technology and scientific intelligence, but this lack of emotional development that pulled people back to their simplest needs and desires and left them stumbling over their deepest insecurities. In the end, there was nothing more compellingly human than that.

“I’ll bet Chloe is up front eating lobster,” Jane said. She sighed and handed the magazine back to Desmond. “I’ve never liked lobster. And lately, I can’t even look at the poor things, trapped in their holding tanks at the supermarket.”

In the airport lounge, Chloe had started chatting with a gray-haired businessman from Atlanta who, ten minutes later, had her ticket upgraded to first class so they could continue what must have been a riveting conversation. Chloe had seemed genuinely surprised by the attention: “Wasn’t that nice of him?” she’d asked as she was gathering up her things for early boarding.

“Just for the record,” Jane said, “no rich older man ever found me so interesting or attractive he offered me a first-class ticket. You have to be exactly the right blend of pushy, pretty, and emotionally needy, and I’ve never been good at keeping the pieces of my personality well balanced.”

“Just for the record,” Desmond said, “you seem very well balanced to me.”

In the end, being a good friend usually came down to talking people out of their perceptions of themselves, especially the accurate ones.

“You wouldn’t think I was a hopeless alcoholic if I ordered a Bloody Mary, would you?” Jane asked.