I sat and gazed back at him as his yes-nods slowly came to a halt. Was that the purpose of those nods: to tell you how you must answer? For I saw there was no other reply I could make. I was supposed to say, Yes, I was done with it. That everything I’d cared about for the last ten years was a hopeless dead end. All those articles neatly listed on my résumé, all the talks at conferences, all the colloquia and symposia and everything else with Greek plural endings—over. The years I hung in there teaching the same course over and over, just to stay inside my profession somehow—why all that meant nothing, I was supposed to say, I was such a fool, what a waste. What was more, I was supposed to be grateful for the chance to leave it all behind, for a new start, even at the bottom.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m done. I suppose I’ve said everything I had to say on the subject anyway.” Then I laughed without meaning to. “You know, the world hasn’t exactly stopped in its tracks to listen to me.”