In retrospect, the trip to the city had been a ridiculous idea. After all, the beginning of the beginning of the end had started on a trip to New York. On the train, he tried to engage Miranda with complaints about the departmental budget cuts, but all she wanted to talk about was this wonderful Wittgenstein she was learning about in her college course. ‘“Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life? In use it lives. Is it there that it has living breath within it? Or is the use its breath?”’ she said, an eager sheen in her eye. ‘Well?’

‘I didn’t think I needed to respond,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem to have to do with real life at all.’

‘Maybe when you say you didn’t think you needed to respond, you didn’t need to. Maybe I needed you to respond.’

‘Is this still philosophy or do you just talk like that now?’

‘Jesus, Bill.’

‘What?’ He looked at her looking out the window. From the side, her lips were two red jelly beans. He could absolutely bite them. This was real life: lips like jelly beans! Historical facts! He was a man of events, not ideas, a historian, a knower, not a philosopher. ‘We’ll be there soon,’ he said.

‘When is soon?’

‘Twenty minutes.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said. ‘When you imagine soon, the word soon, what do you see in your mind? When is it?’

‘I feel like I can’t say anything without it becoming a fucking discussion anymore,’ he said.

‘Lucky we’re going to a play then,’ she said. They didn’t talk for the rest of the ride.