“Yeah.” He seemed excited, too. “Like, the texture was different. If I thought about it too hard, the feeling slipped through my fingers. But it was still there.”
Anna nodded her head. “That’s it exactly. It’s everywhere,” she said. “That feeling. Everything is a little different here. This experience is different.”
James shook his head. Shaking it off. “It was wild. Can I have some coffee?”
“Your first cup of coffee,” she said.
He laughed. “I guess so.”
They ate breakfast, and she asked if he wanted to meet some of the other people who lived here. That seemed to make him uncomfortable.
“Maybe if I end up staying,” he said. “But if I’m only going to be here for another day or so …”
“That makes sense,” Anna said. “Besides, you’ll just make them all jealous.”
She was glad he’d said no. She wanted him to herself. After breakfast, they took a walk in the wheat fields. James had grown up in a city. This was all new to him. He asked her more questions. About how the world worked. She couldn’t answer all of them, but she could answer better than anyone else here.
They came back for lunch. Grilled cheese sandwiches. “Does your mom make these?” he asked.
“No, they’re just part of the house. Vestigial narrative.”
That amused him. Anna amused him. He was always smiling at her. It was incentive to keep talking.
After lunch, they sat on the porch again. James told her what he knew about himself. He was a sociologist. He worked at a university. He got excited when he realized they were both from Nebraska.
“That’s nothing,” she said. “We’re all from Nebraska. It’s like how Stephen King’s characters are all from Maine.”
“Oh.” He hunched back into the swing, disappointed. “Well. I’m a professor, but I do research, too. I was married once, in my twenties, but it didn’t last. I’m not very good at dating.”
“You aresucha love interest,” she said.
“Wouldn’t not-being-good-with-girls make me abadlove interest?”
“Uh. No. Sweet that you think so.”
James was blushing. “Well. I … mostly deal with my mom and the guy in the office next to mine—I wonder if they’re here?”
“Can you picture them?”
“Not really.”
“Probably not, then. But you might have an office.”
“My office …” he said. “The whole campus. How would we find it?”
“You just have to set your mind to it,” Anna said. “If it’s here, we’ll get there.”
James stood up. He walked off the porch. Anna followed him up the driveway and down a path, onto a university campus. She’d never seen anything so expansive—it took her breath away.
“James … this is magnificent.”
“I think she went to school here,” he said. “That makes it easy to conjure, right?”
The buildings got fuzzy when you got close to them, and they kept changing places. But the building where James worked was solid. The staircase smelled like wood polish. The door to his office was open. He was delighted. “This is it,” he said. “This is mine.”
“It’s gorgeous,” Anna said. There were papers on his desk with actual writing. There were framed photos with real people in them.
James sat in his desk chair and spun around. Anna leaned against his desk. “You’re happy here,” she said.
