Page 48 of Wayfarers

“Really.”

“Why?”

“I guess you always want what you don’t have.”

“I hope that’s not true.”

“Seems to be.”

“Maybe what makes it seem true is that that unrequited wanting is a temporary state and you eventually arrive at some Zen place of contentment. I mean, we have a lot of life ahead of us to see.” She pauses. “I hope.”

“You hope a lot of life or that we eventually arrive at the Zen state?”

“Both. Hey, question.” Sylvie sounds eager to switch topics.

“Hey, ask away.”

“The first time you told me your name, you started to say something that began with M. Is Knox like an alias? Are you actually named Mickey?”

“Manson.”

“So we’re back on the serial killer jokes.”

“’Munk. It was my nickname growing up; my whole family calls me that.”

“As in brown robes? Funny haircut? Chanting?”

“As in my stuffed chipmunk from whom I was inseparable as a little boy.”

“Aw! Can I call you ’Munk for the rest of the drive?”

“I’d actually way prefer Knox honestly.”

“Yeah?”

“I made a big life change recently and I’m reverting to my birth name to symbolize that change.”

“You know what I like about you?”

“What?” I ask, weirdly nervous.

“You talk in complete sentences. And you say what you say with authority.”

“I do?”

“I’m jealous of that.”

“You don’t feel like you have authority?”

She laughs. “Not always. Really, almost never. Sometimes I think there’s, like, an imbalance of how much power you actually have and how much control you feel like you need. Like, people in charge of their own destinies don’t cry when their GPA slips. They just soldier on.”

“I think I’m maybe trying that out, honestly. Because I don’t feel like I had a lot of control either, before this.”

“Now I feel bad.”

“Don’t. Guilt does no one any good,” I say, repeating a refrain I heard often growing up.

“That’s a healthy outlook.”