Munich Airport by Greg Baxter Page B

would have been appropriate. She said, Please tell me you are not a diplomat. I’m not a diplomat, I said. Please tell me you do something completely insipid, you’re a lawyer or an accountant, or a graphic designer. I gave her a funny look. Well, she said, then tell me you’re something evil, like a journalist or a politician. I said, I’m in marketing. Marketing! she exclaimed. That’s marvelous, that’s a hundred times worse. I said, You don’t hear the word marvelous much anymore.
    We walked along a lot of empty, dark streets—I mean the windows were dark, and the place seemed very sleepy. She said Brussels was so dull that, after midnight, you could walk down the middle of any street you liked, and she liked to do that. While we were in her studio, a cold front had arrived, just like that, and now the skies were gray, and there was a chill. That chill felt nice after the week of weird, swampy heat, though the chill would transform, in a day, into the return of winter in central Europe, and my father would feel quite proud of himself for splurging on a warm coat. The clouds, which were low, and which absorbed the lights of the city, were bright and fluorescent, and they moved swiftly.
    What did you want to become? she asked.
    When I was younger?
    When you dreamed of your future, I suppose.
    Oh, I said, I don’t buy in to that stuff.
    What do you mean?
    I tried to think of a way to formulate a response that did not sound depressing or dismissive. She meant the question honestly. I think she even meant it kindly, as in, I seemed like the kind of person who could be more, or achieve more, than what I had become and achieved in my life. And she based this on the fact that she thought I liked her music, or her installation, or whatever the best word to describe it was, and because, like all artists, she based her belief on the potential of others to be more or achieve more by their capacity to appreciate her music, even though—and perhaps it isn’t true in her case—what often happens is that artists base their faith in others on their incapacity to recognize bullshit, or their unwillingness to declare bullshit when they see it. But I did like what she had done. I liked it because she was a nice person and because it was entertaining, and certainly thrilling at times, and I liked the fact that it had offered a respite from the ordinary. And, yes, there was a beauty to it. I could not help thinking, however, that all the thoughts a human being could have about the experience of being in that room were predictable, that the only way to connect to her piece—or to art in general—was intellectually, because to connect emotionally to art was naive and quasi-religious, or because emotion no longer belonged to art, it was simply a currency of pre-existing phrases—musical or visual or grammatical—to describe categories of human conditions. Nevertheless, I thought about her question, and though I said nothing, I decided that if I could have been anything, I would have liked to be a doctor.
    It’s a mean question, she said, I take it back.
    What do you think I would like to be?
    She stopped and looked up at the sky. Then she looked at me, measuring my width and height. An archaeologist, she said.
    We were less than five minutes away from my hotel. She knew where I was staying, so, without discussion, we simply walked in that direction, and when we arrived she came inside the lobby. I asked if she would like a drink at the hotel bar and she gave it some thought. Not really, she said. So we got in the elevator and went up to my room. In the elevator she said, It’s funny, I’ve been here almost a year, I’ve got a few months left, and I have no idea what’s happening in the world, I don’t read papers, I don’t watch television, I don’t read any letters I receive, not even ones that look official, I don’t meet other people in the