“What about you, famous race blogger, Princeton fellow, how have you changed?” he asked, smiling, leaning towards her with his elbows on the table.
“When I was babysitting in undergrad, one day I heard myself telling the kid I was babysitting, ‘You’re such a trouper!’ Is there another word more American than ‘trouper’?”
Obinze was laughing.
“That’s when I thought, yes, I may have changed a little,” she said.
“You don’t have an American accent.”
“I made an effort not to.”
“I was surprised when I read the archives of your blog. It didn’t sound like you.”
“I really don’t think I’ve changed that much, though.”
“Oh, you’ve changed,” he said with a certitude that she instinctively disliked.
“How?”
“I don’t know. You’re more self-aware. Maybe more guarded.”
“You sound like a disappointed uncle.”
“No.” Another one of his pauses, but this time he seemed to be holding back. “But your blog also made me proud. I thought: She’s gone, she’s learned, and she’s conquered.”
Again, she felt shy. “I don’t know about conquering.”
“Your aesthetics changed too,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you cure your own meats in America?”
“What?”
“I read a piece about this new movement among the American privileged classes. Where people want to drink milk straight from the cow and that sort of thing. I thought maybe you’re into that, now that you wear a flower in your hair.”
She burst out laughing.
“But really, tell me how you’ve changed.” His tone was teasing, yet she tensed slightly at his question; it seemed too close to her vulnerable, soft core. And so she said, in a breezy voice, “My taste, I guess. I can’t believe how much I find ugly now. I can’t stand most of the houses in this city. I’m now a person who has learned to admire exposed wooden rafters.” She rolled her eyes and he smiled at her self-mockery, a smile that seemed to her like a prize that she wanted to win over and over again.
“It’s really a kind of snobbery,” she added.
“It’s snobbery, not a kind,” he said. “I used to have that about books. Secretly feeling that your taste is superior.”
“The problem is I’m not always secret about it.”
He laughed. “Oh, we know that.”
“You said you used to? What happened?”
“What happened was that I grew up.”
“Ouch,” she said.
He said nothing; the slight sardonic raise of his eyebrows said that she, too, would have to grow up.
“What are you reading these days?” she asked. “I’m sure you’ve read every American novel ever published.”