In Iowa City, along the highway, we stopped at a gas station across from a Walmart where I worked for a couple months back in 2004. I didn’t know we were going to stop there, in its vicinity, and when I saw it I remembered working there and what my life had been like back then and my mood became ponderous and quiet. Which is a funny thing to say, but I don’t know how else to say it. I mean only that I became thoughtful and somewhat melancholy, or nostalgic, because I was conscious of the way time had passed since then, and the direction my life had gone, or hadn’t gone, according to choices I’d made and events that had affected me. So that A., feeling the shift in vibes between us, as we drove out of the gas station, remarked on it. And I felt obliged to explain to her what I could, of what I’d been thinking.