But have you ever hung out with people in an orchestra? I’m not talking about kids who are in orchestra at school. I’m talking about actual, paid classical musicians.

Yeah. Well, since I started going to Juilliard last year, I have.

And believe me, it is MUCH more fun to do what I’m doing, which is teach kids who’ve never seen a flute before how to play one. This rules. Because their eyes get so big when I rip through something really fast, like “Flight of the Bumblebee” or some Tchaikovsky, and then I tell them I can teach them how to do it, too, if they just practice.

And they’re all, “No way, I could never do that.” And I’m all, “No, seriously. You CAN.” And then I show them.

That part kills me every time.

Skip says Ruth should have gotten an internship at some advertising company, and that these kids are never going to amount to anything no matter how much art we throw at them. He doesn’t say that kind of thing to me, but that’s only because he wants to get into my pants. The company he’s interning for is paying his rent for the summer (which is why he is crashing on our couch: to save his rent stipend for something he really wants, which, knowing him, is probably something completely asinine, like a Porsche). He’s here right now, as a matter of fact, sacked out on our couch (or, should I say, hisbed ), watchingJeopardy! with my brother Michael, who’s also interning in New York for the summer, and also crashing at our place. (He gets the floor. Skip called dibs on the couch first.)

Mike—who ended up at Indiana University, as well, after having deferred admission to Harvard, due to being in love with a girl who later dumped him for a guy she met doing summer stock in the Michigan dunes. We are no longer allowed to mention the name Claire Lippman in our house—is in New York for a summer job that involves a think tank and computers and tracking cyber-terrorists. Sort of like what I was doing during the war, only he gets to do it from a cubicle on the Columbia campus instead of a tent in a sandy desert.