“I restored this old farmhouse back home and I had to eat outside for an entire month while I figured out the whole kitchen situation. I came to prefer it.” Daniel takes a long sip. Of course you did. Did you wear a cowboy hat and no shirt while you chopped wood and lassoed recalcitrant horses?

“And you’re living where now?” I ask.

“I live in off-campus housing over by U.C.L.A. It’s really nothing but a dry-walled hotbox over on Glenrock in Westwood…along with a thousand nineteen year olds away from home for the first time. They must have slaughtered hogs on my carpet or something, I swear. When I tried to hang up the one poster I have, I pounded right through to the next apartment,” he asserts, digging into his dinner. He has posters?

“So, your apartment is slowly killing you then?” The first honest thing I’ve said all evening.

“You could say that,” he smiles.