“You expect too much, that’s why you get so cruelly disappointed,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she said, “but by expecting nothing, to minimize disappointment and keep alive the dim hope of a pleasant surprise, don’t you also sacrifice standards and ideals?”

“Maybe so, but keeping my expectations low is more realistic than expecting the rare excellent things that are so infrequently delivered,” he said.  

“Mmm,” she said, “it is a lot to expect to be heard, I suppose.  We talk most of the time to hear ourselves talk, because we need to speak, after all, not as a way to thoughtfully mull over what the person we are talking to has expressed.  It’s the way of the world.”  

“My work here is done, sister, you have grasped my essential point.  Until you get in the habit of expecting nothing, you will always be disappointed, given the way of the world, as you say.”  

“Mmm,” she said, “still, isn’t the way of the world also to wage war, to rage when frustrated, to expect the worst will always happen, to justify torture, to accept our powerlessness against any of the many gigantic, ruthless forces arrayed against us?  The way of the world, isn’t the profit of the privileged always bought at the expense of 98% of the world’s inhabitants?  At the price of the destruction of the planet we live on and the extinction of most of its life forms?”  

“My little socialist,” he said, smiling.  “Surely you don’t expect any of this to slow down in our life times.”  

“Nobody expected the end of child labor,” she said.  

“We fixed that by making international business treaties that allow child labor anywhere but here.  Many of our goods are still made by child slaves, and it keeps our prices down, I might add. You feel like paying $2,000 for an iPad made by workers protected by fair pay laws?”  

“Nobody expected the United States to do away with slavery.  Jefferson and Madison, who both owned slaves, were typical of the antislavery visionaries among our Founding Fathers, and yet…”  

“All it took was the bloodiest war in American history and a century of legally winked at lynching, et, voila, a small percentage of formerly enslaved people are now as free as anyone else who has enough money,” he said.  

“You make a good point, but it doesn’t swallow the larger point,” she said.

“You say most of us don’t have conversations where we really take to heart what the other person is saying.  That may be so, in one sense, in your experience.  Yet every day, a million times an hour, these kind of conversations are conducted by salesmen.  Salesmen must be adept and sensitive listeners and respond to what their potential customers want and need.   If a salesman doesn’t speak in a way that… why the look?”  

“What people do to earn their living is not the same as what we do in our most cherished private encounters,” she said.  “A psychiatrist may listen carefully and respond thoughtfully…” she began.  

“Oh, here we go!” he said, louder than before.  

“Why is that so threatening to you?” she asked.  

“Oh, boy!” he said.  “It’s not like we haven’t had this conversation ten or a hundred million times.   I get it, I get it.  I GET IT!”  

“What do you get?” she said.  

“Oh, no,” he said “I’m not going to go there, let’s not and say we did, I know you are but what am I?  Hoo boy, no, no, no.  Not again, never again.  You are singing a one note samba built upon a single note.  What is it with you?  Why, Dolores, why? I mean, really, Dolores, for fuck’s sake.”  

“No,” she said, “you are absolutely right.  Anyway, I brought you the cookies you asked for.  Here you are.  And I will try to get back here to visit you next week.”  

“That’s very nice of you, Dolores,” he said, getting up and taking his long coat off the table.  “Thank you so much for the cookies,” he said, “they look delicious.”  He shrugged into his coat, gave her a hug.  

“Anyway,” he said, “thanks for coming to see me.  It always makes me happy when you find the time.  Once again, you’ve made my day.”  

“And you mine,” she said, smiling happily.   He smiled back and turned to walk down the long, depressing hallway.  

In the elevator he took a long breath and shook his head.  “Some fucking world,” he said to himself, as he pulled up the collar of his coat and headed through the lobby and out into the street to hurry back to the office.