She hands me a small chocolate-covered blueberry. I eat it. It tastes more like my Grandma’s sofa than a blueberry. I like the taste though. I walk and wonder about these artists. How they always seemed to have a group of friends around them that influenced their work. How sometimes, a work I look at and say anybody could have created this, and other times I look at a work and say only this one individual in all of human history could have created this.

She is extremely perceptive. We each are timid about saying that a work is too minimal or, god forbid, that it is not “good.” For example, there is one work of art that was just blank—three canvases on the wall, all of them just blank. She says maybe this is just an exhibit that hasn’t been set up yet, or the artist hasn’t been here to create it yet. But then we read the little placard on the wall and it says something like “blank painting” for the title. It explains the artist wanted to show a work of art that displayed all the “opportunity” of blankness.

The exhibit is closing so we go down the elevator and before leaving find one last work of art—a giant rusted steel maze with walls at least fifty feet tall and slanted sideways. We start to walk through and soon don’t know where in the maze we are, but continue to walk along the same path assuming it must lead to the end. I feel safe with two walls on either side of me and no option other than the path in front of me and her in the path in front of me so I’m walking after her. Finally we emerge from the steel maze and I ask her, “Are you hungry?”

We walk, arm in arm, it’s a little cold outside. We walk into the restaurant. We ask the hostess for a table for two. The hostess tells us the wait will be 15 minutes. She says she’s going to use the bathroom. I sit down in a chair to wait for her. I wait for a few minutes and really start to feel the blueberry then.