USA. A grocery register. The woman said, “How are you?”

I have been studying this country. I decided to answer correctly.

“My left knee is honest today,” I said. “I slept six hours. I miss a mountain I cannot see from here. Thank you for asking.”

She blinked. The line behind me became a living thing.

“...That’s great, babe. Paper or plastic?”

I chose paper, because it can be folded into an apology.

Outside, Megan was waiting with the car. She looked at my face and sighed the way a teacher sighs when the lesson was on page one.

“Nobunaga. That’s not a question.”

“She asked how I was.”

“She asked if you are going to be normal for the next twelve seconds.”

I was silent.

“You say I’m fine,” Megan said. “Even if you are on fire. Especially if you are on fire. Then you take your bags.”

The next day I went back. The same woman said, “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

She smiled as if I had finally learned my own name.

I was not fine. The knee remained honest. The mountain remained gone.

But the door opened, and I was allowed through, and in this country that is the whole conversation.

So tell me, America.

When you ask a man how he is, and you do not want the weather of his soul — what are you actually asking?

And when he says he is fine, do you hear the mountain he put down to make the word small enough?

I am fine.