In a friendly, steady voice she told how she had overcome her hesitations. When Sue toured the local museums now, she saw graffiti on statues, and she said the neighborhoods were slipping. I thought of my grandmother’s old place in Kansas City years ago, how it had been block-busted by sleazes who frightened the whites away and resold the houses at handsome profits to Afro-Americans. Hotrods had roared up and down Chestnut Street; Grandma had been the last white holdout. The memory still enraged me. Although I hadn’t been to Kansas City in years, I believed Sue. “My brother and sister are quite a bit older than I am,” she went on, ”and they both have children of their own, and I’m not crazy about the idea of leaving them to know their aunt through phone calls and video tapes. But I have no intention of staying in the Midwest just for my family’s sake. “It’s my life and what I want to do requires more than the Midwest has to offer. I can fit in well wherever I go. And I’ve gotten a few books on Oz. From what I’ve read, I’ll like Australia just as long as I don’t have to wear one of those damn hats and worship Paul Hogan. I have Greg to worship. They may drive on the wrong side of the road and drink beer with lunch, but it’s not like I’ll have to learn a whole new language.” Besides, she loved the idea of the children growing up with an accent as delightful as the one she heard from Greg. I asked Greg if his virtual romance with Sue had changed him. “It’s relieved a lot of the pressure that exists between myself and women, because it’s no longer that I’m looking for something more than friendship—I have a relationship which satisfies those needs and so don’t need anything from those friendships. What is most interesting is that change that I haven’t picked up but that other women must have. In the two-and-a-half years I’ve been at the university, I’ve been ‘hit on’ a grand total of zero times that I can remember. In the twenty days or so that I’ve been engaged, I’ve been hit on three times. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out exactly what is making women see me as attractive. And they weren’t friends or acquaintances either—completely unknown to me. Weird.” So how much had Greg changed Sue? “A lot,” she e-mailed back. Sue said: “Being with Greg has taught me, if anything else, that my life doesn’t have any boundaries, be they physical or emotional or geographic.” This was more than lover’s mush; I noticed her use of “With Greg,” as if they were in the same room.