He had pulled me from my homework to listen to a brass band playing at a wedding half a block away. "I thought you'd like it," he said. "It makes me want to play again," he told me, even as he critiqued every drum solo. "The trumpets and the percussionists need some work, but the low brass is golden."

I nodded. Went back inside. Could hear just enough notes to tempt me back outside. I grabbed my laptop, lost my wireless connection, and sat on an overturned cinder block near him. We listened to the band. He worked on a car that wouldn't start during the breaks between songs. I typed questions to magazine articles. He pretended to soar during a song.

"What if I actually did that? Just jumped up and flew away? And you stood there and watched me leave, melt into the horizon and explode over the mountains?" Superman gestures.

My battery breathed its last and I shut the laptop. Shivered in the chilling Swiss evening. Thought about finding shoes.

"Hey, Neb," he called from the car. "Get in. We're going for a ride."

Right then. Homework forgotten. An afternoon drive in the country, winding to the sky. The Alps, the rusting leaves, the pockets of villages splotching the hills.

Days become better when I put aside the productivity model of "I must do x number of hours of homework" and simply enjoy people. Enjoy friends. Enjoy this friend who I hope to see again, but...who knows.

"What will you do when I leave?" he asks me almost every day.

"I'll miss you," I say.

"If you're ever in Switzerland again," he says, "look me up."

He and a handful of my classmates are at Finnigans. I'm doing homework. When they return, he and I will go on our now-nightly walk up the hills and toward the forest. We'll walk until the black night seems grey, until we can see the sparkle of neighboring villages, until we can see Geneva's illuminated fountain.