How Are You? (Don't Answer)

Ulises had been in Toronto for nine days when he realized he was doing something wrong. In Guadalajara, when someone asked how you were, they wanted to know. You told them about your back, your mother, the traffic and the price of tomatoes, and they told you about theirs. Then you were friends.

So on his first Monday at the insurance company, when a man in the elevator said, "Hey, how are you?", Ulises answered honestly. "To be honest, not great. I haven't slept well since I arrived, because the heating in my apartment makes a noise like a train, and I miss my mother's cooking." The man smiled, nodded and got out at the next floor, even though Ulises was fairly sure it wasn't his.

It kept happening. The receptionist asked how he was, and he told her about his cold. A colleague in the kitchen asked, and he described the bus he had missed that morning. Each time, people looked surprised, then slightly worried, and found a reason to leave. By the second week, Ulises had started to wonder whether something was wrong with him.

Finally, he asked Priyanka, who sat at the next desk and had grown up in Toronto. She laughed so hard she had to put her coffee down. "Oh no," she said. "'How are you?' isn't really a question here. It's like saying hello. You're supposed to say 'Good, you?' and keep walking. If you really want to talk, you say 'How are you doing, really?' and you stop walking."

"So nobody wants to know how I am?" Ulises asked.

"Everyone wants to know," Priyanka said. "Just not in the elevator."

It felt like learning a second language inside the first one. Over the next weeks, he practiced. "Good, you?" to the security guard. "Good, you?" to the man at the coffee cart. It was efficient, and a little lonely, but nobody ran away anymore.

At the end of October, he got into the elevator with Deirdre, his manager, who had always been polite and slightly distant. "Morning, Ulises. How are you?"

"Good, you?" he said, perfectly.

Deirdre sighed. "Honestly? Terrible. My daughter is moving to Vancouver, my cat is on a diet and hates me, and my husband has decided to learn the trumpet." By the time the doors opened on the fourteenth floor, Ulises knew more about his manager than he knew about anyone in Canada. She stepped out, then turned around and smiled. "Thanks for asking," she said. "Nobody ever does."