Take a guess, how many pages do you think I have?

Once I said to Bruno, Take a guess, how many pages do you think I have?

No idea, he said.

Write a number, I said, and slip it across the table. He shrugged and took a pen out of his pocket. He thought for a minute or two, studying my face. A ballpark guess, I said. He hunched over his napkin, scrawled a number, and turned it over. I wrote down the real number, 301, on my own napkin. We pushed the napkins across the table. I picked up Bruno’s. For reasons I can’t explain he had written 200,000. He picked up my napkin and turned it over. His face fell.

- Nicole Krauss, The History of Love