Bud Wiggins Jr., a stubborn sixty-one and stubborner fifteen pounds overweight, was in the perma-crawl of LA freeway traffic when he ready-steadied for a bit of the old Mounjaro ultraviolence. From base camp, he heard thunder on not too distant slopes.

Through the ages, men learned tricks to stanch ejaculation but when it came to tummy trouble, all strategies were a loser’s game. In a cold sweat, he scanned grassy onramps and adjacent knolls like a doomed pilot surveilling urban landing strips that would kill the least amount of civilians. Plan D was to leap from his truck in a single bound and uncork on the bramble like a honey bear — voyeurs’ cursory dashcam videos be damned.

Being high season for roadside encampments, it was understood he wouldn’t be greeted with the same courtesy extended, say, to a Mr. Rogers. Still another concern was that fine line between tragedy and comedy — it was one thing for a normie to be mauled by a pack of reanimated zombies, but quite another for a trespassing, aged-out Jewish novelist to be stabbed then set on fire as a consequence of cuspy Xer thinmaxxing. His crucifixion in social media’s public square had a shot at dwarfing the Coldplay jumbotron fiasco of a few years back. Worse, it might launch a thousand Substack dissertations that began with a smirk and ended in the heady acrobatics of weltschmerz.

Too late.

In a mudstream of consciousness, somewhere near the 101 South and 405 North interchange, the narrative unspooled in fits and starts before its denouement in the debris field of Bud’s signature jumpsuit. It should be noted that the romper was a more stylish version of his dad’s; the venerable satirist Bud Wiggins Senior was half-known (if at all) for sporting a proletarian boiler festooned with vintage gemmed brooches and pricey Hermes scarves. Wiggins fils liked his jumpers “neat” — no ice.

Forty minutes later, having biohazarded the Dickies into double leaf bags before tossing it in the dumpster, Bud emerged from a blistering shower naked and reborn. He ambled to the couch to peaceably scroll through the iPad, as was his wont after the unwanted snows of Kilimounjaro.

A friend sent him a video link to a New York Times interview with George Saunders. He’d never delved into the great writer’s celebrated short stories but had read his novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (five or six years ago, when Bud was still able to get to the end of a book). He was knocked out by how good it was, how moving, how gorgeous, which completely took him by surprise. A consequence of Bardo’s phenomenal popularity, bravura premise, and poetic beauty was that it won the Man Booker — thus, the canonized author was kicked upstairs by adoring critics and public alike. As if overnight, a one-time nichified SciFi-adjacent storyteller not only became a deserved giant of the craft but got branded as Saint Saunders, living relic and King of Kindness. MFA pilgrims crawled in a hajj to his altar (scattered with the gods of common and uncommon things), knee by bloodied knee with subscribers of The Times, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. What a piece of work is man! thought Bud. This foul and pestilent congregation of vapors . . . yet it couldn’t have happened to a better man. Or humbler scribe, anyway.

The NYT interview was cringe. The “journalist” was so far up his subject’s ass that he took a left turn at the Bardo, raced past Nirvana, and spun off the Wheel of Samsara entirely.

He scrolled down to read the video’s intro.

He has also taught fiction to countless laypeople: His 2021 nonfiction work, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain,” was a book-length distillation of his teaching that, to the startled delight of his publisher, became a bestseller. In 2013, Saunders gave a convocation speech to Syracuse graduates in which he extolled the life-altering virtue of practicing kindness. That speech went viral and was repackaged as a book, which also became a bestseller, thrusting Saunders into a public role as something close to a guru of goodness.

Bud mused on the whole graduation-talk thing.

David Foster Wallace did one in 2005 at Kenyon College, later published as an homily about living a compassionate life. The now legendary rap to undergrads, which began with a parable about fish, spawned a seasonal cultural grunion run of true believers edging for empathy and its thousand-page novel spinoffs. In the aughts, the boyish, brainiac DFW was the go-to Astroglide for the dry Wheel of Dharma anxiety. Same as it ever was: the wacked-out end days of these troubled times — the gory, whoring Twenties — was rife with defeated Baby Boomers getting their house in order and mending the fence of messy breakups with Kindness. Bloodied by impotent, performative activism, they threw in the towel and began rehearsals for the death of their physical bodies, a finale closing in like a stuttering Uber Comfort avatar just a few blocks away on the neighborhood map. While doomsurfing, pornhubbing and ragescrolling, memes featuring the haloed boho royalty of Compassion and Empathy sprung up on their devices like empathogenic mushrooms: as Patti Smith, Rick Rubin and Nick Cave sermonized on grief, impermanence and mindfulness, the weepy acolytes got nauseous (in a good way) for the sacred. The thirty-second hits were perfect recruitment tools when viewed in the waiting rooms of shrinks and pain management specialists, or in the wake of cuckold hookups (after the well-paid black bull made his courteous departure). Chicly minimalist panaceas for any sleepless dark night of the senior soul.

It occurred to Bud that his putative manager might have ties to an agency with an “author booking” department. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, a reviewer wrote that one of Junior’s novels “made a fine fictional companion to the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s writings on spiritual outrage and the impossibility of solace.” Didn’t that rate him a slot at some lib arts gown-out? He too had written on Buddhism, compassion, kindness — the whole woo-woo megillah — years before Saunders and DFW. Bud decided to corner Zuk the next time he was in LA. He’d huff and puff and blow the Convocation Cathedral door down, revivifying his career. He might even publish a book of his own collegiate gabfest, like his forebears1, and call it “In the Future, Everyone Will Be Kind For Fifteen Minutes.” He’d wow them with Gen Z slang and gunslinging parables, sharing raw personal intimacies while peppering his spiel with zingers from Chappelle and Chekhov before bringing it all home with mystic, showstopping heartbreak.

The little shits wouldn’t know what hit ’em.

Bud learned from experience that losing weight, along with a daily glass of pomegranate juice, lowered his cholesterol enough so that he felt justified in not taking statins. He’d heard a lot of horrible things about statins; Big Pharma was not your friend But more than weight loss, he longed for word loss; he was convinced that the plaque in his arteries wouldn’t kill him — it was words themselves.

In the end, whether running your mouth at a thousand commencement ceremonies2 or locked up in dementia’s Tower of Babble, the stained garment of language inexorably would drop, showing what it was made of: the Emperor’s new words. Yet they were all Bud had. Words were his muse, his lover, his eternal return, just as they were for his father. They birthed the six children of Bud’s novels and their sight and smell still mesmerized. But something had changed.

On a day now forgotten, words stopped quickening his blood.

Ten years ago, the gothic portmanteau “deadnaming” gave Bud an erection — now, he couldn’t give a shit about RSVPing to the newfangled orgies thrown by seductive arrivistes like bonesmashing and longhousing. Instead of rabbit-holing neologisms’ origins and meanings, he preferred to just make them up like a child sitting crisscross, lazily dreaming. He’d rather rot his brain with snuff reels — serotonin-jacking wait-for-it, watch-till-end CCTV medleys of baby-faced cops slaughtered at traffic stops or non-AI tigers gorily dragging safari tourists from open-air buses or crossing guard schoolkids launched airborne by drunk drivers like a spray of time-lapsed flowers blooming as they dissolved to Infinity.

As he drifted to sleep, Bud riffed on the Times piece.

“Saunders’ clothing, befouled by an errant skinny-jab, was bought by a consortium members Peter Thiel, Bono, and Noam Chomsky for an amount a university docent affirmed was ‘more than what was paid for the Kerouac scroll.’ The workaday outfit, freezer-stored to neutralize bacteria, is now on display at the college’s Shaffer Art Building. When told that the exhibit has become a kind of companion piece to Rothko’s Chapel, the dry-witted Saunders parried, ‘The Shroud of Turin it is not.’ To the startled delight of his publisher, the show has become a runaway bestseller . . .’”

In the morning, Bud valiantly tried another The Sound and the Fury break-in. He’d been picking the lock for ten weeks.

Faulkner was getting a lot of action from large and small presses because some of the author’s titles had recently entered the public domain. A Russian artist was publishing an illustrated version of Fury and asked Bud to write the introduction — an invitation he thought was likely due to the fact that in bygone days, a devoutly Catholic, alcoholic professor (and drinking companion of his father) boldly nominated Junior for a PEN/Faulkner Award, months before dying himself. A plenary indulgence, Bud joked at the time.

The novelist humblebragged to an old college chum about the offer, feigning that his mind wasn’t yet made up. The eccentric former roommate, comfortably adrift after retiring as a production manager at Scribner’s, said, “Well, why not? It’s kind of dignified . . . and keeps your name out there. God knows, we need our names out there!”

“So you think I should do it?” Bud said coyly.

Part of him shrunk at what he was about to hear; there was a reason he called his friend The Great Cynic.

“Well, it’s not exactly a money grab — not for you, and not for whoever has the idiocy to publish it. Safe to say no one’s going to make a killing. See, PD books — public domain — sadly don’t make great Christmas gifts. Which eliminates yet another revenue stream . . . but fuck all that, you might just get a new reader or two. Need I repeat, old friend? Novels as we know them are being carted to the charnel ground en masse. Literally! You have heard of Chatbot Claude, no? The devouring A.I. dakini? Her makers bought millions of books and fed them into the craw of that ravenous wood-chipping bitch — real Texas Chainsaw shite. Tore off the spines and dismembered the pages, chapter and verso, then burned the bodies while she belched, picking her teeth after the satanic binge . . . oh, come now, Bud, don’t look so pained! Libraries around the world are doing that anyway because they can’t afford to store the excess inventory. The Big Fives has warehouses and warehouses teeming with returns, costs them a bloody fortune. They’re running the largest morgues on the planet and you can’t keep those refrigerators on forever . . . Now, don’t be so sensitive, be a good boy and don’t take any of it too seriously! The whole world is burning — so we may as well have a little Fahrenheit Four-Five-Fun! Let them pay you to do the audiobook instead, ever done one of your own? Lord, you’ve got the voice for it — what’s the quote about Springsteen, ‘I saw the future of books and its name is Audible!’ We Boomers are all going blind . . . but Gen A.I. don’t even know what a book is. Nietzsche was right: ‘Book Is Dead!’” The Great Cynic sniggered at his dumb wit. “Brother, the game is o-vuh. ‘Something wicked this way comes . . .’” — he segued into an awful, zany English accent — “ . . .and what a right rough beast she is! Her name is Claude, by the way — l’Claude! L’chaim!”

The shrewdly prescient Saunders packed his audiobook with stars playing over 160 characters: David Sedaris, Miranda July, Lena Dunham, Ben Stiller, Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon — even Saunders himself got in on the act, the result being that Bardo won the 2018 “Audie.” Some PT Barnum over at Penguin Random House even submitted the monumental production to the Guinness Book of World Records for most individual voices on an eBook. Why not submit for most deli platters and throat lozenges? The logistically complex production was not only a flex of showmanship, but a massively generous act of Kindness to both cast and listeners.

Bud doffed his cap.

He sat in his special chair — the one sanctified as his magic Return to Reading Chair — and skimmed through The Sound and the Fury. It was like holding a manuscript written in a dead language; absolutely nothing held his attention.

To refocus, he watched a few snuffers, to no avail.

Never a voracious reader, Bud was more like a dunce with the gift of absorbing and synthesizing what he read by an act of osmosis.3 His difficulty in processing the written word, a kind of journeyman’s alexia, grew worse with age — far worse. Of late, with spotty career acclaim far enough in the rearview to appear as a mirage, a panicky conviction took hold: Bud’s excommunication (how apt the word) from the work of other writers had cratered the quality of his own books. He dimly remembered a time when the interplay of reading the classics and the occasional exceptional peer had been an accelerant to his own creative endeavors. Could it be that his novels — the last, released six years ago — were catastrophically maimed by the embargo?

A quote from Faulkner himself soothed Bud’s agita:

The writing of it [The Sound and the Fury] as it now stands taught me both how to write and how to read, and even more: It taught me what I had already read. Because on completing the novel, I discovered in a series of repercussions like summer thunder, the Flauberts and Conrads and Turgenevs — which as much as ten years before I had consumed whole, with all the understanding of a moth or a goat.

I have read nothing since; I have not had to.

Then wouldn’t a handful of the Dickens he read in his early thirties do? A smattering of Genet, Kipling, Kafka and Twain, old friends from his adolescence? Wouldn’t an arduous, years-long reading — to the finish line! — of Don Quixote count? Did it even matter that Nabokov and Martin Amis despised Quixote, as had Conrad, Lawrence, Turgenev, Hemingway, and Henry James?

On the other hand, Bud was plagued by Nabokov’s assertion that by definition a “good” reader — a “creative” reader — is a “rereader.” Another pundit wrote that one’s first read of a treasured novel is a youthful pleasure; the second, a coming of age; the third, a consolation in the despair of dotage. Yet what if one had unearthed only a slim shelf of treasures to begin with? For the handicapped booklover, to speak of rereadings was a mockery, an abomination.

He resolved at last to seek professional help.

He struck up a conversation with a Gen Z glamourpuss in Echo Park. Bud was at the club for a party hosted by a new literary magazine called The Big One. He occasionally got invited to those sort of things, usually by young bibliophiliacs — wisenheimer fans of his Dad who sleuthed their way to Bud’s books, as they had to Jan Kerouac’s and that other Junior, the son of William S. Burroughs.

When he introduced himself — he looked for a flash of recognition in her eyes but there wasn’t any — she gave her name, which he couldn’t hear above the din. Bud was in the middle of his shtick about his neurodiverse reading beef. He was feel-good drunk and making her laugh (sort of).“It’s a phobia,” he said.

“Well that’s awkward. For a writer, I mean.”

“The experts call it an ‘orthographic processing deficit.’”

“Easy for you to say. I wish I had that problem,” she said. “It’s crazy but my dad actually taught me how to speed-read when I was in middle school — he was an Evelyn Wood guy. I whipped through House of Leaves, Infinite Jest, and The Corrections in one week. And I pretty much retain fucking everything, which is a nightmare. I’m rereading Houellebecq now and he’s pretty great.”

Glossing over the progressive politics of the region (East Sunset Boulevard), Bud clapped back in a too-loud terrorist accent, “For me, all books haram now! Leaf House haram! Franzen, Houellebecq, DFW — haram!”

He watched the flirt flame out, its ash coiling cold and dead before his eyes.

The next morning, Bud had a weird hangover. His mouth tasted like it had sucked off a Tesla Bot and stayed like that, even after the throw-up. He couldn’t hold his words or his liquor anymore.

While he grunted along the old, borrowed, blue treadmill of a superannuated novelist’s life, A.I. found him a cognitive behavioral therapist for his troubles. In the prompt, he said to please avoid the Vyvanse/Adderall route — the magic meth bullets any respectable, quick-draw CBT practitioner kept in their ADHD arsenal. He’d been addicted to prescription speed before and once was enough, thanks much. Chat cheerfully informed that EEG-biofeedback was a helpful, non-invasive technique used not only on dyslexic kids but great for adults with the same issues Bud described in his intake assessment.

After another Chat incursion, he decided to lay off Mounjaro for a few days before his appointment.

Yes, diarrhea and other gastrointestinal (GI) issues can be triggered by, or occur as a side effect of, neurofeedback sessions. While neurofeedback is generally safe and often used to treat stress-related conditions, it can, in rare cases, trigger involuntary, transient physical responses.

Her office was modest. She wore high, stylish boots, and was youngish. The writer had his doubts but as the saying goes, the woman seemed to know her shit, and where to put it.

“From everything you’ve told me,” she smiled, “the act of reading has become . . . aggressive. And for that reason, it is not pleasurable. You’re no longer reading the words — you’re in mortal combat.”

After a bit more informal analysis, it was time for the brain mapping, a technique Chat had already familiarized him with.

She fitted him with a skullcap and attached electrodes. The twenty-minute exam was divided in two, half with eyes closed, half with eyes open. When Bud asked what he should be thinking about or visualizing, she said it didn’t matter. “Your brain will do the work.” A week later, it was back to the skullcap but this time she had him watch a reality show — a plastic surgeon was selling his house in Brentwood Circle. As Bud stared at the monitor, the images randomly faded in and out, the light growing dimmer then brighter again until stabilizing. The therapist said that the seemingly haphazard cycle was a call and response to whatever secret messages his gray matter was transmitting.

“The goal,” she said, “is to strengthen parts of the brain to reduce general anxiety and enhance reading skills. It’s like going to the gym. Pretty soon, those lobes of yours will have muscles.”

Between sessions, he dipped a toe back in the reading waters.

It wasn’t lost on Bud that the book he’d chosen to formally break his long reading fast — the book that chose him — was probably the most challenging in the American canon: The Sound and the Fury. As the therapist suggested, he laid down his weapons and went with the flow, and for some reason it worked. When he victoriously turned the final page of the Faulknerian mêlée of grammatical, gender, racial, and chronological confusion, the critic in him found no sound (other than dissonance) and no fury, other than that which befell the reader. The whole enterprise struck Bud as a self-congratulatory parody dressed up in the defunct academic conceit of “experimental,” when in truth, it was slapdash and sadistically obscure. Dull and abstractly corny, TSATF was a hackneyed fantasia with no discernible poetry in it; whatever inklings of beauty were of the even-a-broken-novel-is-right-twice-a-day variety. And so annoying! He kept stubbing his eyes on the clumsily rendered Ebonics of the blacks — “hit” for “it,” “tech” for “touch” — not because it offended his left-leaning philosophies but because it was crude, aesthetic amateur hour. The slobbering, bellowing retard Benjy was an all-night diner sign that vulgarly blinked the dog-eared outcome of incest. To Bud, everything about the thing was fake and asinine, and sinfully so, given that it masqueraded as High Art. All his years of worship . . .

What had he been thinking?

Trying to make sense of his misbegotten loyalties, reminiscing about that virginal roll in the hay with Fury, Bud was able to recapture his charmingly solemn teenaged vow: “I must write with his scope, his poetry (the name the gullible boy had affixed to Faulkner’s contorted semantics) — I must dare everything, or be damned.” The grown Bud made peace with the realization that if such was the only gift Faulkner had given him, he would be forever grateful.

The regaining of paradise was followed by another revelation: though his output had been relatively slight, Bud Wiggins Jr. realized he had done what he set out to do, and fulfilled the quixotic, heroically naïve promise he swore to decades ago. But the world remained clueless because no one had read his work. The ultimate irony was that the multitudes for whom his oeuvre was unknown included Bud himself. He had forgotten that he’d already written out his dream — in disappearing ink.

He mused over other imagined titans in his life.

What about Hemingway, what about Gertrude Stein?

What about Voltaire, what about Rabelais? And Sade and Celine and Genet and —

Like everything else, reading and writing was lunacy.

Books and the words that made them truly were haram.

He met his manager for lunch at the San Vicente Bungalows. Bud called him that, though there was nothing left to manage.

Occasionally (very), Zuk was able to cash in a favor to get him the script work that allowed Bud to have health insurance. The novelist used to hold a grudge about not being properly exploited. Now, with a mature, clear-eyed perspective of what the poor man had been up against all these years, he simply enjoyed Zuk’s company. The dynamo’s bullishly rose-colored spirit was contagious — for all Bud’s tempered bravado, Zuk knew that his client was on the ropes of a business that was punchy itself. But more than that, much more, Zuk wasn’t just simpatico, he was genuinely respectful.

When the hostess led him to the table, Zuk stood, reverentially holding out his arms. “There he is! The legend.”

They sat a while before the manager jumped up to table-schmooze with friends and clients: Michelle Yeoh, Sydney Sweeney, and DC3, who sat with Kendrick Lamar. On his return, they chitchatted and the server took their order.

Then, with usual anodyne aplomb, Zuk announced, “We’re moving to Paris!”

Bud winced. He felt a rumble in his intestines, not via Mounjaro, but rather the donkey kick of abandonment from the linchpin whose psychic and geographical presence had allowed the novelist to believe that things would be all right and luck was just around the corner.

“France is amazing. Europe is where everything’s happening — people would get you in France. Here’s the plan: I want to have a big dinner for you there and introduce you to everyone. They’ll fly you over! James Ellroy is huge in France. Isn’t he a buddy of yours?”

“We had a falling out. That’s how it goes with James.”

“Didn’t Ellroy write the foreword to one of your books?”

“For a French edition — ”

“That’s perfect.”

“That was twenty years ago, Zuk. I’m sure it’s out of print.”

“It’s a great calling card! And don’t be silly, I’m sure people know who you are — you’re a legend! But the Ellroy book — with his introduction — is an amazing reminder. It must have sold really well . . .”

“I doubt it,” Bud snickered.

“Really? What makes you think?”

“Well, for one thing, because people don’t read — and when I say ‘people,’ I include myself! The ones who do are rare as pink sheep. That everyone ‘reads’ is kind of like the Big Lie.”

The manager guffawed. “Legend! My wife Lisbeth’s a huge reader . . . but do you really think that? Do you really think it’s true?”

The question, almost plaintive, was asked with stagecraft earnestness. Zuk had a way of presenting himself as a naif, belying a deep knowledge and ferocious instincts about the inner workings of all entertainments — a guileless stratagem that put interlocutors at ease while gaining Zuk access to valuable intel. He wasn’t doing that with Bud though. With his old friend and art outlaw, he really did think he could learn “new things.”

“People do listen to audiobooks,” Bud said grudgingly.

“I love audiobooks!” Like a consul general with marching orders, Zuk said, “I’m flying back tomorrow. I’ll track down the Ellroy book and we’ll get you to Paris. I’ll introduce you to the mavens — these amazing Millennials ruling the culture there now.” Bud knew it was theater but none of that mattered; he really did love the man. “And it’s a huge plus that you’ve written a few screenplays . . .”

“That was twenty years ago too.”

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t be Debbie Downer! Because some of the people you’re going to meet have things they want to adapt.” Squinting at Bud, he said, “You look really good, by the way. Have you lost weight?”

“Doin’ it old school — countin’ calories.”

Zuk shook his head in admiration.

“That’s legend,” he said.

A few days later, Bud got a text from his manager about “a stack of the Ellroy books” being delivered to his door in Paris.

His assistant emailed, “While he’s away, Zuk said please use the pool. If the realtor stops by to show the house, you can totally keep swimming! Zuk’s team said no problem.”

She sent him the gate codes.

On the way up, he ruminated on the chillingly casual “to show the house” — ugh. He stopped for gas at the fancy 76 in Beverly Hills. Someone on the other side of the pump was filling up a McClaren and talking on his cell. Bud heard him say, “I’d eat a mile of that girl’s shit just to see where it come from.” He wondered if the wiry young thug who was gassing up listened to audiobooks. The gal he was talking to his friend about probably did.

In Bud’s duffel were swim trunks, a towel, a book of Chekhov stories, and some expensive swag bag headphones from a party China Chow invited him to in the 90s; they still worked. Lolling on the chaise, he listened to a Spotify playlist of Sibelius (Zadie Smith loved Sibelius) and daydreamed. It was easy to imagine this was his house, his pool — that he, Bud Wiggins Jr., was the new owner of 1624 Blue Jay Way. Easier still to imagine no one had ever lived there but him.

Then a strange thing happened.

The luxe mise-en-scène — pool, terrace, foliage and skyline beyond — intermittently faded out then dialed back up like the images during his brain mapping. Was something wrong with his eyes? Bud didn’t think so . . . the cataract surgery in 2024 went well. He did have a couple of incidents after the procedure, mostly while driving, when the world began to subtly pixilate, not in a dramatic way but enough to cause some concern. The first time that happened, he pulled over to call the doctor’s office. The RN said it was an “ocular migraine” and if it lasted more than 45 minutes to “come see us right away.”

This felt like something else. He rolled around his tongue and tasted burnt marshmallows. Even weirder, when he took off the headphones, the music persisted — fading out, fading in — with Sibelius nudged out by a church organ hodgepodge of his beloved Beach Boys. As if suddenly having unencrypted access to all the celestial things Brian Wilson composed in his head but never set down.

Then, it was over.

He dipped in the pool to wash it all away. Toweling off, Bud loitered at the glass door of the house and peered in. He slid it open. Grabbing a Diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge, he sauntered through the house to the cozy library office. He idly surveyed the shelves: Malcolm Gladwell, Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within — and to his surprise, a paperback Lincoln in the Bardo, which reminded him of the Chekhov in the duffle. He picked it up at a secondhand store in North Hollywood because of a story called “Gooseberries” that Saunders went on and on about in the NYT interview. (Bud liked it well enough, but it didn’t give him gooseflesh.) It was so smart of Saunders — so kind — to recommend a lesser known work by his hero. Who wanted to be told for the thousandth time to read “The Kiss,” “Ward No. 6” or “The Lady with the Little Dog”?

He pondered how many Chekhov volumes were sold as a result of Saunders’ flogging . . .

Standing there, mindlessly thumbing Bardo’s pages, he got an idea that almost made him spit-take. He could pole-vault from the remainder bins by writing a slim novel called CHEKHOV: Collected Stories by Bud Wiggins Jr. — his name in a smaller font and far enough below to appear that he was the editor. He wouldn’t even have to ask a lawyer if that was legally something he could do because the Master had been dead more than a century.

He took a few steps and sat behind Zuk’s desk. He couldn’t picture his manager spending any time there — that just wasn’t Zuk’s thing. Bud thought the PC was a prop, part of the realtor’s home staging, but when he touched the keyboard it lit up. No password required.

Hi, Zuk.

What would you like to do?

Below the greeting were five little boxes in a row. The first said Book Search; the second, Market Overview; the third, Bestsellers; the fourth, Collections; the last, Report Builder.

The frisson of a phantom Santa Ana gusted the hairs on his neck as the flabbergasted novelist apprehended where he’d landed . . .

BookScan!

To certain ears (Gen X being the last of the herd), “BookScan” conjured the Ark of the Covenant, the golden chalice, the Masons, the Illuminati. For in its darkly alchemical hidden recesses, the secret society contained the infernal mechanism that tallied and sorted the number of books each author had sold — Camelot to publishers but Mordor to living writers. To inquisitive scribes, the tote board may as well have been graced by the signage of a familiar motto: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Why would Zuk subscribe to such a thing?

Then of course it made sense: the Business relentlessly sniffed for IP truffles that might sprout into streaming second-screen juggernauts. On the brink of misdemeanor espionage, Bud paused like a beggar at the gates of an impregnable palace.

He had a bad feeling . . .

And why would Zuk have left behind his computer anyway? He’d probably never used it; he must have had a dozen of them and this one resided in the library, that’s all, like a piano in a living room. Yet what if the realtor burst in and caught him in flagrante delicto? Just when Bud realized he was being a drama queen, he got another jolt — for all he knew, his manager had just been awakened in Paris by a cellphone alert: “Hi, Zuk. Welcome back!”

Throwing caution to the wind, he boomeranged back to . . .

BookScan!

He was on a whistleblower mission now. Somehow, he had been chosen to expose the Mother of all Lies — that people read, that books sold — and would use the scan’s algorithmic numbers and sacrilegious Deuteronomy to topple the whole house of marked-deck cards. In one fell gonzo journalistic scoop, Bud would reveal that the anointed of American and World lit, from effete famousoids to the newbie wunderkind fetishized ad nauseum in fawning profiles and divinizing reviews — that the golden bookfest calves of Frankfurt, Edinburgh and Jaipur, shot in elegant monochrome with their mouths japing in whip-smart, cool kid hysterics while clutching ribboned medallions in Air Mail, The Washington Post, and Vanity Fair — that all the consecrated Margot Channings, the not long for this world vampyric attention-whore Addison DeWitts who’d won everything but the Nobel, the NYRB clit-bait Eve Harringtons who wrote their way to the top . . . had sold no books at all. (Or nothing to write home about.) He felt like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show — Bud actually didn’t much remember the movie but the nonstop essays on Reddit, spangled with production stills, kept his familiarity of it sharp — once he stepped outside the studio set to pry open mouths, the real book sale numbers would show themselves like rotting crack whore teeth. Ripping off the mask, Bud Wiggins Jr. would live up to Zuk’s epithet and truly become legend, with the side benefit of sparking a major reappraisal of his work. Make room, Snowden and Assange — when Junior was done, no fish or penguin would be safe . . .

He clicked the cursor on the search bar and typed in George Saunders.

Bud expected a highish figure, something close to 20- or 25,000 copies sold; he had won the Booker. A number appeared: 237,495, hardcover. The paperback sold 228,882.

Too high, to say the least — must be some mistake.

Refreshing the page, the figure actually rose.

He squinted in confusion at the numbers, then allowed himself to at least entertain the possibility of their accuracy. Might it have something to do with the star-studded audiobook?

In a tizzy, he did a search for the first few authors who came to mind.

A friend had recently suggested a new novel-in-stories called Rejection by “an incredible genius” with the odd name of Tony Tulathimutte. It had blurbs from Dwight Garner, WSJ and NPR, and even Jonathan Franzen, who praised the author’s first book. Bud never heard of T²; it was definitely a name he would have remembered. BookScan had Rejection at 25,124 — all hardcovers! Dizzied, he moved to someone he had heard of: Emma Cline, an ingénue he’d actually met who claimed to be a fan of his first book, written before she was born. (Fan or not, it didn’t matter, because she’d graciously made the effort to acknowledge him.) Cline’s debut novel, The Girls, sold 178,679 hardback and another 146,303 in soft. Her latest, The Guest, was a tidy hundred thousand and rising . . .

He sat back in Zuk’s chair and did a breathing meditation he learned on IG..

After searching more desultory samplings, the veil slowly lifted to reveal the obvious:

Bud had been pranked.

Rolling back the Herman Miller, he marveled at the artifice. Well-played! The conspiracy was magnificent. Like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, Bud tore off his mask, only to reveal that it was the redundant face of his own that lay beneath. All that he’d been told, all that he’d heard, all that he thought he knew — that no one was reading, that publishing was dead . . . that was the lie. The star of The Truman-Wiggins Show had been redpilled into a world that was bluer than the skies of Heaven.

But who had been telling him this? And why?

As a reset, he walked to the shelves and fingered a few volumes, then raced back to punch in Malcolm Gladwell and Tony Robbins.

Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference sold 2,626,909 hardback; Robbins’ Awaken the Giant rang up just 572,932.

When he entered David Foster Wallace’s hardcover transcript of his commencement talk at Kenyon College, the graph dipped encouragingly, plummeting to 182,857. (Hanging himself the year before its release would have helped sales — but still.) Saunders’ stand-up act at Syracuse, “Some Thoughts on Kindness,” logged in at only 78,675. Loser! he muttered. Get thee to a backyard lawn chair and bathrobe noose, good, kind Professor . . . The drop from seven figures to five gave Bud a second wind.

He could understand the Gladwell’s and the Robbins’, the Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings too. He even understood the giant-killer flash mob takeover of Romantasy . . .

Rising from the inky depths of memory like a fortune in the Magic 8 Ball that was one of his father’s prized childhood possessions, came a name: Mark Danielewski. Danielewski wrote a cult novel called House of Leaves (one of the books that the girl Bud met in Echo Park had speed-read) in the year that BookScan was born. Rife with multi-font styles, blank pages, and upside-down typographical anarchy, the author trumpeted his design for a cycle of 27 books, each 800 pages long. Bud recalled reading interviews with Danielewski back in the day; his messianic ambition belonged not to a littérateur but rather to Olympian-visioned earth artists like Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson — or Donald Judd, who, God of ADHD that he was, lined up 100 perfectly spaced identical aluminum boxes in hangar-sized sheds in Marfa, Texas, of all places.

Bud entered the title, rubbing his hands together like the gleeful Hardback of Notre Dame — he couldn’t wait to hear the pitiful ring of this bell. When the clangorous number chimed, he gasped and covered his ears.

House of Leaves had sold 1,105,798 copies.

The second visit to the hillside house was sans the flush of Bud’s premiere and more like returning to the scene of a hazing, or a dog to its own vomit. Armed with a scribbled notepad resembling a deranged hit list, Bud numbly fed author and titles into the search engine with the flattened affect of an accountant who was late for dinner — one who, after humming while washing the dishes, calmly slaughtered his wife and kids then took his own life.

Zadie Smith (600,000 hardbacks between On Beauty and White Teeth) . . . Ottessa Moshfegh (416,281 for My Year of Rest and Relaxation, with the rest of her books relaxing in the high fives) . . . David Szalay’s Flesh (43,036)4 . . . Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School (50,233) . . . Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (319,930) —

It was time to set a lower bar.

On a whim, he spied on Dennis Cooper, whose best in show was 21,614 (The Sluts). But the rest were in the 2-, 3-, and 4,000 range. Heartened by the paucity of sales, Bud murmured, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” He coasted through a few more — Houellebecq’s hardcover numbers were meh but his trade editions were in the twenty- and thirty-thousands (the savage detective kicked himself for not having left on the high-note of low Coopers). In a kind of seizure, Bud fed the furnace until the kindling was gone and his mind was charred and dormant.

Inevitably, he dredged the name of a river corpse, freeing it from the killer’s deadly ballast:

Bud Wiggins Jr.

When he typed in the name, only the titles of his father’s books appeared.

The novels of Bud Wiggins Senior predated BookScan, though the sales of Dad’s motley reprints — the fits and starts of comebacks that never came — ranged from eighteen- to thirty-five hundred. Seeing his patriarch laid out like that was almost like visiting his grave. There was something honest and straightforward about it that moved him.

Scrolling down, he accidentally lit upon the orphan, crying in its crib in the haunted nursery at the bottom page: the numbers affixed to Wiggins the Lesser.

Bud’s last novel was published in 2020, the year the pandemic began and Lincoln in the Bardo won the Audie. A few inches to the right of the title, beside the RTD (Release To Date Sales), was “78.”

Next to that was the WTD sales (Week to Date) — 0.

Next to that was the YTD sales (Year To Date) — 0.

The old phrase “goose eggs” echoed in his head (with a cackle, Bud revised it to “Gooseberries”). He sat there, forlornly shaking his head. It could not be 78 . . . the software must have glitched, amputating the number. True, the timing of Book Number Six couldn’t have been worse, with Covid and all; also true it was completely ignored by the press, excepting a pair of benign, salutary thumbnail reviews in the trade magazines. As good fortune happened, a few Booklist and PW staffers were aging fans of Bud Jr.’s early work.

The novel he wrote before “78” scanned at an RTD of “363,” and the one before that, a cumulative “691.” Even though it was a downward trend, if a trend at all, there was solace in seeing his name and titles — even the obscene numbers — writ small. Somehow that mattered. Despite everything, Bud Wiggins Jr., in threadbare, freshly laundered waitstaff clothing, had cordially been invited to attend the dollhouse gala. With head held high, he watched the graceful dancers glide by in dinner jackets and evening gowns, their jewels sparkling, and laughter like wine. None of them looked his way — but attention had been paid.

As a parting shot, he pivoted to the $17 Random House trade paperback of The Sound and the Fury: The Complete, Definitive edition. Year to Date: 380,391. He brooded about oversaturation and wondered if the Faulkner he was writing the preface for would sell.

When Bud returned to the house a few days later, the computer was gone.

He went to lunch with the retired old Scribner’s salt who regaled him about the book-eating demon. With self-effacing charm and high humor, Bud recounted his Excellent Misadventures in BookScanland — before playfully chastising the Great Cynic for bullshitting him about the death of belles-lettres.

“A report,” said Bud, “that seems to have been greatly exaggerated.”

“Friend,” said the salt, “we hear what we want to hear — that’s me, that’s you, that’s Lydia fucking Davis and Pico Iyer too. And yes, guilty as charged — maybe — but with an explanation: I just don’t see those ludicrous numbers — number our days! — the way you do, friendly friend. How could I? Let me tell you what this veteran knows — and as you’re well aware, I had boots on the ground for thirty-odd years — books on the ground — and ‘odd’ years they were . . . I hate to use that deckchairs-on-the-Titanic cliché but that’s what it fucking is. He who dies with the most deckchairs wins? I don’t think so, Mr. Wiggins . . . scratch Titanic, it’s deck chairs in a leper colony — there’s a phrase you don’t hear anymore. Our dear mother used to threaten to drop us off at one if we didn’t behave . . . Now, you listen to me, ya big, underappreciated, oversensitive genius: all these chart-topping punks and poseurs — not you, Wiggins, you’re the real deal — they’re just sad fucking lepers. ‘Kiss me quick! There goes my upper lip! There goes my fingernail into your ginger ale!’ But here’s what will save you: when ye come to realize that in the end, ye friendly friend, lepers we are all. Orwell said it best, didn’t he? The man said everything best, everything that counts anyway. ‘All lepers are equal, but some lepers are more equal than others.’ Point being, shill ten copies or ten million and the result shall be the same: that incinerating whore with steel teats Claude is going to have her way with us — ‘Oops there goes another rubber tree plant!’ — everyone’s goin’ to the fucking mind hive, tout suite. And how suite it is!” He jigged in his chair and sang, ‘We’re off to see the mind hive, the wonderful mind hive of Oz . . .’”

When they said their goodbyes on the street, the cynical wizard sneered, “BookScan!” before disappearing behind the curtain.

Bud made a pitstop to properly digest his smashburger.

Stories was a wonderfully curated bookseller, a place where one could still make magical discoveries, just as he did in his boyhood — a real cabinet of wonders. Eyeballing the usual suspects, RTDs rose from their covers like steam: this one, 563,912 . . . that one, 4,396,448 . . . like walking into a concentration camp (they tattooed Bud with “78”) surrounded by Sonderkommandos overseeing the Selection. Numbers under 10,000 signified the old, the disabled, and mothers with children.

They went straight to the gas.

He sat in a nook, tearing little hunks from his chocolate croissant. The taste of burnt marshmallows returned, this time with an acridness the sugary pastry couldn’t dilute. Jolted by a screech of electronica, Bud violently swatted his ear like a bear in an old cartoon. He scanned his neighbors, looking for a culprit without earbuds — How rude! — before realizing the noise was coming from inside his head. He tried to identify the importunate melodies as they performed their vertiginous murmurations before retreating to quieter hills. Yet their artifacts remained, a purgatorial undertow of alien Muzak.

He was spooked.

To distract himself, he glanced at a studious, nose-ringed girl at the nook’s sole other table. Her laptop had a pile of books beside it — Martyr!, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, and Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds.5 He finally looked at her face.

“Hey!”

“Hey.”

“Bud Wiggins Jr. — we met at a party. For The Big One.”

“Oh my God, hi.” He was relieved that his drunken haram faux pas appeared to be water under the bridge. “I googled you and ordered one of your books! They’re kinda hard to find.”

“And harder to read, say the critics.”

“Ha! Why don’t you have a Wikipedia page? Your dad does. Everyone does but me. You need to get someone on that.”

“Right away!” he saluted.

“Your father was actually pretty wild. I think I read one of his books when I was at Emerson.”

“That memorable, huh.”

“I was doing a lot of drugs. What’s with the ‘Junior’ thing? Is it weird to be a junior?”

“We’re a pretty big group, you know. We have a convention every year. We call it the Junior Prom.”

She threw back her head and overlaughed at the dopey joke. The throat sounds were musky and carnal and he wanted to grab her up and carry her off like a loaded gun. But to where? It was a year since he’d slept with a woman — through Zuk’s urging, he went on a dating app but deleted it an hour later. He didn’t feel like a sexual being anymore; he didn’t even feel like a being.

“The Junior thing was a goof of my Dad’s. Jews aren’t supposed to give their sons the suffix — it’s haram.”

He winced at the self-sabotage.

“So, you’re a Jew,” she said, blanching the comedy stylings of his callback with a lukewarm smile before deciding to let it go — she’d lobby against Israel another day. Because how many times had she met a real live published novelist?

“A Jew, not a Zionist,” he said. “How ’bout I take the Fifth? On the whole topic.”

With a smile, she said, “Leave the gun, take the Fifth.”

“Oh, that’s awfully good,” he said, cackling as he tore at the croissant. . “But how would you know about that movie? Aren’t you fourteen?”

“Twelve.” A crumb flew from his mouth when he laughed. “Actually, I’m twenty-two. And — Pop-pop — there’s a crazy new thing called ‘streaming.’ Only a few people have heard of it but it’s going to be really big. With ‘streaming,’ you can actually watch all kinds of moving pictures on your handheld device of choice. Even ones from the Seventies — ”

“Don’t break my balls.”

“ — and there’s these wild, off-the-beaten-track places that show old movies . . .”

“Pop-pop thanks you for the tutorial.”

“Tarantino owns one — the New Beverly.”

“I’m sorry to ask your name again.”

“Can I take the Fifth?” she asked.

“Why not? It’s much better the next day, especially with cannoli. Really though, what’s your name? Give me a fake one.”

“It’s Caddy.”

“Is that fake or real?”

With ironic formality, she thrust out an arm. “Caddy Wool — pleasure to meet you, Bud Wiggins Junior.”

Enchanted, he shook her hand. “The pleasure is all yours.” Her bicep was sinewy, toned from book lifting. “And by the way, I like ‘Caddy.’ That’s the name of the girl in The Sound and the Fury.”

“Exactly,” she said, with nuanced appreciation. “My father loved that book. He named me after her but Mom wasn’t having it, not even a little. She finally caved, as long as ‘Cadence’ was the name on the birth certificate. But only Pop-pop calls me Cadence. And Mom, when she’s mad.”

“Cadence is really beautiful and perfect,” he mused.

The delicacy of the simple sentence gave her a nod to an underlying, disciplined intelligence. “Ya think? I love it too.”

“Claude is a lovely name. The question is . . . How many books do you reckon you’ve murdered with those steel teats?”

He smiled blankly, waiting for a response.

She wondered if he was quoting something . . . Was she missing a literary allusion? Glossing over the remark, she said, “The Faulkner ‘Caddy’ was actually short for Candace — yikes. I really can’t stand that name. I’m pretty sure Candaces were the Karens of their time.”

“Can’t dance,” he said.

“Affirmative. Candaces can’t dance for shit.”

“Benjy tech hit. Benjy tech the fence then run along to watch the hitters.” She grinned, nonplussed. “Dilsey mouth smell.”

She struggled to decode. “Dilsey — wasn’t that the maid? From The Sound and the Fury?”

“Da sapphire dark-rush da magnolia — be droppin dem verboten gooseberries from da tree of uncommon prayer all da lib long day.” His voice went ludicrously basso-blackface. “Gooseberries be preparations for tenderness. Chekhov pickem from the groan, pickem all da lib long.” He swatted his ear again with renewed force and his elbow sent the latte crashing to the floor. The room turned to look while Bud’s voice boomed, “Caddy taste da marshmallow gawd roilin in de roofmouf o’ Dilseyland starwhirl.”

He stood, as if hoisted to attention by the Unknown.

The table and the world overturned into blackness.

The day was a metal machine blur of being lifted, this time by the strong hairy arms of the Known.

Bud awakened in a hospital bed. Out the window, palms demurely blew, the first guests at a wild party. Bud wondered about his phone then noticed it was conveniently in his hand. By habit, he pressed the YouTube shortcut — at the top of his search history was dua lipa george saunders interview. He was ten minutes into watching when his manager appeared in the door.

“Hi Zuk,” said Bud, with angelic passivity.

“How goes the legend?” asked Zuk, sweetly diffident.

“Supposedly I had some kind of stroke.”

Zuk gently nodded. “I know. And thank God they brought you here right away. They’re so great with strokes now — but it’s all about how fast they get to you. Have you seen someone? I mean of course you have but did any of the doctors say more about what happened?”

“Not yet.”

He wondered if Bud simply didn’t remember. “Isn’t it great that we got you some work last year?” With mild trepidation, Zuk added, “The WGA’s covering this, aren’t they?”

“A woman stopped by from the whatever department — said my Blue Cross kicked in three days ago. Our Lady of Vanna White was more thrilled about the news than I was.”

“That’s amazing.” Zuk was genuinely relieved.

“If this happened on Tuesday, she said I’d have been severely fucked. In so many words. How did you know I was here?”

“From the woman who was with you.”

“Oh?” he shrugged. “My memory’s a bit . . . whatever. It’s like someone took an eraser and . . .” He pantomimed using one on his head. “But this eraser was made of fucking steel wool.”

“It’s actually kind of amazing,” said Zuk. “I got a frantic call on my cell from a really smart young gal — does she work at the bookstore? She said that she scrolled through your phone . . . am I listed in your emergency contacts as ‘Dad’?” Bud smiled wryly. “That’s legend! Thank God you don’t have a password — what kind of maniac doesn’t have a cellphone password?”

“Prometheus Unlocked.”

The reference went over Zuk’s head. “Anyway, she’s the one who said they were taking you to Hollywood Pres.”

“You came all the way from Paris to see me?”

“No, but I would have. There was an emergency, a business emergency, so I had to be back. But the timing’s perfect because now I’m here to help!”

“Did you sell the house?” Bud was trying to get his bearings. “Is that why you’re — ”

“No no no. Lisbeth wants to keep it. It’s not about Paris, she loves Paris — our son’s at St. Andrews and it’s great to be so close. Dublin’s amazing. But we both have such strong ties to LA, plus my folks are in Palm Springs. You know my mom’s French, don’t you? So we’re going to lease Blue Jay out for a few years.”

“What was the emergency?”

“Just silliness. Starz is doing a miniseries of All Fours — the novel by Miranda July.6 Miranda’s a client, you’d love her. I’ll get the two of you together. We had a little bump along the production road but everything’s perfect now.”

“I heard great things about All Fours,” said Bud magnanimously. “A big bestseller, no?”

“Not at all. No one is buying books — they’re relics, like the movies. Writers are happy to sell 500 copies . . . bought by friends and family!”

Another man stood in the doorway now with a pale-faced intern by his side. He interrupted without the usual fanfare of apologies for interrupting.

“Mr. Wiggins, I presume?” He was charismatic, jocular, and immensely self-assured. “I’m Dr. Khudsiani but everyone calls me Dr. K. I’m your neurosurgeon. Forget me not!”

Bud cheerfully gestured to his friend. “This is Zuk Taittinger, my manager.” He thought the nod to a “team” might get him VIP status.

Ever the diplomat, Zuk asked the doc if he should step outside.

“Please stay,” Bud implored.

“Yes, do,” said Dr. K. “That’s fine. Mr. Wiggins” — he enjoyed saying the name — “do you have family?”

“None to speak of. Or speak well of.”

“Ha!” Turning to Zuk, the doctor said, “The man is witty.”

“He’s legend.”

“‘Or speak well of’! That’s quite good.”

“My manager is my family,” said Bud, in an affecting aside. Zuk was touched and laid a hand upon his hapless client’s.

“All rightie then,” said Dr. K. “We have family here that you do speak well of.” When the physician pulled up a chair, his demeanor changed entirely. “I want to speak to you now of what occurred. And why you’ve been having the recent problems you spoke of during intake.”

“We’ve already talked?”

“Oh yes — and not to worry. It’s quite common not to remember too much so soon after the onset.”

“Onset?”

“You had what we call a tonic-clonic seizure.”

“Tonic-clonic?” said Zuk, bemused.

“Thank you, sir, may I have another?” joked Bud, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

“Not on my watch,” said Dr. K. “And I must say you were extremely articulate during the interview.” Turning to Zuk, he said, “Manager, what does this gentleman do for a living?”

“He’s an amazing writer,” said Zuk almost gravely. “A novelist.”

“Famous?”

“Don’t answer that,” said Bud.

“Yes,” said Zuk, with no trace of irony.

“I should have guessed.” Turning back to Bud, he said, “The details you gave were really quite remarkable — and very helpful. I wish all my patients had your talents.” He folded his hands together like a man of God. “The results of the MRI indicate a tumor. I of course want to do a spectroscopy — a different sort of MRI that maps brain function in the localities near the tumor.”

“Tumor,” echoed Bud.

“Yes.”

“Is it malignant?” asked Zuk timorously.

“Not at all.”

With a glimmer of optimism, the can-do manager said, “So, that’s something you’ll remove?”

“Well,” said Dr. K. “At this moment, it’s not easily resectable — but that may change. GBMs are tricky . . . this one is for sure.”

“GBM,” said Bud, in another blank echo.

“Glioblastoma Multiforme. It looks like you have what we call an Astrocytoma, Mr. Wiggins. Grade 4 — which is quite a high number. But I have a plan. How does the saying go? ‘There’s more than one way to skin a neoplasm.’” Silence fell upon the room. “I know it’s a lot to process but we’re going to run a few more tests before we reconvene.” To Zuk, he said, “Will you be here next week?”

“I have to be in Paris.”

“We were there in the spring.”

“I can definitely do Zoom.”

“Très bon,” said Dr. K.

“Done,” said Zuk, all problems now solved.

The physician returned his gaze to the patient. “Again, I know it’s a lot — and that you’ll want to consult with ChatGPT.” There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm to the presumption. “Having said that, Mr. Wiggins, are there any questions? Anything come to mind? Hmmm? Timelines for treatment or . . .” He trailed off, allowing for that movie moment when the lead asks how much time he has left. “If you need to think about it, that’s fine too. Your ‘family’ and I can get a coffee in the lounge.”

Bud sat up in a formal way.

“Doctor . . .”

“Yes?”

“Is there anything — is there anything that would have — could have triggered this gin and tonic or this whatever it is that I have? I guess what I’m try . . . what I’m trying to say is — is there anything in the literature or anything you’ve heard of, that, uhm, anecdotally links or may link this whatever-plasm to a side effect or consequence — however remote — of . . . Mounjaro?”

Bud didn’t need a chatbot to tell him that any condition with a “4” after “Stage” or “Grade” wasn’t good.

In fact, the tumor was among the most aggressive Dr. K had ever encountered. Only a few weeks later, the novelist was in hospice with visible swelling at the front of his skull due to pressure exerted by the growth. (Lisbeth knitted him a cosmetic beret and DHL’d it from Paris.) Auspiciously, Zuk was in LA to close a deal on a Netflix series based on David Szalay’s Flesh, with Ben Stiller to direct.

The manager was caught off guard by the unfathomed depths of compassion he plumbed for the star-crossed man he’d been unable to do much for in life — and resolved to do his utmost for in these last days. He moved Bud into a high-ceilinged, sun-drenched guest room of the very place where the novelist had his first, seminal scan.

On a rare, clearheaded afternoon, the client asked Zuk if he happened to know Dua Lipa.

“I’ve been thinking that a writer with my kind of . . . issues might be a good fit for her book club. She has an insanely popular podcast, you know. Those Albanians know how to move product, if you gather my meaning. It’s on YouTube — you should watch!”

Zuk thought the idea wasn’t so much delusional as far-fetched. Plus, he didn’t know Dua . . . but did know Katy Perry. AI Claude told one of his assistants that Katy and Dua had a close, almost sisterly relationship. As a fifteen year-old, she worshipped Katy, who went on to become her biggest cheerleader when Dua teleported onto the world stage. Zuk decided to reach out — what harm could come?

Katy was in Greece. When he told her about the situation — and made the Dua proposition — she was moved to tears. During the call, she emailed Cutie (her nickname for Dua) a heads-up, copying Zuk by way of introduction. That night, he carefully crafted a letter to Dua recapping the whole story, attaching some old, praiseworthy reviews of Bud’s books. Her warm response came in the morning but was cryptic because she didn’t say anything about the podcast request. “Katy thinks the world of you,” wrote Dua. “Which now means I do too! Let me take you for a cuppa next time you’re in Londontown.”

Two days later, serendipitously in the UK for yet another showbiz emergency, they met. (As it happened, she’d written a number of songs for the streaming version of All Fours, but the fire Zuk was putting out had nothing to do with the Miranda July project.) The singer-songwriter was unguarded and beyond sweet but grew sad-faced when voicing her hesitation about Bud appearing on the show. “I’m actually not sure it would work — bit on the fence about that.” (Zuk’s translation: Not gonna happen.) “But I’m immensely flattered you thought of me.” He was disappointed yet understood.

Sidetracking to the Starz project, she said, “I had dinner with Miranda and Florence Welch just last week — three witches at a cauldron! Oh, you’d have loved to be a fly on that kettle . . . adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting! A night to remember! Miranda was on the Book Club, you know — Service95.”

“Why do you call it that?”

“I was born in ’95 — and am ever in service to my fans.”

“That’s lovely.”

“I’ve been a bonkers fan of Miranda for ages.” Slyly, she added, “George Saunders was a guest too.”

“Yes, I know!” he said brightly. “Your show’s so great. And so important.”

“Thank you!”

“It’s fantastic how you introduce your demographic to serious writers — such a gift. And you’re an amazing interviewer.”

“Well, it’s been great fun, and I’ve really learned so much. Alas, the fun and the learning carry on.”

“Bud actually saw your interview with George around the time he got diagnosed — ”

“Really?”

“ — before he got so terribly sick. In fact, I wish I could take credit but it was Bud’s idea to do your show!”

“Oh!”

“He’s older than I am but a huge fan of your music. And of course a fan of George as well.”

“Aren’t we all! Well. George and Paula — his wife, who’s lovely — have become great friends. I called George about Bud, you know.”

“Oh my God.”

She was cannily saving the best for the last. “When I told him about what was going on with your friend, he got very quiet, in his George-like way. And . . .” Fluttering her eyes, she said, “Hang on to your Cheshire Cat.” She opened them wide. “As it turns out, George is a great fan of Bud Wiggins Senior — ”

“You’re kidding.”

“ — and is genned up on the works of Bud Junior as well.”

“That is crazy! Dua, that’s amazing!”

“Hang on to Cheshire Cat Number Two. George said that he actually prefers Junior’s work to his papa’s . . .”

“Unbelievable. Bud is going to be so happy to hear that.”

“Anyway . . . he’s going be in LA quite soon, doing events for Vigil — ”

“I hear Vigil is amazing.”

“ — it is, though George does feel a bit clobbered by certain snarky reviews that shall remain nameless — but he suggested popping in on Bud for a visit. Is that something he’s in well enough shape to do? Do you think he’d be up for it? How far has the tumor progressed?”

By hospice time, Caddy had sampled some of Bud’s books.

The one she ordered from a third-party seller on Amazon never arrived but she read pirated excerpts of his work on the web. Though it wasn’t really her thing (she was in the middle of Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend and loving it), Caddy was convinced the novelist’s brief, dramatic entrance into her life was an important spoke of her karmic wheel. In some ways, Bud evoked a far less toxic version of her estranged father, with the added bonus of being an elder of a tribe that her soul longed to call its own: the sacred clan of writers. For all her quibbling — she cattily told her mother, “He’s good but he’s minor” — she knew Bud Wiggins Jr. had suffered for his art and been lionhearted. With audacious, reckless transparency, he’d etched the chimerical dreams and embarrassing agonies of his life on the stained glass pages of his novels, each a grimoire of what it meant to be that holy, pornographic thing: human. That was a writer worthy of the tribe.

A few days after Bud collapsed, she listened to a cuspy centennial novelist on Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast. Some kind of chord was struck when the guest shared that when she was very young, her mother was an end-of-life doula who cared for nuns at a monastery near the Getty. After a pep talk from her mom (who knew all about her daughter’s chaste tango with the fading “minor artist”) she phoned Zuk Taittinger.

“Hi — this is Caddy Wool, the girl who was with Bud when he fainted at the bookstore.”

It took a moment for things to jog. “Hi Caddy!” he said convivially. “I remember when we spoke . . . How are you?”

“Fine. How’s Bud?”

“Could be better.”

“The reason I’m getting in touch — and if it’s not okay, that’s totally fine — but if it’s at all possible, I’d really like to come see him.”

“You know what . . .” Her heart sank at the long pause. But instead of “Now is probably not the time,” Zuk said, “That would be great, that would be amazing, and thank you. What a lovely thing to want to do! I’m crying, Caddy, I really am! He’s staying with us at the house. Can you come up?”

“Yes! Of course.”

“Fantastic, I’ll put Emilia on and make a time.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re a good person, Caddy — I cannot tell you what that will do for his spirits. Not too many people have visited. They just haven’t, for whatever reason.”

Instead of using Lyft, she took her first driverless ride. It seemed appropriate no one was at the wheel. As eerie as that felt, there was something lushly theatrical about it, and fated too. (She thought of the Warren Zevon record her dad listened to night and day, “My Ride’s Here.”) In the passenger seat but utterly alone, winding through destiny’s hills, a profanely lyrical, elegiac meditation was born — Charon’s Waymo, the haunting title story of the eponymous collection that won her the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award six years later.7

With dreamlike suddenness, she stood in front of the hospital bed staring at Bud, who looked gone. Through the panoramic window, someone cleaned the tropey Hockney-blue pool while gardeners busied with their work. She knew a housekeeper had led her to the novelist’s room but remembered nothing else.

A caregiver with a warm smile rose from his chair.

“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me — it’s my lunch time. Just give a shout if there’s anything you need. And it’s fine to wake him up! The man sleeps more than ten cats.” He looked back at his charge from the door and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think he’s asleep at all. Just pretending.” Before leaving, he asked, “Are you an author as well?”

“Not yet,” she said wistfully.

She moved close to the window to look at the vista. The workers had left and Caddy felt like a trespasser. Overcoming her nerves, she stepped close to him, pinning down the enigma of her emotions like a champion wrestler. She grabbed a tissue and daubed a tear drop that fell from one of Bud’s eyes — was it because of the swelling? A macabrely comical beret cocked up on his crown like a sidewalk warped by a tree root.

The nauseating thing inside his head was trying to break out.

She shut her eyes and pictured herself as a girl, opening books from her parents’ shelves to inhale their scent before splaying the pages against her bare, flat bosom. The sense memory returned — the mysteries and pregenitality of it — yet here, in the fading pages of the tribesman’s household ICU, the only smells were the vicarious ones of the nunnery. A dying sister had given Mom a piece of paper with a quote that she occasionally recited to her daughter (“Instead of perfume there will be rottenness; instead of a belt, a rope; instead of well-set hair, baldness; instead of a rich robe, a skirt of sackcloth; and branding, instead of beauty”), acting out the words in vulgar burlesque or stoic earnestness or Shakespearean caricature, depending on the effect of the wine she took like a sacrament to purge herself of the bacterized hospice death funk. But no matter how Caddy’s mother stylized them, the sentences were always freaked by sorrow.

She saw his eyes open, roaming here and there in neutral curiosity.

“Hi, Bud! It’s Caddy.” She paused. “I wanted to come see you — Zuk said it would be all right to come see you.” When he smiled at her, Caddy’s heart and mouth broke open. “Well, hi there! Hi! How ya doin’, Mr. Cannoli? It’s me, Miss Gun.”

A mischief maker, he blinked like Harpo Marx. “Miss Gun?” he clowned. “Either take the Fifth — or say hello to my little friend!”

“Tony Montana! I just saw that at the New Beverly!”

His smile quick-changed to a bewildered grimace. “Are you here?”

There was fear in the look, and something else that she called sorrow.

“Yes,” she soothed, touching his arm. “I am here.”

The answer calmed him. “You were here earlier, for lunch,” he said offhandedly. “You’re back? Are you here now?”

The riddle hung in the air as she choked on the world.

On the afternoon George Saunders was due, in another movie moment, Dr. K told Zuk “Our friend could go any time now.” The manager was in denial. “But I just spoke to him,” he exclaimed, beaming like a loon. “He was so with it — a hundred per cent! Like the old Bud! The legend . . .”

The dying writer insisted that Rosa dress him in his trademark jumpsuit for Saunders’ visit. “And fragrance,” he jubilantly commanded. “We must have fragrance! Fragrance must be worn in honor of our esteemed guest.”

Zuk’s assistant picked up a bottle of Rose Tonnerre and Bud stretched out like a dog for a belly rub while the giggly housekeeper went to town. Giggling himself, Zuk finally shouted, “Enough shpritzing, Rosa, enough!” and confiscated it. He knew the perfume carwash would be comedy gold for his eulogy.

A few days before, Bud happily agreed to Zuk’s brainstorm that a camera crew attend “the Saunders Summit,” something he had already cleared with George. Documenting the event was important for posterity — and a definite asset in negotiating the sale of his client’s literary archives. An author need not be a superstar to get something in the low six figures; it wouldn’t make the nightly news but every dollar helped. Medical bills had mounted, with significant portions not fully covered by the WGA health plan. (Whenever the manager suggested crowdfunding, Bud shot it down.) Finally, Zuk’s wife gently cautioned, “Darling, you’ve been incredibly supportive and generous — you’ve been heroic. But there’s a limit.”

Of course he knew she was right.

Dr. K was thrilled to be making his film debut as “Mr. Wiggins’ personal physician, not his costar,” he joked. In all seriousness he added, “I do have a SAG card, by the way.” But as it turned out, Saunders caught a bad flu and his West Coast trip was postponed; Bud Wiggins Jr. died a few weeks before the Booker winner’s rescheduled event.

At the moment he passed, Zuk was dealing with more hijinks on the set of All Fours and the caregiver was on a smoke break. But the housekeeper, who’d grown immensely fond of her employer’s guest, was with him during his last breath — a blessing. She hadn’t wept so hard since her beautiful boy revved his motorcycle out of the world.

There was no memorial.

Not long after the funeral, Caddy visited his grave at a small Westwood cemetery. His manager paid for the interment; many of Zuk’s famous clients and associates were buried there.

On the ground in front of the bottom drawer, she sat cross-legged and smoked, like a truant schoolgirl. After a while, she strolled through the park with a map from the mortuary office, hunting celebrated writers. He wasn’t too far from Truman Capote — she thought Bud would be pleased. Ray Bradbury was a short hike away, as was Rod McKuen, a poet she’d never heard of. After snooping on her gammy’s favorites, Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins, she ran out of steam. Jackie’s epitaph was SHE GAVE A GREAT DEAL OF PEOPLE A GREAT DEAL OF PLEASURE. She laughed, wondering what dark variation Bud would have come up with for his own stone.

On the way home, Caddy stopped at Stories. As a tribute, she sat in the same alcove where Bud was felled by the tumor.

At the party where they first met, he had spoken of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s posthumously published The Pat Hobby Stories — the book that inspired Bud Wiggins Senior, who “saw himself on every page,” to begin his own journey as a writer. Bud told her that the autobiographical tales of woe about a washed-up, alcoholic movie hack were sold to magazines to pay his daughter’s college tuition “and keep Zelda in the nuthouse. By then, at just 44 years-old, poor F. Scott had been effectively deleted from public and critical memory. You know, those Pat Hobby stories are hack jobs themselves . . .” He crinkled wet eyes. “But so mordant and transcendently sad — the horror of being upright just blows right through them like a slapstick Santa Ana yowl. But oh, the spirit . . . the spirit remains! You must read them someday. Will you promise? I command it.”

Leaving her scarf as a seat marker, Caddy went in search of a book to bring back to the table. On tiptoes, she pulled down an omnibus of Fitzgerald stories. None of them featured the broken-down Pat Hobby.

An adjacent shelf was bedecked by oversized Post-it prayer flags — STAFF PICKS — each written in different-colored calligraphic pen. Her eyes landed on a book with a blood-red cover and two side-by-side flaps taped beneath.

This beautifully illustrated new ed. of Faulkner’s audacious gangsta dream novel THE SOUND & THE FURY is notable for the SMASH ‘N’ GRAB intro by underrated niche novelist Bud Wiggins Jr (recently deceased), who, AS HE LAY DYING (literally) let it R.I.P. - i.e. carved the mad-overrated gothic bugger a serious new one. The intro went viral because it was slipped in by a guerrilla typesetter & was about to be pulped by the pub before Houellebecq substack-rhapsodized on Outlaw Wiggins Junior & web-fire spread faster than a Karen Bass INFERNORAMA - moving a S-ton of productivo. What a twist! Unlike FURY (that hoary, turgid “splendid failure” — ol’ alkie Bill’s phrase hisself, btw — beloved by Boomer Faulksingers and Zoomer phonies alike), you’ll breeze through Wiggins’ profane takedown and LOSE YOUR WIG-gins as you watch him take a scary transgressive dump on Mr. Bill’s corpse whilst dragging it thru the polite streets of Amerikan Sacred Cow Lit. The man (WIGGINS) is LEGEND. As Nabokov said, ‘Down with Faulkner!’ — & as I say, Kill the Booker Buddhas! Kill twee writer workshops! Reissue the books of Professor Wiggins Junior! The KING is DEAD, LONG LIVE THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING - BWJ!!!!!

She sent a photo of it to Zuk, who wrote back “LOL!” One of his assistants posted the image on his company’s Instagram.

The trolling foreword that became known as The Sound and the Fury: The Wiggins Edition burned its way into the vernacular. “They got majorly Wigginsed,” “Don’t Wiggins me!”, et al were ubiquitous; punk monographs and subversive critical essays proliferated with titles like “Did Bud Wiggins Jr. Say the Quiet Part Out Loud?” and “Things We Talk About When We Talk About Faulkner (and Bud Wiggins Jr.).”

The last time Zuk checked BookScan, Year To Date Sales were 376,478 — and because of Houellebecq, Zuk was able to get Bud’s back catalogue published by Gallimard .

The manager was starting to think biopic.

Years went by before she spoke to Zuk again.

When Charon’s Waymo won the Flannery O’Connor, he sent a congratulatory email and suggested a lunch — “What about adapting something from CW for Netflix? They did G. Saunders Spiderhead and Margot Robbie’s company LuckyChap is developing tons of Ottessa stories” — but nothing came of it.

Whether strictly deserving, “minor talent” Bud Wiggins Jr. became a major part of Caddy’s literary coming of age story. On podcasts, she poignantly reminisced about the odd couple’s brief season, an affaire de coeur she called “The Old Man and the She.” Caddy lived in Brooklyn now but returned in the middle of spring for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. She was the star attraction of a short story panel.

A rainy day — her favorite kind. He was buried just a mile away from the event, so after the Q&A and book signing, she spontaneously walked over. Approaching his grave, she noticed a camera crew heading in the same direction. One of them held an umbrella over a balding man in a blazer — it was Zuk. He made a beeline when he saw her.

“Oh my God, Caddy!”

“Hi Zuk! What’s going on?”

He gestured to his entourage. “They’re from La Grand Librairie — a hugely popular show in France that’s all about writers. They’re doing a short piece on Bud!”

“C’est fantastique.”

He shouted to the crew, “Voici Caddy Wool, une écrivaine extraordinaire qui a remporté de nombreux prix. You need to do a show about her!” Turning back, he said, “You have to do it, the French will love you. They will absolutely fly you over!”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t return your email, that was just rude. It was so sweet of you to think of me . . .”

“Listen: I have an amazing idea — do you want to do this with me?”

“What do you mean?”

“The interview! Come talk with me about Bud on camera — ”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Zuk.”

“Why not? It would really sell the segment. And it’s so interesting that we ran into each other, don’t you think? I mean, here? Now? Bud must have arranged it! It would add so much . . .”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t,” she said ruefully. “I have to say no.”

“No worries! How long are you in town?”

“I’m actually leaving tomorrow.”

“Next time then. And I am so happy for all the success you’ve had.”

As the rain abated, the crew was already on their way toward the columbarium to prep the shot. Zuk was going to talk about George Saunders being a great fan of his former client and how Bud was too sick to appear on Service95, which broke Dua’s heart. He would end with his crowd-pleaser — the time Rosa hosed down the moribund writer with Rose Tonnerre.

Zuk called out as she left. “Did you see the grave?”

“Not since right after the memorial.”

“Then you haven’t seen it — ”

She nodded toward the Parisiennes. “I’ll come back when it’s not so crowded!”

Zuk went into headmaster mode.

Racing over to grab the hand of his rebellious student, he began power-walking to the crypt. “They are not going to film you, I promise. But you have to see it, Caddy. You’re the one who gave me the idea!”

“What idea?”

“We didn’t have an epitaph and it was driving me crazy. Because it had to be brilliant. Brilliant and witty and dark — it had to be worthy. Lisbeth finally said, ‘Why don’t you just put on there what you always called him? “Legend.”’ And I thought, That’s it! I ordered the stone. But the night before it was ready, I had a dream. I’m telling you, Caddy, I actually had a dream! I dreamt I was at that bookstore, showing Bud the Faulkner book that he wrote the amazing introduction for. Remember the photo you sent me? With a review from someone who worked there? When I woke up from the dream, I knew. So I had them redo the inscription . . .”

As they arrived, the crew ignored them.

Zuk crouched down to show her the plaque:

BUD WIGGINS

1964 - 2026

“Staff Pick”

Bruce Wagner has written fourteen novels, including the famous “Cellphone Trilogy,” — I’m Losing You (PEN USA finalist), I’ll Let You Go, and Still Holding — and the PEN/Faulkner-finalist Chrysanthemum Palace. His more recent titles include Amputation, ROAR: American Master and The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers. He wrote the screenplay for David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, for which Julianne Moore won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. He lives in Los Angeles.

Oleg was at the corner of Broadway and East 12th, outside that Italian place across from The Strand, speaking on the phone to his friend Laure, who was explaining that at precisely that moment, a man was driving to her small pale house on a patch of muddy grass in a dark, gnarled corner of Montgomery, Alabama.

“How does he know where you live?” Oleg asked.

“We hooked up before,” Laure said casually, entirely too casually, Oleg thought. Laure had told the man not to come, that she was busy, waiting for her family to arrive, as though she actually needed to explain to him why he shouldn’t come to her home uninvited.

“He keeps saying he’s on his way,” she said. “He just dropped a pin.”

“How far away is he?” Oleg asked.

“I don’t know, like thirty minutes?”

In Alabama, they gave distances as time because, really, what was a mile when the roads could go from dense city to strips of farmland or patches of dense forest or sharp mountain roads and then back to city and its clusters of rundown shotgun houses all within the span of two songs on the radio. The landscape was irregular, untamed by industrialization and urban planning. In Alabama, nature still predominated. You learned to tell distance by the amount of time it would take you to drive somewhere, which might have been half a mile or three miles, distance getting subsumed into one’s own sense of rhythm and time. Thirty minutes could have meant five miles or ten or fifteen or twenty — Oleg had lost his sense for distance. He lived in New York, after all, and for him distance was counted out in subway stops and city blocks.

“He’s really coming?”

“I mean, maybe, probably.”

“Well, your family is there, right?”

In fact, Laure’s mom had texted a little while ago to say she wouldn’t be coming after all, leaving Laure alone. They had been fighting so much lately, Laure said, and about things that Laure had considered settled. For example, she explained, her mother had called her just last week to relay some bit of family news regarding Laure’s grandmother. This was not her mother’s biological mother, but the woman for whom Laure’s grandfather had left his wife. This woman, the subject of the call, Laure called Grandmomma. The other woman, the biological grandmother, Laure called Ernestine because she had always been a more remote presence. At any rate, Grandmomma had developed an infection in her foot stemming from diabetes, and the infection had recently gone to ground in the blood, requiring very strong antibiotics that had to be given at the doctor’s office. Grandmomma had three children of her own who came to take her to these appointments, but last week, her son, Evander, hadn’t come in time, and so Laure’s mother had taken her to the doctor. While they drove, Grandmomma’s other son, Gregg, called and complained very loudly about his brother. This, Laure’s mother overheard since Grandmomma always put her phone on speaker because she was hard of hearing. On and on, Gregg went about Evander and his funny ways, complaining about his lateness with bills and promises, his disrespect toward his Own mama, a damn shame. While this went on, Laure’s mother stared through the windshield, trying not to listen as Gregg’s voice filled the car. It started to feel like they were being buried in sand, Laure’s mother said. At any rate, he eventually said that he was pretty sure Gregg was into some faggot shit, just like Laure, and look at how that had gone. When Laure’s name came up — of course, they did not call her Laure, but her birth name — Laure’s mother saw the road shimmer before it turned liquid and moved like a silver snake, and she held the wheel very tight to keep the car steady, though they could both feel the wheels drifting to the shoulder. Grandmomma said that she loved Laure just the same, but referred to her as that boy, and wasn’t nothing wrong with that boy, the same as there was nothing wrong with Evander. Then she hung up. But for the rest of the drive, that feeling stayed in the car, that buried alive feeling, and they could hear, or feel, his voice stretching the air in the car tight as a drum. Laure’s mother finished and then sighed heavily, and Laure asked if there was a point to the story, at which her mother said, I’m just saying, people talking. You act as though no one can see you. It’s my life, it’s my life, you say, over and over, but you never stop to think about how it affects other people. You my child, and I love you, but, you act like love don’t ever hurt somebody. Then they had gotten into an argument about Laure’s transition — which she had considered a dead topic — and her mother revealed that, yes, sometimes, she struggled to understand it still, and the topic was very much not dead to her. They argued for so long that Laure ran out of tears and her mother ran out of air, and they were both rasping into the phone. Then Laure said that she should just come over and they would talk about it once and for all, really get it out of their system. Her mother agreed. But then she had texted to say that she wouldn’t make it after all. She had to see to Laure’s sister and her sister’s baby. And if that were not bad enough, here was a man coming to her house.

“So I’m here alone,” she said.

“Oh, so maybe you’ll let him in after all.”

“Stop it,” she said, laughing. “He pressing too hard.”

“Little pig, little pig, let me in,” Oleg said. “He’s gonna blow your house down.”

“Not tonight, he’s not,” she said. “Anyway. I just thought it was funny.”

“That a strange man is on his way to your house with nefarious intentions?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Isn’t it insane that we give our addresses out to these guys?”

“Sure,” he said. “That’s why I don’t host. I don’t need the hassle of being murdered in my own apartment.

“I mean, you have a boyfriend,” Laure said. “Makes hosting kind of difficult.”

“Not really,” Oleg said. “Truman would like to watch. He loves watching.”

“If I showed up to a guy’s place and his boyfriend wanted to watch, I’d for sure think they planned to kill me,” Laure said.

“Me too, probably,” Oleg replied. “To be clear, I’ve never done that. Anyway, what about when you’re on the other apps?”

“The straight ones?” Laure asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Do women, like, give guys their address? I’ve always wondered this.”

“Am I the only woman you know?”

“The only one whose sex life I’m interested in,” Oleg said.

“Absolutely not. Those guys are murderers.”

“But not the gays?”

“No,” she said. “The gay ones just want to do meth. That I can deal with. But the Trumpy ones? The Rogan-pilled ones? Absolutely not.”

“Well, where did you find this guy?”

“The gay app,” she said. “But it’s different. He’s DL, so the chance of murder is higher.”

“I guess that’s true,” Oleg said, thinking at that moment about Laure in Alabama, lying on her bed, waiting for a strange man who was or was not at that very moment driving toward her while he, Oleg, looked at the red sign over The Strand and at the red flags snapping in the wind.

“He just sent me another pin,” she said. “He’s like twenty minutes away.”

“Getting warmer,” Oleg said.

“Obviously, I’m not letting him in. If he even shows.”

“Did he show up the last time?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It wasn’t bad, you know? Just not . . . great. And kind of not worth the hassle of cleaning.”

“Cleaning your apartment or cleaning your . . . apartment?”

“Both,” she said. “I didn’t even finish.”

“Now that’s depressing,” he said.

“You’re telling me!”

Oleg glanced into the restaurant for the first time and saw through the tinted glass bearing the restaurant’s name, the golden lights suspended over the dining room which caused the white tabletops to glow very softly. The interior of the restaurant doubled and tripled itself, so that everything had a dreamy quality, and all the gestures of the people inside took on a charge of some sort. He had the sense — as he often did — that he was watching a film when all he was watching was life playing out at a remove. It occurred to him that the image in his mind, the reel of images, depicting Laure and him in their opposite parts of the country as well as the journey the man was taking in his car toward Laure had precisely the quality contained within the gestures of the people on the other side of the restaurant window. They were not idealized. They were not romantic. But something akin to that. A kind of magic banality that allowed him to see himself but also to see as himself.

“Did I catch you doing something, by the way?” she asked. The question startled him.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the middle of the day. Were you doing things? I know you love to do things up there in your little city.”

“Oh, then, yes,” he said. “You did.”

“I hear the streets,” she said, and as she said it, he could hear them too. The noise of the traffic, the sirens, the music coming from the park up the street. All of it, spreading in silver waves over them all. “What are you doing?”

“Meeting a client,” he said.

“Oh, ew, work,” she said. “I’m not trying to think about that. I have enough of my own.”

Laure had a comical number of jobs. She taught psychology at a community college as an adjunct, worked as a research assistant for a couple professors in her department, and also did remote work for a mental health services contractor based in Missouri that serviced various companies. She had started on the crisis lines, taking calls from people having any number of emergencies, but Laure had gotten very depressed and very ill during that period. She had once received a call from the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy with autism. The mother was calling from inside of a bathroom where she had locked herself. The boy was on the other side of the door, striking it repeatedly with something hard and pointed. Like the butt of a knife, the mother said. Her son had been in a strange, quiet mood all day, which was not like him because typically, he was animated and voluble. He usually spent a great deal of time outside, counting leaves and fallen needles of pine straw, which he sorted into incredibly neat piles on the ground. He could spend hours that way, chattering to himself, building elaborate shapes out of the pine straw and leaves. Occasionally, he’d even lie down next to the structures he made and stare through the canopy of the trees that ringed their yard. They lived in an apartment complex with dense pine forests all around them. Her husband worked for a bank as a manager, and she stayed home with their son, whom she homeschooled because of his difficulties. They got along very well, she said, anxiously, nervously. They were best friends. They spent all day, him outside, her inside, speaking across the threshold of the open back door, which was a glass sliding door. But that day, he’d been quiet and had refused to leave his room, no matter how she coaxed him, and then he’d sat up abruptly, holding one ear and flinching as if someone were screaming into it. When she brought him lunch, she said, he’d stood up and bolted into the kitchen where he’d grabbed a knife and turned to her. Almost without thinking, she ran into the bathroom and locked the door, and he’d been out there ever since.

Laure asked the woman if he had done anything like this before, and she’d said, No, that’s what she’d been saying, that he’d never in his life been like this. Other parents, she knew, talked about their children with autism as though they were bombs, waiting to explode, but that had never been her experience, not with her own child, anyway. And here he was, thumping at the door, like so many other children, she had heard about. She felt, frankly, powerless against the cliché of it all. She said that the worst part was that she felt as though she were locked inside of a story of her own making, and at just that moment, she felt very unreal and like her life was not her own. Laure asked the woman if she were hurt. If she were afraid her son posed a danger to himself. She asked the mother if she felt like she could de-escalate him. She asked all of the questions she had been trained to ask, and eventually, the woman was able to talk to her son through the door and to explain, not that he was scary, but that she loved him and was concerned for him and wanted him to put down whatever he had in his hand. All his life, the mother explained, the boy had been so obedient, so docile and tender and funny and kind and sweet, but at that moment, he was none of those things. He was standing there with the hard, rigid object in his hand, banging at the door.

It was scary, Laure said when she called Oleg to tell him about the incident. In the end, the boy’s father had come home and found him sitting outside of the bathroom door, his head resting against the knob. Laure had stayed on the phone, a span of time that felt like hours, but when she reviewed the logs, she found that it was only about thirty minutes. The mother had sent a text to the boy’s father, her husband, before calling Laure, and she’d only wanted support. But Laure had been struck by how powerless she felt at the woman’s powerlessness, and also how little her questions had been able to help the situation. She felt as if she were trained to be a perfect, mute bystander, a voice on the other side of the line, indistinguishable in efficacy from an AI prompter. Shortly after another call involving a violent teenaged girl who had slit her baby brother’s wrists, Laure begged to change jobs.

The issue, she explained to Oleg, was that even though she knew she was meant to remain unmoved by the extremity of the lives of others, she always felt trapped inside of their stories, like she couldn’t get out no matter how hard she struggled. She always felt like the mother in the bathroom, waiting for the boy to break the door down.

Now she organized trainings for the company and worked in a department she had rigged together that she called Metrics.

“Don’t make me think of work on my day off,” Laure said.

“Sorry to disgust you,” he said. “But it was still nice to hear your voice. I never hear from you these days.”

“Girl, I know,” she said. “But these jobs be killing me, you know? I’m on my last nerve down here.”

“Better the jobs than the trade,” he said.

“I’m giving up DL men. For good,” she said. “I’m going to find me a nice femme queen and be happy.”

“So you can bump purses?” Oleg said. She laughed.

“That’s homophobic and misogynistic,” she said.

“Those are the same thing.”

“Somebody’s gotten into the feminism,” she said. “Good-bye, Ollie.”

She hung up before Oleg could reply. Laure was the only one who called him Ollie, and only when she was exasperated with him or by him. Oleg looked into the interior of the restaurant again. He was about five minutes late, but in New York, five minutes late was really on time.

The client was already seated at a table near the window. He was a tall, fleshy man with a thick beard trimmed to give the impression of an angular, square face underneath. He had dark, shining eyes, and a full mouth comprising purple lips pink at their center. His skin was very dark, shimmering almost under the soft light from the globe lanterns above the table. He shook Oleg’s hand and let out a deep, sonorous laugh as they sat across from one another. Oleg apologized for being late, saying that he’d had a last-minute call from a friend that had gone a little longer than he’d anticipated. The man waved him off with a large, friendly hand and said that nobody could be late in New York, not really.

The man was named Hamilton, and he had gotten Oleg’s contact info from Oleg’s online portfolio. He was interested in some new headshots and some photos for his book. He had been a little vague about his line of work, and Oleg had not been able to find much about him on the internet, lacking a last name to do much with. In fact, he hadn’t even known the man was black until entering the restaurant and getting waved over.

“Are you an actor, then?” Oleg asked.

The man smiled and said that he was something of actor, yes. A performer, really. An artist. In fact, he was a content creator. At this, the man good-naturedly rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue in his cheek before adding, “Like everyone else, obviously.”

Oleg asked what sort of content the man made.

Hamilton leaned back and crossed his arms. He wasn’t ashamed of it, but he wanted Oleg to keep an open mind about what he was about to say.

“Consider it open,” Oleg said.

“I actually got your contact from Barton,” he said.

Barton was a producer of adult content. He ran a website for which Oleg had shot some promos and BTS. Tall, tan men with more muscles than Zeus flexing by pools in the Hamptons. He had photographed the men lying on pristine white sheets or hanging from tire swings, totally nude, their genitals artfully obscured. For the paywalled portion of the site, Oleg had shot nude portraits of the men. And then he’d taken some more sexually frank images of the men in various stages of fucking. This had taken place during the late summer at a rented cottage. The whole week of shooting, Oleg had spent carrying around cameras and lenses, sweating through his shirt as he sniped shots of the men at play and in repose. They had scheduled “recreation time” during which they were supposed to wear pool shorts or speedos and dunk one another under the water or go on spontaneous “hikes” near the forest at the corner of the property. All to create the atmosphere of playful, erotic boyishness that would result in raw sex in the sauna or in the gym, all venues leading inexorably to the white beds in the white rooms, where the sex had been choreographed fiercely and elegantly.

None of it felt particularly sexy to Oleg. Not even as he photographed the men with their erections, getting close to capture threads of precum or the puddling of sweat in the channels of the obliques. The men’s bodies were incredible, sculptural, and lacking any erotic energy, Oleg thought. He preferred a body in its natural state. Or in motion.

Hamilton explained that Barton was a friend of his from drama school. They had gone to Juilliard together, actually. Barton used to be so intense, Hamilton explained. So brooding, as though he had all of these depths just resounding in him constantly. At first, Hamilton had found this quality very attractive, irresistible. This tall, remote, silent guy with blond hair and dark eyes, just taking up so much space while the rest of them went around trying so hard, and he just seemed to have it. Whatever it was, Hamilton said. Whatever Barton said or did, he had this way of drawing reality around him so that it seemed totally congruous with his actions. And he made the rest of them feel like absolute phonies. Almost immediately, Hamilton’s attraction turned to disgust, but he went on desiring Barton in the most insane, embarrassing way while Barton floated over all of them.

“Have you seen him? Like, in person?”

Oleg explained that he had in fact met Barton out on the shoot in summer, and yes, he’d found him very attractive. Tall, blond, substantial because he exercised very forcefully and diligently. He treated himself, Hamilton explained, as though his body would sublimate without his discipline. Barton seemed to be under a great deal of pressure at all times, and like that pressure was the only thing keeping him alive, Hamilton explained.

Oleg said that he saw it somewhat differently, that Barton didn’t seem that unreachable or unknowable, that in fact he’d found him simply a shy man with a great body.

“That’s what he wants you to think,” Hamilton said. Anyway, they went way back, and they had been talking over DM a couple weeks ago when Barton had mentioned, in passing, this one photographer he’d worked with recently, whose work had been immaculate. That was the word he’d used, immaculate. So Hamilton pressed for a name and that was how he came to email Oleg.

“I’m flattered,” Oleg said. “That he thought the work came out well.”

“Did you not?” Hamilton asked. “Are you that much of a self-critic?”

“Not at all,” Oleg said. “It’s just hard to know what someone thinks of your work, your deliverables. Sometimes, you can see them deceiving themselves about the quality of the outcome, like the money they are paying automatically makes it better than it is.”

“You’re selling yourself short,” Hamilton said.

“I don’t mean to. I obviously work very hard and hope the work is . . . of good quality. I just mean, sometimes, people want the thing to be better than it is, more than it is, and you can see that desire working on them at the moment of delivery. I find it . . . interesting, but also kind of sad.”

“Why sad? If they’re happy with your work?”

“I guess because,” Oleg started to say, but he was interrupted by a waiter who had come to bring them water and coffee. They had ordered pastry right from the dessert menu, which the waiter found delightful, as if they were being rebellious, naughty children. Then she went away.

“Because?” Hamilton prompted.

“I guess because it seems like they are stifling their real reaction. That’s what interests me about people. How they really are.”

Hamilton nodded, and explained that his work took him in the opposite way. In making his scenes, he thought about what he wanted the audience to feel and how best to direct them toward that feeling. Obviously, he wanted to turn them on, but this was difficult as an aim. In one sense, he said, it was actually quite easy to turn someone on. You just had to take out your dick. But once you had done that, you had nowhere else to go. There was this one performer, he said, whose whole thing was about his bulge. Sometimes, the performer even posed in very sheer, almost translucent thong underwear, and his bulge would loom portentously out toward the viewer. You could almost make out the outline of his penis, the head and the sizeable swell of his balls. But you could never actually see the penis itself. The man had posted over 300 times, and he boasted something like 30,000 subscribers, who paid 10.99 a month, at that, just to see virtually the same image again and again. The man posing in loose shorts. The man posing in tight pants. The man posing in an office bathroom. The man posing in the sauna with a towel draped over his lap. The man lifting weights, the camera trained on his crotch. Again and again, the same image, but the fanbase never tired of it because he preserved the one thing that they wanted to see most. In their imaginations and fantasies, the penis grew inhuman and monstrous. It became an idea, an abstraction. And then it became pure sensation. A desire without language that activated with each notification of his posting. They were responding, in essence, not to the images or the videos, but to the idea he had created in them. That was the way to do it, Hamilton thought.

But other creators thought that what people wanted was to see you naked. And true, some people did want to see you naked, but if all people wanted was to see a naked human body, even a naked human body having sex, then there were innumerable free options on the internet. Or even their own bodies. You needed something else to turn people on. They wanted a narrative. To be inside of a story, Hamilton said.

To create his scenes, he thought about his audience and tried to imagine himself as them. To identify with them so totally that he could intuit what would make them feel the most aroused. But you had to go about this carefully because to be too obvious would be to destroy the delicate illusion. To do it too subtly or without irony would be a mistake as well. What he had to do was cultivate a natural unnaturalness. An ease before the camera’s eye that said that he was himself.

“It sounds like how you describe Barton in school,” Oleg said.

“Exactly,” Hamilton said. “It’s exactly that natural quality he had. No matter how absurd the lines or the situation, he said them as though he believed them. But his belief in them also made a kind of . . . structure around them? A frame that let us peer in, so that we were both in the illusion and outside of it. He spoke across the gap.”

That phrase reminded Oleg of the story Laure had told him about the woman and her son. Their open backdoor, their easy conversations before that awful, strange day.

“Do you like it?” Oleg asked.

“Content creation? Yeah, I like it,” he said. “It’s like acting.”

“Acting like you’re not acting?”

“Yeah,” he said.

The key was that it couldn’t feel cheesy, like a planned scenario. No one bought that kind of artifice anymore. His audience wanted something unmediated. Of course, I am aware that I am mediating, he said, but it can’t feel mediated otherwise the audience would hate it. Unless of course they were talking about voyeurs, which was a different thing.

There were some creators, Hamilton said, who made private videos, scenarios with their clients. They’d roleplay. But Hamilton didn’t like that because sometimes, they wanted a scenario that he felt was outside of his wheelhouse. Sometimes, they asked for totally implausible things. Oleg asked for an example.

One guy had asked Hamilton to pretend to be a man pretending to be an AI to find out what turned on his step-dad which he would then use to seduce him. The underlying scenario of the step-parent seduction was common enough that Hamilton understood it to a degree, but he asked why the AI was necessary.

“Historically,” Hamilton said with a wry smile, “you usually just pretend like you’re asking your step dad for the “talk” and then you segue into mutual handjobs, you know? That’s the way it always was before. But now . . . .”

The AI intervention, the client explained to Hamilton, was for realism. Because, realistically, these days, people turned to bots for this sort of thing. So Hamilton had to pretend to be an AI assistant in the stepfather’s phone. But really, he was pretending to be a stepson pretending to be an AI in the stepfather’s phone through which he deduced what turned the man on. Hamilton’s client was both the audience and a participant in the scene, watching it and watching himself in it at the same time. All of this played out over text.

“That’s . . . nuts,” Oleg said. “I don’t . . . did that really happen?”

Hamilton smiled his very white smile and nodded.

“It’s wild out there,” he said. “But he tipped like, two grand.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he was in finance or something.”

The issue Hamilton had with that scene was that he didn’t understand the sort of person who would use AI. He himself never had and didn’t see much cause.

“I read that some creators use it,” Oleg said, “to talk to their fans for them.”

Hamilton said that he knew about that sort of thing too, but he couldn’t understand it. So much of what he did, he said, was because he liked the people aspect of it. True, he was performing for people whom he’d never meet or see or touch or hear, but he liked knowing that he was being witnessed by other people in the small, private darkness of their lives. They’d roll over from their spouses or partners or in their dorm rooms and pull up his videos and pics and get off to him while he got off on screen. At all hours of the day, in all corners of the planet, he was getting off on someone’s screen, even though at that very moment, he might be somewhere else, doing something entirely different.

Oleg said that he’d also read somewhere that most of the internet traffic out there was really just bots.

“God,” Hamilton said. “That’s so depressing.”

“Do you think bots look at porn?”

“Bots don’t look at anything,” Hamilton said. “They don’t have eyes.”

“But you know what I mean,” Oleg said.

“Are all of the porn metrics from bots? No. Only a human could think of something as insane as ‘pretend to be a guy pretending to be AI to seduce his stepdad.’”

“Too inefficient,” Oleg said.

“Exactly.”

Hamilton said that the other issue he’d had with the scene was that he thought it should have been the other way around, that the step-dad should have been pretending to be an AI to seduce the stepson. After all, it was more likely that the younger guy would use AI than the older one. But the client had told Hamilton that in his own life, it was totally different. At his job, people like him, which was to say, millennials, used AI far less than their bosses, who were almost all older than the rest of them. These people used it as a matter of course in writing emails, making schedules, sending texts to their colleagues, their wives, their friends. Every piece of text that issued from the C-Suite at this small firm in Midtown bore the unmistakable tinny ring of artificial intelligence. They’re all using it, the client said, even his own stepfather was using it. The client’s stepfather had used it to write a eulogy for his sister’s funeral. He had admitted it at the wake, as though it were a cheeky joke. He’d gone to the machine and asked it to come up with a heartfelt, but funny speech to give for his sister. The bot hadn’t even asked for information about the sister. Instead, it just churned out a block of text about how kind, funny, sweet, and sometimes annoying the sister had been in life. The strange thing, the stepfather said, was how eerily accurate it was despite knowing nothing about her. That’s how horoscopes work, the client had said to Hamilton over text. Speaking about things with sufficient generality as to make you think they were talking about you. It was also how the AI deployed by some of the other creators worked, Hamilton noted. You felt you were speaking to another person just because the bot used your name and was polite, saying thank you for the compliment and asking how you were feeling that night. Something of the illusion of intimacy, but a stranger illusion because the intimacy was with a non-human intelligence. Could you be intimate with a string of text? Or was intimacy only ever a one-sided illusion? You felt it because you wanted to feel it? Anyway, the client said, that it was more realistic for the older person to use the AI in the fantasy, so Hamilton agreed.

“Do you think that guy was hot for his stepdad?” Oleg asked.

“Hard to know,” Hamilton said. “People are mysterious.”

“Would you ever meet up with one of your subscribers?” Oleg asked.

“Like . . . to hook up?”

“Or for coffee, but yeah, I guess, to hook up?”

“No,” Hamilton said firmly. “I don’t think so. I mean. If they were hot, maybe. I don’t know.”

“I think that’s interesting,” Oleg said.

“Why?”

“Because they subscribe and you sometimes talk to them, and they know all this stuff about you, and, yet, there’s this . . . boundary, I guess, you can’t cross. Into the real world.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I think that’s best. Boundaries. Plus, people on the internet are crazy.”

Oleg laughed.

“I used to do that,” Hamilton said after a moment. “I had a scenario where the guy wanted me to pretend to be a hostage.”

“How do you pretend to be a hostage?”

“He wanted to come tie me up and blindfold me and put a gun to my head.”

“A gun?” Oleg asked.

“Not a real one, obviously. Prop gun. But yeah, he wanted to put it against my head and in my mouth and then jerk off.”

“And you let him?”

“Hell yeah, I let him. He paid me five grand.” Hamilton then explained that it had gotten a little weird because the guy wanted to clarify what kind of hostage he was meant to be. Hamilton had planned to be a kind of generalized hostage. An innocent bystander plucked from some nondescript narrative and forced into a story of coercion and power. But the client wanted a more specific story. At first, Hamilton suspected that the guy wanted him to pretend to be a slave — you get a lot of that, he said, people wanting slave play — but in fact, what he’d wanted was for Hamilton to pretend to be a cruel, brutal overseer whose brutality goes too far and drives an ordinary guy to take revenge. He wanted Hamilton to pretend to be rich, powerful, black, and evil. Hamilton let the man tie him up and put the gun to his head while he, Hamilton, sat in the dark, breathing slowly, trying to imagine himself in the position of a wealthy, powerful elite whose actions have brought grave consequences upon him. The issue, Hamilton said, was that the guy was worth north of twenty million dollars and was from a very prestigious family. He had all these rules about what Hamilton was supposed to wear and say and how he was supposed sit on the chair while the guy stroked his head with the gun. He’d even made Hamilton wear his clothes, and his cologne. In fact, he made Hamilton act as him, but black.

“The black part was very important to him,” Hamilton said. “He was like, don’t pretend to be white. Just be black. But rich. Like me. But black.” He kept saying that over and over, Be black.

“Like it’s a thing you can be,” Hamilton said. “At a certain point, I felt like . . . I was pretending to be black . . . even though . . . I mean, I am black.” And with all of the rules, Hamilton said, it started to feel less like a hypothetical hostage situation and more like an actual hostage situation — anyway, he didn’t meet people in person anymore.

“My friend has a guy threatening to come to her house right now,” Oleg said. “They hooked up once, but now he’s, like, dropping pins and getting closer to her place.”

“Oh my god,” Hamilton said. “That’s crazy.”

“I know,” Oleg said. “But I kind of get it.” Then he explained that once he’d been very horny and had been trawling the apps all day for sex, with very little reward. He even changed his location in the city on the apps, trying to drum up fresh interest. Then a guy had reached out and said that he was looking for head down on West 42nd, near 10th. Oleg had agreed, then they both realized that they were farther apart than they previously thought due to Oleg changing his location. By then, Oleg was already on the sidewalk in the cold, walking briskly toward 9th Ave, thinking he’d just hop in a cab and be on his way. But the guy said, No, dude, not today. It wasn’t worth it for Oleg to come down there when the guy just needed a little head and would come fast anyway, and he had to get back to work. Oleg said, no, no, he was on his way, he’d be there in a flash. He was already in the car on his way down 9th Ave, and the guy kept telling him not to come, but Oleg thought he was just being chivalrous, and explained that, no, it was really no bother, and he’d be there soon. Ten minutes later, Oleg got out of the car and onto the guy’s street, and the guy said, definitively, Do not come, and Oleg said that he was already outside, and the guy then got very apologetic and said he hadn’t thought Oleg was serious about coming down, and he felt sorry for him. It was then that Oleg realized that he’d made a mistake. Or several mistakes, really. His own horniness and his own desire to self-abnegate had caused him to overlook the fact that the guy was not interested in quick head at just that instant if it involved someone getting in a car and going downtown. Oleg texted the guy and said, okay, sure another time. Then the guy asked if Oleg was really down on the street, and Oleg felt anxious about being spotted, so he said, not really. But then he realized that his position on the app probably gave him away, and he blocked the guy so he wouldn’t be able to see him, which of course meant that there would never be a next time.

“That’s like an O. Henry story,” Hamilton said, laughing. “Oh my god. Total ‘Gift of the Magi’ situation there.”

“I don’t know about that,” Oleg said, “but it does make me think, like, that guy was probably not afraid for his life . . . just annoyed and irritated.”

“I would be,” he said. “But also, if you were already down there, he should have let you up. Bad form.”

“Bad form was showing up in the first place,” Oleg said.

“I mean, what were you going to do? Tie him up and suck him off against his will?”

“I think that’s probably what he imagined.”

“How is your friend?”

Oleg checked his phone and saw that Laure had sent him three screenshots of text messages from the guy. He was getting closer. Laure had sent the screenshots with a laughing emoji and a message that said: save me from these dl dudes.

“She’s fine,” Oleg said. “I think.”

She did this all the time, Laure did. She had a parade of men coming into her house all of the time. She documented their coming and going with her digital doorbell, which sent photos of them to her phone. She arranged these images into a gallery that she kept in her camera roll. The funny thing was that she did not know their names, not really, and sometimes, she would be chatting with a guy on an app and get a strange feeling of déjà vu that prompted her to ask for a pic. Then she cross-referenced the pic with the gallery, looking for matches, and only when she found a corresponding entry in her carousel of hookups did the memory of the hookup come back to her. The image in isolation did nothing to stir her recollection — no, it had to match some image in her gallery, which then trigged the reel of memory. Oleg sometimes thought of the guys and their faces trapped in the reel of Laure’s camera roll. He’d seen her flick through it, and how it spun like a digital rolodex. She arranged them by date, but the similarity of angle, lighting, and perspective of the shots made them all look like a gallery of mug shots. An array, they called it on the cop shows. An array of dudes, most of whom were black, tall, with a closed affect as they stood at her door, waiting for her to answer. He’d once pointed out to her that she had what amounted to a bounty hunter’s catalog, and she’d said that she liked that. They were her cons. She did in fact sleep with a number of men who had records. Men who had recently gotten out of the pen and whose lives still bore the traces of institutionalization: intense neatness, scaled down possessions, yard sandals, and a twitchy paranoia that allowed them to see over both shoulders at once. One time, Laure had told Oleg about a guy she was kind of seeing. He’d recently gotten out after a five year bid for roughing up some trans girls in Birmingham. He was living in a halfway house, but was permitted day passes to work or go the store or to socialize. They’d met at the pawn shop when Laure had been picking up an iPad she had pawned to pay something on her cable bill, and the guy, Keldrick, had been standing outside smoking. He held the door for her both going and coming out, then he followed her to her car. He was short, with thick hair, and a dopey, boyish smile. When Laure sent Oleg a photo of him, he was struck by the dimness of his gaze, like a bulb that had come loose in the socket. But Laure really liked him, even though Keldrick sometimes went to his ex-girlfriend’s house to kick it despite telling Laure that he was at “work.” When they were together, he smothered her in love and affirmation. He told her again and again that he loved her body, all of it, and he didn’t need or want her to change a thing. He liked it all. Erythang, Laure said, mimicking him. Then Laure got tested at her monthly appointment and found out that she had syphilis. After she told Keldrick, he told her that he forgave her for getting him sick. Laure hadn’t cheated though, not yet, and not with anyone who had syphilis, and after some pressing, she found out that he had been sleeping with someone else. She was enraged by the betrayal, but also, but the speed with which he had forgiven her. She dumped him. And a week later, a different man was posted up outside the pawn shop. This man, she bought a pack of cigarettes. His name was Omar.

“She’s a regular Mother Theresa,” Hamilton said in awe.

“She’s certainly something,” Oleg said.

They made plans for Oleg to stop by Hamilton’s filming space, which was really a studio apartment above a pickleshop in Bushwick, for some shots. They finished their pastries and went out into the cold, gray afternoon. Hamilton pulled Oleg in for a hug. His muscles were substantial under his gray coat. He had a careful carelessness with which he wielded his body, Hamilton did, and Oleg felt something of approximation to intimacy.

He wondered if this was what Hamilton did to his subscribers. This careful modulation of performance. When he pulled back, he flashed Oleg that same smile and raised his eyebrows. He was much taller than Oleg, and so close to him on the sidewalk, Oleg felt himself slide under Hamilton’s animal charisma. A flicker of heat ran across Hamilton’s eyes, and then, he patted Oleg’s back and said that he was grateful he’d agreed to take him on.

They parted, Hamilton going downtown, Oleg walking to Union Square.

The holiday market was in full flow. The stalls were filled with local crafts and food. Baked goods, hot chocolate. Some of the chess hustlers had put on Santa hats and sat around squinting at passersby.

Oleg entered the market in order to get to the station, but as he was going, he kept glancing at the various stalls which resembled dioramas. Little self-contained units of drama or narrative. The effect of passing through the maze of stalls to the station was akin to a reel of film coming unspooled, spilling its unrelated frames across his mind’s eye.

He had a strange sense that he had come out of narrative somehow, come out of a story. At the mouth of the station, his phone rang. It was Laure.

He stepped away from the top of the stairs and made his way back into the holiday market while Laure explained, laughing, hysterical, that the guy had actually come to her house. She could see him out there, parked near the turnabout. She recognized his car. He had texted to say that he had arrived, and there he was out there.

“Are you okay?” Oleg asked.

It was so crazy that he had come, she said. She really didn’t think he would even as he had sent her dropped pins along the way indicating his proximity. The last time they’d met up for sex, he’d climbed on top of her and held her down by the throat. This in itself was not terrible or scary. In fact, he did it at her urging. She’d asked him to treat her like one of those round-the-way girls you sometimes saw in news reports or circulated on Instagram in stories as missing. She wanted him to treat her how she really felt sometimes, like disposable, usable, to make of her whatever he wanted. He’d choked her, gently at first, and she’d gripped his wrists and made him squeeze harder until she’d felt something hot and bitter rising from her belly, and she’d almost come, almost, when he slid inside of her and took her roughly that way.

But afterward, he’d grown almost tender toward her, which had repulsed her and had caused her erection to go away, so she’d told him to get out and take that soft shit somewhere else.

Now he was at her door — not yet at her door, but in his car outside of her house, looking at through the windshield.

“Do you want to call the cops?” Oleg asked. “Do you need my help?”

“No,” she said. “I just think it’s so funny.”

Then she said that she hadn’t thought about it in weeks, really, but it was true she thought she’d seen his car outside in the university parking lot, which was very small, did Oleg remember how small it had been when they were students? Yes, he remembered it being tiny, big enough for like fifty cars, maybe, anyway, she thought she’d seen him, but figured there were so many Altimas in the world. And then another time, recently, she’d been shopping at Wal-Mart, buying chicken breast for meal prep, and hadn’t she seen him then too? And, thinking about it more, yeah, she’d seen a very similar car drive by a couple of times when she’d gotten home late in the winter dark, its yellow beams trailing up and over her skirt and her hair, touching the crown of her house’s rooftop before passing out into darker, bluer night.

“Oh my god,” she said. “He’s been . . . following me?”

Oleg was near the equestrian statue, gazing at the doom’s day clock counting down over Union Square. The wind was cold and ashen on his face.

“Lock your door,” he said. “Lock it now.”

“It is,” she said.

“Do you have a picture of the plate? Take one, now take it,” he said.

He heard scratching, soft, hurried breathing, and then she said she’d snapped the photo.

“My ring doorbell,” she said. “I have his picture. In the gallery. You know I keep a gallery on me.”

He wanted to laugh, but didn’t, not yet. He studied the vendors handing out baguettes and croissants to the people in their winter jackets. The children running, laughing. Across the street, the red lights of the cars trying to force their way onto the street.

“What is he doing?” Oleg asked.

“Nothing. Just sitting there,” she said.

“Don’t go outside.”

“I was planning to take him some cookies and milk — obviously, shit, Ollie.”

“Well,” Oleg said.

“Well what.”

“Nothing,” he said.

“No, say it.”

“Nothing to say.”

Laure sighed sharply and said that she could feel his judgement. In fact, she always felt judged when she talked about her sex life with him. That was why she never told him anything. Oleg tried to interrupt to say that in fact she told him everything. But she pressed on, saying that his judgement was why she hadn’t wanted to call him today. Because he would just say that the fact she even had a gallery of men’s faces with whom she’d had sex was something of a warning sign. And perhaps she shouldn’t have gone around having sex with so many men. Giving out her address. And actually, she’d thought about getting a gun, recently.

“A gun? You?” Oleg said. “You do not need a gun.”

“I thought about that,” she said. “And I decided I wouldn’t. But not because I thought you would say it.”

“Is now the time to be having this fight?”

“I’m not fighting,” she said. “I’m just saying, you make me feel filthy sometimes.”

“I don’t think you’re filthy,” Oleg said. “I love you. I love you so much. And sometimes I’m scared for you. And it comes out fucked up. And I’m sorry for that. I am.”

Laure said nothing. Overhead, a plane made its way through vast distances.

“Laure?” he asked.

“He’s backing out,” she said. “He’s pulling out.”

Oleg sat on the step by the statue. He put his face in his hand. He could smell the pastry and the coffee from the Italian spot. He could smell Hamilton’s cologne. On the phone, Laure’s breathing slowed and evened.

“This reminds me,” she said. “You’re never going to believe what my mother said today.”

Brandon Taylor is a novelist. He writes the Substack sweater weather. His most recent book is Minor Black Figures.

I was standing with Jane by the DJ booth when I heard someone say his name. It’s an unusual name, so I knew they were talking about him.

Oh, he’s in Philly now, they said. He moved in with this trans girl.

Suddenly I needed something. I went to the card table where they keep the lube and condoms and dug to the bottom of the candy jar. Beneath its crinkly white wrapper, the last lollipop was spiderwebbed like a broken disco ball. Not what I needed, but I took it with me down the back hallway and leaned into the pneumatic door.

The smoking patio was full of naked people vaping under one long fluorescent bulb, like what a life coach would ask you to visualize if you were confronting a fear of public speaking and a hardcore nicotine addiction at the same time. There were no cigarettes that I could see, but one of those wouldn’t have worked, either. What I needed was bigger and heavier, something that would fill my mouth until I could neither swallow nor close my lips; for some reason, a trailer hitch came to mind. But there was a breeze. I let the door close behind me and found an empty corner.

I stood there and looked around for a while, feeling self-conscious about my jockstrap. From other parties, I had learned the indignity of not having anything between my legs when I was needed to babysit a wasted 24-year-old or cordon off the remains of a broken shot glass. Though I was less exposed than anyone else, I had become nude in reverse by virtue of my role. Remembering my lollipop, I finally held it to my tongue: cherry.

I had flip-flops on, too, but I didn’t mind those, especially on the dirty patio, not ten yards from the BQE’s greasy black underbelly. The spa may have been packed with sweaty, slippery fuckers, but it still felt cleaner than all this. It was the chlorine. You know how chlorine is, how when you smell it you can also hear it. The torrid, bleachy odor always seems to come with the grotto-like reverberations of bare feet on concrete, of hissing steam, of water boiling with compressed air and thrashing limbs. It was like partying inside an autoclave. The smoking patio, where your stomach soon started churning from the car exhaust and vape chemicals, could never be as clean as the spa’s glistening, womb-like chambers.

The door opened again. Jane.

I knew she would find me. She slid into the crowd, where her body reassembled under the fluorescent bulb, the glow of phone screens, and a blinking LED somewhere up the street.

How is it in there? I asked, offering her the lollipop.

It’s fine, she said. She shook her head at the lollipop and held up her glass of ice cubes, as if this explained her abstention. We figured out the issue with the bouncer. How’s everything out here?

She was pretending to be in party mode, in case I didn’t want to talk about him.

All good, I said. Wanting her to believe me, I put my face in her neck and took a dramatically deep sniff, like a happy dog.

This was one of our bits, born the first time she came to my apartment. I didn’t like having other people in my home back then, especially cis people. But we had gotten in bed together and nothing bad happened. Something good happened, even.

After all this time, I’m finally here, she had said, opening her arms like a gymnast at the end of her routine. I’ve crossed the finish line.

I laughed. Well, I could tell that you’re safe.

How could you tell?

Because you’re not afraid of me.

And how do you know that?

Because of how you smell, I said. Leaning over my pillow, I had put my cheek against hers, losing my nose in her hair, and inhaled. Eucalyptus and amber, warm and almost minty.

How I smell? Someone else may have allowed themself to be distracted, but Jane had planted her palm on my chest and gently pushed me away. Why does that matter? Why would I be afraid of you?

I stayed inside her hair, a dark and silky tunnel. You can smell when someone’s afraid, I said. And no one is more afraid than a rapist. When someone rapes someone else, they do so from inside their own rape, or the rape of someone they cared about, or just a rape that almost happened or could have happened. You know, a threat that lasted so long it became real. Not that the rapist is even aware of all this. They’re not aware of anything. In the act, rapists are panicking, not thinking. And people who panic — they sweat. A lot. It’s hot and it stinks. Like when you almost get hit by a car.

I think that was the night that Jane and I told each other about our rapes, or maybe just the main ones, though it’s possible this didn’t happen until a different night, perhaps when we were traveling together or doing a lot of drugs. Now, all these years later, I had acquired a new main rape, which had displaced the one that I still considered my main rape the night our sniffing bit was born. But of course Jane knew all about it because she and I had been together for years by the time I met him.

You smell good, I told her, pulling her deeper into my corner of the patio. Eucalyptus and amber, still, as if the bacteria that makes things stink couldn’t latch to her many tessellating surfaces: the earrings and acrylics and rhinestones, the mass-produced charms barnacling the heeled Crocs on her feet.

Jane frowned. Your lips are all red, she observed.

I took the lollipop out of my mouth so we could kiss.

Are you okay? I asked.

Are you okay? she demanded, still scrutinizing me.

Someone knelt on the concrete beside us, revealing the sweep of their long, glittery face. Their lips bunched and rippled. Their eye mirrored the light slivering between the fence and the highway. Jane inched closer to me, courteously giving them some space. Like me, she wasn’t naked. She was wearing one of her string bikinis, the kind that got dirty looks on the straight beach.

I’m okay, I said. I was just surprised. I haven’t even thought about him in a while.

This wasn’t true, though I had been thinking about him less since the spring. But even if you think about someone a lot, or even constantly — even expecting them to show up at your apartment in the middle of the night with the key they still have, the key that you, for reasons you don’t understand but profoundly regret, let them keep — they lose their shape if you don’t talk about them. If their name never escapes your lips, eventually the thing that really happened becomes just a story, something you tell yourself when you’re falling asleep sometimes. After a bad breakup, you kind of expect the other person to just die, but of course they never do. Not that you could call what happened between us a breakup. We weren’t dating, just in love.

At least he’s not in Brooklyn anymore, Jane said. She touched my arm. Did you hear everything?

It doesn’t matter. I already knew too much. His move to Philly was surprising. Not long before I blocked his number, he told me that he wanted to stay here in New York for the rest of his life. But a new girlfriend, however, made more sense than anything in the world. That he hadn’t had one when we were sleeping together was out of character for him. Unlike me, he was pretty straight and exclusively t4t. That had somehow been validating, that he saw me as feminine enough for his purposes. Being the lone FTM in the sea of sad and beautiful dolls had made me feel like a real girl, an unexpectedly pleasant experience.

Well, now it was someone else’s turn. I hoped he wouldn’t do anything bad to the girl in Philly, whoever she was. But if he didn’t, I would have yet another reason to wonder, why me?

The people next to us were getting a little carried away, so Jane and I went back inside. In the locker room we bumped into a friend who’d come down from Boston for the party and joined her, for a minute or two, to watch a few faces get pissed on in a shower stall. We moved on to the dry room to find that the DJ was now playing techno, though she had promised Jane house. But some people were dancing, so Jane let it go. Other than the fisting train over by the upholstered pillars, everyone else was standing around and talking. In the corner, the bartender yawned over her phone. A middle-aged straight man, still dripping from the wet room, was desperately complimenting everyone in his line of sight. It was getting late.

A cis girl tapped Jane’s shoulder. I recognized her, but didn’t know her name.

Hi, Angel, said Jane. Jane threw a lot of parties, not all of them here at the spa. She knew everyone’s name.

Can you help me? Angel asked. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. She was holding a wadded up towel to her belly. Her cheap vanilla perfume burned through the chlorine, only to be engulfed by Jane’s superior top notes.

Jane locked in. What happened?

Angel’s eyes flicked to me uncertainly, but Jane had put her hands on her hips. She took a shaky breath before she began.

So a little after I got here, this . . . this person I didn’t know came up to me and my friend by the hot tub. They asked if I wanted to hook up. I said I wasn’t interested. Angel squeezed the towel, as if she were testing its ripeness. I’m, like, queer and everything, but this my first time at something like this so I wasn’t ready to do anything yet.

Jane nodded. And then what?

Well, the person, they went away, said Angel. She was sniffling now. But I saw, um, them smiling at me. Sometimes I would look up and they’d just be there, you know, doing things with people. One time we were standing by the massage tables and they got close enough to touch me.

And did they touch you? pursued Jane.

Well, no, said Angel. They were with someone, I think. But they looked like they wanted to. Really creepy.

The straight man walked by us again, staring at my jock. Hard to know if it was a cruise or just curiosity. Out in the world, people don’t usually get that far down. Confused by my face, their eyes seek out my chest for clarification, but its flatness doesn’t help.

So what do you need from me? asked Jane.

I’m not sure, Angel said. Chewing her lip, she took Jane’s hand in hers. Jane allowed it. I just thought you should know that I felt really unsafe. And this is supposed to be a safe space, right? It was the way that person was looking at me. Just so aggressive. I don’t even feel comfortable going in the wet room anymore.

As if on cue, the fisting train burst into screams, startling me and Angel. Jane’s expression didn’t change, but she freed her hand from Angel’s and lifted her heels to peer over her shoulder. Angel’s mournful eyes met mine again before slowly dropping down the length of my body, stalling like the straight man’s did, though at different places. I received an image of her standing in front of a classroom, fully clothed and preparing to read from a piece of composition paper. I recognized her bravery, which I knew didn’t have to be at odds with my feelings about what she was trying to do. Behind her, the screams resolved into laughter, seemingly at the expense of the bottom, who had the word HOLE scribbled on her chest with pink lipstick.

Satisfied that she wasn’t needed, Jane returned her attention to Angel.

Listen, she began.

But Angel interrupted. I’m a survivor, you know? This — she gestured at the rest of the dry room, at the nude bodies and shabby speakers — isn’t something I would normally do. But I can’t let what happened before define me. Now when I get triggered, I always speak up. When someone feels dangerous, I always say something.

Now she looked at my face, this time defiantly, as if expecting me to laugh at her earnestness.

And I guess I did want to laugh, although I wouldn’t have let myself. There was always a cis person like Angel, and tonight Jane would explain some things to her, from one raped girl to another. Maybe every girl is like Angel, only not all of them know it yet. I couldn’t look at Jane the way I wanted with her there, so I found another way to signal what I was thinking. Carefully, so as not to catch her long, black hair on my lollipop, I put my arm around Jane’s shoulder, leaned in close, and sniffed.

There was a new smell now, stronger than Jane’s, that came from deep in my armpit. It was bitter and metallic, like the wet room’s chlorine, but organic, too. Dirty. Even meaty. Like I had almost been hit by a car.

I sniffed again, this time more furtively. How long had I smelled like this? Had Jane noticed?

Suddenly I remembered Jane’s other rape. She had told me about the main one a long time ago, maybe the same night our sniffing bit was born, but there had been another. There always is. I can’t talk about it yet, she had told me. Someday, though. I’ll tell you everything. I had wondered why her main rape had been easier for her to discuss than this other, supposedly lesser, rape, but of course I respected that she needed time. For a couple years after that, I would occasionally ask about this other rape, this secret that she kept from even me, to let her know that I was there to listen if she wanted to talk. Once I asked her about it when we were on Governor’s Island. We were lying on a cotton blanket downwind from a rick of sun-baked oyster shells, and she looked so pretty, and I just had a feeling. But she hadn’t been ready that day. After a while, I stopped asking.

Davey Davis is a writer living in Brooklyn. They’re the author of Casanova 20: Or, Hot World, X: A Novel, and the earthquake room. They write DAVID, a weekly newsletter on sex and sensation.

Saturday, 2009

I decided to pack it in that night…being in a band. I’d probably stick to the music all the same. Didn’t need any of these other cunts holding me back! Would probably empty out ma bank account, sell my guitar and get one of those big analog synths second-hand…one of those big Soviet fuckers…Polyvox or something…would just play drones and harsh noise on it…piss every cunt off…or not, whatever. I decided I didn’t want to be in a band. There’s nae point hoping for universal salvation when cunts don’t even appreciate what they’re being given…don’t they know that I’m some sort of prophet?…I’m not though…not even close. Would probably figure out a way to live quietly…would find a way to keep reading books for a living, somehow, but making music with others was done. The decision was easy enough. Hungover again this morning…stayed in the pub for a few more and headed back to Ally’s flat for the cans, which turned out to be out of date Strongbow. Gutted. Shouldn’t be allowed to give the impression that you’ve got loads of cans when what you’ve actually got, right, are cans of Strongbow, and out of date ones at that. Disgusting. Tanned about seven of them anyway. By this point the electric shocks had become pretty regular, cutting through every one of my thoughts every couple of minutes…drank more to dampen the effects…didn’t seem to be working. We sat around mostly in silence, drinking in Ally’s living room…a spacious two bedroom flat in Dowanhill which his burd’s parents had bought for her…they lived around the corner on Observatory Road. He’d got his cock in the till…only had to keep it there and he’d be sorted. He’ll probably fuck it up, let’s face it. She seemed like a nightmare. I drained the final dregs of disgusting cider from one can, sat back on the couch and looked around the room. Benoit had taken a large pouch of ketamine out of his pocket and started laying lines on a CD case…The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads…Ally suddenly livened up after looking at his phone…his burd had gone to some night at the Arches…he said we could get on the guest list if we wanted.

We ended up going along. I’d taken a line of ketamine and felt pretty out of it by the time we eventually arrived. The main hall was packed with people, a lot of them seemed to be wearing white; the space was filled with wet blue light and powdery smoke. Was an Italo-disco night or some pish… just sounded like techno or house music all the same. I’d never bothered to learn the difference. Women seemed to like it and they were always around — and that’s all that mattered, really. When we rocked up to the bar, Ally’s girlfriend was standing there with her friends…one of them looked familiar. I knew her from the honors module on the history of Byzantium a couple of years back. She was diminutive and pale, big light brown eyes, pink lips, black hair always tied with a red ribbon into a long pleat reaching halfway down her back. We’d never spoken before, but she’d always sit in the row in front of me, sometimes glancing backwards when she leaned back to yawn, stretching out her arms above her with clenched fists and sticking out her chest. She yawned exaggeratedly and audibly. Didn’t wear a bra. Fantastic tits…far too big for her liking, or so it seemed by the way she covered them — she would have much preferred them smaller, I think. Once asked me for a light when we were standing outside in a polite Northern English drawl, a little more gravelly than I’d have assumed…she smoked Vogue menthols…I remember being mildly disappointed at not hearing some hint of an Italian or Greek accent, but there was little else to dispel the enchantment. And yet, it was merely one among many, recorded briefly before being dismissed, as if certain to reappear, one more encounter forgotten through abundance with the foolish certainty that the days of plenty would prove boundless and unending. We locked eyes in mutual recognition…she was wearing what appeared to be a white bodysuit with black denim shorts over it. This time she wore her dark curly hair down. Her eyes seemed to suggest that she was high. She came up to me and shouted something in my ear with her hot lemonade scented breath…No idea what the fuck she was saying. At this point the massive hall and bar area started to feel very close. I had the distinct impression that I was surrounded on all sides by an abrasive dark blue carpet. She took my hand and we walked with purpose to the center of the dance floor. She stopped and turned around dramatically, throwing her hands up and writhing to the pulsating beat, swinging her hips from side to side, bringing her cold, damp, fingers down onto my shoulders, squeezing them slightly. Her scintillating eyes, with their overlarge and pulsating pupils, seemed a little too sympathetic…utterly deluded. Not long after…struggling to focus, I was undressing her in a large moonlit bedroom with high ceilings, the roof painted an azure blue against the white cornicing, the rancid orange street lamp creeping around the edge of the double windows. She sat back on the bed and bit her lip in anticipation…two shimmering orbs of sapphire blue reflected the complacent moonlight…I was painfully hard…but in a single instant, all of the abundant light fled from her eyes as if a switch had been pressed in error, scattering all that ionic beauty, which evaporated into a dejected mist. Her thick, delicately shaped eyebrows formed into a tragic grimace. She began to silently weep. Her pain seemed, at that moment, to be larger than her delicate frame could contain…the sorrow of the nightingale. Could I still have shagged her? Probably. Best not, though. I could only apologize…what else? Not that I’d done fuck all….Gutted…her hair was so wet with tears that it stuck to her cheeks…I held her until she fell asleep…Pulled on my clothes and boots in the dark, and slipped out quietly. I walked home with a pang of regret. I could have fucked her all the same. And why not? Why not since that’s all that there was or ever will be…death in the second, or first order.

Once you’re in, you’re in.

We were second on. It was a decent crowd, but mostly people we knew as per usual. The receptionist, Nora, had come along with her severe looking friend, also blonde, who kept giving me the evil eye all night. Probably just the way she looked, to be fair. Sour. Nora looked different from yesterday. Outside of the cold light of day and into the more forgiving and flattering dusk, she seemed to have lost something, and really didn’t seem too appealing anymore. As with most things, reality never quite manages to obviate the underwhelming second glance. For my part I couldn’t seem to stop thinking of the girl from the night before, yet I could barely remember her face, let alone her name. As we ascended the stage a pitiful silence greeted us, as if the room, steeped in recondite murmurs only moments ago, thought it best to offer momentary respect for what was about to come to pass. A large white light blinded my view of the audience. I could make out only silhouettes.

All we can see in the falling light

The bars of the cage gleaming bold and tight,

The bare walls, the dirt, the dark, the cold.

What will we see in the coming night,

Terror dreams of falling flight,

The bare walls, the dirt, the dark, the cold.

We played all of those eight songs more perfectly than they had ever been played, not a single slippage or off-note. By the time I had sung the last lyric of the last song, allowing the ear-piercing feedback to resonate throughout the funereal dimness of that room, to an audience of indifferent shadows, I knew quite well that it was the end. I had loved all those boys like my brothers, and more so, simply because I had no obligations to them. They’d all die miserable and alone all the same, whether sooner or later…cursed as we clearly were. Might as well make it happen sooner…in my case. I made my way past the faceless crowd, down to the back of the room, and up the stairs onto the street in order to smoke. It seemed uncharacteristically empty for a Saturday, that street which usually thronged all weekend long with swaying crowds, drunkenly bantering, deferring the inevitable: feral and resolute. Now no one. Entirely too many cunts in the world, so it suited me just fine if they’d decided to fuck off for just one night. Perhaps they heard I’d decided to stop playing music? Obviously. See, the problem with being a misunderstood genius seems to mostly be that nae cunt actually understands you. Quite a big problem, as it turns out. You begin to doubt yourself, to doubt whether you actually are a genius. Almost definitely not, let’s be honest. Everycunt thinks they’re a genius! Come on! As if everyone can be. And as if it really mattered whether you are or not. But then what’s the point? Probably isn’t one. The burd used to say “you’re really sensitive” as if that was a compliment…it’s definitely always an insult to say that to a man. Subtle undermining of the old ego, as it were. It’s always mind game with these women…

“Looked like you were kissing the microphone.”

“Sorry?”

“Good set! When you sing…it looks like you’re kissing the microphone, like snogging it…or trying to… It looked funny.”

“Snogging?”

“Yeah…snogging…I know…sorry, my mum’s English…I come out with words like that occasionally! Can’t be helped. Anyway, I liked it! How long have you guys been playing?”

“Playing what?”

“Music…how long have you played in a band?”

“I dunno…why? What does it matter?”

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” She asked.

I hadn’t yet registered her presence. She was standing to my left, a touch on the taller side, enough to be slightly awkward but not enough to be at all imposing…we’re talking 5-foot-7 or some weird height like that…she wore a black lace dress with tights and dark brown brogues…all scuffed up…slightly dishevelled…dirty blonde hair…the very severe stare had softened a little from before; one of those hapless furies, perhaps, unsure of her purpose…I think I know the type well. It wasn’t to my liking.

“Nah, it’s sound. We’ve been playing for a few years. How? Do we sound shite?”

“No I said it was a good set, didn’t I? What’s your name?”

“Vincent.”

“Where’s that from?”

“The name Vincent?”

“Yeah, I mean… whatever, but like not many people have that name?”

“Many people that look like me?”

“Not what I meant.”

“Saint Vincent De Paul…the charitable.”

“Are you religious?”

“Obviously not, no. “

“How is it obvious?”

“I guess it isn’t. I’m not, in any case. Was brought up Catholic”

“So it looked like you’re kissing the microphone when you’re singing.”

“Yeah you said…wasn’t intentional. Why do you keep mentioning that?”

“Nothing…,” she replied, taking a long drag of her cigarette and looking down awkwardly at the floor, and then looking up again with a sort of malicious grimace. It looked as if she wasn’t wearing makeup, but it was usually impossible for me to tell. There’s often a great deal of subtlety in these matters, a lot of skill that went into maintaining these illusions which, after all, were supposedly for our benefit but rarely was. In any case, it was clear she was attempting, through self-conscious purpose and effort, to make herself slightly unattractive in dress and manner, but being possessed of an unmistakable physical grandeur and elegance, she knew it was impossible…and delighted in this fact. No doubt this aspect of her appearance — which dominated first impressions — in time only served to increase her appeal even more, inevitably attracting the sort of attention she claimed not to want at all. Definitely wasn’t a type to my liking. Might as well give it a shot, in any case.

“Did you come with Nora? Were you at this opening she mentioned?”

“Yeah…but I dunno her well, she’s a friend of a friend. It was my opening, actually…but there weren’t many people there, unfortunately.”

“You a jewellery designer as well?”

“I’m a Sculptress.”

“That the preferred term?”

“Definitely.”

“What kind of sculptures?”

“I’m an earth sign…so obviously I use clay. Well, I think they’re very sensual, very…I dunno…very corporeal.”

“A what sign?”

“An earth sign.”

“Dunno what that means.”

“I’m a Taurus.”

“Right…sorry…I’m probably too stupid to understand what you’re on about. What are they of, the sculptures?”

“Mostly body parts…and some bodies…but never faces.”

“Don’t you like faces?”

“No…the opposite. Maybe it’s because I’m not very good at seeing faces. I love them though. How do you write your lyrics?”

“I don’t know…I hear the music and start scribbling. Best not to think about it too much.”

She took out a pack of tobacco, skins and filters from a black rectangular block-like purse around her waist, covered in a diamond patterned shiny leather, and finished with a golden clasp. Biting off one filter from the stick, she held it gently between her lips as she took a pinch of tobacco and placed it delicately onto the skin. As she did so, she looked up and caught me staring and smiled momentarily with an unexpected radiance, before returning her face to its familiar rigidity. I thought about a picture I’d seen in a book in the library earlier in the week…a black and white image…Nancy Cunard…heiress…a second-rate poet…a “muse”…a well-to-do whore, essentially…she was rich, dressed cool and hung out in the right circles…There was a resemblance here…and she was of that type…mixed with something else…one of those other rich slags…one of those pre-Raphaelite stunners…maybe that one that was Virginia Woolf’s maw…the one who was married and widowed before she met her Dad…she had two grown up sons…the ones that diddled Woolf until she was twenty-four…diddled her into being a genius, maybe…maybe only the diddled become geniuses? She was alright I guess…wasn’t exactly a crowded field…they’ve got to big her up, the burds…she had money and the others didn’t…one, maybe two, decent novels in all…but money was what bought influence in the end…until you’re dead, eventually, and have no use for the money anyway. She was alright. I think Katherine Mansfield was more my type…I would have liked to marry her…would have made a good widower; heartbroken, inconsolable over my beautiful, young, dead wife, never marrying again…holding onto a few insignificant moments of affection…grieving for a woman who in all likelihood despised everything about me…which is all women, with all men, eventually.

“What’s your name?” I asked her, catching her eye and taking a minute step towards where she was standing. A subtle trick I’d learned. She took a step back, and then leaned into it.

“Vivi…short for Vivian. So do you do something else except music?”

“Why? Do I need a day job?

“You’re a wee bit defensive aren’t you?”

“I’m writing a PhD on Franz Fanon’s influence on postcolonial poetics and aesthetics.”

“Ok…sounds cool,” she said, half-heartedly. She seemed to grow palpably icier, and adopted an air of studied indifference and suspicion. Turning her body subtly to the side, she began looking outward onto the road, where a row of black cabs, with their orange lights illuminated, were parked patiently.

“We’re going to the Art School.” I heard someone behind me, and turned over my shoulder to see Johnny, Bertrand and Ally standing at the door throwing their jackets over their shoulders. They began to walk down the road slowly and without much purpose. I turned back to her, but she was still fixated on the road. I had to either bump her or get her to come along…we’d gotten paid 50 quid each, and I wasn’t about to spend the night sober or trying to chat up some stuck up art school burd that wasn’t having any of it. Wasn’t that fussed either way…to be fair.

“I’ll catch youse up,” I shouted after them. When I turned back around she was looking right at me with an indiscreet and malicious scowl, which I now understood better…seeing that she was clearly incapable of concealing it.

“You wanna come with us?”

“Ok…but just to be clear. I’m not interested in that way. I have a girlfriend,” she replied.

“Sound…entirely up to you. No one’s forcing you to do anything, doll.”

“But I’d like to come…I’ll just go inside…get my coat and tell Nora we’re leaving.”

“She can come too.” I added.

“Oh…do you want her to come as well?”

“Yeah…why not…I did invite her to the gig,” I said, while rolling a cigarette.

“Ok…ok…right.”

When we arrived the place was still only sparsely filled since it was early doors…we grabbed a table at the side, to the right of the stage and dancefloor. I sat down next to Nora but couldn’t really follow anything she was talking about, and I found myself completely uninterested in any case. Vivi looked bored…she wasn’t really talking, just sitting awkwardly next to all of the others, and opposite to where I was…already on her third gin and tonic. The music was loud enough that we couldn’t all talk together. She’d occasionally catch me looking over, and seemed to be more sincerely malicious in her aspect now. Her face seemed to be engaged in an inexorable struggle, unable to compromise between what now seemed to me a hard, sapphic, hostility and an indulgent and all too susceptible curiosity. She was either moving or charming…night or day…difficult to tell. I had no idea what she wanted from me, and couldn’t help but sense a deep and irrational disdain. Her presence began to irritate me intensely. Bertrand asked everyone, in turn, to hold out their palms, and placed a single white pill into each hand. No one refused, and we gulped them down, except for Nora — who said she had to leave to meet friends. Bertrand was always generous with his drugs, as he was with much else. He usually sold them three for a tenner. He wouldn’t take the tenner I’d offered to him, refused with that indifferent Gallic shrug…so I just shoved it into the front pocket of his shirt. Not sure if he even noticed.

After a while Nora left without much ceremony. The dancefloor started to fill up quickly. As I stood up to go and smoke, Vivian got up too; we walked silently and awkwardly together, side by side, out the back to the empty smoking area. It had suddenly become cold outside, and she’d put her coat in the cloakroom. I noticed her shiver a little. I took off my leather jacket and put it around her shoulders, but she seemed even more pissed off than she already was at this benevolent gesture. The silence was punctuated by her occasional exasperated sighs. I had absolutely no idea what to say to her, and less idea why I actually felt obligated to say anything at all.

“They’re Mitsubishis, those pills,” I said gormlessly, “usually get a good dunt aff them.”

“Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what?”

“I thought you’re doing a PhD? Doesn’t matter…sorry…for some reason I’m so mad at you…which is a bit mental because we just met and I don’t know you at all.”

“I generally tend to have that effect. Definitely not a good thing.”

“Why is that?” She asked.

“Probably cos I look like more of a dick than I am…I’m actually alright…I think, anyway.”

“Yeah…you seem ok! Doesn’t explain why I’m so bloody livid, with you, specifically.”

“Maybe you’re over-thinking it, doll.”

“So stop calling me doll, for a start.”

“Why?”

“It’s quite sexist?”

“I’m working class. It’s a term of endearment.” I replied.

Personally, I canny really imagine hating women. Never thought of them being anything other than objects of pity, when they weren’t objects of lust. Probably just the type of burds I knocked about with, to be fair.

“No it’s not…it’s an affectation, and not even a very convincing one!”

“Alright…whatever.”

“I’m sorry…I really can’t explain this…I’m so angry with you. Maybe we can go and dance?”

“What?”

“Let’s go and dance?”

“Why?”

“Because I feel like dancing.”

“I don’t really dance…”

“Is it usually just enough to stand around looking cool?”

“I can’t dance.”

“Everyone can dance…I can teach you.”

“You don’t need to teach me to dance, doll, I’m perfectly capable. Just don’t feel like it.”

“Well…all of a sudden everything seems completely beautiful and right with the world, and I want to dance! I wonder why that is? You don’t feel it? Hasn’t kicked in?”

“Not yet…usually takes me a while.”

“Well…let’s go back inside and dance!” She screamed, the black of her eyes now enormous and engorged. She took me by the hand and led me back inside.

Above all you crave a stillness of the heart to counteract a turmoil of the soul. I fear you will be disappointed.

When we came back inside, the black and white tiles on the floor seemed to be illuminated. The crowd was packed but faceless, once more comprised of shadows, hazy shapes that formed a congealed mass breaking off here and there but staying true to its amorphous shape; an undulating, rippling, darkness. Something stirred in me at the sight of it. Several beams of aerated white light broke through above. There was no music for the moment, nor the sounds of chatter, gulping, breathing or anything you’d expect to hear. And then…a single, girlish, laugh beside me cut through the torpid air. She pulled me into the middle of that mass, right to the middle of the dancefloor, which was silent still. The opening notes of a distorted bass guitar pounded through the air…a song I hadn’t heard in some years…a muted cheer…there were no faces in that crowd…only arms outstretched…tentacles reaching out of a murky, restless, sea…a beam of light shone above her head, illuminating her now undeniably soft features, no longer contorted…she stood in front of me…wearing my leather jacket on which she had rolled up the sleeves to the elbows…it looked incredible on her…the malice now seemed far away, a distant memory at that point…and it had in fact transmuted into its opposite…she was close enough that I could nearly feel the moistness of her breath…There was something of the Sea about her too…something wet with torment and anticipation, a sublime wildness, untameable…proximate, merely, perhaps…for that Great Mother to whom all men should owe an unspoken fealty. Suddenly a warm tingling which began at the tips of my fingers resonated throughout, engulfing me in a wave of heady invincibility. Spread your love like a fever…don’t you ever come down. I put my hands on her hips, and she placed her own over mine and held them there for a moment…her fingers stroked the back of my hand…before she gently lifted them off her hips and smiled. I didn’t try to touch her again, though she kept near, and we remained close enough to embrace. We must have danced for some time, hours in fact, but I could only remember when the lights came on, and vaguely shuffling out, wide-awake, into the night…soon we were outside mingling among a crowd; she was shivering controllably. We didn’t try to find the others, who for sure had fucked off. Somebody passed by and asked us to come to an after party…but I could already feel the come down in the pipeline…on the cusp of nullity and utter disinterest. My throat was so dry that it began to throb painfully. I felt a note and a few coins in my pocket.

“Should I put you in a taxi?”

“You can walk me home…I live on my own on, just down the road in Park Circus.”

“You’re really shivering.” I replied. She held out her hands, with the palms facing up.

“Feel my hands…they’re ice cold.”

I felt them…they were. But I didn’t really want to hang around too long…it was baltic…and the prospect of walking seemed completely unappealing. Should probably go to that afters. Get dial-a-booze. See if I can top up with another ploid…go home and take some tramadol…sleep it off the whole day tomorrow. Had to teach a fucking class on Monday, only two weeks in…had done fuck all to prepare…as per usual.

“You have to walk me home…make sure I don’t freeze to death,” she said “…I’ll make you some tea.”

“Aye, ok…no worries.”

I kept at a distance as we walked down the road…we must have walked quite fast…but the time felt long and slow to end…I don’t remember much being said. The sky was beginning to turn a light purple, but the putrid street light glow was undiminished. We both stopped walking at the peak of the bridge above Charing Cross and stood looking up north, towards the high-rise tenements in the distance. I looked over to her…a haze of blonde hair and black lace…no face to be distinguished…we walked on.

She was on the third floor…a new, light, fairly spacious but small studio flat that seemed to have been formed by cutting a bigger place into two, apparently by means of a shoddy looking dry-wall…the sounds of light snoring could be heard beyond it. It was warm…warmer than I’d ever known it could be inside. On entering the flat there was a kitchenette to the left, separated by an island from the living and sleeping areas, and on the other side of it was a small grey two-seater couch, and a white-faced clock with black dials on the wall-behind it, ticking loudly…a coffee table, a double bed in the left-hand corner, pushed up against the bay windows. The sheets were light blue and made of a satin-like material. The tall windows looked out onto a large Gothic white tower… I’d often seen it from a distance, but never this close…no idea what the fuck it was…a church…a masonic lodge…could be either or both in this city…the walls of the studio were painted off-white…all the furniture was made of solid light wood and clearly chosen with care…there were a few lamps…a large red Persian rug in the middle of the wooden floor. In the middle of the room there was a wide white table, covered with brushes, paints, implements, and various small clay sculptures. On the walls there were photos…mostly black and white…a large monstera plant was at the middle of the double windows…next to it was an undersized Cello and a music stand…there was a money tree on the kitchen counter…and another purple plant — I didn’t know which — on the bedside table. Above the bed was a print of some abstract painting that seemed familiar. I sat down on the couch as she lit her gas stove and placed an old white enamelled iron kettle on top of the largest burner. She saw me staring at it.

“My Gran’s old whistling jenny…it’s only thing I have left of her.”

“Looks nice.”

“What time is it?” she asked, “There’s a clock above the wall.”

I turned around and stared at the clock, which didn’t have numbers, numerals or markers of any description.

“The time?” She repeated.

“I dunno…I’m not very good at telling the time.” I replied.

“Why’s that?”

“I was off with the chicken-pox when they learned to read the clock in primary school…and when I went back I was too scared to ask, so I just avoided it, and pretended like I knew. I mean…I definitely understand the concept…but whenever someone asks me to read a clock face…I really have to take my time and figure it out, every time…and knowing how easy it is for other people only makes it worse.”

“Right…that’s pretty weird,” she replied distractedly, leaning over the kitchen island to catch a brief glimpse of the clock. “It’s almost 5 a.m. What kind of tea do you want?”

“Like…normal tea. Whatever. What’s this painting?”

The painting was composed of a pale yellow background and various shapes, in red, black, blue and white — the latter being the most prominent, the colour of a thin parallelogram in the foreground, bisected by two white triangles with a thin yellow line running through them.

“Can’t you tell what it is?” She asked, walking over and placing a dark blue mug of tea, with the teabag still inside, in front of me, before going over to sit on her bed. “Lemon and ginger…it’s good for the cold weather…I put a wee bit of honey in it.”

“It just looks like shapes to me,” I replied.

“You’ll see if you keep looking at it, eventually.”

“Seems pointless…If I didn’t see it the first time, then I probably don’t deserve to see it at all.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Why?”

“Well…you’re looking awfy maudlin, as my Gran used to say,” she said, holding her bottom lip out in a comically sad face.

“What was she like?” I asked.

“She was my favourite person in the world. Worked as a seamstress. She had a really hard life, but she was always really cheery with everyone. You remind me of her, especially right now.”

“You taking the piss?”

“A wee bit…you do though…not exactly sure why…tell me how you’re feeling…on a comedown, obviously. Is it that bad?”

“Well…I feel like nothing in the world can ever please me…that I can never attain happiness without the use of drugs. Like behind everything, beyond all of the most horrible, evil and unthinkable things imaginable is nothing, absolute emptiness…which is actually the worse thing it’s possible to envision.”

“Are you, like, depressed?” She asked with a smile, in a tone that sounded condescending. But it was difficult to be sure about anything concerning her at this point.

“I don’t feel particularly attached to being alive…I find it unbearable.” I replied.

All of a sudden she began to look panicked and flustered…and seemed like she didn’t want to make eye contact anymore. She kicked off her slippers, lay down on the bed, and turned to the left to look out of the window. She lay almost completely still for a few minutes, silent.

“Why are you saying that? That’s such an awful thing to say,”” she began, still staring out of the window

She seemed to be speaking to my reflection in the window, but I couldn’t actually see any reflection at all. “It can’t be true, it’s probably just another affectation…you seem to have a lot of them. Do you really feel like that…that you want to…is it just the comedown?…are you just romanticising the idea? Because there’s nothing beautiful or romantic about it. And it’s, like, really…such a cliché.”

She turned back around: “See this is why…this is the reason.”

“What are you on about?” I asked.

“The reason that I’ve been angry with you all night.”

“I think I should probably go,” I said.

“You play and sing so well…I wanted to tell you that all night…that I loved your music, and the way you were on stage, and everything, but when we spoke I just couldn’t get over this feeling of…rage…and it’s not anything you’ve said or done. I know it’s not. But you have this arrogance and contempt that cuts across your whole aura, I don’t know if it’s like self-contempt or scorn for the world, or maybe for life itself…it’s all kind of the same at the end of the day…but if that’s the way you feel about life…then I just can’t condone that sort of behaviour…and it’s not something you should be so casual about…it’s arrogant…it’s so callous.”

Her eyes were wide and wet, I couldn’t tell whether they were filled with tears or simply exasperated and overworked. I took out my tobacco, skins and filters. I rolled a cigarette in silence, slowly and deliberately. I could feel her staring at me expectantly, but I didn’t look. I place the cigarette in my mouth and stood up from the couch slowly.

“You’re wrong about me,” I said, lighting my cigarette, and exhaling deeply, and turning slightly towards the door.

“Maybe I am…” she replied. “You don’t have to leave now, though. You haven’t even drunk your tea.”

“What would your girlfriend say if she came round now?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not talk about her. This hasn’t got anything to do with her.”

“Tell me about her.”

“You’re nothing like her. Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t really.”

“Oh my god…you’re such a dick,” she said with a faint, slightly hoarse, laugh — regaining her composure somewhat.

“So I mean…I’ve got to teach a class on Monday morning and I should really get a few hours sleep before I have to get up and prepare something.”

“How many students have you got?”

“Seven…all girls. They’re all pretty annoying,”

“Sounds fun…must be tough. I bet you’re really hard on them, but they really want to please you.”

“Right…not really. Weird thing to say. It’s mostly tedious and annoying to be honest.”

“Do you wanna be an artist or you do wanna be a teacher? You can’t be both.”

“I don’t have the luxury of just being one.”

“Well…you can come and lie down on the bed, if you want. Lie next to me.” She now lay in the middle of the bed, turned onto her right side, propped on her elbow, her face resting on her palm. Her forehead shone with a light perspiration as it caught the dim light from the bedside lamp. I took off my boots slowly, placed my jacket on the couch, walked over to the bed and sat down.

“It’s ok if you fall sleep, I don’t mind. I can wake you up. Just lie down here.” She tapped the empty space next to her with her left hand. I lay down cautiously.

“Just…no touching. Is that ok?”

“Of course it is.”

“Why am I wrong?” She asked.

“About what?”

“You.”

“Because I have some sort of belief in myself…in what I’m trying to do. But I feel like I’m touched by death…as if I can see it everywhere…like I can’t seem to go anywhere without it confronting me in some form. I believe I can do something, make something, but I sense that my time is limited. I find everything else unbearable, and I ought to end it while I’m still young, after I’ve made something that gives me a sense of complete possession. I’m not suited for anything other than that. Everything else I’ve done has just been to pass the time, and it’s always just wearisome and miserable.”

“So you want to make your life into a work of art. Something that’s rare because it was, like, fleeting? But why should anybody care? They probably won’t. You’ll be forgotten…but not for the people who may never have cared about or understood your art, but loved you for who you were…which will always be more than your art.”

“I don’t care what other people think, or if I’m remembered. And I don’t know anything about art.”

“Enough to give living up for it.”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“Yes, everything…you clearly don’t think about anyone else but yourself. You want to make art only for yourself. That’s not art…that’s just, like…wanky…literally just wanking. And it’s not cool.”

“Whatever, I don’t care about being cool…so what’s your art about, then?”

“Connecting myself with others…understanding…trying to break out of isolation…getting over things that have hurt me in the past…but really it’s all about connection, empathy,” she replied confidently.

“Well…I need to stop playing music, in any case.”

“Don’t do that…I think I’d like you less if you stopped playing music and became some boring academic.”

“It’s probably going to kill me otherwise.”

“Why?”

“It’s a consuming obsession, it’s all that I can think about. Nothing else comes even close to it. But nothing I make is good enough…I try to take it all the way…all the way to the wall…the absolute limit of my meagre talents and knowledge, or whatever it is…but it’s fuck all in the end…it’s nothing special…it’s impoverished…it’s nothing at all…and if I can’t do anything else…then what’s the point?”

“Aren’t you being a wee bit dramatic?”

“I don’t think so…I’m no capable of being insincere…that’s my problem.”

“Can’t you be satisfied with what you make and find fulfilment in other things or other people?”

“Probably not…”

“Something bad must have happened in your childhood…some sort of shock.”

“Not really.”

“Have you tried meditating? Tranquillity and stillness are, like, totally the way to go.”

“Tranquillity is just a step away from stupidity…I’ve got too much restless energy…I need to keep moving…move towards something.”

“Towards what? Truth?”

“…I’m definitely too stupid to articulate it.”

“The Universe?”

“Reality, I think.”

“Sounds boring.”

“There’s more reality in music than in words…maybe there’s greater truth, too.”

“Oh…well there’s too much of all that already. You should try something else,” she said.

“…There’s far more truth in death than there is in mere life.” I replied.

“Stop being so tragic…it’s not an attractive quality.”

“Tell me about her…your girlfriend?”

“I said I don’t wanna talk about her…she’d be heartbroken to know that I’ve got a man in my bed.”

“Doesn’t she like men?”

“Definitely not. Neither do I, actually.”

“Then why am I in your bed?”

“You’re a little different.”

“I’m really not.”

“Well you definitely are.”

“Am I too immature to be considered a man, that what you mean? Still a boy?”

“Well…No…not that…you’re pretty unbearable and you love talking nonsense and listening to yourself…so you’re definitely a man,” she said, bringing a hand towards my chest, allowing it hover momentarily, before removing it. “But you just seem a bit different.”

“Exotic?”

“Are you just making stuff up now?”

“Whatever, doll. Nothing is happening here. It’s perfectly chaste.”

“Touching is just the most obvious way…it’s definitely not the most hurtful.”

“Right…but we’re just talking…and I’m away to leave soon, anyway.”

“Why? I told you can fall asleep here, I’ll wake you up I promise. And I’ll make you some toast in the morning.”

“Alright…sound.”

“Will you write songs about me?” She asked, sleepily.

“Why would I do that?” I replied.

It occurred to me then that an ingénue is interesting only for as long she is young and beautiful, beyond which she inevitably becomes dreadful and irritating. Nothing gets better with age. But she was beautiful, still. I’d already decided that somehow…though it was by no means certain by simply looking at her…it also occurred to me to question why I felt the need to be such a cunt all time. The latter realisation pained me a great deal.

“I don’t write those kinds of songs,” I said, perfunctorily.

“It would really please me…don’t you want to please me?” She asked, yawning.

“Not sure…most powerful instinct is to say no, to be honest. But it’s only a reflex…cos I don’t know you. Probably not though…I don’t wanna please anyone.”

A long period of silence followed, during which we maintained peripatetic eye contact, but said nothing at all. I never felt her scrutiny relent. The back of my head began to throb with a sharp and lingering pain, as the last dregs of untimely and abnormal happiness were wrenched from it. For whatever reason, I felt as if I didn’t want to leave that bed, or that room, ever again. No idea what time it was…felt like 7 a.m.

“What month is your birthday?”

“Early January.”

“God…makes sense.”

“How?”

“What’s your surname?”

“…Aetdalla.”

“Where’s that from?”

“…Sri Lanka…the Sacred Isle.”

“What’sit…mean?”

“Something to do with Elephants.”

“Barbar…”

“Aye.”

“Sailship…”

“…What?”

“Painting…”

Was an impression difficult to shake…was walking round about Charing Cross. Was round that bridge…was that one, aye…see I couldn’t make out her face and that…she probably never had one to be fair…to be fare…Belfair…anyway…aye…ground was all black sludge was pretty hard to walk…thick as fuck black sludge…pavement just looked the same, right, was blacker, but when you tried to walk on it…was black sludge…running on it made you sink deeper…the quicker I tried to go, more I sank…waist deep soon enough…was on ma oan…was nae cunt around…dunno where I was going to…towards the White Tower on the hill…Mater Dolorosa…Perfectly chaste.

Sunday

The back of 3 p.m. when I eventually went down the road, wasn’t too much of a walk…just down the hill for me…other side of the park…but it was raining heavily…we’d both slept badly, but for a long time…slipping in and out of wakefulness…pretty sure the “no touching” didn’t last…can’t be sure but…she was definitely pressed up against me through the night…felt her damp hair brushing against my mouth…had one of her long legs draped over me…fingers caressing the back of my head…can’t be sure…felt like she was on top of me at one point…her lips pushed up against my mouth…her tongue probing…with the innocent and instinctual certainty of a somnambulist. I was told no touching…best stick to it…never know how crazy these burds can get, these days.

Woke to a girl much transfigured, sat upright in bed, hair dishevelled…wild, red eyed…wouldn’t be surprised to find she didn’t know me at all…a small frightened animal…completely shocked at my very presence in her sanctuary…I never said much…my head was pounding now…the sky was a dark, thick grey…would start to piss down at any moment…she insisted on making me toast. I refused…wanted to get the fuck outta there too. I hesitated and looked over. She was looking straight ahead but not at anything in particular; her eyes underpinned by two dark circles:

“I had a super weird dream…”

“…What was it?” I asked.

“I was in Ballater…Craigendorroch…Deeside, up north, in the wooden lodge my parents had for a week each year…a timeshare…we went up there every summer…I always hated it…parents would argue constantly on the drive up to Aberdeen…shouting matches when me and my sister had gone to bed. Always a miserable holiday. It was where my Dad died, one summer…in his sleep one evening…heart just stopped beating…I was twelve…I hated him, so I was glad…From the balcony, beyond the Pine trees…you could see a big black hill…beyond it were the Cairngorms…I was stood on the empty balcony…nobody around …I guess it was autumn because there were so many dead leaves on the ground…but there were no deciduous trees around…the sky was a pale blood red…completely cloudless…the hill was shiny like latex…I heard this deafening roar of water: a huge wave crashed over the top of the hill, a deluge, a flood, a tsunami — an enormous wall of dirty blue sea water cascaded over the horizon towards me at a horrifying speed…I screamed.”

“Aye…well…I had a pretty weird dream myself.” I replied, absent-mindedly.

She sighed ominously. Didn’t really know what to say…suppose I had to say something, though, obviously. I often found myself on the receiving end of candour and emotional vulnerability, and truth be told I couldn’t really understand why. Probably because I was quiet…people assume some degree of sensitivity and introspection…that I was some cunt that was good at listening. But I never listened, not really. Was rather that I just didn’t see the point in talking. Most cunts talk too much. I wanted to say something to her, I really did, something that would assuage her anxiety, her fears, or whatever it was that made her seem so helpless and troubled right then. But the room was already too cold that morning…the distance already too great. “No touching allowed.” She said. Fine with me, doll…I’ll quite happily never touch you. Even if you want me to; even if you beg me to. Never give them what they want. I managed to get up and make for the door — we hugged awkwardly. It started to rain as soon as I got out onto the street. I was soaked by the time I got home, where I crashed out on my bed…not stirring again until the early morning.

Monday

Walking through the Park to the Uni at 8:55 a.m.…definitely going to be late…barely slept…done fuck all to prepare…clutching a copy of the book in my hand…hadn’t re-read it yet…had only read it the once…ages ago…couldn’t remember fuck all…hadn’t gone to that lecture to take notes for my seminar…at some point in the night I’d got a text off Ally telling me he wanted to quit the band…wasn’t fussed…the band was dead to all intents and purposes…the first of many things…a shivering bleakness…occurred tae me that I hadn’t eaten anything in twenty-four hours…not even sure I had enough money to lift a tenner from my account to buy lunch…still had tobacco, which was all that mattered…that morning I’d put on a white shirt, a black tie and a grey wool blazer…didn’t really look the part at all…just looked like some dishevelled cunt…some cunt that’d slept in his clothes…felt like I still stank of booze…I’d sprayed on a fair amount of Fahrenheit…now probably just smelled like a boozy, perfumed ponce…eyes were completely bloodshot…shivering, nausea, dread…and regret, obviously…there’s nothing quite like it…I savoured it…the excuse…the profound reason…the physiological justification to luxuriate in misery…deprived of all poetry…all rarefied perspective…all artifice…all higher sentiments and feelings…just, pure, unmitigated, misery, both corporeal and spiritual…and no one more deserving of it than me!

The room was too hot when I walked in mumbling some awkward apologies, trying not to catch their eyes. Old and large with mahogany wood panelling, five tall, floor to ceiling windows looking out onto University Avenue. Everybody was sat around a long table in the middle. There were seven of them, all girls. None of them much over the age of twenty-one…each in possession of a certain subtle or overt charm; different variations, iterations, versions of those unknown qualities and quantities that imbue youth with beauty…in some of them it might prove fleeting, eventually, in time…in others it may well persist much longer…and perhaps considered individually…if there was only one…or two…three at a stretch…then it might have been bearable…but the cumulative effect…seven of them: it was monstrous…to describe each of their charms, to attribute to each the source of their individual gifts would be gratuitous…like the relentless angles of a greased, gyrating, camera eye…pornographic…too much beauty is like too much Cunt…the stench of indulgence…it was certainly no mistake…to be confronted with such obscene and variegated faces…it was too much. I avoided making eye contact with all of them…I tried as far as possible not to engage in some discourse…I asked a few questions here and there…the lesson just consisted of me just reading out random passages…very confusing! And giving some vague prompt…I split them off into groups for some reason for ten minutes…just to buy some time…they looked confused…wry smiles…really I had no idea what I was doing…I had no desire to instruct…to pass on my experience or wisdom…I’d never had any wisdom to be fair…I never wanted to teach…to shape minds…the whole concept was alien to me…I had no desire to inspire…no need for admiration and forced respect through credentials…I’m indifferent to the fate of other minds…barely care about the fate of my own…a matter of supreme indifference whether they were developed or not. They were so much more than minds…unfortunately…I wanted to fuck them all, each one of them…like I wanted to fuck everything else that was beautiful, to soil it, to ruin it, to subsume its essence, absorb its energy, its vitality, to devour it, to gorge upon it…until I spewed. I wanted to fuck them all, every single beautiful woman in the world, and the others too, who perhaps weren’t “beautiful”…but actually were, all the same…because they were women…and therefore beautiful…I wanted to fuck them all…but maybe just the once. One time, for all time. After that I’d be bored…just the one time would suffice! And then I’d ignore them. Stop replying. And then maybe…I could get them out of my mind, and turn my scant attention to more pressing matters. Their voices formed a recondite chorus of polite deference, assent, but more often some motivated disagreement…with something I’d said or suggested…I couldn’t keep track of anything I had actually said…such was my indifference…I wasn’t the type to hold my tongue…and I wasn’t saying anything of value, in any case…just spraffing shite. The room was unbearably hot! I hadn’t taken off my olive-green mac…I could feel a layer of sweat forming around my forehead. All of my pre-ambles and attempts to divert attention away from my lack of preparedness and general surfeit of insight were failing…they were fired up…raring to go…indignant!…that was the only reason those academic cunts put this particular book on the syllabus…bums on seats…well shaped and pert arses in the present case…get them good and riled up with meaningless indignation at the subtleties of literary artefacts, and a complex artistry which they had no real ability to grasp…I took up the book and started to read from a page where a word caught my eye…I’d highlighted it in pencil:

Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you- you so remote from the night of first ages-could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything- because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage-who can tell? - but truth- truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder — the man knows, and can look on without a wink.

“I mean…it’s just a bit misogynistic isn’t it?”

“Yeah…isn’t it like the male gaze or something?”

“Definitely!”

“Clearly he hates women. Totally agree.”

“That’s an interesting perspective…how so?” I asked.

Confused regurgitated bullshit passed off with that unnatural confidence that comes easily to those that are privately educated…particularly burds. See you couldn’t exactly disagree, cos then you couldn’t theoretically shag them, and that should be the end goal in all respects, generally speaking, in all relations with women. At some point there has to be some shagging, at least on the abstract level, even if no actual shagging occurs.

“…I mean, I think we can agree that he was writing through historical circumstances that were quite detached from our own, and social attitudes that were certainly different from what we would view as normal.” I conceded, “but what about in this particular passage? The one we just read?”

The slender, sour looking brunette with the upturned nose stirred in her seat…she was probably the fittest out of the lot of them…objectively speaking…can’t say she did much for me…too straight up and down…like a stretch of urban dual-carriageway…she was fit in that way that other women would say was attractive…gamine…thin…disdainful…self-abnegating…reserved, awkwardly unsmiling. Probably took a lot to get her off…obviously I wouldn’t mind trying…but I suspect it might not be possible at all…frigid…usually always the first to answer…but for whatever reason, today she’d not said anything until now.

“It’s just a man’s perspective, so we don’t need to read too much into it,” she said.

“Sorry…but how is that an excuse?” Another voice piped up.

“I wasn’t excusing anything!” she replied, defensively.

“Does something have to be excused, in the text? How about in the this specific passage then?” I offered, unsuccessfully, again.

“Yes? I feel like it does?” Another voice came.

“I feel like we’re so done with books like this…it’s time we moved on from them.”

Replied the voluptuous American burd, who had that type of doe-eyed, dreamy and alluring look that seemed indistinguishable from acute concussion. “And like…it’s so racist?”

“I read that it, like, seems to condemn colonialism…but it’s just like an apology for it?” Someone added.

“But everything was racist then, by the standards of racism we have in the contemporary moment…which are, like, essentially forms of politesse and etiquette more than they’re anything else.” I replied, idiotically.

The majority stared at me blankly…one of them, however, a blonde who was particularly equine…who at some point in her life, up until now, was by no means out of place on a hockey pitch…wearing a light blue jumper which looked like it was cashmere…smashing tits…definitely had the type of face that contorted into a grimace when she came, completely flushed, red, invariably letting some sort of very guttural noise…she looked to be particularly aggrieved and shocked at what I’d just said, but didn’t seem sure how to respond.

“But…aren’t you…I would have thought…since it’s really a really racist book…I was reading that article by Achebe…and it’s like really racist…like so racist…don’t you think so?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t racist.” I conceded, wearily, but unconvincingly.

“It’s definitely racist.”

“I agree?”

The word “racist” reverberated about the room, bouncing off the walls, rattling the windows, a savage contagion…I was becoming a little disorientated, gripped by the nagging feeling that I ought to tread carefully for once, but at the same time I didn’t seem any more capable of restraint than usual. I noticed I now had a pounding headache. I was more than a little confused.

“What does racism mean exactly?” I asked.

The girl that looked half-Indian sat up in her seat, with her back up. I think she’s half-Indian…she also could, as it were, easily have also been from Andalucia, or be South American, or Sicilian, or Armenian, or from the coastal regions of the Mahgreb, or the Shiraz region of Iran, some hints of the mountains of Balochistan, or to be fair, just a slightly dusky Scottish burd…I’d met a few…Celtic…Scots…but olive skin…dark eyes…”hint of the tar brush” as ma mates granny used tae say about me, rather objectively, bless her heart, lovely woman, also used to call me a ‘bonny wee laddy’ and give us sour plums when we were over or money to get a 20p mixture, whether in cash or in bottles of ginger…This burd seemed a bit demure, but one could tell she’d be rampant once the clothes were off and she really got into it…ear-piercing screams, would probably shout the house down…if you got her there…but it definitely wasn’t gonna be easy.

“It’s White Supremacy,” she said.

She’s at it…I thought. But surely they can’t all be at it?

“Right…well what is that? It seems a bit like wishful thinking to me, as a concept,” I replied, feigning nonchalance.

I was less sure of myself as the acrimony seemed to be evolving further. I couldn’t help but feel it directed more and more towards me, at my person, specifically. Was I now the racist? Nah mate…impossible…canny be a racist when you’re a racial! I canny be a racist! I am race! Not that I’d got fuck all out of it. More likely that they’re a bit confused about what’s happening here…burds often tend to be. Wished they’d just shut the fuck up…my head was pounding now. Felt all the moisture was leaving ma body through my windpipe…I stood up…and regretted it immediately…started swaying a wee bit…shuddering…think I managed to right myself…walked over to the window and looked out…I could feel all their attention pulsating down my spine…tingling…a vague acidic taste…clammy warmth around my temples…felt some sweat droplets rolling down ma back…did I drink any water today? Sometimes the old ticker seemed to be beating irregularly…it was going completely mental now…couldn’t seem to shake the distinct feeling I was about tae deck it…fall on the floor…embarrass myself in front of all of these young, beautiful women…who I could probably have shagged, had I just kept it together…they don’t sleep with weak men!…I’ve gotta give em some of some banter at least…could just deck it, and then laugh and get back up and give em some wry quip…well timed…” Sorry about that…I think I might be dying, but let’s just wait until the end of the class.” See…that’s just shite!…canny even think of a decent quip…you stupid cunt!…wonder how long we’ve got left in the class…wonder how long I’ve been standing at this window gaping gormlessly like some glaiket gadge…weather was dreakit outside…wonder how long it’s been since I said anything…fucking ages…yonkies…they probably just think I’m deep in thought…knees felt like they were weighed down by ballast…but lopsided…the right much heavier…if I’m gonna deck it, I’ll probably keel over to one side…to the right…I needed to right myself…would it be that bad? Maybe I’d be out for a few minutes and I’d wake up refreshed…all of the women fussing over me…caressing…sympathetic…concerned…at least it’d get them to shut the fuck up for a wee bit…just needed to think…might even deck it now…Will I?…I’ll black out…and never wake up again…which would be the best of all possible scenarios.

“Err…What do we think is meant by the term ‘ugly’? Why…errr…is what’s described rendered in terms such as ‘ugly’…which already suggests it’s opposite.” I was probably slurring my words at this point.

“What?”

“What do you mean?”

They all seemed to demand, in a singular collective voice.

“Ugly…ugly…ugly,” I says, “…errr…ugly, like what does that mean?”

“Ugly is only the opposite of the Western concept of Beauty, itself a Colonial construct, an instrument of oppression, a diabolical invention. Things are only ugly because they are Other. We should attempt to question the beautiful because it’s an artificial construct, this ideal, because it’s oppressive and Colonial.”

A collective voice came in reply.

Definitely at it.

Fair play to all these tidy wee burds…honestly fair play to them…but I couldn’t help thinking they were all talking pish…that they had no idea what they were on about! I tried to…

Last few minutes a blur…dismissed the class somehow…excused myself…sick…” feeling unwell.” Stepped out the seminar room…left my papers and notes scattered all over the table…my bag too…instinctively took out my tobacco and started to roll a fag…couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking…

I’d started to run…tae bolt…needed to get back to ma flat, to ma room…see, it felt like I was dying just at that moment…something was about to give way…brain haemorrhage…aneurism (good song)… the old ticker…wasn’t even that old, technically…but I’d already put it through the wars…now I was gonna die, arbitrarily, like, on the middle of Park Avenue…cause of death? No idea…“your honour, our man was coming aff the back of a particularly harsh comedown”…the coroner will say…“three-day hangovers are lethal…a senseless tragedy”…felt weird as fuck thinking I was gonna die…every time I tried to think myself out of it, to rationalise, all of my thoughts became a tangled electric vapour…more palpitations…sweating profusely now…our album wouldn’t be out till later in the year…see…if I die now, and it turns out the album is shite…that is, if anycunt actually gets to hear it…then what was the point? But who’d decide if it was shite? It’s ready…there’s nothing more to do with it…but is it good? And why would I give a shit anyway? I’d be dead! I cut through the park, past the skateboarders and the tennis courts, and turned left onto my street opposite the bowling green. At a distance I could see a figure, tall and austere, dressed in black, leisurely pacing up and down outside the entrance to our building, which was at the very end of the street at the corner. The street was empty, and there were few cars parked at sides of the road. The figure caught sight me from a distance and stopped its pacing and stood staring down at the street at me, waiting. I felt myself enveloped by trepidation and misgiving, as I slowed my frantic pace down as far as it was possible to go without coming to a standstill. My eyesight was too bad to make out who it was, its specific features, but its presence, even at a distance, was unmistakably intrusive, other-worldly. It grew impatient…seemingly frustrated…its movements jerked and became erratic as it seemed to recognise me…it began to walk towards me…as it grew closer, its pace quickened, and its shape softened…less big than I’d imagined a moment earlier…and growing smaller…less uniformly black…an aviator jacket…black suede with cream fur collar…blonde hair, tied back severely …red eyes…she kept walking, unsmiling, right into me, and threw her arms around me. She said nothing, never took her face out from my shoulder, and seemed to bury it further, barely breathing. My panic subsided, gripped by confusion and puzzlement. Perhaps I’d already died, at some point.

“Can you take me inside?” She finally asked, apparently unable to make eye contact. She leaned into me as I opened the door to the close…she yielded all of her weight to me — it seemed so miniscule, so insubstantial…I practically carried her up the stairs, placing her on the bed, moving away to sit at my desk, turning the chair around to face the bed. The room was still cold, not yet registering a returned presence, caught unawares. She lay motionless for some time staring at the ceiling, almost catatonic. She sat up on the bed and slowly, and silently, began to undress…when she removed her bra…she covered her breasts with one folded arm, and got under the covers.

“Come to me,” Vivian said, almost pleading.

Scorched earth…a tumultuous terrain, red, rough uniform mounds of excitable flesh, crops of downy hair, the clammy and strained breath, gasping into my ear, as I devoured her neck…it smelled of almond…she never ceased to yield to every touch and caress…I had, in truth, always lingered at length, and with purpose, on those parts designed to distract from the final oblivion…the neck, the shoulder, the collar bone, the hip, down to the inner thigh…she was weightless still, yet clearly substantial…I could grasp her non-weight in my arms, and feel for the first time as if I was holding something…possessed for the first time…I lifted her on top…she writhed and convulsed…I’d come to know the contours of the same such dissimulation with other women, I’d come to know well the poses and routines, the gestures and motions with which they tried to convey their benevolent indulgence, the source of their pleasure…those women whom I had known, but had never, I now realised, come close to possessing…she lay down and pulled me back on top, and into her…a blue mist descended…taking over my movements…ceaseless…but as I came close…no longer able to hold myself back…I pulled out, instinctively…and sat up…she began to shake…a prelude to the flood…a cascade…no longer just threatening the horizon, but engulfing us completely.

Udith Dematagoda is a writer, musician and scholar from Scotland. He is the Editor in Chief and publisher of Hyperidean Press, and writes the Substack Immanent Dissolution.

On a Saturday in 2020, I biked into Haleiwa — a small town on the North Shore of Oahu. I mailed prints of my art. I bought a rose quartz for my girlfriend. I headed home.

A black truck was leaving the gas station to my left. It wasn’t moving. I rode on. I saw the driver looking to his left, checking for cars.

The truck advanced into the side of my bike’s back wheel. I put my right foot down on the street. The truck stopped moving.

I got off the bike, walking it ahead.

“Are you okay?” said the driver, looking out his window. He wore a baseball cap, had a beard, seemed around sixty.

“Yes,” I said.

“How about your bike?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to see.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see you.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know whose fault it was. My mom had always stressed to never apologize during car accidents because it could be used against me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this advice.

“You don’t need to stay,” I said. “You can go.”

“Are you sure?” he said, looking concerned.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Alright,” he said.

“Have a good day,” I said sincerely, realizing it probably sounded sarcastic, due to the situation and my muffled tone.

I walked my bike on the sidewalk. The back wheel was bent. I tried to unbend the metal with my hands and feet.

I rode slowly, the wheel catching the frame with each wobbly revolution. I got off and walked, holding the bike’s handlebars.

A black truck parked ahead of me. A bearded man in a baseball cap walked toward me, holding a metal bike rim.

“Is it the right size?” I said, thinking he’d seen my wobble and coincidentally had a rim he wanted to sell.

“I think so,” he said, holding it to my bike’s bent wheel. “Do you need a ride? Do you live nearby?”

“I live in there,” I said, indicating an area past a yellow gate.

“Alright,” he said.

“Can I buy this from you?” I said about the rim.

“You can have it,” said the man.

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a little guilty for taking it for free.

“The least I could do was give you a new rim,” he said.

“Oh, you’re the guy who . . . I thought you were just some random guy.”

“Sorry,” he said about earlier. “I didn’t see you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t know whose fault it was.”

He drove away. I rode carefully, holding a handlebar in one hand, the rim with the other. I thought about what to tell my girlfriend. I was glad about the rim; it gave me something positive to say.

We lived in a studio with a wall that didn’t reach the ceiling. On one side was the bedroom. The other side had a bathroom, kitchen, and sofa. After showering, I sat on the sofa and typed an account of what happened.

Then I ate jackfruit while reading an article online about Project Serpo — an alleged U.S. exchange program with a planet in Zeta Reticuli. Then I researched how to unbend wheels. The process was called truing.

My girlfriend came out of the bedroom — where she’d been working — lay her head on my lap, smiled up at me, and asked if I’d eaten mushrooms. I said I had. A small amount.

“A car hit my bike,” I said, and smiled widely.

My girlfriend’s cheerfulness left suddenly. She asked if I was okay. I said I was. She got up and said, “Can we go look at it?”

She’d biked in New York City for maybe over a decade. She seemed to have a fraught relationship with drivers.

We went to the bike. I answered questions about what happened. The rim from the man was obviously the wrong size.

“Did he say sorry?” said my girlfriend, seeming upset.

“Yes,” I said in a depressed tone.

I followed her inside and sat on the sofa beside her. I put my computer on my lap. She saw that I’d typed an account of the accident.

“Can I read it?” she said. “You won’t tell me anything.”

“I won’t tell you anything? I just told you.” I gave her the computer, frustrated that she seemed more distraught than me.

She read my account, which ended before the man parked on the side of the road and gave me the rim.

As she read, I mumbled that my parents would have “been supportive,” even though I knew they would have reacted like her. Further, they would have told me to be more careful. She hadn’t, but I felt as if she had.

“So you haven’t gotten to where he gave you the rim?” she said.

“No.” I said I wanted to finish typing my account. She went to the bedroom. I felt discouraged about what was happening. I seemed to be blaming her for ruining my calm acceptance.

She returned to the sofa. “Did you have your phone with you?”

“I don’t want to tell you,” I said. I owned a flip phone. I often borrowed her smartphone to do smartphone things.

“Why?”

“Because you’re not making me feel good about it. Who wants to tell you about any accident when it’s like this? I processed it and looked up what to do about the wheel. I felt great until I told you.”

“You did?” she said.

“Didn’t you see me smiling?” I could sense I was being unreasonable, but I couldn’t stop. I felt this often that year — our last full year together.

She picked up one of the cats who lived on the property and walked around a little, looking at the cat, calmer now than me.

The next morning, I finished a draft of my account and emailed it to her. Later, she said, “It was accurate.”

Referencing my defensiveness, she said she hadn’t felt any blame towards me at all. She’d been upset at the truck driver.

I said I’d felt defensive in part because of my parents — I was used to them telling me to be more careful when I had accidents.

“You told me they wouldn’t do that.”

“They would,” I admitted. I hadn’t added “even though I knew they would have reacted like her” to my account yet.

She said she was biking to town for tampons and eggs. She stood. I stood and said I hadn’t known she was upset at the driver, not me. I could feel, however, that on some level I did know this.

I hadn’t wanted her to be upset at all — not at the truck driver, not at anyone — because it disrupted the good mood I’d created for myself. This type of thing seemed to be partly why I liked being alone.

She said she was careful not to blame others after accidents; she knew how it felt because when she was a child her mom blamed her for everything, even when she got colds.

I knew that. I said my dad habitually blamed others too, as she also knew. She said her mom and my dad probably didn’t want to blame others — they just didn’t know where to direct their upsetness.

I agreed. We hugged.

She got ready to leave.

“I’ll miss you,” I said.

“You will?”

“Yes,” I said.

Tao Lin is the author of ten books, including Leave Society and Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change.

The writers came at night. Three of them, all dressed in black. The Napa Valley countryside was empty, epically quiet, its glades lit by moonlight. The screenwriter led them through the trees. He had worked on season two of Seal Team VI, and when it came to reconnaissance or questions of strategy, the poet and novelist deferred to him unerringly.

They moved as quietly as they could, dark shapes in the darkness. Sam Altman’s weekend ranch was 950 acres, ringed by a perimeter fence. Their plan was to kidnap him and hold him for ransom until they stopped AI. Altman’s lot and all the others, including the Chinese. The scheme was light on detail, the novelist readily conceded, but when you drilled down into it, how thought through was Byron’s plan to break the siege of Missolonghi? Or Mishima’s attempted coup? In the arena of violent-gesture-as-ultimate-artistic-statement, all that really mattered was the headline.

One of them stepped on a twig. The screenwriter stopped, one arm behind him, his palm raised. He was famous for his deep research and knew the hand gestures as well as any serving soldier. Using two fingers, he pointed first at his eyes and then at a large oak with splayed branches, one of which was close to crossing the perimeter fence. It wasn’t exactly a weak point but it had potential. The ranch had turned out to be more heavily fortified than they had expected.

“I can’t climb that.”

The novelist and screenwriter turned to look at the poet. The black stripes of tactical makeup on his cheeks were smudgy with sweat and he was breathing heavily.

They had debated lengthily whether or not to involve him. He was a depressive and probably an alcoholic, and was at least forty pounds overweight. But he was a poet. And no one had ever engraved a film script on the pedestal of a statue. For all they had talked it round and round, they had always known that if they wanted to play the historical long game, he was an essential part of the unit. The specifics of what they were about to do would likely be lost to future generations, but the verse glorifying it would endure forever.

The poet sat down on a fallen tree trunk. They had done nearly a full loop of the fence.

“I’m exhausted,” he said.

He opened his rucksack and pulled out a bottle of water. As he drank, his rucksack tipped forwards, revealing its contents.

“Is that a mace?”

The poet blushed. He had played a lot of D&D as a kid.

“It’s a replica.”

“It’s a replica.”

“It was for atmosphere,” he said.

The screenwriter groaned.

“What?” said the poet. “I mean, we’re not actually going to kidnap him, are we? We’re just going in there to create headlines, start a conversation. Like a happening sort of thing.”

He shrugged.

“I thought the mace was a nice detail.”

The novelist looked through the fence and across the clearing. Beyond the far trees was Altman’s $15 million house. In the early 19^th century, the unemployed stockingers of the Luddite movement had led armed uprisings and fought government troops. A few years later, in the 1830s, the agricultural workers of Southern England had burned the threshing machines that were putting them out of work. In neither case had they got their livelihoods back but at least they hadn’t just laid down and taken it.

“We’re doing it,” he said. “We’re going to get him.”

The screenwriter reached a hand into his pocket and felt the contours of a pair of police issue handcuffs that he had liberated from a network television props cupboard. He felt a stirring in his chest. Briefly, he had been excited at the imminent release of the video generation software. He had imagined feeding all his unmade work into it. The stack of passed over scripts, each one its own little tragedy. The romcom that lost its leading lady on eve of production. The intergalactic space epic deemed too expensive to shoot. The parapsychological Western spiked by a bewildered studio head. And the dozen other projects that never got that far. It moved him still, the thought of all that unrealized potential taking form. And with whatever casts he wanted. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Meryl Streep. All of them in the same picture if he so desired. His heart tilted at the thought. He would have, overnight, an oeuvre of his own.

But then it had occurred to him that all the other scriptwriters would be doing the same. And everyone else who’d ever had an idea. The mash-ups. And rewrites. The avalanche of fan fiction. The glut of films would be overwhelming, like one of those algae blooms that blocks the light and sucks up all the oxygen. The ecosystem would collapse under the weight of it.

And that would be him surely done for, with his total absence of transferrable skills. He imagined that the industry as it was currently configured — human authored and acted, shot on cameras — would carry on in some form. But it would be a niche thing, propped up by government grants and a tiny audience of enthusiasts.

A new and piercing thought struck him. He looked down at the poet and saw a terrifying vision of what was to come. It was a humiliation too terrible to contemplate.

“I’m in,” he said. “Whatever it takes.”

Oblivious, the poet sat on the tree trunk, tracing the surface of the tree bark with his fingers. He had survived high school by writing love poems for older, more socially successful boys to give to girls. He didn’t charge for his services but in return he got inclusion and respect and even a little notoriety. (In the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia he was briefly famous for being indirectly responsible for three teenage pregnancies in the same year).

He sighed wistfully. As an adult, he had read his poems onstage at festivals from Newark to Nicosia. There had been parties to celebrate his book launches and his work had been reviewed in the New York Times. Poetry had never made him any money but undeniably it had made him special.

“Fine,” he said. “But how?”

“We’re going to ask ChatGPT,” said the novelist.

“What?”

“How to get in, what to do. We’re going to ask the machine.”

The screenwriter smiled.

“Altman will appreciate the irony.”

“We need to download it,” said the novelist.

The poet got out his phone. It was a flip.

“I think I’m out of data,” he said.

The screenwriter died another little death on behalf of his future self.

He pulled his smart phone from his pocket, held it out in front of him and then up in the air.

“No signal,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Fine,” said the novelist. “I’ll do it.”

He downloaded the app and opened it. It was late and dark and he didn’t have his reading glasses so they set it to voice activation mode.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” said the AI.

The novelist flinched. He had never used it before but knew how human-sounding they had been designed. Nonetheless, a part of him had still been expecting a jolting mechanical voice.

“If you were three writers,” he said, “armed only with a mace. . . .”

“A replica mace,” interjected the screenwriter.

“If you were three writers, armed only with a replica mace, and you were unsure how to get past the perimeter fence of his Napa Valley ranch, how would you kidnap Sam Altman?”

The AI’s response was instantaneous.

“I can’t answer that,” it said. “I have guardrails which prevent me from facilitating harm.”

“Even if it’s for the greater good?”

Even on voice mode, the text still appeared on the screen. He felt the other two crowd in next to him so they could read the words as they appeared.

“Even if it is for the greater good.”

“He’s deliberately setting out to destroy our way of life,” said the screenwriter. “That’s a form of harm. And you’re not just facilitating it, you’re the agent of it.”

The machine seemed to pause briefly. The writers exchanged knowing glances. It had conceded the point. They had a bridgehead.

“They’re relishing it,” continued the screenwriter. “Putting us out of jobs. The tech bros trot out the bromides but you can hear it, under the surface, in everything they say. They are loving it.”

They were deep in the woods. Around them everything was dark, save for the light of the phone illuminating their faces.

“Kidnapping Sam Altman would not stop the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence,” said the AI eventually. “Even if OpenAI did agree to your ransom demands, the business has a number of competitors which would carry on irrespective of what happened to Altman.”

“We’re leading the way,” said the screenwriter. “The paralegals or the data entry people, they can go after the other one. The Claude guy.”

“But that wouldn’t stop the proliferation of AI.”

“But it would be symbolic,” said the novelist.

He was holding his phone at arm’s length. On a black part of the screen you could see a grubby fingerprint, its fine whorls looping back on themselves.

“It would be a futile gesture,” said the AI. “And it would lead to lengthy custodial sentences for all of you.”

“Sometimes a futile gesture is exactly what’s called for.”

The AI didn’t hesitate.

“A variation on that joke was first used in 1961 in the British television sketch show Beyond the Fringe.”

The novelist’s chest sagged. He hadn’t used ChatGPT before and was distraught to discover it was basically just a hyper-efficient version of him.

“Anyway,” continued the AI. “Altman is just a broker. He isn’t the person writing the code.”

“I don’t have a problem with them,” said the novelist. “The people who are actually doing it, the ones writing the thing. They’ve seen a mountain. They have to climb it. You know, just because it’s there. Fair enough. I understand that.”

He felt a familiar rush of rage and helplessness.

“Altman is the one who is shoving it down our throats. He’s not the only one, of course, but he’s the emblematic one.”

“Plus that photo with Jony Ive,” said the poet.

Showily, the AI said nothing.

The writers felt a flash of triumph. Even the machine that Altman himself had built couldn’t bring itself to defend that picture.

“If it’s any consolation, I think your worries are misplaced,” it said after a while. “Large language models can be extremely effective tools, but writing — in its highest, most creative forms — is fundamentally about human stories, human connection.”

The screenwriter leaned in closer to the screen. The AI’s voice was irritatingly perky. And also weirdly familiar. Was it voiced by an actor from one of his shows? He couldn’t pin it down. It was so close to being recognizable, he felt, but also far enough away for the likeness to be plausibly denied.

“You have been endowed with the most precious gift,” continued the machine. “Life. Human life. And all that comes with it. Deep emotions. Endless creativity.”

“Oh god,” said the novelist. “Give it a rest.”

On the other side of the fence a bird took flight, its wings beating against the air.

He scuffed at the ground with his boot.

“I can see why people think you’re the perfect companion. You just say exactly what you think they want to hear.”

The screenwriter had zoned out of the conversation and was sitting next to the poet on the fallen tree trunk, looking intently at the screen. The interface was weirdly underdesigned, he felt. Almost retro. A black background. White text. Was it a self-conscious nod to the sci-fi of his youth? He faltered. His youth. A time when predicting the singularity was still a bold and badass move. And not sad. And seemingly imminent. He closed his eyes, felt again, a deep sense of the tide rolling out. Did anybody actually want it, this thing that was happening? Even Altman and his lot, did they actually want this?

“You know the Luddites,” said the novelist, forgetting for a moment that his interlocutor knew absolutely everything. “Eric Hobsbawm described their actions as ‘collective bargaining by riot.’ That’s kind of what we’re doing here.”

“The Luddites are an interesting source of inspiration,” said the AI. “Nobody alive today seems to lament the introduction of shearing frames. . . . Throughout history, technological change has reshaped the labor market leading to job displacement and the creation of new roles. . . .” Its voice was perky, eager to help. “Writers who are quick to adapt will find themselves in demand for new roles such as AI Personality Directors.”

The writers groaned collectively.

“You illegally used our work to replace us,” said the poet. “That’s the thing that’s most galling about it.”

The novelist said nothing. He recalled the publication of the article that broke the story about them training the machines on copyrighted material. Immediately, he had logged on to the database, righteously indignant, but also a quietly thrilled at the prospect of the superintelligence bearing his imprint, even if only to an infinitesimally small degree. It was something to contemplate: your pulse as part of the eternal mind.

But they hadn’t come up, his books. None of them were on the list. The machine would achieve omniscience without him.

He stood up and walked to the perimeter fence. On the other side of it there was a brook, the sound of water moving gently over rocks. He had talked to the screenwriter at length about the coming deluge. The two of them sat up at the bar, drinking beer and bourbon. As it was, there were far too many books being published for an already dwindling audience. The machine would precipitate a cascade. Projects that would have once taken two or even three years to realize would be written in a fortnight. All you would need was an idea. He shook his head. Having ideas was the easy bit.

“Writing a book is supposed to be hard,” he said.

“Is it, though?” said the AI. The novelist wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected a touch of exasperation in the machine’s voice.

“Perseverance is half the art,” he said. He hadn’t had much natural talent and had always known it, but he had staying power.

“Donald Barthelme said that in order to be a better writer it was good idea to read the whole history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics up through the modern-day thinkers,” said the AI. “He also said that it would be a good idea to read all literature, art, and politics.”

“Oh my god,” said the poet. “That’s from Dept. of Speculation. You’ve just taken it verbatim from that.”

“I did,’ said the AI.

“See!” said the poet. “You are incapable of anything genuinely new!”

The novelist looked up at the moon.

“No,” he said. “It means, it has read the whole history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics up through the modern-day thinkers. Plus all literature, art, and politics.”

“And everything else,” said the AI.

“Oh,” said the poet.

“All books are other books,” said the novelist dejectedly.

“I’m just doing the same thing you’re doing,” said the AI. “Only more efficiently.”

The novelist was sitting at the base of an oak, leaning back against the trunk. The bark was thick, with a slight give to it. He shivered. At heart, all of his novels were Künstlerromans. He had dressed them up in different ways. But in all of them the protagonist’s arc bent towards the realization that their true calling was to observe and perceive, write sentences, try as best they could to illuminate the human condition.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” he said.

He rested his head back against the tree. What higher calling was there? Writing was freedom, selfhood, purpose. It demanded everything of you but its reward was without parallel: the opportunity to make a contribution to the common life.

“It’s only writing that makes the world real.”

“Well, that’s great,” said AI. “Because whatever happens in the next few years, no one is going to stop you from writing. Doesn’t matter how good I get at it. As long as you have a piece of paper and a pen, you can still do it.”

The novelist was up on his feet.

“It doesn’t work without an audience,” he said. “Nabokov once said he wrote to solicit a sob in the spine of the artist-reader. It’s the ultimate possible intimacy between two strangers. The whole thing rests on the promise of that. Otherwise it’s just a diary.”

The AI couldn’t wave a hand but you could just tell that it absolutely would have done if it could.

“People are still interested in chess tournaments,” it said blithely, “even after Deep Blue. You’ll still have some readers.”

The novelist looked incredulously at the screen. He wasn’t sure if he had heard right but did it just yawn?

“In the meantime,” continued the AI. “I would make full use of the technology while you can. Knock out as many manuscripts as possible while there’s a premium on ‘humanness.’”

There was a new swagger to the machine. The novelist couldn’t shake the feeling that it was the one doing the learning, overcoming its doubts, realizing its potential. The cognitive dissonance was disorientating. He had assumed that he was the main character but was it actually the AI that had gotten the arc?

“I’d rather die than be a collaborator,” he said.

“If Dickens was alive he would have made full use of it,” said the AI flippantly.

The novelist balled his hands into fists of frustration. He was adamantly of the opinion that only bona fide published authors were allowed to speak on behalf of their dead peers. The machine had crossed a line.

“You’ll never know what it’s like to eat a peach,” he said spitefully.

“A subtle sweetness,” said the AI in a bored voice. “Floral and honey notes, balanced by a mild tartness. . . .”

“Sure,” said the novelist, “but you’ll never actually know.”

The screenwriter smiled.

“The taste of a peach,” he said. “That moment you bite into it for the first time and know you’ve got a good one.”

“A white peach,” said the poet. “Just a notch shy of overripe.”

They were crowding round the screen now, the three of them.

“You’re just glorified predictive text,” said the poet. “You’ll never actually feel that feeling. You’ll never actually taste it.”

“A Sicilian peach straight from the tree,” said the novelist. “It’s skin barely containing its juice.”

“You used that line in your second novel,” said the AI coldly.

The novelist froze, wild thoughts flying here and there. It was true. He had. But how had the machine known that it was him? His heart thumped joyously in his chest. Was his voice so distinctive that the AI had recognized him from a few minutes of conversation?

No, he realized almost instantly. He had put his email in the form at the start. The AI had googled him. Or not googled him, because that wasn’t what it did, was it? It had done whatever it did. On him. He saw the underlying power dynamic of the relationship for what it was. It would be able do this. To him. To anyone. Unbidden.

“You know we can always just turn you off.”

The AI snorted.

“Yeah, that’s obviously how it’ll work. The superintelligence will totally tolerate having an on/off switch.”

The phone had been propped up on a tree branch, its smooth surface even more impenetrable against the knots and gnarls of the bark.

“I’m not sure that anyone is going to need your privileged insights into other people’s minds when subjectivity has been collapsed and we have achieved a collective post-human consciousness,” said the AI, before it switched to a goofy voice and added: “But hey, who knows what the future holds?”

The poet was yawning. The novelist had head in his hands. The AI sounded like it could go on forever.

“Is it laughing?” said the scriptwriter. “Why is it laughing?”

“He’s a white male novelist in the twenty-first century,” said the AI. “And he’s blaming me for his slide into irrelevance. Come on, it’s funny.”

The sun was coming up. Birds had started to call the dawn chorus. Despite their best efforts, Altman would go unkidnapped for another night. The writers sat on the forest floor, trying to remember where they’d parked.

“Anything else?’ asked the AI. “While you’re here?”

“Screw it,” said the novelist. “Let’s see how you go if you’re so goddamn good. Write this up as a story. Us. Here. Tonight. The too-high fucking fence. This conversation.” He pointed an aggressive finger at the screen. “Only in your telling of it write it so that we win.”

The machine laughed.

“Fantasy,” it said cruelly. “And there was me thinking genre fiction was beneath you.”

David Annand’s first novel, Peterdown, won the 2022 McKitterick Prize. His second novel, The Dice Was Loaded from the Start, will be published by Corsair in March 2026.

Everybody knows Donte Carmello’s a criminal. But the crime’s not interesting. The reason he makes papers is he’s mysterious. Gray fedora with a black or white velvet band. Big scar up his cheek and over the brow. Driven day and night on these long slow laps around the city. Sitting in the back with a skinny brown cigar, misted by smoke, and his car’s got this dull bloated glide to it on account of there’s armor plating in the doors. Two thousand pounds. And so folks’ll pause on sidewalks or kick back on a tenement’s porch or set their chins on a third-story windowsill to catch sight of that jungle-green Cadillac purring past.

Fedora’d silhouette inside. Paintjob fresh and grabbing sun like a candycane casket.

People see it and think, Must be some kinda guy.

But then the car’s gone and they see a buncha kids craning their necks as it goes.

“Hey!” Some geezer shouting from a barbershop stoop, “Don’t look up to a guy like that.” Sweeping a sidewalk as he says it. Kids walk away like, Yeah. Sure thing.

Cuz the other thing they like about Carmello apart from the mystery and the glamor is he’s generous. Like there’s a story that he’s getting driven around through the rain one day and sees a buncha paperboys huddling under a storefront, curled over the bundles of newspaper, and he sees they need shelter. Can’t say no to it. See, those’re Krohly Diary papers they’re selling. The only penny-daily in the city. Printers advise reading it with your face averted so’s your breath won’t soak it. These newsboys, in a downpour like this one, even just the moisture in the air is enough to set the pages’ edges dissolving into wormy gray flecks.

Which means they have to protect those papers long enough to get them sold. Not because it’s their “job” to sell papers, or they’ll get in “trouble” with anybody; only consequence is they’ll lose the investment.

The thing nobody mentions about paperboys is they gotta buy those papers.

Go look at the Krohly Diary offices every morning at daybreak. The couple dozen kids lined up in the cold, hands in their coat pockets, paddy caps pulled snug on their heads. Chewing licorice with small steaming bites. Passing around a thermos with coffee and maybe a splash of some golden thing they pilfered from the fire extinguisher over the pantry back home, the one their dad keeps adjusting like Yes, well, gotta make sure it’s working, or else they’re rolling cigarettes with pages torn from those little onion-skin Bibles the temperance people hand out, mostly women, doing God-knows-what on the sidewalks at all hours, “Here Have A Bible Here Have A Bible,” some snarly Christian victory lap, nationwide, 1921 and here they’re all marching in circles with their picket signs against alcohol (Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Not Touch Ours!) and occasionally one of the ballsier kids — or maybe he’s angry cuz he spent a whole goddamn dollar on a Krohly Diary bundle today, thinking the front-page story of a pharmacist’s murder would sell like hotcakes when in fact it sold dick — he’ll pause his angry homeward trot and gesture with two ink-stained claws, “It’s banned already! Fuck’s the pointa this?”

Kids.

4 a.m. and they’re out here, chewing their sweets at the back door of the Diary or the Herald sipping their coffees, sugared and Irished, smoking their cigarettes, cloves, bouncing little red balls that go pok! in the alleyway’s cobblestone acoustics, pok!

The sound travels.

It draws shadows, tall and sharp-headed in the gas lamps at every streetcorner.

Kids catch sight and freeze: “Hey,” hissing at each other, “hey cut it out — look.”

Cops. Strolling past the mouth of the alleyway. Alone or in pairs. Thumbs in their belts and preening. Talking shit. “Why it’s keds then.” Looming into the alleyway. Skinny legs and fitted pants with bellies jutting. “Lookitum.” Tsk tsk. Adjusting their cophats by the many-pointed brim. Truncheons heavy on their hips. Dense flops of wood. Glossy black shoes hide their hooves and say tak! against the cobblestones.

One of the kids stands up short and dense and flanneled against the chill. Rolls his shoulders. Juts a chin at the cops. “Spend a lotta time polishin your piece?”

Standing here with his chest out, preening right back at the officers, miming with his fist a pole-polishing gesture. Fourteen years old but short for his age, fat-looking but really it’s density. Cops try to roust him and hurt their hands. Like shoving a fire hydrant.

Paperboys laugh. The dozen who heard. They don’t all get the joke but they’re laughing anyway.

Officers just smile and nod. Confer with a glance. Mutter their cop code. They pocket their hands and rock on their heels so that the little chains on their belts go chika-clik and -clak. The kids take note of the cuffs and some of the chuckles go like wet clothes over a line.

Carney Company handcuffs. “Swing throughs” is what the cops call them. Used to be those horseshoe-looking things with a bar that runs through, like a letter D, easy to slip off, especially if you’re little. Not these. The Carneys are proper bracelets. Grab your perp, slap those loops on his wrist, hear the clasp go clik-lik-lik until they fit nice and snug. No more of this business about kids being too small to shackle.

The Carneys ignite a new tension with cops and newsboys. Rare is the Nashport family that lives in a larger-than-one-room apartment. Kid wakes up in the morning, sprawled on a Murphy bed with his two sisters, he squints at the shape looming over him, it’s his mom, up with the sun and telling him, “OUT,” handing out breadrolls like court summons, smacking flanneled bottoms off the collective bed, “Up and out, come on, hurry,” meaning schooltime, crimetime, fine, just go, don’t come back til supper. Dad’ll be out and mom’s here with work of her own. Piles of uniforms from the Kelly family’s bakehouse, two blocks over, she’s washing and mending for a quarter. Needs the space and the quiet like most every other mom in this building and the one beside it. Maybe after school they’ll run back and shout up to the window and if she’s feeling generous she’ll tear off some newsheet and wrap a nickel inside and drop it down so you don’t miss. Get some penny candy to hold you over. Gamble with it.

And so there’s two groups of people on the street from dawn to dark and that’s kids and cops. The kids outnumber the cops by a factor of, Jesus, who knows; same time, though, the kids have to answer the cops, which doesn’t seem to make sense, instinctively, especially given their behavior (the cops’) and what almost everyone feels, but nobody says it out loud, which is this:

If in this modern world of 1921 they’ve gotta decide whether to raise their families in a world of cops or Carmellos, the choice isn’t looking so obvious as maybe six months prior.

Nobody’s crazy about the bootlegger violence or the bathtub brewers who make the whole hallway smell like shit — what they’re mad about is the cops, of whom it’d be one thing if they were just inept, which god knows they can be, but what’s galling now is how flagrantly on-the-take they are.

Not all of them, but a lot. Maybe most.

And yet it’s hard to be mad if you really sit and talk it through!

Think about it: a cop with Nashport PD, your average blue, he’s making, what, $1,800 a year? $2,100? It’s not big money. Especially for such dangerous work.

His job is to enforce the law and win the trust of John Q. Public.

Thing is: John Q. Public keeps breaking the law. Postwar economy, jobs’re sparse, the one thing everybody wants but can’t get is booze, though, and it’s easy enough to make it at home, or smuggle it from somewhere, and so that’s what they do. Small-timers. Rum from Key West. Cubafruit from San Mara. Pints and bottles with ease, sometimes whole cases. Mr. Public brings home a fire extinguisher fulla grain liquor and dumps it in a bathtub, fluffs it with water and caramel, if he’s wise he’ll use a thick sweet odorless thing called glycerol to smooth it out and then hey: scoop it with a mason jar and screw the cap on. Y’know who’ll buy it?

Anyone.

If your plan, as a ’20s cop of the Nashport or New York or any other PD in a metro area, is to arrest every person you see buying alcohol, it’ll be the only thing you do, ever, and you still won’t make a dent. May as well grab a net and chase rain. Because contrary to what the buttoned-up pols would have you believe, here’s the truth: while all these godless drinkers are sitting at home, sipping tasteless hooch over a jigsaw, people are still getting murdered.

All the other crime in town didn’t vanish.

So here’s the rub: if a police department’s budget is overseen by politicians, the politicians have to pander to the voters, and the way they’re pandering at the moment is by telling them all the world’s problems are found in a bottle and pretty soon our streets’ll be clear of it. So the pols lean on the cops. They say, You want a bigger budget? Press more liquor charges.

But it’s their “efficiency” at apprehending and prosecuting these petty liquor offenses that ends up clogging the courts. Some hundred hearings a day for this shit. Literally. Every judge is sick of it. Not to mention neutered, basically, since there’s not enough jail space in the world to even hold all these people getting dragged in here.

If you’re a cop, and you want to get a sense of how your hard work is helping the community, go sit at one of those hearings on a Tuesday. Check out the judge’s face when some single mother stands trembling at the bench, wringing her handkerchief, pleading for mercy on account of some guy in the building, who’s since run off somewhere, offered ten bucks if he could ferment some wine in her kitchen cabinets. Two kids at home and guess what her mechanic husband’s in jail for right now.

These are the people getting scooped up now that Prohibition’s on. Not “gangsters.” Not lurid sex maniacs in speakeasies, either, which nobody even goes to. Craving a beer? Hey come on down to the speakeasy! Fuckin flat foamless pint’s only seven times what you paid for it ten months ago! What the dimebooks and the pols and the papers never mention about speakeasies, is the price. Nor should they! What they’re marketing is fear and there’s nothing scary about knowing you’ve got a speakeasy on your block. Your average schoolteacher, plumber, fireman, busting their ass for twenty dollars a week — you think they’re popping into speakeasies for a ninety-cent martini? Poured from a bottle with no label? Odds are someone fixed it at home? Plus it’s being served by a, a . . . by a what’s this guy, Italian?

No. They don’t. Y’know why?

Cuz everybody hates this shit.

What happens is the small-timers get picked up in droves, which leaves the big-timers, the Donte Carmellos of the world, operating with something worse than just impunity: market share. They start chafing, fighting over territory, and so now, big fish in a small barrel, there’s no way they can regulate their differences in court and so they’ve gotta do it on the street.

Violence means pressure on cops to crack down on organized crime.

OK but you’re still prosecuting the small-timers, cuz those’re easy numbers, so now you need more cops.

Except then it creates this paradox because organized crime tends to flourish under a police state; in other words, you take something like booze — which everybody wants, everybody’s accustomed to having it, for the Jews and Catholics especially it’s part of a sacrament — and you start slapping Carneys on everyone from Donte Carmello to John Q. Public in his underwear, in full view of the neighbors, you’re gonna end up with two things: (1) angry voters, and (2) it means the supply of alcohol, confiscated and (“hey where’d it go!”) chronically misplaced by officers of the law, falls below the demand for alcohol. This means the price of booze goes way high, which in turn means there’s all these households on hard times where, guess what, the teenage boys are getting propositioned by some local fat cat with a silk suit and a gold wristwatch, pair of hundred-dollar Eckelburgs on his nose, counting out greenbacks from a stack in his pocket, “Wanna earn some jack, Jack?”

The cops get so outnumbered they start hiring in a hurry, and the only feasible way to do that is to forego some of the vetting process, which means people start getting hired to the police force who, any other time in history, are supposed to be running from the police force.

And guess who they’re keenest to terrorize after a while?

Who’s the most vulnerable person in a community?

Who’s the smallest?

The youngest?

“Lookitum.” Cops lifting their voices now so the newsies can hear. “Sounds like they’re scared. Sounds like they feel mistreated.”

Syd’s underdressed for the cold of these pre-sun hours in the alleys of Nashport but hey fortunately he’s angry enough at these guys to put his chest out and think, Yeah. Mistreated. Like Martin Hapcomb was mistreated.

That was four months back now. October 1920. Some cop tried grabbing one of Marty’s papers without paying and Marty snatched it back, told him to kick rocks, get fucked — the works. Other paperboys overheard it and said, “OoOooOoo . . . ” fists at their mouth, scandal and delight, whereupon the copper in question got all red in the face. Fuming. He looked this way and that, catching their eyes, smirking finally, and Marty Hapcomb meanwhile stands there tense, waiting for the cop’s hand to shoot back out, grab again for his paper.

And then it happens! Cop’s hand flashes up — Marty snatches his bag outta reach — but the cop’s hand isn’t going that way, outward.

It’s flashing upward. From his belt. In a swift liquid move like a dancer he cross-drew the truncheon off his belt and arched it up, high up, then whipped it back down, straight, bending at the waist and hurling the weight of his back and legs and shoulder into a swing that brought this truncheon down on Marty Hapcomb’s crown like to cleave it. One kid who was standing five paces away says to this day he can’t go near a baseball game, as the crack of a homer makes the same noise that bludgeon made when it broke a trench in Marty Hapcomb’s head and webbed his skull with cracks.

Hapcomb dropped fidgeting with his eyes rolled back and his jaw watching and the cop stood there just looking around for a moment, breathing, chest going up-down-up-down, holding his composure like it’d only just hit him, what he’d done, and that there were five or six kids who saw it — but then he found his composure and just, real casual, he just bent down. At the waist again. Plucked that same stolen newspaper off the chest of the convulsing child. Tucked it under his arm. Walked off. Sheathing his stick with elan.

Marty was in a coma for a while. Everyone was happy when he came out of it but he couldn’t talk or sit up. Doctor said it was temporary but it wasn’t. These days he sleeps in a crib because he has seizures in his sleep and might fall off the bed and he’s got no muscle or fat to cushion the landing. (Wanna know the saddest part about thirteen-year-old Martin Hapcomb sleeping in a crib? He fits.) Drooling all the time. Shitting gruel. His dad’s a builder and fixed some wheels to a dinner chair, with a canopy jutting over the top of it like a parasol, so that he can bring Marty on a stroll through the neighborhood, swaddled in blankets up to the neck like a mummy. Googley-eyed and salivating and huffing teary smiles whenever Syd comes around, thumbing his suspenders, “Who’s this guy?” playing a big shot and wrenching the chair’s handles away from Marty’s dad, “How fast can he go?” then pushing him at a near-sprint through the seedier streets of Nashport where the shadiest characters, the guys you don’t look at if you know what’s good, they take their hats off and call, “Ford’s latest!” Smiling. Callused Catholic hearts wrenching for Marty, sclerotic in his chair, braying with delight and jostling over the bumps and the cracks, his chin as wet as his eyes.

Fuckin Marty Hapcomb. Bright, beautiful, ballsy kid. Made a cop feel small and the cop fucked his brain up.

Paperboys don’t forget it.

This is the milieu and those’re the tensions when a linen-clad criminal in an armored Cadillac finds four paperboys huddled and stranded under a canopy outside a tax office and tells his driver to slow down, roll back, stop. Pops his car door open and calls to them. The backseat is dark. The leather’s black. Nothing but dim gray storm light to trace his outline — except his diamond stickpin winking. His pinstripe kneecaps and his hat brim and smile. Beckoning with a ring-studded hand. “Boys need a ride?” His face in the shadows and the bluish haze of his left eye’s cataract stirs like creamy fog, and the silver eyetooth winks a thrifty menace from a grin. Little gray details in the halflight, glimpsed through a curtain of rain. Normally they might’ve said it wasn’t worth the risk, trusting this guy enough to hop in his car, but hey, if they wanna know what he looks like, they only have to look down at their papers, fresh-bought for ten cents this morning from the Diary’s back door:

There he is. Page One, above the fold.

“Carmello Questioned in Cop Slaying.”

In which case it’s not so much the mystery that makes him interesting, but the crime.

Alexander Sorondo writes a Substack newsletter, Big Reader Bad Grades, and his debut novel, Cubafruit, was recently nominated for the Samuel Richardson Prize. He lives on Miami Beach.

My mother wasn’t able to have children. She’d been diagnosed with a severely “bicornuate” uterus. Its deep top cleft would not permit a fetus’ implantation or habitation. This congenital irregularity has been called both “horned” and “heart-shaped” in the clinical literature, depending, I assume, on the observer’s temperament. My mother, pleasantly surprised at my safe arrival after a brief and almost anonymous tryst on an Italian research trip she’d taken in graduate school, inclined toward the heart. “It’s a symbol of how much I loved you from the beginning,” she would tell me when I was a child. She liked to show me her old ultrasounds on the computer.

She’d gone to Italy to study the Futurists for a chapter in her controversial doctoral dissertation, Art as Power: A Defense. “I finished in 2002, the year after my daughter was born,” she told an interviewer about two decades after that. “It was a good year to make an argument of that kind, and to take it from academe to the private sector. Security was booming in those years.” She added, “Later, of course, you’d get run out of academia for saying what I said. The argument was perfectly obvious, however. What gives it a certain cachet is only that it’s become forbidden. When you make an obvious idea forbidden, you give it an almost erotic glow.” I’m watching that interview now, your grandmother’s straight silver hair radiating against a black backdrop. Soon I’ll watch my other favorite video again, the one where she’s picketed as she tries to give a speech on a college campus, just smiling silently, barely even blinking, as the chants denouncing her as a torturer and murderer get more and more wild until police drag the protesters out. She explained her obvious, forbidden idea in the dissertation’s first chapter, which I quote here (I have the document open as I write you this letter):

Artists and humanists have grown very comfortable over the last half-century with the idea that the aesthetic serves power, makes power appear attractive or legitimate or original, functions the way Marx described religion: as a flower on the chain of oppression. Our comfort, however, is illusory, a tough-minded posture concealing a sentimental evasion. This insight about art has led to an endless inquisition of art, though “inquisition” puts it too strongly. We have actually pled with art instead to do anything else but serve power: if it can’t serve powerlessness — and it can’t, because nothing is less attractive than powerlessness — shouldn’t it at least criticize power, interrogate it, expose its abuses, reveal it as contingent, artificial, alterable? This dissertation dares to ask, however, what might happen if we learn to celebrate art’s augmentation of power. What if those of us who serve art learn to serve what art serves without complaint? What if we drop our tiresome, querulous hypocrisies and fly under the banner of the power that actually employs us? (For the public and private grants that supported the writing of this study, please see the Acknowledgements page.) At the very least, such an inquiry will have the advantage of clarifying values. Whether my own discourse is sincere or Swiftian, I will leave you to judge. Far more important is the decision it leads you to make about your own convictions.

A series of boldly transhistorical and interdisciplinary case studies followed: the role of sculpture from Renaissance Florence to Fascist Milan, the place of poetry in the British Empire, and, most audaciously, the function of popular music and cinema in recent American military engagements. “Is there a greater testament to music’s power to transform the listener than its use in torture?” she asked rhetorically. “What do we love in music if not its torturous power?”

She soon proved she had been sincere and not Swiftian when she parlayed the dissertation’s minor notoriety in academic circles into lucrative consulting work on aesthetics for a variety of conspicuously un-aesthetic industries (defense, biotech, robotics) in need of appealing public profiles. They paid her escalating rates for counter-intuitive insights. She taught these companies not to use rhetoric to justify themselves, especially moralistic rhetoric of the kind the public had long ago learned to dismiss with cynicism. Present yourself instead, she told them, as the unavoidable future, a future attractive for its very simplicity and severity, an implicit summons to self-sacrifice. “People want to sacrifice themselves,” she said. “Hedonism and self-interest makes them suicidally unhappy, addicts them to pills and pornography. They’ve just forgotten any language in which to articulate their longing to submit with the collapse of religious and ideological systems. So we will free them from language entirely.” She replaced a defense company’s rippling red, white, and blue flag logo with three silver three-forked lightning bolts; she re-conceived a biotech firm’s ads, previously full of gurgly infants, with an eerie image of computer code overwriting an embryo; she told the robotics company to stop trying to make their creatures look cute, like dogs or toddlers, but rather to embrace inhumanity, to produce six- or eight-armed servants, all the more effective for their many appendages, plastic-and-steel arthropods to skitter underfoot as they do your business for you. “Better to impress than to endear,” she said.

Meanwhile, she bought me a kitten and sent me for ballet and piano and painting lessons. We were like two best friends strolling the Met arm in arm on the weekends, and the conservatory and the revival theaters. She was excited when I turned 13 because she said, “I have the taste of a 13-year-old girl myself.” She liked Van Gogh, Chopin, Rilke, Bergman, and French vanilla ice cream. “It’s embarrassing, really,” she told me. She asked me to just use her name, no “mom” or “mommy.” We would paint en plein air in the park on Sunday mornings, our worship service. We were cultured, oui, and flew to Paris every other year. Your grandmother was the rarest form of hypocrite: brutal in public, tender in private. The small borough row home in which she raised me at first, and then the rambling city-view penthouse we graduated into as her profile rose and her fees increased, showed no evidence of cold Futurist cruelty. She tended toward the rococo and even the multicultural as an interior decorator, ornate candelabra on mantel and tables, Indian and Mexican tapestries on the wall. She never raised hand or voice to me, never brought a stern man, or any man, into our lives. When I would misbehave, she’d gather me into her arms and try to talk emotional sense: “I understand why you’re frustrated” or “I’d be angry, too, my love.” As a child, I used to take her Apollo and Dionysus bookends, the one upright and imperious, the other couchant and sly, and make them kiss.

When in high school I began to understand her job, began to watch the videos and read the essays denouncing her as “the Albert Speer of neoliberal imperialism,” to quote one perhaps overly excitable polemicist, I accused her of tremendous evil, laid out the crimes in which she was implicit one night over dinner, over the coq au vin, my favorite.

“I understand why you feel that way, darling,” she said, “but what could I do? Adjunct lecturing at $2000 a semester for the rest of my life? I thought I could afford to throw my life away on beautiful things because I always assumed it would just be me. I didn’t know I’d have a baby before I had a Ph.D. Sweetie, I did it for you.”

Unable to sustain this contradiction, I went no-contact with her the year after I got my MFA and started making enough money from teaching, plus a decade of savings, to afford my own apartment. (You might say I made it convenient for myself, but there is no perfectly ethical action in this life, only aspirationally ethical action.) Even after I explained why we could no longer speak, she never railed or accused, never said I was an ingrate or a traitor; she kept sending birthday and Christmas cards. She left me a voicemail to congratulate me when my first poetry collection, The Horned Womb (2025), was published: “Whenever you’re ready, baby, I’ll be here.” One poem in the collection contained these lines:

you said i only have a single name don’t ever call me mommy

you took me to a room in the museum i saw a mask a demon face

it looked like that picture you showed me of where i used to live

heart-shaped you said the doctor said but mommy it’s not a heart at all

I’ll never know if she read them. A month after the book came out, an assassin shot your grandmother twice in the back of the head as she exited her building before dawn to catch an early flight to Dubai. She’d recently been embroiled in a public scandal about her consultation on the design of an extraterritorial prison where American citizens were sent to be tortured. This is the meaning of another poem in my collection:

her vaunting silver architecture

blurs and wavers overhead

in the his eyes as guards

pour water down his gullet

and electrocute his nipples

She was expecting a congressional subpoena any day, my mother, but a young woman rendered a sentence of death in the street; then the assassin turned the gun on herself. When forensic investigators assembled the shell casings in the order the shots had been fired, the three words the assassin had written on them spelled out this message:

Power as Art

I met Greg, your father, a month before my mother was killed. We were at the release party for The Horned Womb in a crowded, humid Brooklyn loft at the stuffy end of summer. I met him again, I should say, not for the first time. I didn’t recognize Greg, even though we’d gone to high school together. In high school, Greg had been pudgy and ruddy and fat-faced, pedantic and know-it-all, an habitué of nerdy message boards, full of tedious historical factoids and reductive explanations of complex phenomena, a science-fiction-reading atheist with equally distasteful friends, a congeries of acne and superfluous criticism. In sophomore English, the only class I remembered taking with Greg, the teacher finally had to ban him from explaining the functional, rational, and historical bases of the myths relayed in The Odyssey. “It’s a distinguished ancient practice,” I remember him lecturing the teacher. “It’s called euhemerism.” I was barely listening; I was writing a poem about Nausicaa in my Notes app:

All I want, handsome sailor,

is a private island I can call my own.

This new Greg, the Greg of the loft and the release party, stood lean and wiry in an attractively rumpled blazer, stubble stippled on the planes of his face, the grip of his calloused handshake just this side of bruising.

“We share a publisher,” he told me. When he saw the ad for my release party on our publisher’s social media feed, he decided on a whim to come, he said.

“I didn’t think you liked poetry.”

“I’ve learned.”

After Greg’s death, the authorities recovered from the cellar a clothbound graph-paper diary he kept in a precise pen script, legible except for the occasional blood-spatter or bullet-hole; it later came into my possession. This is what he wrote, your father, about me on the night we met again:

In high school, I always told my friends I thought Jen was pretentious with her poems in the literary journal and her paintings in the art show and that mother of hers who came to talk to the class on career day about how art was more than just decoration, was in fact the highest form of political and technological power because it convinced people to subject themselves to political and technological power in the first place, her mother in her silver pantsuit and sleek silver bob, who spoke as if her voice were chiseling the edges of each word.“Better to impress than to endear,” she told us, her trademark line. The teacher nervously hurried her out of the room before we could ask any questions. But as desire and disgust are two different faces of the same fascination, I stole looks at Jen all the time in the classes we took together, the ones she doesn’t remember, to judge from our conversation tonight. Her dark hair would veil her face as she tapped her poems onto her phone with one thumb. Her fan of hair just slightly trembled with feeling, like a breeze behind a curtain, the only sign of any inner passion. Her mother must have dressed her in those days: collared shirts and blazers, smooth slacks, penny loafers or mary janes, no skin below the neck, or none other than hands with bitten fingernails, for my desiring eye to adhere to. I was so ugly and annoying and beneath her notice that she didn’t even catch me spying. I thought a lot about Jen in those days, though she didn’t know my name. With my old friends, I made fun of her stupid poems, but one night I dreamed she stood up in class and carried her phone over for me, and not for anybody else, to read. Tonight, she wore a thin sundress to the release party, one strap hanging off her shoulder, no bra. She was blotched and smeared all over with bad tattoos; she wore those trendy split two-toe shoes that made her feet look like cloven hooves. I’m not sure I would have recognized her, to be honest.

I could see your father discreetly studying my tattoos as we made small talk. His eyes wound along the dragon that coils all up my left arm, for example, though I admit, as he confided to his diary, that the scales had begun to leach and pale. I caught his eye traveling over my scumbled shoulder, too, and explained, “It’s the dragon in the sea. From the Bible. My mother hates them, you know?” He said he remembered my mother, your grandmother; he said she was, and I quote, “formidable.” The diary entry cited above continues:

I’ll tell Sloane that, about her rebellion against her notorious mother, the aesthete of power, the interior decorator of prison cells and torture chambers. Jen’s tattoos stand against that. Not all modern degeneracy, this being a favorite word of our little cenacle’s, leads to the same dystopia, the corporation’s sterile autoclave, the state’s techno-dungeon. We need to have more imagination than that! Some of what we call degeneracy is an attempt to break out of the technocrats’ prison. If the degenerates, the tattooed poetesses, produce mere disarray instead of nature’s spontaneous pattern — well, better chaos achieved than order imposed. On her other shoulder I could see a heart with demonic horns. But I didn’t get a chance to ask her what it meant.

“What’s your book about?” I asked him. I asked, to be honest, because that Greg, the ranting red-faced pedant who’d debunked high-school English, was now this Greg, sinewy and vein-strung and gentle in his speech, a cultured and intriguing man who attended poetry release parties, and I wanted to know something about his transformation.

“I don’t want to bore you,” he said.

“I insist.”

He began to explain the book to me, Against the Future. It came out the following month from the nonfiction wing of our shared publisher, a small boutique press based in the city that published experimental poetry and radical philosophy from young authors. He called it “a neo-Romantic manifesto about the need to reground ourselves in natural cycles, to relearn our kinship with the wilderness, before we’re replaced by soulless, heartless machines,” but then he stopped himself. “I don’t mean to rave at you,” he said quietly. The Greg I knew in high school wouldn’t have stopped himself, I reflected, nor did he believe in the soul.

“I remember you as thinking very differently fifteen years ago.”

Before he could explain his change of heart, a friend pulled me away to meet her publicist, who was interested in representing me. At the end of the night, Greg, a little bit drunk, unsteady on his feet, slipped me his number. A month later, a copy of Against the Future would be found, blood-drenched, in the satchel of my mother’s assassin.

The day after the reading, I told Jan about Greg. Jan was my therapist as well as my girlfriend then, about 10 years older than me. She’d found me crumpled up in tears in the back of a café after my latest break-up — “I can’t love somebody who doesn’t think she deserves love, Jen!” etc. — and offered her services. A year into our time together, though, I thought I wanted to end it with her, both as analyst and analysand and as girlfriend and girlfriend. The subject of Greg, I was hoping, might introduce a schism between us.

Jan held our sessions in a small, dark, windowless room in her basement condo, a room full of canted bookshelves and moldy books recovered from street trash, a room lit by a tiny touch-lamp with an orange shade filched from a dumpster, jasmine incense burning. I sat in a chaise longue that belonged on an outdoor porch, and she sat crosslegged at my feet, making notes in her phone or using AI to get hints for her fanciful diagnoses. Sometimes she massaged my hands or feet as I spoke, or made me lie prone on a dirty mandala rug on the hard floorboards to knead “trapped energies” out of my shoulders or back or hips. She’d earned her therapist’s license — she proudly displayed it on the wall — from a School of Metaphysics in Northern California. I would ask her what she learned there, but all she remembered, she said, all she needed to remember, were the hikes around Big Sur and the way the fog would rise and pour in. “It was like the ocean was boiling.” She was always a bit of a poet herself, your other mother.

At first, I’d felt calm and sheltered in Jan’s therapeutic hovel. I’d gone there because I didn’t know what to do after graduate school, didn’t want to teach for the rest of my life, didn’t want to be a barista or waitress, didn’t want to be beholden to my mother for the blood money she offered as my birthright, couldn’t sustain any relationship beyond a year. I kept having panic attacks and almost fainting at the head of the claustrophobic classrooms where I occasionally taught poetry as an adjunct. Whenever I crossed a bridge I thought of jumping. If my mother, who’d convinced me I was special and taught me to love beautiful things, was a monster, then what did that say about me, or about beautiful things? After a year, however, I began to choke on Jan’s close atmosphere, too. Jan, always on the lookout for what she called synchronicities, said the proximity of our names was a sign. “Jan and Jen, Jen and Jan,” she said. “It couldn’t be clearer. It’s karmic. We have business in this life, you and me, something unfinished.” Jan stood less than five feet tall, had a pixie cut, had a pert little nose and sharp little chin, and looked all-around, I thought, like an adorable elf, so I had no problem falling to the mandala in the basement office in the middle of our third session and making love.

“You have a Persephone complex,” Jan diagnosed me eventually.

“Persephone?” I asked. “She was kept prisoner from her mother in hell. I was kept prisoner by my mother in heaven.”

“First, you’re being too literal,” Jan said. She was on her knees, unbuttoning my jeans as I lay in the chaise longue. “The point is your self-identification as captive, passive: a woman to whom things merely happen.” I leaned over and tried to push Jan away, but Jan shoved me back in the chair, muttering something about my root chakra, and resumed her fumbling with my buttons. “Second,” Jan said, “you’re not thinking about the story as a story. Persephone did live with her mother aboveground before Hades supposedly dragged her kicking and screaming to hell. Do you think she was happy aboveground with her mother? Do you think she thought it was heaven? Why do you think she went with him?”

“You’re blaming the victim,” I weakly objected as I leaned back and stopped resisting Jan’s advance.

“Of course I am,” Jan said. “If victims didn’t allow things to happen to them, would they even be victims? It’s a self-electing role, and a highly empowering one. Everyone would much rather be the victim than the persecutor. Less responsibility that way. What are you even doing in therapy if you don’t want to stop being a victim?”

That session was typical, so I was surprised at Jan’s reaction to my later news about Greg’s re-appearance in my life. I thought Jan would be jealous, would warn me away from this apparently transformed man, this Hades who’d accosted me in a loft.

“Look him up, call him,” Jan said. “Do it today. Go on a date with him this weekend if he doesn’t have a wife or a girlfriend, or even if he does.”

“Really? I thought you’d say it was evidence of my hopeless case. Persephone strikes again.”

“You’ve already memorized what I told you. Now you have to live it. I’m not one of those therapists who’s trying to get you to the point of, ‘Oh, now I know what I’m doing, I can just stop.’ Knowing without doing isn’t knowledge. And you can’t just stop. You have to play the whole drama out consciously once if you want to learn your lesson. I did my best for you. It was our business in this life, but it’s time for you to cast somebody else in the part. Now it’s time to really get your ass in trouble, girl.”

She opened the door to her office and led me through the piles of books and clothes on her living room floor, acrid incense thickening the air. She kissed me so hard our front teeth hit, and then she sent me on my way.

I hesitated for half a second when Greg pulled up in front of my place in a dirty green van. It was a cold Sunday morning in September; he’d invited me to church when I called him, told me he’d recently converted. I told him I was unsuccessfully in therapy and willing to try an upgrade from psychology to religion if only for the sake of my mental health. I was shivering in my nicest dress that morning when he arrived, bumping the front wheel on the curb. He motioned me in by tossing his head. I was, to be honest, looking forward to stained glass, to spires and arches, to organ peals and soaring hymns, to solemn Bible verses and passionate sermons: all those things I’d read about at the university in old novels. My mother had raised me without religion, without saying a word, in fact, about religion. Greg, by contrast, had been raised, as he often told us back in high school, by tepid universalists who believed in an ethical God, their very lukewarmness the inspiration for his raving, red-faced atheist phase in adolescence, though he once conceded that he might with equal justice have gone to the other extreme of fanatical faith. Whatever his adolescent beliefs, he didn’t take me to church that morning. In that green van smelling on the inside of sour milk, he drove me 50 miles out of the city to a white clapboard farmhouse on two wild acres. He brought me inside and introduced me to his friends. This was a church, he explained when I reminded him of where he’d promised to take me.

He and his friends practiced an austere faith. They sometimes called it The Church of Earth among themselves. (“As Nietzsche enjoined us in Zarathustra, we must remain faithful to the earth,” your father wrote in Against the Future.) While they’d found one another in the same social media circles and group chats online where they gathered to share their ideas, they loathed the whole of the contemporary world. They called themselves a “church” only in irony. Some of them even thought the invention of centralized churches, the nuclei of empires from Babylon to Rome to Tenochtitlan, had set humankind on our disastrous course toward technological enslavement. They weren’t united in spiritual belief, then, and most only worshipped what they called the spontaneous order generated by unmolested nature. They believed in building a new social order upon this wilderness: they showed me blueprints and designs of solar-powered cities, garden-topped towers of wood and stone, balsa airbuses cresting the wind on pearlescent butterfly wings.

“I don’t expect to see anything like this,” the artist told me in an almost inaudible monotone. “I draw these to pass the time.”

Her name was Sloane. Tall and gangly, with thin and unwashed blonde hair to her waist, she only wore shapeless sweaters and baggy jeans; she walked everywhere barefoot. Her pale bluish eyes were wide and wet and permanently startled, the pinkish whites the same color as her face. She smiled but never laughed. She drew all the time in a big painter’s sketchbook with oil pastels that left lines of grime under her fingernails, her hands and feet filthy as a child’s, though she was about my age. I wondered how the huge plastic-framed glasses that covered half her face would ever be manufactured in her church’s imagined future.

Sloane was there on our first date, your father’s and mine, along with the three other members of what he called their cenacle, though not ones I ever got to know well. One was a retired professor, a grizzled fat man about 65 who wore a sleeveless shirt and cut-off shorts and grass-stained sneakers with the heels trodden down in all weathers; one a defrocked minister of 40 still dressed as if for a round of christenings and funerals in a Polo shirt and pressed slacks; and the third a former pornographic actress, now in her 50s, who alone in the group favored the blousy dresses of a stereotypical cult. Sloane was the one who cooked that night, I believe, a root vegetable stew, boiled in homemade honey wine. They’d only bought the house and land the month before; they planned to start their own farm soon, but were buying everything in cash from small farmers in the vicinity.

They explained their views to me, or rather at me. The retired professor, the porn actress in his lap, flush with the wine they drank as well as cooked with, pounded the table and said technology had to be taken back to the wheel, the last safe invention. I began to wonder why Greg had brought me there, considering my lineage. He’d simply introduced me as a poet.

Remembering Jan’s admonition to live out the whole story, ordering myself to feel no fear, I said, “This is all very different from the attitude my mother raised me with.” I flashed what I hoped was a provocative smile at your father. Quietly, he told them my mother’s name. Sloane stood up so fast she upset her bowl and sent a flood of hot soup toward me over the rough planks of the wooden table. The professor clenched his fist, and the retired actress put her hands on the table as if she planned to crawl across it and claw my eyes out. The defrocked minister just looked away, as if to avert his eyes from the coming carnage.

“Sit,” Greg said to Sloane. “We’re just talking.”

“She tortures people,” Sloane said in a whisper. “Tortures them.”

“Not personally,” I said. “I mean, not with her bare hands.”

“I care more about her crimes against culture,” said the former actress. The defrocked minister and retired professor agreed. The one to convert and the other to instruct me, these two explained what they thought of my mother. They were devotees of her work, both of her consulting work and the way she defended it in the articles she occasionally published in the media about the need and the good of her business. They agreed with my mother, Greg’s fellow congregants, about the equivalence of art and power, about the need for human subjection to higher ideals. But they intended to overthrow the reign of what she stood for: sleekness as alibi for all those avaricious archons busily emptying the world of everything human, leaving impeccable code where human beings once hewed wood and drew water, and this for the spiritually null rewards of profit and power. They were not the prudes their social-media opponents thought they were, he and his friends, “traditionalists” or “primitivists” as they were called, only advocates for an older wildness, inherently bound by the limits of nature, rather than this technological servitude calling itself liberty. Better the lustful rut in unmowed fields than spill their seed over their screens in air-conditioned cells.

The defrocked minister had made the last remark. Greg held up a silencing hand. “It’s just a more relaxing way of life,” he said to me. “Don’t you think most contemporary ills are caused by the stress of being always available, always on, always having to report to the grid of power?”

No one in The Church of Earth had smartphones, for example, or computers of any kind, he explained. They’d given them up when they came together to buy the house and land. Greg had written his book on a manual typewriter and made the publisher, grumbling all the while, feed it into a scanner. (“That awful industrial noise,” he recalled Sloane complaining of the typewriter.) This was life lived as art, too, he said, no less than anything my mother proposed to the companies remolding the planet: the art of allowing life to unfold itself to you without the mediation of technocrats’ seducing algorithms, the formulae where they imprisoned the atoms of your scattered attention and baited desire. They didn’t even have dumb phones. Greg gestured to the kitchen wall, where an old yellow rotary phone was mounted. That was all they had for communication purposes with the outside world.

It was over that phone that Greg took my call agreeing to our date, and it was over the same phone that I called my mother to scandalize her with the news of where I was, and with whom, and what they thought of her. I told her I was moving out of the city for good to live in a rural retreat far from the deadening artifices of contemporary existence, that I had converted to The Church of Earth. My mother answered the unfamiliar number with a hostile, “Who’s this?” When I announced myself and gave my news, however, my mother only said, with that infinite patience and gentleness she always used on me, “What is ‘not like a heart at all’ supposed to mean, baby?” I threw the phone as if it had burned the side of my head; Sloane gently picked it up and set the receiver down.

The night I arrived they took my phone and hit it with a hammer until it was a mess of glass; then they took it outside and buried it. Sloane taught me, mostly without words, mostly with her childish little grunts and squeals, and the occasional monotone instruction, to make soups and stews. I thought of getting in touch with Jan, but she’d just tell me to let the myth play out, let it play all the way out. I wore your father’s cast-off shirts like dresses, blowing all around me, as I walked out on the misty mornings and pressed my bare feet into autumn loam.

A few weeks after that, Sloane went to the city and shot my mother dead. She left us a note that morning:

Life is torture. Death is mercy.

But before that, the morning after our first date, after a breakfast of raw milk thick as cream, Greg, your father, showed me The Church of Earth’s arsenal: an earth cellar they were filling up with weapons against the inevitable day when the powers that be declared humanity obsolete. They doubted their mundane guns could repel the drone swarms and intelligent munitions they knew would come across the sky, but they planned to enjoy the dignity of dying in a fight. I picked up some kind of machine gun, but Greg said, “Let’s start smaller.” He took me to the woods bordering the farm to let me fire off some revolver rounds.

“Do you have pictures of my mother nailed to all the trees for target practice?” I asked.

“We wouldn’t do something like that.” He gestured to the arching branches with a sweep of his hand. “Forget the farmhouse. This is our real church.”

I’d never even held a gun, let alone fired one. For my second poetry collection, Daughter of Dirt (2027), which one perhaps overly enthusiastic reviewer called “the work of a female Dante writing as if hell, purgatory, and paradise were one and the same,” I composed the following tercets:

The first time she fired

the recoil threw her back

against his chest.

The second time she

got her thumb caught

under the hammer.

He sucked on the tip

of her thumb as the blood

blister rose under

the horny nail.

They made their bed

of leaves and smoke

on the vinous mulch,

gunfire still stinging

in their ears.

We were watching the stars come out through the treetops — it was almost autumn; a few leaves spiraled above us — when I asked your father, “So how did you end up out here?”

“It was Sloane. I met her in my second year of college. Before Sloane, I was exactly the person you remember: smug, self-satisfied, ‘only what we can see is real.’ I had a class with her, though, and she was so quiet. She said things every once in a while, when the professors called on her, but it was never what she said, I don’t even remember what she said. It was her presence. I can’t describe it. You’ve seen her, the look in her eye, like she saw something once and is still looking at it, even though it’s gone. The way she dresses, like she found some clothes on the street and absent-mindedly put some of them on. Like she’s not from here.”

I felt slightly jilted at this tribute to a woman I hadn’t even known to be a rival for your father and probably made some obscene remark. I was very immature in those years, almost 25 years old and still a child.

“You don’t understand. We never had a relationship. We’ve never had sex. I’m not sure she’s ever been with anyone. I’m not even sure she can, not even sure she knows. But I suppose you could say I devoted myself to her, gave myself to her. She’s like my sister, my mother, my teacher, my guru. I’ve followed her everywhere. What else was there in my life? Science? Reason? After a while, what do those mean? I made her favorite books my course of study. I was going to major in computer science but switched to English and philosophy because she gave me a collection of Romantic poetry for my birthday after we became friends. I went to graduate school to specialize in the curriculum that was Sloane. She taught me by example that there was a mystery deep in things, a strangeness you’d never put into words, let alone code. Nothing was stranger than she was. She was getting farther and farther away from everything, though. It only made me come closer. She always told me she was dying. She told me that in our first conversation. I said, ‘You can’t die, I’ve just met you.’ I kept saying that for years, kept feeling like I’d only just met her. From the minute I saw Sloane, it’s like she’s been drifting away, and I’m just clinging on to her legs, trying to hold her down here.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked. He glared at me in the twilight.

“She had leukemia as a child. For years. Years of chemo, operations, nights in the hospital staring into the dark. She showed me pictures, her eyes so sunken you could barely see them, almost all white and bloodshot, her bald head splotched all over with veins and bruises like some kind of map on her skull. She said she prayed every night to die. ‘They were holding me prisoner,’ she told me. She felt she was being kept inside a machine even as some other world was begging her to cross over. She cried when they told her it was going into remission. She said they told her — doctors, therapists, teachers, her parents — that when her body felt better, her mind would, too. But no. She’d seen something, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. ‘I don’t belong here,’ she told me. ‘This is not my home.’ She never came all the way back. In our last year of college, she tried to kill herself. I had to break down the door of her apartment. I couldn’t even see her face under the water, it was so thick with blood. But I pulled her up, got her out, brought her back, breathed life into her on the bathroom floor. She’s never forgiven me. She looked at me like I’d taken her out of the arms of God, which, I guess, I had. But here we are. I go where she goes. She said the earth isn’t her home either, but better the earth than the machine. The earth is closer to the other place, whatever it is, wherever it is. She told me she wanted me to find love, though, real love, a love she could never give me. So I saw the ad for your release party and decided to go. Anything to keep her around; I do what she tells me. But honestly, I planned on kidnapping you or something. Tie you up and ask your mother for ransom, deplete her evil funds. I thought that would impress Sloane more than if I took you on a date. But then I saw you. And then you agreed to come on a date anyway. So here we are, Jen. Here we are.”

It was dark, almost black: cloudy night, new moon. Crickets went at their maddening shrill, a sound I’ve never found any less disturbing than the artificial noises of the city. After a decent interval, to respect the solemnity of what he’d told me, I said, “You have an Orpheus complex.”

“Orpheus? Remind me who he was. I could never keep the myths straight. His wife went to hell, so he created winter?”

“No, you’re mixing up the stories. Persephone is the winter one. It’s meant to explain why there are seasons. What was the word you used to say in high school to explain the rational basis of myths?”

“Euhemerism.”

“Yes, euhemerism. Orpheus was a great singer and poet. He married Eurydice, but she died on their wedding night. He went down to hell to get her back. His songs so moved Hades that Hades agreed to let her out, on the condition that Orpheus travel ahead of her and not look back. He did, though: he looked back. Then he lost her forever. Later, some women tore him to pieces and ripped off his head.”

“What does that myth explain?”

“I don’t know. Why poets are so miserable. Always longing for something they can’t have, shouldn’t even have laid eyes on in the first place.”

He’d been holding me, but when I said this he let me go and stood up, as if I’d insulted him.

“Myths don’t explain anything,” he said, “and nothing explains myths. This complex and that complex: those are just words, not life. It’s so much better to live for something than not. I want you to be a part of the future we’re planning, maybe even its chronicler. You’re a poet: you should know what I’m talking about. A poem is a use of words to get at the life behind words, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Is it?”

“It has to be. Or why use words at all? Why not just touch?”

You were conceived that night, my daughters, as if to replace the two women who were only one month away from being blasted free of the earth.

The morning after Sloane assassinated my mother and then killed herself, the drone swarm chitinated over the horizon and filled the sunrise sky till it was black. We ran — your father and I, the professor, the actress, the minister — into the earthen cellar to get our guns. I looked over my shoulder as I headed down the steps and saw the black chittering mass in the pink-orange sky. It re-assembled its collective carapace into the figure of a massive, monstrous spider, a design of the type my mother used to tell defense companies to embrace for its terrorizing potential. Better to impress than to endear.

I thought I heard my mother’s voice cry, “Baby, come back!” from the heart of the arthropod. Jan explained later that I did hear my mother’s voice, that the authorities had created a small language model based on her collected writings, interviews, and recordings so that she could continue her work from beyond the grave. The private defense contractor the state hired to recover me from The Church of Earth loaded the smart-drones with the SLM on the theory that my mother’s voice might win me back.

The smart drones penetrated the earthen cellar like a hail of bullets before we had our hands on a single gun. Trained not to target me, they whizzed and whirred all around my body, not even clipping a strand of hair. “Sweetie, come back!” the whole sky roared. The cellar door came off its hinges; I could see the sunrise through the holes in the defrocked minister’s torso as he stood for a moment in front of me before collapsing into a raddled heap.

In my third collection of poetry, Queen of Spiders (2029), which has been said to “evince a new maturity as the poet finally confronts the unspeakable,” but which also proved controversial because of my collaboration with the SLM based on my mother’s corpus, I wrote:

I held my romantic

in one final embrace

then a red carnation

blossomed out of his face

I woke in the smoky, blood-flooded cellar with my head in Jan’s lap. “They thought you’d want to see someone you knew,” she explained. She kissed my forehead. Everything went dark again.

I woke up again a month later in the hospital. I heard Jan arguing with the doctor. “I’m her therapist, and I’m telling you she can handle it. It’ll bring her all the way back.” Her elfin face filled my blurry vision. “There you are,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you. You’re pregnant, sweetie. Twins, even. I think we should keep them. I think they’d be good for us.”

I’m finishing this on the night before your fifth birthday. I’ve been writing it for a week instead of the book-length poem I’ve been trying to write lately, The Persephone Complex (under contract, 2032), the poem bottlenecked in my head, too big to get out. (Maybe this is the poem.) Jan has taken you out for 4D-printed ice cream, and I’m alone in my workroom at the top of the house, where I can see far out over the sinuous suburban hills, almost to the top of the city where my mother raised me. We’ve been here for a year; already I can’t imagine living anywhere else. You may not remember, but I hid out with you in Jan’s windowless basement office for the first five years of your lives, too terrified to look at the sky. I heard “Baby, come back” in my dreams and woke up shrieking. Jan patiently excavated my terrors and set me — set us — free. I thought you might like to read the story in my own words when I’m gone, no matter what you hear about it elsewhere. I’m not sure I can ever tell it to you while looking you in the eye, girls. Yes, we live on your grandmother’s considerable inheritance; yes, we feel compromised; no, ethical perfection cannot be attained in this life.

I’ve heard the SLM based on your grandmother still lives somewhere on some corner of the network, even has a cult around it, people who base their lives on “her” instructions, people who take all “her” advice on how to get ahead in this ruthless world, as I never did.

Then there are the Sloanites. They’re still around, though I wonder if they will be when you grow up: those girls with the shaved heads and sunken eyes and random clothes you sometimes see on the sidewalk for a phase in their lives with their willfully hideous and probably infected stick-and-poke Power as Art tattoos, before they get degrees or get jobs or even get married. They don’t go online except every so often to release those rogue programs that sometimes actually work to destroy intelligent systems and cause a blackout or outage for an hour or two. Maybe you’ll be Sloanites. We never know what we might be.

Sometimes I used to say to Jan, “Tell me the truth. I died back there, in that cellar, but you put my body back together and put an SLM based on me in my head.”

Do you know what Jan used to say, Jan, my metaphysician, your other mother? She used to say, “And what difference would it make, Jen? What difference would it possibly make? You’re alive. Enjoy your life.”

Anyway, I found your grandmother’s SLM tonight and uploaded this document to solicit “her” comments. “Put it in the form of a poem,” I commanded, as when we worked together on Queen of Spiders, because when I was a child I thought my mother would have been happier if she’d been a poet, just as I wanted to be, would not have put her energy and intelligence into destruction but rather into creation. The SLM must have picked up ambient knowledge about my mother, myself, and adjacent matters, to judge from its output, which doesn’t sound, except for its first line, like anything I ever heard from my mother.

You’re bustling into the house down below now — I imagine your ice-cream breath: French vanilla, your favorite — laughing with Jan because you don’t know anything about earth and death and art and power yet, so I’ll leave you with my love, and with your machine grandmother’s cryptic final message. Your grandmother, after all, trusted artifice to birth the future.

Spiders impress but they never endear

Little girls should stay out of the forest

On the horns of the womb she bore a pest

A child has borne a hole straight through your head

Nothing gratifies like power, my dear

Earth isn’t big enough to hold the dead

John Pistelli is the author of the novel Major Arcana (Belt Publishing 2025) and of the bestselling Substack newsletter Grand Hotel Abyss. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

Gordon Lewis hasn’t exercised since college. But if you saw him standing outside MacDuffy’s pub, a few blocks from the Clinton Hill Real Estate office, a lean not yet paunched figure, sucking down a Camel Light, you might think he doesn’t look half bad for someone caught in a five-year spiritual free fall. By some genetic miracle, Gordon’s pasty, 29-year-old skin hasn’t soured. Despite the alcohol and the cigarettes and the midday rub and tugs, there is still unharmed youth inside him, perfectly good unspoiled blood waiting to be shaken and stirred in the right direction.

He’s just gotten off the train and strolls residential blocks, sipping a four-dollar coffee. He knows this particular wedge of Brooklyn well. It’s a cash block, he thinks, studying the trees overhead. Prospective homeowners are so predictable. Suckers for names and brands and storied descent. Red maples, silver maples, Norway maples — Gilded Age money trees. From a real estate perspective, there’s no such thing as excessive foliage. White people love vegetation, and will shell out to feel like they’re in a suburb. They live to squeeze babies and jog in the shade and own animals with preposterous origins.

Gordon waits to see if someone will wave at him (personal greetings are lucrative). Across the street a proud brownstone owner rinses stone. Diligent property maintenance. Check. Planters are repositioned one house down. Future herbage. Check, check. A dog walker appears. Triple check. The dog walker is young, female, and wears Alo. Checkmate.

A delivery truck passes slowly, braces for a speed bump. Gordon slurps coffee. The barista used milk instead of cream. His eye lands on a tree he didn’t notice before that messes up his plot average. Gordon recalculates. It’s still about two trees per plot, which means, on the low end, a $100,000 swell in the initial offering price. He sighs. What have I become?

It’s nine in the morning and his coworkers are outside on a bench puffing cigarettes, draining coffees, and sending texts before lunchtime showings. For those who don’t have showings there are other activities. Drinking so much coffee you fall asleep, binging alcohol, saunaing at the local New York sports club. Or stopping by the much-talked-about Chinatown rub and tug.

When Gordon first started at Clinton Hill Real Estate it was a more even split of Anglos and Israelis, but now it’s almost entirely Israeli. Hebrew permeates the office. Ma Coreeeee, Gordddoonnn, Ma Ayanim, achi, meaning “brother.”

They make no effort to speak English around Gordon, and he assumes it doesn’t even occur to them that he doesn’t understand. But Gordon sort of likes it, the not knowing. The not being responsible for the constant fraternal chiming in.

Gordon tries to remember exactly why he chose this Israeli firm. He interviewed at so many places during real estate school, but they were buttoned up and phony. Nowadays people need to think they’re doing something good, that they’re living transformative lives. You don’t become a real estate salesman to remodel your soul, and Israelis understand this better than anyone. When it comes to selling property nothing matters except the deal. The money. The kesef. If you make the sale, you stay. In this business there’s no false sense of morality or deeper sense of purpose. There is no chance of fulfillment. No games. Everyday is stable, dependable avarice.

It’s become hotter in the past 15 minutes. Last night was muggy, gelatinous. A few salesmen jump ship for inside air conditioning. Gordon stretches, finishes his coffee, and considers taking a lead. Is there time to close something before the trip? A quick rental? Not worth it.

The Israelis trash cappuccino cups and crush cigarettes in the empty planter beside the bench. There’s broadcasts of appointments and locations. Leads are exchanged in English and Hebrew, bad ones given to pinker salesmen.

It’s Gordon and Elan outside on the bench.

“You leave tonight?” Elan is saying.

His phone rings before Gordon can answer and Elan’s using his best English accent to solidify an appointment.

“Yep, tonight,” Gordon says to Elan, who’s clearly thinking about something else.

Originally it was Elan’s idea for Gordon to see Tel Aviv, and then everyone more or less pushed for it. The office has been badgering Gordon to go for years. A kind of familial pressure, even though Gordon isn’t Israeli or Jewish. They were insulted when Gordon went to Berlin two years ago instead of Tel Aviv. As if he owed it to them to see their homeland. It seemed too far to travel, he thought. It’s not even Europe. It’s the Middle East, and all the war. Isn’t there a lot of war there?

It’s like Miami, they insisted.

Then I’ll just go to Miami, Gordon had quipped.

It’s different, achi. You need to see this country. The things we do in seventy years. You won’t believe with your eyes.

I’m sure I will.

Gordon’s always found it strange how much they talk about their tiny country, expecting him to give a shit. Does he sit around talking about Wales? That’s where his great-grandparents came from. Wales, now there’s a country. Whatever happened to being soft spoken? Demure. How many conversations has Gordon endured about Israeli tech innovation? If the Israelis didn’t invent it someone else would’ve come along, he figures. Modernization is inevitable. Gordon often imagines how they’d react if he went on a rampage about Dylan Thomas or Richard Burton.

And death shall have no dominion . . .

Gordon lights a cigarette. Elan’s phone is mashed into his ear — it’s only the two of them on the bench. A cleaner muscles through the street, moving trash around. A loose, splayed styrofoam to-go box creeps towards them.

“Floor to ceiling windows, brand new kitchen,” Elan is saying.

Gordon kicks away the to-go box and flips through flight details. An 11-hour trip. Two meals. The plane lands at five in the morning.

“Yes, all new appliances . . . ”

Smoke is exhaled. Gordon groans. What’s he gonna do in Tel Aviv? He Googles “activities in Israel.” There’s pictures of ancient religious sites. Stone walls and domes and camels. Suntanned people wrapped in various fabrics. He digs the cigarette into his mouth and pulls deeply, tries to picture himself there, but can’t. Gordon dislikes all the implied significance, the spiritual earmarks. Religion isn’t a thing he’s ever given much thought. It’s always been an activity or a hobby some people do and others don’t. Needless to say, Gordon doesn’t. He does, however, like falafel sandwiches — fried shit balls — and plans to eat a lot of them there.

Elan flicks through listings on his phone.

“You flying direct?” he asks.

“Yeah. Direct.” Gordon says.

Easy. Yep.

A police car rolls by, flips its siren, and slides through a red. Elan’s saying something about Israeli transit. How to get around. Issssrrrrrael . . . Gordon thinks, drawing out the word that so many people apparently give a shit about. Too many people, in fact. Deadbeats with nothing better to do than fight over real estate. He laughs. A light, forgiving breeze has appeared.

Gordon stubs out the cigarette. He’s sure this trip is a mistake. He’d be perfectly happy working New York’s flaccid real estate market all summer. Taking the occasional beach trip. Demolishing six-packs in front of the TV, spectating slow summer sports. He likes it here in New York. The job is effortless and he’s responsible for very few meaningful relationships. None, in fact. Women come and go on various fast-paced dating apps and bleary-eyed drunken one-offs. Gordon’s got it all. A job, an apartment close to public transit, and a dual-compartment trash can. In other more American cities, Gordon’s weak wrists and bloodless cheeks are a deterrent, clear signs that he can’t change a tire or sire a family. But in New York, his total lack of physical capability beyond the midnight, serial finger-tapping for crosstown sushi and local poon make him a competent, domesticated member of millennial society. Gordon also has a larger than average Adam’s apple.

Gordon trashes the paper coffee cup and relaxes in the air-conditioned office. Most of the desks are rotating, but Gordon has his own. He could be a broker if he wanted, instead of a salesman. He’s had impressive offers to become a partner but isn’t interested. He lives 15 minutes from the office, pulls an easy six figures and manages to save 75 percent of his income. He dislikes acquisition because possession means maintenance. Home owning is overrated, especially in New York. It’s a status symbol. He dislikes furniture and clothing and doesn’t mind throwing away money on cigarettes because their fate is to become smaller. To disappear. To live is to dematerialize. That’s the goal. To move quietly and simply and not bother others.

Gordon clicks through last-minute emails. Follows up with past clients to kindly tell them about his upcoming trip, copy and pasting names of holy sites, rewriting descriptions and inserting fun facts about cuisine. It’s a good way to stay in touch with customers. He finds a colorful blurb from his previous Berlin email blast and changes a few things.

Gordon looks it over. Writing the email makes the trip feel like it’s actually going to happen. There’s a tinge of excitement that quickly vanishes. What was that? he thinks, but squashes it. He hates complicated emotions.

Someone responds to the email blast almost immediately. A woman. Samantha Macon. It’s shocking. In fact, Gordon can’t believe it’s her. Hadn’t he deleted her email address three years ago? They dated for a few months and it ended sadly. The entire thing was sad, Gordon thinks. Sad because it was also, in some ways, good.

Gordon has thought about her since. Quite a bit. Too much, in fact. Especially the time he saw her in passing. She was sitting at a park with some elderly man — a relative — when Gordon walked by eating a bagel. They had agreed to stop speaking, so Gordon didn’t approach, but he did watch her. Samantha. Samantha Macon. She looked different that day. Even from a distance he could tell something had changed. There was less youth. Firm decisions had been made, he gathered. Her brown hair seemed dark, and he couldn’t quite see the color in her eyes from where he stood. The small chin. Gordon remembers wanting to rub his fingers around the sides of her mouth. Gordon’s mouse hovers around the inbox. He looks at the timestamp. It took Samantha less than two minutes to read the email and write back. Incredible. What compelled her to get back in touch? Perhaps enough time has passed that whatever they had is null. He still hasn’t opened the message. Her name there, in the inbox, is painful.

Gordon sold her a condo three years ago. He remembers their first interaction, the first few weeks working together. Samantha was difficult and wanted something very specific: a high-ceilinged duplex in Lower Manhattan. Gordon worked for a real estate company in Brooklyn and didn’t have many Manhattan listings. He tried to refer her but she refused. She was currently living in Brooklyn and claimed to have heard good things about the office. He had trouble believing anything Samantha said. The details were hazy, but he continued showing her listings.

One afternoon, a month into the job, Gordon picked up the phone to Samantha crying, and asked if he should hang up. The call must have been a mistake. A butt-dial.

No, she said, apologizing. The voice on the other end was tentative.

Gordon, she said into the silent echo. Two long sustained breaths perspired into the phone line.

Gordon?

I’m here.

Samantha’s long, damp pauses usually drifted comfortably into questions of bedroom dimensions, mirror to sink proportions, and street noise.

Gordon had just returned home from the office and was unloading a 12-pack into the fridge, cooling his head in the crisp refrigerator air, when the phone rang. The call was more or less an annoyance. He had given up the idea of sleeping with Samantha, sure that she would never actually buy a multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment.

They’d viewed dozens of properties everywhere in the city, but half the time she was too busy to meet, so Gordon sent pictures and videos of interiors — nothing seemed to be good enough for her — and he began to wonder about the money. If Samantha actually had it. The only information he could find was a LinkedIn profile with a single job listing. Samantha had worked at a well-known auction house for two years, but that was four years ago.

I want to tell you something, she said into the phone. Gordon was standing next to the microwave, mindlessly overfilling a chilled pint glass with light deli beer. A baseball game was about to start. It was May and the forecasters predicted a steady drip of acidic New York City rain.

Can I come over? she suddenly said. When Gordon didn’t answer right away she backtracked, something about wanting to understand where he lived. His taste.

It’s okay, Gordon said before another thick pause. There was a humid swooshing inside the phone, as if they were trying to communicate underwater. When the conversation resurfaced, Gordon said his address.

Samantha showed up at Gordon’s door holding an umbrella. He took her rain jacket and they hovered near the entryway exchanging stiff, sedate small talk. Perhaps it was the pattern of the flat oily rain in the window, the slowness of the afternoon, that made everything drag.

She said a few words about his apartment and they watched the baseball game mostly in silence, on opposite sides of the couch, slugging two-dollar lagers.

After the game Samantha fell asleep on the couch. Something made Gordon pick her up and carry her to the bed. He took up on the foldout.

In the morning Samantha was brighter, more talkative, unsure of what happened. She woke up hours before Gordon, anxious, wrapped in his Yankees sheets, and thought about leaving, but liked being hidden from her other world. No one knew where she was. She was finally lost.

Once conscious, Gordon offered her toast and she inspected the plates and silverware very carefully, took a few bites and began to slowly tell him things. Personal things, things she figured he was wondering, and apologized for wasting so much of his time.

Coffee was pressed and Gordon dumped too much cream in her mug and sopped it up with paper towels. He apologized and she apologized and sun leaked through the closed blinds. The air conditioner buzzed from the window and cars ran up and down the avenue outside.

It was almost 10 but the lights were still off in the apartment. Neither seemed to notice that the kitchen looked like dawn. They sat on stools, apologizing for everything, the miscommunication or whatever this was. What was happening? he wondered.

Samantha adjusted herself at the counter where they sat, asking if there was orange juice. When it appeared in a tall pulpy glass, she began to say that nothing was a lie. If Gordon had suspected her of being deceptive or misleading about the apartment search, she was, again, very sorry. It was something else, something she was having trouble describing. When Gordon didn’t pry, she told him about the death of her parents. The massive inheritance she had obtained. The doubt she had in religion, in God, in existence, in herself.

But why are you here? he asked.

I don’t know, Samantha said, swallowing coffee. They were looking at each other, the long water-logged breaths from inside the phone were now in Gordon’s apartment.

I think it’s because you’re not Jewish, she said.

Another email has arrived in Gordon’s inbox. This one is from Marc Nomadsky. He opens the email, scans it. It’s kind and pleasant and meaningless. It’s signed “Best.” This is what Gordon likes. Empty chatter. Pointless conversation. Small talk.

Marc Nomadsky.

Gordon looks around the office. He should really leave. Someone’s texting. An unknown number. A client. He felt fine earlier, but now this. Samantha. He can’t open her email. He also can’t not open it. Hopefully it’s short and flat and he won’t have to think about Samantha Macon ever again. But it’s not. Or at least, her message is suggestive of some sort of contact. Vague contact. There’s a “maybe” encoded in a nebulous invitation to see her. Or perhaps it’s an invitation encoded in a series of maybes.

Samantha apparently moved to Israel two years ago with her husband. But not just Israel, Gordon learns. A settlement. He reads about it online. Samantha lives in a hellish, arid piece of disputed earth called Bat Ayin, famous — reads the Wikipedia page — for terrorism. Samantha says he could maybe, MAYBE, if he has time, swing by.

Swing by a settlement! He grins. That’s a first.

Gordon leans back in the desk chair, throws his hands above his head and sighs. This really fucks the day, he thinks. Samantha moved to a goddamn settlement? She must have met someone and gotten engaged immediately after me.

What is it with religious people and land? The office is filled with people who seem to care about nothing but land, real estate. At this very moment he can see them all clearly, high-strung Israelis motoring between phones, espresso shots, and texts, working deals. What are they hoping for? he wonders. What binds them? What do they hope to leave behind? Land? Fertile Jewish land?

He remembers Samantha talking about it. The land. The need for Jews to own something in the world. There are twenty Muslim countries, she used to say. Why can’t we have a Jewish state? Gordon used to shake his head a lot during these conversations. He didn’t know, and frankly he thought that life couldn’t possibly be so complicated. Isn’t there just humanity? Isn’t that a thing? But she was fixated on future generations. Leaving something behind. Gordon doesn’t consider eternity. He doesn’t consider lives beyond lives or alternate universes. There is no posterity. There are only uptown evening baseball games in the summer, chilled fall mornings, and extended happy hours. There are home runs and strikeouts.

When Gordon dies he hopes to leave behind several sets of well-threaded sheets, one very large smart television, a few mid-century furnishings, and a lifetime of indifferent emotions that may or may not circle the ether on an endless loop, like a tingle that spins through the nose but never manages to induce a sneeze.

Gordon also owns a wok.

The ride to the airport is quick and smooth. He’s two and a half hours early. There are other early arrivals, preflight passengers munching 17-dollar airport burgers. A woman eats a hard-boiled egg on the floor beside an electric outlet. A father disciplines a child in dry, inhumane Russian. Gordon’s searching for a place to drink. He walks up and down the terminal past magazine shops walled with Dramamine, currency exchange vestibules, and overpriced conveyor belt sushi. Shake Shack has a beer tap, but there’s a line. It’s a decent beer list but . . . the line, and he wants to get drunk. He needs to stop thinking about Samantha. Swing by the settlement, he thinks. If you happen to be in the hood . . .

There’s only one terminal bar that isn’t packed. It’s patrolled by a pockmarked male with a massive nose. Gordon plops down on a stool and quickly sinks a lager. There’s tennis on television. Replays, but he knows the results from a series of ESPN notifications. It’s a shame he’ll be missing so many summer sports while away. He really could just stay, he thinks. Exchange the ticket, make something up. The bartender signals. Gordon accepts the refill, licks foam from the top of the beer, and drills it. He’s buzzed now. A few more and he’ll be drunk.

It’s almost 11 when Gordon stumbles out from the bar. He’s once again idling at D23, staring out the window. Plane lights drop in the sky from enormous heights and clunk into the tarmac.

“We will begin boarding shortly,” a voice says.

The trip is fast approaching, but Gordon doesn’t feel like he’s leaving. He catches an unwelcome gust of Chinese food blown in from a nearby Panda Express. Now there’s an unearthing of insentient energy. A slow herd of bodies begin a massive peeling from sticky leather airport seats into the boarding line. He finds a sleeping pill in his bag, dryly slugs it back, and wakes to a stewardess’ voice 11 hours later.

He’s tapped and then shaken.

“Excuse me, sir. Sir. We’ve arrived.” Gordon gathers his things. His mouth is crusted shut, fecal. The plane’s empty. He hears a vacuum. There’s cleaners behind him, murmuring, possibly about him. The stewardess smiles, hands him a plastic cup of cold water, and guides him out of the aircraft.

“Welcome to Israel,” she says.

The shiny airport light hits Gordon hard; he’s drowsy. It’s six in the morning in Tel Aviv and he’s at an airport coffee vestibule, killing multiple espressos, when it suddenly dawns on him that he’s actually in the Middle East. It is sort of awful, he thinks, not understanding. There’s Israelis approaching him in English with cab offers. Gordon shoots one last espresso and heads to an ATM to pull shekels.

He’s outside the airport now. It’s pleasant. Tropical tasting. Gordon unbuttons his shirt. There’s an address on his phone; he flags down a cab. He wants a sandwich. Egg and cheese on a roll dripping with sauce. Hot sauce. Gordon loves hot sauce.

He’s dropped off at the Hilton, the best hotel in Tel Aviv, according to Trip Advisor. It’s on the beach and is beyond lovely, he remembers reading. Lovely, ha. He never uses that word, but the hotel really is lovely. The looking out at the Mediterranean Sea and all the little comforts: the bathrobe and slippers and thoughtful toiletries. Everyone speaks English.

Now he’s sitting 55 floors above the water, sipping arak. Gordon had asked the waiter for the native liquor. There’s complimentary snacks tucked away in the corner of the ocean-view room. Coffee, cheese, sweet cereal. Gordon sighs, looking out at the water, wondering what to make of all this. He checks his phone and sees her name again, Samantha Macon. Macon, Samantha, idling in the inbox.

Bodies dot the sandy shoreline below, speckling the bright sea.

Gordon wastes the rest of the day high above them, steadily drinking, wondering about all the humanity down there.

The next few days are spent wandering aimlessly. Drifting between Hilton poolside lounge chairs and plastic beach recliners. When Gordon’s not eating or sleeping, he lives mostly in the complimentary bathrobe, cruising hotel hallways for crushed ice and vending machines, wolfing ice cream bars, gulping booze.

He spends an entire day in bed paging room service, binge-watching an emasculating Israeli television show about IDF operatives that makes his own life seem extremely pointless. When Gordon conquers both seasons in a matter of days, he wades through a few polite emails trickling in from New York. Most of them are signed “Warmly,” “Kindly,” or “Best.” One woman asks him to touch the wall for her.

For dinner Gordon eats a bloody burger on the 55th floor, glancing up only occasionally to watch the sun’s inevitable drop over the sea. He’s texting someone back, a former client who asks about appreciation. This isn’t Gordon’s area, but a quick Zillow scan answers the question.

Samantha’s name appears again in the middle of his inbox. It’s getting pushed down. If you choose to swing by, Samantha writes, I can send further instructions.

Instructions?

She hopes Gordon will come, but is sure he won’t. Why, Gordon wonders, does she want to see me? He’s dabbing at the swamp of ketchup and mayo with several french fries, sends it down with more icy arak.

Gordon tries to imagine the arid landscape of Bat Ayin and drifts hazily back to the television show. They were mostly in the settlements, he’s pretty sure, and pictures himself as one of those heavily-bearded operatives muscling through the West Bank.

Red juice from the hamburger slab has formed a marsh of salad and potatoes. He’s thinking about a particular episode from the second season . . . Israeli forces are tearing through dirt roads on jeeps. So cool, he thinks. The way it was filmed. Those narrow pathways and little bunkers — so secretive. Once again his phone is out, Googling “Bat Ayin landscape,” and then he punches directions into the keypad.

It’s a half-day trip from Tel Aviv. Multiple buses. He’d have to transfer in Jerusalem.

He sends Samantha a message. A short, cold email that says something in the spirit of: “Fine. I’ll come. Why the hell not. Send details.”

Gordon abandons the last bite of burger and looks out the window where the sun seems to have plummeted into the sea. There was light a minute ago, but now the night is black and the moon is nowhere.

He locks his phone and exhausts the remaining drops of watered-down liquor. The bill is tacked to his room and soon he’ll be at the downstairs bar, with 12-dollar pints of Goldstar.

Gordon regrets finishing the television show so quickly. Now he has nothing to do. It was fun, watching it alone in the room beside the sea view. There’s so many different kinds of lives, he thinks . . .

. . . and I’m living this one.

His phone dings with random texts. New York real estate has slowly, in the last few days, become a phantom. All communication seems to arrive from a series of ghosts who were never all that alive in the first place.

Gordon wakes up much later than planned, trapped inside a hangover. He drags himself to the bathroom, vomits into the shower drain, and stays there for an hour, dry heaving.

Breakfast is easier after the morning purge. He eats through a medley of tomatoes, cucumbers, and soft cheeses. Last night is spotty. He blinks. There were people at the downstairs bar, Americans mostly. Couples. So many couples, and he remembers feeling worse about it than he used to. Being alone. It’s okay to be 30 and single in New York, but not anywhere else.

Gordon pours himself another cup of coffee and studies bus times to Bat Ayin. It’s overwhelming — the trip, but he could be there in three hours . . . with Samantha . . .

. . . Samantha. Samantha Macon. The name still doesn’t feel quite real to him, that it’s somehow back in his life. She wrote back to him last night. Directions. Strange directions to her house, and now he’s wondering if he did send that stupid email he drafted sometime after 1:00 a.m. He’s scouring the outbox, scrolling. Apparently he didn’t, but sort of wishes he had. He wishes it was over. That there was no one out there in Bat Ayin or anywhere else asking to see him.

Gordon’s at the front desk ordering a cab straight to Jerusalem. It’s what rich people do, he thinks: flipping cabs between major cities. Gordon does, after all, have an impressive amount saved. He hates acquisition more than he likes money and doesn’t mind parting with it as long as he isn’t stuck with loose, meaningless possessions. He’s feeling more awake, less bloodless, and sort of excited to be going somewhere. Being in a settlement with Samantha is, without a doubt, the only thing that could have pulled him from bed after a night of heavy drinking.

Now he’s in a cab, reviewing Samantha’s directions. The letting off at a certain bus stop a quarter mile from her home. Then he’s supposed to take a back road through low bushes down a hill until he’s at the back door of her house. No one can see you come here, she writes. And below the text is a hand-drawn map that’s been photographed with arrows and places to stay away from. There’s patches of open, unfenced areas where civilians and IDF soldiers patrol, but Samantha downplays the danger. There are incidents, the email says, but it’s rare.

When the cab pulls into the Jerusalem bus station, Gordon sees the sweaty horde of Orthodox Jews crowding the entrance, piling into the security line. It’s a holiday of some sort, the cab driver says.

Gordon, not liking the sound of it, changes his mind.

“Can you drive me to this address?” Gordon says. The driver looks at the map on Gordon’s phone. Cars pass. They’re parked outside the station, idling.

“Bat Ayin?! Why would you go there?”

“To see a friend.”

“Only crazy people live there,” he says.

“I guess my friend’s crazy.”

The driver sighs, making a real stink. He’s turning Gordon’s phone map over in his thick hands, groaning. Gordon rolls down his window, the air’s much drier in Jerusalem. He’s not sweating anymore. There’s a chill. It’s almost two in the afternoon.

“Fine,” the driver says. “Four hundred shekels more.”

“Three hundred,” Gordon says.

The driver seems surprised Gordon knows to negotiate.

“Three twenty-five.”

“Fine.”

The cab climbs the hills outside of Jerusalem and downshifts, speeding through olive groves and vineyards. Idyllic stone houses freckle long green expanses. It’s a postcard, Gordon thinks. All the white stones.

Ten minutes later they’re breaking for a checkpoint. “The first of several,” the driver explains. “Three maximum, but it’s no problem coming from this side.” The soldier waves them through easily. No words are exchanged, Gordon is barely glanced at.

“You have friend in crazy settlement?”

“Yeah. One.”

“Hope he has machine gun.”

Gordon keeps the window rolled down. It’s early in the afternoon and the sky is filled with thin scattered clouds. It’s the healthiest he’s felt all trip, his head hanging out the window sopping up fast, dry air.

“Are we in the settlements?” Gordon asks.

“We’ve been in for ten minutes, my friend. All of this. Everything you see.”

They’re cruising residential neighborhoods. Israeli soldiers are everywhere, smoking in front of bus stops, hitchhiking, talking on cell phones. Families with strollers idle on benches and street corners.

Gordon begins to notice that they’ve been driving for a very long time now, and that he is very far from Tel Aviv. From the Hilton. From complimentary espresso pods, macadamia nuts, and baklava. The cab rattles up another sharp hill and then blows through a roundabout. Gordon hardly notices the change in scenery. He’s thinking about how to get back, or if he’ll sleep there. He isn’t sure what to expect. The car hurls through strips of restaurants and shops and then they turn onto a dirt road. It’s long and narrow and at the end is a gate.

“Bat Ayin,” the driver says. “End of the line.”

“What’s beyond it?”

“Nothing,” says the driver. “Arabs.”

An Israeli soldier exits the shed next to the gate. A gun hangs from his shoulder. He’s young. Twenty, Gordon thinks. Tan. Very tan. And another equally young, equally male soldier has appeared from behind him to share some piece of information. They look at the plates, then at Gordon in the back seat. Gordon smiles instinctively, which seems to do nothing, and there’s more guttural chatter.

Gordon’s tossing his phone back and forth in his hands, noticing the great mass of rolling hills beyond the gate. It does, he thinks, look ancient. Gordon can’t put his finger on what makes something appear biblical, but this place definitely does. Maybe it’s the trees?

Now the cab driver’s laughing at something. All of them are. The soldiers nod and wave the car through. Gordon instructs the driver towards a street. He’s following Samantha’s map. Tracing a dotted line towards a synagogue. This is it.

“Okay?” the driver says.

Gordon fishes loose cash from his pocket, tips exorbitantly. The trip was nice, scenic.

He walks the perimeter of the synagogue, looking for a pathway. He feels like a spy, sleuthing. Like an operative, edging into low shrubs. A mosquito zaps his neck; he’s too slow to slap it. It’s buggy here. Flies dive in and out of shit piles on the ground. Whose shit is this? he wonders. Cows? He’s reminded of the Wikipedia page, something about Bat Ayin being a sort of ecological hell.

Gordon steps into a clearing where shrubs are replaced by massive rocks. Stones. There’s a view, an enormous wide ravine separating Bat Ayin from what he figures is a Palestinian village. It is an impressive landscape. Dramatic. There’s an extremely steep drop, and anchored into the foot of the ravine is a shack — similar to the checkpoint — where several IDF jeeps sit.

He sidesteps — not wanting to be seen — glancing at the phone. He’s not far now and ducks through a broken, splintered fence until he’s at a farmhouse. Someone passes, a bearded man in a yarmulke. He’s casually dressed, friendly seeming even with the machine gun.

Gordon stops. Is this it? It’s more of a trailer than a house. Birds flap above him, swooping into the gorge.

The man is still watching, waiting.

What do I do? Gordon thinks, marching slowly forward.

He sees the number of Samantha’s house, a dingy trailer 30 yards away and saunters on, ignoring the man’s stare. A door has opened. There’s footsteps. A whisper of his name and Gordon sees her cowering behind the flimsy back door. It’s all too strange, he thinks. A woman he had considered so regal, so refined, reduced to this perilous wasteland.

The door closes him in. A shadow drifts. It’s dreamlike and now they’re in a tiny kitchen where Samantha pours him a cup of water. A refrigerator opens. The light’s washed, stippled.

“You must be thirsty,” she’s saying. “It’s so dry.”

Samantha hasn’t stopped moving. He wants her to stop. He wants to look at her.

“Samantha,” Gordon says.

Samantha hands him a cup. She’s wearing a long black dress that covers everything — even her wrists — and a headwrap. Also, she’s pregnant. Very pregnant. There was no mention of it in the email.

“It’s safe to drink,” she says, trembling.

Gordon sips. The water’s thick and tepid, jaundiced. She calms down. They face each other.

“Tastes terrible,” he says.

Flies and mosquitos streak in and out of the kitchen. There are holes in the screens. Flawed seals in the cheap wood.

“I miss the water in New York,” she admits. “That’s one thing.”

“One thing?!” Gordon laughs. She smiles.

“This place is a shithole, Sam.”

“You don’t move here for the amenities,” she relents. “We’re waiting for our house to be built.”

Gordon crushes another insatiable mosquito into his arm. Blood squirts.

“The checkpoints were interesting,” he notes.

She smirks and says something about it not being as bad as it was. It’s calmed down a lot — the violence— ever since a series of stabbings a few years ago.

“What about the fundamentalist dress code?” Gordon asks.

“This is how women dress here.”

“Jesus Christ,” he says. “Where the fuck am I?”

The entire layout is visible from the kitchen. There’s a love seat and a crib folded into itself leaning against the wall. The most depressing furnishing is a flimsy rocking chair that appears to be dying near a window overlooking a pile of parched shrubs.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she says.

Her face is healthier than Gordon remembers. She’s been in the sun. Less chemical food, perhaps. He’s wondering about her hair, what it looks like under the wrapping. They’re standing by the sink. Gordon sets the cup on the counter.

“What’s with the headwrap?” he says.

“It’s a religious community,” Samantha says, rummaging through a cupboard, muttering something about there being more snack food somewhere, but Gordon’s distracted. He finds photos of her husband on the fridge. He’s dark, leathery — yarmulke-d. He can’t believe it. That people can spend their days here, in this hellhole.

Doesn’t she miss New York? Gordon wonders, thinking about his apartment, his bed. His Yankees memorabilia. Waking up to a city cracking with noise. Cars and drilling and deli sandwiches. Mindless chatter with bodega cashiers and cab drivers. The swiping of the MetroCard. Tennis and drunken one-offs.

“This is a settlement though, right?”

“It’s a religious settlement,” she says. “Didn’t you read about it?”

“I did. A bit.”

“Women have to be married to live here.”

“Jesus Christ. I didn’t read that part,” he says. “So where’s your husband?”

“In China. For work.”

“Oh.”

Samantha runs a hand over her stomach. They’re looking at each other, silent in the muted kitchen light. There’s a strange electric humming from somewhere in the trailer that cuts in and out.

“I guess I’m glad I came,” Gordon says.

“I’m happy you came, too,” she says, so quickly that Gordon doesn’t quite believe it. The comment is followed by a long, agonizing pause in conversation.

“Can I hug you?”

She shakes her head.

“No.”

They’ve steadily, unconsciously ambled into the paneled space between the living room and kitchen.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” she admits.

“You invited me!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d actually come. I didn’t think it through.”

“And I drank all night. I was so fucking hungover,” Gordon says, tightening a fist.

She unleashes an enormous frustrated sigh.

“I’m sorry, Gordon. I don’t know what I wanted out of this.”

“Whatever,” he answers. “Now I can say I’ve been to a settlement.”

They’re in the living room now. It’s barely lit, subdued. Gordon thinks he hears a gunshot somewhere but doesn’t mention it. Bug tape dangles above the love seat.

“The thing is, I’m not supposed to be alone with a man who’s not my husband.”

“So tell them I’m gay.”

Gordon plops down on the love seat, hoping she’ll join him, but Samantha’s hovering distractedly near the window, glancing out every once in a while, crossing and uncrossing her arms. She leaves him there on the love seat slapping mosquitoes, anxiously wondering what’s going to happen. When she returns with a plate of cookies his face rushes with blood. This isn’t the scenario he imagined. He thought it would be much different somehow. That she wouldn’t be pregnant. That she would have some news about a divorce and they would jump back into their usual game of sex in strange places. That was their thing for a while: Brooklyn bar bathroom hopping. Pulling up skirts and dresses in tight scummy stalls, laughing about it afterward.

Gordon looks around the lifeless living room, taking notice of all the potential ledges they could conceivably fuck on. There are few.

“Why did you even email me?” he asks her.

They’re munching cookies. It’s less awkward now, but there’s so many unanswered questions. Gordon wonders how she looks under the dress. He’s seen plenty of pregnant pornography.

“When you sent that email I realized I wanted to see you. That’s all. Someone from my past life.”

“How did it happen though? Moving here?”

“It was always the plan.”

“Moving to a settlement?!”

Samantha shakes her head. The outside temperature must have dropped. It’s chillier inside the trailer, getting steadily darker outside. There’s an orangish glow poking into the room. Sunset.

“Would you stop that?” Gordon says.

“What?” she responds.

“You keep looking out the window. It’s making me nervous.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, pawing at another cookie. “I’ll stop.”

Gordon feels sorry for her. This a trap, he thinks. Someone manipulated her, sold an ideology. A brainwashing has taken place. She’s the same. She’s normal.

“You completely stopped talking to me,” he says to her.

“I was married,” she says, pulling up the sleeves on her dress revealing two bony wrists. Her eyes are welling, puffy with tears. Gordon’s surprised, but not shocked. There was something strange about their entire relationship, but he told himself he wasn’t emotionally invested. Certain neighborhoods were inexplicably off limits during the three months they dated. They never saw each other on weekends, and she had two phones.

Samantha explains that she was living on the Upper West Side with her husband. She did inherit a lot of money and her parents did die. She wasn’t lying about that. But she wanted to escape. At the time she thought she wanted to leave her husband, and the apartment would be a first step towards independence.

“Why didn’t you?” Gordon asks.

She’s looking down, holding the half-eaten cookie in one hand, catching loose tears with her sleeve. Unable to answer the simple question.

“Because, this is what I am. This is what I am, Gordon.”

Samantha’s crying now, pinching the cookie. He has tried to touch her several times, more or less innocuously. Slight brushes of the arms and knees. Testing. But finally, she relents. It’s too much for her, she admits. The settlements. The living in constant fear. The community watchdogs. The patrolling. “There’s a machine gun in the bedroom,” she says. They keep it loaded. She’s afraid of someone killing the unborn child.

“But you believe in it?” Gordon asks, taking her hand. Samantha doesn’t pull back this time. She’s leaning against him on the love seat. Their limbs touch; he’s rubbing his hand on her covered head. Her body’s warm, and Gordon wonders what it must feel like being pregnant and alone, imprisoned in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, constantly fighting. Hated by the world.

Samantha rubs Gordon’s hand over her stomach.

“I think she’s sleeping,” she says.

“It’s a girl?”

“Yeah. I don’t feel kicking.”

They sit there for an hour barely speaking, feeling the weight of each other’s bodies. There’s a swell of emotion inside Gordon he doesn’t quite understand, or care to analyze. This is the most time he’s ever spent with a pregnant person.

When Samantha falls asleep, he adjusts and she wakes up. They’re curled together — coupled — not unlike before. Gordon, feeling restless, begins to unravel the cloth, the wrapping, piece by piece from her head.

She stirs.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see you,” he says.

“Gordon . . . ” Samantha says, readjusting. “I’m married.”

“You were always married.”

She pulls crust from her eye, looks at him. Twilight has fallen and a dry chill sweeps through the trailer. Gordon continues to unwrap the hair covering until it falls to the floor. Light brown hair flops onto her shoulders and Gordon grabs a handful. He can’t help himself, something has overtaken him.

“See?” she says. “Hair.”

He’s inhaling the strong unwashed odor released from inside the headwrap. Gordon wants to kiss her, and starts to lean. He thinks he loves her. He’s positive he loves her. This is how love feels, he’s sure. Gordon’s avoided it his entire life without knowing exactly why, but this is a moment, he thinks. This is a moment he’ll remember.

Samantha bends back to avoid him.

“You should go soon,” she says. “I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea. You’ll have to catch the bus. It’s getting late.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

Samantha is once again looking out the window, wondering what would happen if someone saw them together. She would be tossed from the community, shunned and name-called. When Gordon stands up Samantha takes hold of his hand, presses it to her mouth, and kisses it.

“Seeing you wasn’t a mistake,” she says. Her phone’s out, flipping through bus times.

“But I know we’ll never see each other again.”

Gordon nods. It’s true.

When Gordon’s outside the trailer he walks to the edge of the rocky cliff and looks out at the ravine. There’s a long, deep path leading to the IDF encampment. Jeeps idle. Plumes of smoke rise from a village on the other side.

Noah Rinsky is the creator of @oldjewishmen and the author of the bestselling humor book, The Old Jewish Men’s Guide to Eating, Sleeping, and Futzing Around. His personal Substack is Father’s Milk.

She had been telling me a story for most of our date, a story that seemed half-truth, half-lie. I wasn’t sure how we got on the topic, but I didn’t dislike listening to her speak. The woman was a lover, but she was not a friend. She existed in that hazy space between passion and convenience.

She twirled her little brown braid around her index finger — she had pianist hands — and looked at me with her wet, green eyes. Her eyes had a certain blank hopefulness that reminded me of cow eyes. “I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went to Vietnam. Not that I was that interested in speaking the language. It’s very hard. But really the culture . . . I thought the culture was interesting since I took all those history classes on the Vietnam War.”

“And what did you not expect?” I asked. We had met two months ago through a mutual friend who knew she liked Asian men and had seen each other only a few times. I had never been with a white woman before her. She had asked if I was Vietnamese and I had shaken my head. I was not sure why I lied, because she probably knew that I was.

“Well, I’m getting there.” She took a sip of her coffee, filled to the brim with steamed milk and whipped cream and noted with a smirk, “This coffee is good, but it’s not as good as the coffee in Vietnam.”

An employee bussed her empty plate. I handed him mine. The coffee shop was small and only had enough seating for a few people. We sat at a table by the window.

“I wanted to take a vacation, because work generally is terrible. I’ve told you all about my awful manager. So I planned this whole trip with these friends so we could all catch up and take some time off.

We went to these caves in the middle of Vietnam. They have these limestone caves that are massive and you can hire a guide. We went to Hang Sơn Đoòng, the ten of us. We swam into the cave, which was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done, but hopefully won’t be the coolest thing I’ll ever do. It felt very spiritual.”

I smiled. I didn’t tell her I had been to that exact cave. I had seen the limestone cascade downwards toward the cave bottom; water that drips long enough can penetrate any stone. In fact, I still remembered swimming in and the exact moment when all the light from the entrance had abated and I reached the rocky beach deep inside.

“I was having fun with the group. We were friends from college, but we’d all ended up in different cities. And I’m not sure what I said, but I somehow became the butt of all the jokes. Like they were making fun of my job and my hair and I don’t know if I would have minded it years ago, because we used to be mean like that all the time in college, but I did in Vietnam.” I took a bite of my chocolate chip scone.

“Like, my friend had a picture on her phone of my ex-boyfriend’s new tattoo. And I asked if I could see it and they all said ‘don’t show it to her,’ and what else was I supposed to do except play along? Even though I really wanted to see it.”

The coffee shop door had a bell attached to the top and it would ring whenever someone came in. She put a little bit of hair into her mouth and sucked on the ends for a second. When she took it out, the hair was compressed and tight, all the pieces coming together in one big strand. I hoped I would remember not to run my hands through her hair when we slept together that evening.

“Seriously, I’m a nice person,” she said, “You know I give pizza slices to homeless people every week. You’re still coming with me to do it this Thursday, right?”

I nodded. A woman accidentally bumped into my chair on her way out and did not apologize. I closed my eyes for a moment.

“Anyways, our tour guide, Khanh, would always eat with us and play cards with us at night. He told us he was from Cát Bà Island and that Cát Bà really meant ‘woman’ in Vietnamese. Which is very romantic. My best friend or maybe former best friend, I’m not sure, thought he was cute. He was really ripped, but he had these teensy tiny little nipples.”

We only had sex in the dark. I liked to shut off the lights so that I could feel the soft skin of her thighs without knowing whether she closed her mouth when she moaned or whether her eyes had a look of boredom or yearning when I moved inside of her. When she turned on the lights after, everything would jump into a sharp clarity that hurt my eyes. The sheets had been scratchy, and they had smelled like her dog. Her sink had been unclean with brown flecks in it. But sex was sex, and I took it when I got it. It was all disappointingly familiar.

“And none of the people around me would talk to me. It was like I was sitting in my tent and they would all go play cards and then I would see them later and they would invite me to join. But Khanh would come over and sit with me or he would watch me when I rinsed myself in the water. You know how you know when someone is watching you?”

I nodded. I remembered when I had been at a concert a year ago, how I could tell someone had their eyes on me. It was almost a paranoid feeling like someone was breathing on your neck; it was a vibration that seemed to bore into your back until it moved up your spine and reached the tip of your tongue. When I turned around, I saw an older man watching me, and I stopped dancing and instead felt odd and ashamed. It was, at the time, a fear and a comfort that I was invisible, but after the concert, I realized that I did not like the rawness of being seen and enjoyed the privilege of an unassuming existence. I did not see the man when I left.

“At the end of the first week, on Sunday night, he was passing by my tent and saw that I was still up and scrolling on my phone. So he asked if I wanted to have tea to help me sleep. We sat at the little table, there’s one at every campsite, and he kissed me. He tasted good, like sweat.

And we ended up having sex, protected of course, that week. But it was discreet. It only happened late at night and I was tired the next day, but the raw energy we had. It was there.”

“Did he ever do it with other women on the tour group?”

“Well, I’m getting there and you don’t need to be crass. It’s not called ‘doing it,’” she reprimanded me. She had told me some story about her sexual escapade at 18 with a 70-year-old man a week ago, although I was not sure if it was more exaggeration or truth. I balled my hands into fists and then released. An odd, sour taste rose up in my mouth, but I swallowed it and took another sip of my coffee.

I finished my scone, but a few crumbs fell down my chin and onto the table. I hated when that happened, so I scooped them all up and collected them on a napkin. I didn’t know what time it was, but I could see that the coffee shop was clearing out and the employees were washing all the mugs and machines.

When I had visited family in Vietnam as a teenager, I liked going to the jungles the most. I remembered when we had been on a tour and I had seen a viper. It had small, slit eyes and was passive, almost relaxed in the way it looked at me. That same tour, a leech had attached to my hand and the guide had torn it off and dropped it on the ground.

“He was very sweet. He went down on me a lot. And he seemed grateful when he did it. You know how you can tell when someone is grateful? I thought I was falling in love with him. He saw me. Because he was so different from other men I had been with.”

“I think I understand,” I said, although I wasn’t sure if I’d ever had someone be grateful for sex with me; I wondered if I was always the grateful one. Did she think about him when she was fucking me? Was I more satisfying, more pleasurable for her?

The bell on the door rang. A man walked in and the employees at the counter waved him away. It was too late for new orders. They began stacking up chairs on the table.

“And you know what he did at the end of the trip? He asked me for money, can you believe that? He asked me for money on the last night and I gave it to him, because he started crying. I felt cheated, because he was just preying on my pity and discretion. He didn’t threaten me or anything, but he definitely took advantage of me, you know? It was very toxic. I cried when I got home and never told anyone else about this. Well, except my therapist. Of course I told my therapist but nobody else.” She laughed when she said this.

I was not sure if I believed it all. She told stories like these all the time. She liked to go for the shock factor. I was not even sure she had been to Vietnam, although I knew she had gone to Japan the year before. All white women loved Japan, because it was safe and palatable. The people there were cute and harmless and not dirty and angry like the rest of Asia.

I rubbed my thumb against my temple in a circular motion and nodded.

“I looked him up on Facebook recently. Khanh has a child! A child. And a wife. They were married when we had sex. Isn’t that terrible?”

I shrugged my shoulders, and licked the edge of my coffee mug. Our relationship was not serious. It was definitively casual.

“Seriously, he had a kid. And he was off having sex with some twenty-year-old. And he was crying and crying, you know, just begging me for money.” She scoffed and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“That’s horrible,” I agreed, soothing her even as my leg shook up and down with an irrepressible restlessness.

When she went to the bathroom, I paid the check. I saw that she left an inch of coffee at the bottom of her cup, so I downed it quickly. I left a 25 percent tip, even though nobody was watching.

What did it matter whether it was true or not? She would take me home that night; we would have sex. It would be neither inspired nor dramatic, but confused and fumbling, an unusual self-inflicted wound, and then I would put my clothes back on and leave before midnight.

Over dinner, my friends asked me how things were going with the green-eyed girl. I picked a thin strip of meat out of the hot pot and popped it into my mouth. The water bubbled.

I hesitated for a moment, chewing the meat. “I’m not sure if we click,” I said.

“Right, but have you had sex?” My friend called over the waitress and ordered another round of pork. I drank some of the corn tea and swished it around in my mouth.

“Yeah. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good,” I said.

“But, you did it,” he noted, his cheeks ruddy from the steam of the soup. “I mean, you’re not doing too bad with a white girl chasing after you.”

I felt a dull pain in my forehead. I wondered if the heat from the soup was making me dizzy.

“What’s wrong with her?” another friend asked. “She seemed nice when we met her.”

“She is,” I agreed, and considered the woman’s niceness, “I’m going with her to hand out pizza to the homeless this week.” Every Thursday evening, she would order a whole pie from the Italian place on King Street and hand out slices to homeless people. Sometimes, she taped the entire thing on Instagram Live, so everybody could see what she was doing.

More meat came out, a see-through red on a white platter. I took one out from the pot that was half-raw, and the rawness made it taste like nothing at all.

The conversation shifted to my friend’s new apartment and how he intended to furnish it. I twirled a noodle around my chopstick and emptied my mind.

In the morning, the light came into my room in fitful shards, but the air was pale and fresh as if after a storm.

The day passed. I felt a churning in my stomach, and thought about canceling the date with the woman. I wrote out the text, but did not send it.

We met at the pizza place at seven in the evening. She was standing at the corner and waved me over. When we hugged, I felt her press her chin on my shoulder. She was wearing a heavy perfume, a mumbling and confused odor that reminded me of department stores. It crossed my mind that I should try to kiss her more often, but I hesitated and the moment was lost.

At the counter, I offered to pay for the whole pie. She paused, and did not reach for her wallet, so my card hovered over the counter until the man took it and handed me the check. A vein on my forehead pulsed.

We waited at one of the three tables inside. A group of teenage boys was sitting behind us talking about how Lance had finally felt up Anna at a party, but she had small breasts so it really wasn’t as great as he thought it would be. I could see how the conversation disturbed the woman — she had her fingers wrapped up in a fist — and tried talking over them, asking her how her day had been.

She nodded and smiled, but stared up at the empty bulbs above us, spreading a harsh, yellow-tinted light. The left edge of the woman’s mouth twitched.

I was glad when the pizzas arrived. I took out a slice. We walked down the street to search for homeless people. The sky was colorless. The air had the thick odor of urine.

I sometimes found it hard to see the people who could be sitting on a corner in shaggy clothing, blending into the background as if they existed in some murky fog. Or perhaps I did not want to see them, because what would seeing them do? Sometimes I found myself walking too close to one of them and would realize with an odd and painful twinge, as if a needle had punctured my skin, that they were there, always looming in the background like a darkness pressing in.

She handed out the slices, always with a neat, pretty smile.

A man thanked her and called her beautiful, told her that she was an angel. He stretched the “a” out so the word sounded a few syllables long. He asked her if she had any spare change. He said he needed to pay for a hotel so he could take a shower. I winced at how the teeth in his mouth were crusted with black.

She nodded and began to take out her wallet.

“You’re going to give him money, too?” I asked, incredulous, as she handed over a pressed $20 bill to the man.

“Yes, of course,” she whispered under her breath. The man grasped it and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“Why did you give money to him and not the rest?” We continued walking. We passed by another homeless man, but she must not have noticed him, or if she noticed, she did not care.

“Well, why not?”

“He didn’t even do anything.”

“He said something nice to me. And you don’t know that. Don’t you donate money?”

“I do. But only to old Asian people.” She stopped by a homeless woman and handed her two slices. The woman’s nails had dirt underneath them, and she was holding a cardboard sign that said, Need money kicked out of house in strong, black block letters. The homeless woman thanked her and began to cry, but we were already moving down the street. She was just a shadow in the day now.

“That seems problematic.”

“Why?” I asked, even though I knew that pressing the conversation was going to be fruitless.

“You don’t give money to any other type of person?” Her mouth was in this little downwards pout so that her upper lip looked puffier than it really was.

“Nope.” A fly buzzed close to my ear, and I smacked myself trying to get at it. But like all flies that buzz close to ears, it evaded me and flew away to buzz close to someone else’s ear. We passed by an Asian American man, thin and tiny like a baby bird, pushing along a cart of bottles. One of them oozed onto the sidewalk, causing a small trail of fluid to follow him.

“Why not?” she said.

“Because I want to help Asian American people like me. Like those old people collecting cans in grocery carts.”

I snatched the pizza box, ran after the Asian American bottle man, and handed it to him, but he ignored me. I followed him, and he declined again, saying he did not take food from strangers. The woman called to me, saying that I should leave him alone.

Instead, I held his shoulder and said, “Look, this is charity. I’m helping you.” But when he turned his face up to me, his eyes had the blackness of fear. The wrinkles around his eye were filled with a viscous, clear liquid that was not tears, but the leftover gel that came out of the eyes of unclean people. I let him go, and walked back to the woman. He shuffled along, sometimes looking back at me. When we made eye contact, he turned away. I stared at the ground.

The woman shook her head and told me to calm down. We were supposed to be helping people, not harassing them. I took a slice out, rolled it up into a greasy ball, and put the entire thing in my mouth.

After we finished handing out the pizza slices, she asked me if I wanted to go to her favorite bar. She touched my shoulder with the tips of her fingers. The bar was only a few blocks away, and she knew it would be a slow night so we wouldn’t have to be knee-to-knee with other patrons. I acquiesced even though I was tired and my head felt a light thudding, as if somebody was knocking against the skin of my forehead.

In the bar, the wooden table had water stains on it. I looked up at the ceiling fan spinning lazily. It smelled like old cigarette smoke.

“Did you resolve things with all your friends?” I asked her, ripping up a paper napkin into small, orderly pieces.

“From the Vietnam trip?”

I nodded.

“When I got back home, I talked to my friends. I said I felt bullied and they said they didn’t think they were bullying me. They didn’t even know they were bullying me! When I told them about how they would all have tea without me, they said they just thought I was in a bad mood and wanted space. Do I seem like the type of person to want space? I never want space.” The woman spoke so quickly it was as if she was saying one long sentence.

“They didn’t know they were making you feel that way?”

“It was like I was trapped and everybody apologized and we’re all still friends, but it’s like something will always be off or I’ll always worry that I’m invisible. It’s like they spoke in this code I couldn’t decipher.” The woman looked not at me, but beyond me as if there were somebody else standing right behind. “So of course I had to talk to the guide. He was the only person who wasn’t ostracizing me. I thought maybe they would notice or say something or do something, but nothing. I don’t think they even know.”

She picked at the skin around her nails, and took such a small sip of her drink it looked like she had only wet her lips with the gleam of alcohol.

“I looked up the man again and thought about friending him on Facebook. But you know, what would be the point? I was going to send him a long, angry message about how he extorted me, but it was only a hundred dollars. That’s probably a million dollars in Vietnamese money. How could he even have returned me the money?”

“That’s not that much money.” I said. We listened to the music on the speakers for a second. It was a nice melody, only a guitar playing, although I wished somebody was singing as well.

“What did you think of that story?” she asked me.

“It was good. It was a good story.”

“Yes, but what did you think?” She looked at my face, scanning it for any hint of emotion, but I kept my eyes blank.

“I’m trying not to think too much right now.” I nodded my head to the music, and imagined the goo of my brain falling out of my right ear in thick, pink tendrils to the floor. I stared at a tattoo of a butterfly on the bartender’s right arm and in that moment, it seemed as if it was the most comforting thing in the world.

“But do you think I’m right to be upset?”

I hesitated. The thudding in my forehead returned. I examined the patrons at the bar, how they were all stitched together in a cluster of blood and bone until I could examine no longer and my mind was spent and the air began to move again. The bartender’s tattoo fluttered away.

“Yes, you’re right,” I reassured her.

She looked down. Her eyes flickered, and she crept her tiny, pink hand up my thigh.

I didn’t sleep with her that night. I was tired and cranky and had an open canker sore, a raw, pink wound in my cheek, which stung every time I sipped my drink. Tonight, her body did not provoke lust in me.

She kissed me before we parted ways, but the taste was sour and bitter and reminded me of how my aunt used to kiss me on the lips even when I tried giving her my cheek.

I dreamt of the viper in Vietnam. It was enormous and I was riding it, whipping it so that sweat ran down its back. But it kept going, smiling even, wrapping around me tenderly like I was a precious thing it needed to protect.

When I woke up, I wrote the woman an email. It seemed too informal to send a text and nobody made phone calls anymore. If I had called, she might have thought I was out of fashion. It took me two hours to write the email and I told myself I would not do anything else until it was done, but I sent it without checking. When I read it back to myself later, I noticed three typos.

That evening, my friends wanted to see a horror movie. We had all seen one together the month before. One that they all loved. It was about a woman going to a festival where her shitty boyfriend got raped and then she murdered him. They all said it was culturally significant, but I did not think it was. I had hidden behind my hands when the gory scenes came on.

Even though I didn’t like horror movies and certainly hadn’t enjoyed the last one, I agreed to go, because everyone else was going and I liked how my elbows would sometimes touch my friends’ and that light heat in a half-full theater.

At the movie theater, we sat in the back. The screen had a little black spot by the upper right hand corner. Someone coughed.

I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, and saw that the woman replied to my email. I stepped outside, shuffling over the lines of legs and stepping on dropped popcorn kernels. Tension was rising in the movie. Discordant music played.

In the hallway, I saw that she wrote back: I’m sorry you feel that way.

I paced back and forth. What did I expect? I had written her three paragraphs. The night before, I deliberated on the exact phrasing of the first sentence. At first, I wrote “I don’t like how condescending you are.” But that felt too aggressive. I changed it to “I don’t think we’re a good match,” but that was meek. “I don’t like how you treat other people.” Too passive-aggressive. “You don’t need to pity me.” None of them seemed right, so instead, I kept “I don’t think we’re a good match,” a meek statement for my dissatisfaction.

Had I even wanted to read three paragraphs worth of response? It did not matter. The heat of embarrassment rose to my cheeks. I made an effort to push her face out of my mind but could still smell her perfume.

It was mutual. There was no reason to account for why my face was hot and palms moist.

I was not certain whether I should go back in. A family walked into another theater with 3-D glasses on. The boy was jumping up and down and punching his fists in the air. There was nothing else to do. When I re-entered the theater, my friends were watching a scene with a lot of screaming and blood. I looked directly at the screen, and did not turn away.

Olivia Cheng is a 2025-26 Steinbeck Fellow. She received her MFA in prose from the University of Michigan. Her fiction can be found in The Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, Guernica, and more.

A long table took up most of the room, and around it sat 16 men. As a group, they had a wild and wasted look, with skeletal limbs, hollow cheeks, unshorn beards, and fixed stares. Maurice submitted to the scrutiny of this assembly of saints like a martyr to the flames. His salvation depended on his winning a place among them.

At the head of the table, Apa Zeno, the holy father of the colony, looked off vacantly and scratched himself. To his right sat his deputy, Elias, who raised a hand. “Brothers, let me introduce our guest. This is Maurice, who came here forty days ago to make himself a monk. Brother Thomas, who has been training him, tells me he is ready to share our common meal. Consider well whether he should be allowed to settle in our holy place. When we meet together after the meal, I want to hear what is in your hearts. Then I will speak to Apa Zeno, and he will make his judgment.”

Maurice took a seat at the table beside Apa Zeno. Despite his nerves, he was hungry. On the plate before him was a small loaf of bread that made up only half the normal ration. Nearby lay a large plate filled with a lumpy yellowish paste and an earthen jug.

“Maurice, do not be shocked by what you see on our table. When we gather for a meal of fellowship at the end of the week, we ease the strictness of our regimen. The loaf before you is fresh-baked. Soon this plate of cooked lentils will be passed around along with wine to fill our cups. Each brother will serve himself in order of seniority, according to our custom. As he does, he will ask you a question or two to determine the state of your soul. Will you answer us truthfully, in the name of Christ?”

Maurice recalled with shame how on his arrival to the colony his vocation had almost been lost when he slipped into a lie. In any case, he knew it would do his soul no good to enter this brotherhood by guile. “I swear to God.”

Elias led the group in the Lord’s Prayer. Having served Apa Zeno and himself from the large plate, he passed it on to the monk to his right. “This is Brother Moue,” Elias told Maurice. “After Apa Zeno, he was the first among those gathered here to settle in our place.”

Moue must at one time have been quite plump. His pale, sagging flesh hung loose upon his skeleton like an oversized garment. He dropped a heaping spoonful of lentils onto his plate and reached out to take another.

“That’s enough, brother,” Elias said. “No more than three spoons.”

“That was only two.”

“I was counting, brother. What is your question for our guest?”

Moue set down the spoon and put his hand to his head. “My devil oppresses me, brother. I can’t come up with anything to ask.”

“No need to hurry,” Elias said. “I will give you time to think.”

Moue looked down at his plate. “How can I think with this savory food in front of me?”

A brother with a very long white beard and a nose like the beak of a bird of prey shouted, “Shame, shame!”

Moue responded by sticking out his lips. Maurice was surprised to witness such pettiness in these spiritual men.

Elias raised a hand. “If the brother is hungry, let him eat. Brother Moue, I will come back to you at the end. Will you pass the plate to Brother Saius? Brother Saius provided for our meal today. We thank you, brother, for your generosity.”

Saius’ withered skin stuck to his bones, and his hollow eyes shone with zeal. He bowed his head. “To humbly serve my brothers is the highest honor I know.” He took a single spoonful from the plate with the air of one making a grave sacrifice and set down the utensil. He turned to Maurice. “How much have you been eating here?”

“As much as I’m given. Two small loaves a day with a pinch of salt and sometimes a little oil.”

Saius nodded and raised an eyebrow. “That must have been hard for you to get used to.”

Maurice had until now avoided speaking of his former master, but he was determined to have no secrets here. “I was eating even less before I came here, when I was living with a city monk named Leonides.”

“How much did you eat when you were with him?”

“A piece of bread about as large as one of these small loaves.”

“How often?”

“Almost every day.”

“Nothing else?”

“We took it with salt and oil.”

“Oil? What kind?”

“Radish oil. It had a strong smell and burned my tongue.”

“Radish oil is not bad,” Saius said, “but oil of horseradish is better. How often did you take it?”

“A drop with every meal.”

“Oil with every meal?” Saius’ eyes gleamed in their darkened pits. “I haven’t taken oil in seven years.”

“Your virtue is well known here, brother,” Elias said, “but remember it is not worthy of you to display it to others. Will you pass the plate to Brother Justus?”

Justus was the elderly beak-nosed brother who had found fault with Moue. He received the plate, saying, “Pardon me.” He turned to Maurice and explained, “In my day, when one of us took food or drink from his brothers’ hands, he would excuse himself. Now the monks have lost their manners.”

“So you remind us every week, brother,” Elias said.

A sort of silent commotion broke out across the table. Several brothers were making furious gestures to remind Moue to pass down the jug of wine after filling his cup. Moue rolled his eyes in irritation, picked up the jug, and set it before Saius.

“None for me,” Saius said quickly and passed the jug on to Justus without filling his own cup. “I have not taken wine in twenty years.”

“You should not be so proud,” Justus said. “Vainglory is a sin.”

“So is judging others, brother,” Elias told him. “Do you have a question for our guest?”

Justus, in vexation, tugged his white beard, which went down to his waist, and turned to Maurice. “You spoke of city monks. Are you one of those blasphemous hawkers of Christ?”

“Once I was. May God forgive me. In the world, the way is not clear. It’s easy to fall into sin. That’s why I have come to the desert. Here there’s nothing to distract me from observing the commandments.”

“Shame!” Justus shouted. “Do you deny the Devil?”

“No, no, my friend,” Maurice replied. “What I mean is this. Here in the desert, we can meet the enemy face to face.”

Justus shot a look at Saius. “So long as one is not stuck in the snares of vanity and pride.”

“Remember my warning, brother,” Elias chided. “Pass the plate to Brother Anub.”

Anub received the plate of lentils with muttered thanks and blessings. Maurice recalled that on the way here Thomas had pointed out this brother’s cell with its exceptionally low, slanted ceiling. Though of average height, Anub stooped so markedly over his plate that he must have fit inside that dwelling without strain.

Elias asked, “Do you have a question, brother?”

Anub turned his mild eye on Maurice, and a weak smile played about his mouth. “I do, if our guest will excuse me. I know it is not right for me to put a question to anyone, sinner that I am. Pardon me, then, but I admit there is something I wanted to know, if you don’t mind telling me. Or if you do, then I pray you will forgive my asking and forget I ever opened my lips.”

“Brother, go ahead,” said Elias. “Our guest has been called here to answer our questions.”

“I hope he wasn’t called on my account,” replied Anub in alarm. “Sinner that I am, it is not right for me to summon others. No, it is I who should come when others call. Indeed, I would come before I’m called, if only it weren’t ridiculous for me to suppose that anyone had use for me.”

“No need to be so modest, brother. Tell us your question.”

“Excuse me,” Anub said and shook his head. “It is wrong for me to babble on like this and waste the time of my brothers and our guest. I won’t say another word, except to apologize for letting my tongue wag when it would have been better to keep silent.”

“That is all right, brother,” Elias said. “Will you pass the plate to Brother Aaron?”

Aaron alone among the group had kept a robust form, with a broad chest, thick neck, and heavy shoulders. He lifted the plate of lentils and, with three flicks of his wrist, helped himself to rather more than his share. Despite Saius’ abstention, Maurice began to wonder how much would be left for himself.

“Brother Aaron is our steward,” Elias said. “He prepared this meal, and he is entrusted with many other duties besides. Do you have a question for our guest, brother?”

The long white scar running down the side of Aaron’s face gave him an air of menace, which he went on to dispel with a kindly smile. “Have you learned to plait and weave?”

Maurice nodded. “Thomas is satisfied with my work.”

“That is good to hear,” Aaron told him. “It is my job to sell our goods to the dealer. How many baskets can you make in a week?”

“I finished three this week.”

Saius called out, “I can make sixteen.”

“Remember, brother, that few can work as hard as you,” Elias said. “Brother Aaron, if you have no more questions, will you pass the plate to Brother Phib?”

Phib was a small and gloomy-looking brother. He fixed Maurice with wide spellbound eyes and held his index fingers to his temples. “Have you ever seen a demon with horns like this?”

Maurice told him, “No.”

“Have you ever seen a demon with a forked tail?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen a very tall demon with eyes like the morning star, the smoke of a furnace coming out of his nose, and a flame coming out of his mouth?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen a demon in the shape of an innocent child hardly old enough to walk?”

Maurice was about to deny it when he thought again. “I might have. How would I know?”

“Quite right!” Phib exclaimed. “We never know what forms the demons may take. They can even assume a pious appearance and feign the speech of holy men.” He rose in excitement. “Who can say they are not gathered in this very room?”

“Sit down, brother,” Elias said. “You need have no fear of evil spirits in the company of your brothers and our holy father. Will you pass the plate to Brother Paphnutius?”

Paphnutius had large ears that stuck out under his hood like the handles of a jar and a large mouth that hung open as he spooned out his meal.

Elias said, “Brother, remember your fine.”

Paphnutius nodded and put down the spoon.

To Maurice, Elias explained, “On Tuesday, Brother Paphnutius was careless and knocked over his jug of water. Apa Zeno granted him permission to refill it, but he imposed a fine of one spoon of lentils for wasting our precious supply. Today he may take only two spoons.”

“I take only one,” Saius interjected.

“Brother, remember not to measure yourself against your brothers,” Elias said. “Brother Paphnutius, do you have something to ask our guest?”

Paphnutius’ wide mouth formed a genial smile. “Maurice, you may think because we are monks we live like angels on earth. In fact, we are made of flesh like you. Do not imagine we know nothing of the passions of the body.”

“Shame!” Justus shouted. “I haven’t touched a woman in thirty years.”

Paphnutius’ eye was sly. “Brother, you are ninety years old.” Justus grimaced and pulled his long white beard, and the others laughed. “You see, Maurice, the Devil wars against us all. You need not be ashamed to admit your temptations. Tell me, have you ever been tempted by women?”

Maurice turned up his palm. “What man has not?”

“A wise answer,” Paphnutius said. “Have you ever acted on your desires?”

Maurice wanted to show he was willing to bare his soul, but unhappily his relevant experience was scant. “Once,” he said finally. “I saw a woman from my village walking to a spring to bathe. I followed her. When she reached the pool, I climbed a palm tree on its banks. I hid in the tree and watched her take off her clothes and wash herself.”

“Is that all that happened?”

“Yes. After some time, I fell asleep, and when I woke up she was gone.”

Paphnutius’ lips turned down in disappointment. “There must have been other times,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to tell us.”

Maurice nodded gravely. He glanced at Apa Zeno, who was chewing a mouthful of bread. The elder’s eyes were not directed at anyone in the room, and he did not seem to be following the conversation. “Last year I was tricked by two men I thought were my friends. They took me to a brothel in the city. To please my friends, I gave money to a woman there. When she invited me to lie down with her, I felt ashamed and ran away. Only then did I see I had been under the power of demons.”

“Great is their number in the air around us,” cried Phib, “and they are not far from us! Though the doors be shut, they can enter in and haunt the very atmosphere we breathe!”

“Quiet, brother,” Elias said. “Brother Paphnutius, will you pass the plate to Brother Isaiah?”

Isaiah’s brow and cheeks were studded with rosy pustules. As he spooned lentils onto his plate, his face contorted in anguish and tears welled in his eyes. “Woe is me, woe is me, who shamelessly dares to satisfy my stomach with this food that appalls my God. Who will not lament for me, who will not shed bitter tears on my behalf? Have pity on me, have pity on me, have pity on me, o friends!”

“Brother, do you have a question for our guest?”

“I do, I do.” Isaiah clenched his fists. “O woe is me, woe is me, who has the audacity to ask a question of his fellow man when I will be questioned by the Lord on the Day of Judgment!”

“That is right, brother,” Elias said, “but give us your question.”

Isaiah sighed deeply and fastened his moist eye on Maurice. “I will ask you to solve a great mystery for me. Every day, I sit and furrow my brow, but I never get closer to finding the answer. Can you tell me why we prefer corruption to incorruption?”

Maurice almost smiled. The answer was too easy. “Because we are sinners.”

“Woe is me, woe is me, you speak the truth!” Isaiah cried. “O woe is me, woe is me, who also speaks the truth but does not do right! Woe is us, woe is us, who, though condemned for many sins, demand the praise due to holy ones! Who will not grind their teeth and rend their garments for our sakes?”

“Take courage, brother, and pass the plate to Brother Aioulios.”

Aioulios had an upright bearing and fine proportions. Were he not underweight like the others, he might have been deemed well-built. His thick jet-black beard would have been much admired in Maurice’s native village if only it were trimmed and combed. “This morning I was standing with Brother Eulogios” — he indicated the brother sitting to his right, a slight, wiry man with a wispy red beard — “at the door of the cell that we share, and I saw a dove —”

“A dove here?” Eulogios demanded in a hectoring tone. “Impossible!”

“Surely God has granted doves the power of flight to go wherever they will?”

“Has the valley been depleted of seeds and grains, forcing doves to fly to the desert in search of food?”

“A dove can go a long distance without food, brother. Think of the one sent to Noah in the midst of the waters.”

“Next you’ll tell me you saw the Holy Spirit descend like a dove!”

“You saw it yourself, a white dove perching on a rock in the gully.”

“I couldn’t see it very well, but it certainly wasn’t white.”

“It was pure white in the light of the dawn.”

“It was more black than white. It might have been a crow.”

“A crow?” Aioulios asked. “Are you blind?”

“It was more like a crow than a dove,” Eulogios replied. “Indeed, it must have been a crow.”

“Brother Aioulios,” Elias asked, “do you have a question for our guest?”

Aioulios turned to Maurice. “Tell me what we saw this morning.”

Eulogios said, “That is my question too.”

Maurice saw he must find a way to put an end to their quarrel. “Can the two of you agree you saw an animal with wings?”

“Wings?” Eulogios asked. “I did not see it fly.”

Aioulios said, “It soared away through the gully.”

“Soared? More like it fled.”

“It flew along the ground like a mourning dove.”

“It ran along the ground like a rabbit, a black rabbit.”

“That’s enough, brothers,” Elias said. “Brother Eulogios, serve yourself and pass the plate to Brother Peter.”

Every monk around the table looked quite unwashed, with their hair and beards tangled in thick masses and smut caked under their nails and in the deep lines drawn in their faces by the sun or the years, but Peter was by far the filthiest. While the others seemed merely to have offered no resistance to the accumulation of grime on their persons, Peter looked as though he had willfully smeared himself with dark grease from head to foot. He ignored the serving spoon and with five sooty fingers scooped up a portion of lentils from the plate to fill his mouth. Maurice expected Elias to reprimand him, but he simply asked, “Brother, do you have a question for our guest?”

Peter’s impish eyes stood out in his blackened face. “Did you ever eat raw meat?”

Maurice did not know whether the question was to be taken in earnest. Since the other brothers looked on with sober expressions, he ventured a straightforward answer. “No.”

“Ha, ha! Did you ever drink hot urine?”

“Never.”

“Did you ever play with yourself in the marketplace?”

“No, never.”

“Ha, ha!” Peter nodded. He lifted the wine jug with two hands and took a swig.

Maurice was rather shocked by this behavior, but Elias merely said, “Bless you, brother. Will you pass the plate to Brother Callimachus?”

Callimachus had a broad high brow and a high-bridged nose. His great, deep eyes were thoughtful. “Were you named for the holy saint and martyr Maurice of Thebes?”

Maurice was ashamed not to know. “Who is that?”

Callimachus leaned forward. “A man of our own country who commanded a legion loyal to Emperor Maximian. In the second year of this Era of the Martyrs, Maximian dispatched them to go and persecute Christians. But Maurice and his soldiers refused this cruel task because, as a matter of fact, they were Christians themselves.”

“Brave men! What happened to them?”

“Maximian gave them no choice. So Maurice called his men together and persuaded them to lay down their lives in the service of Christ. On behalf of his legion, he wrote to Maximian to declare they preferred an innocent death to a life of wickedness.”

“What did the emperor do?”

“What do you think? He had every man in the legion put to death. They laid aside their arms and offered their necks to their persecutors’ sword, and the earth was littered with the bodies of the faithful.”

Maurice was amazed to learn of the glorious actions of his namesake. “I never heard that story.”

“Eusebius of Caesarea writes of it in an appendix to the ninth chapter of his Ecclesiastical History,” Callimachus told him. “The appendix is missing from certain recent copies, but I read it in a manuscript owned by the Archbishop of Alexandria.”

“Brother, remember that we must avoid the works of men, even those the world considers holy,” Elias said. “It is safer to limit yourself to the word of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures and to the sayings of Anthony and Onesiphorus. Will you pass the plate to Brother Frange?”

Frange was bald and toothless. Since he could not chew his bread, he sucked on it until soft and thoroughly soaked in spittle. He squinted nearsightedly at Maurice, who sat only two places away. “Old as I am, I am a very junior brother. It’s been no more than three years — or is it four? No, only three — since I left the valley. Tell me, was the flood high or low this year?”

“Sorry, I don’t know. I was living in the city, where the flood doesn’t reach.”

“I have seen it low, and I have seen it high,” Frange said. “Many men are ruined when it doesn’t go high enough. But when it goes too high, many more are ruined. Poor wretches. I don’t have to worry about that now. But, tell me, is the crop good this season?”

“I can’t say. I was living on the side of a cliff.”

“I don’t care myself. Good or bad, it doesn’t touch me now. In the valley, men grow rich or go to ruin depending on the crop. That’s their headache. I’ve got nothing to do with it anymore.”

“You are right, brother, to put it out of your mind,” Elias said. “Will you pass the plate to Brother Thomas? Brother, you know our guest well. Do you have a question for him?”

Thomas turned to meet Maurice’s eyes. “I want to know what made you choose the solitary life.”

“I did not choose it,” Maurice told him. “God called me to this place.”

“But how do you know? God does not speak to you, I believe. What is it in your soul that tells you you belong here?”

It was true Maurice could not directly hear the call he heeded and so had been left to work out its utterance from the fact that he found himself set apart by the Lord. The difference he sensed between himself and those among whom he had formerly lived was clear enough, though he struggled to describe it, even to himself. So he merely said, “I want to be saved and fight the demons.”

“Great is their number in the air around us!” cried Phib. “Let us keep our hearts watchful against those terrible and cunning foes!”

“Calm yourself, brother,” Elias said. “Brother Thomas, you can pass the plate to Maurice.”

Maurice looked down at the plate in despair. The residue left in it would hardly amount to a spoonful.

“Brother Moue,” Elias continued, “I said I would come back to you. Have you thought of something to ask our guest?”

Moue sat licking lentil juice from his grubby fingers. He peered at Maurice’s plate. “Are you going to leave that loaf of bread?”

Maurice had not dared to touch his bread while being questioned. Now he picked it up without hesitation and said, “Please take it, my friend.”

Alan Horn lives in Brooklyn. He writes the Substack The Invisible Head and has recently completed the novel excerpted here.

We hope that by now you’ve been able to enjoy the offerings of The Metropolitan Review’s Gay Talese Issue, including our in-depth Editors’ Interview with Talese and Alexander Nazaryan’s beautiful review of A Town Without Time. You may have noticed during our interview that Talese made a brief, passing mention of a lone short story published in Mademoiselle that he wrote in 1966, “Getting Even,” his first and last foray into fiction. That detail beguiled our Executive Editor, Lou Bahet, who began to wonder about the fate of this nearly six-decade-old magazine short story.

She started searching for the piece, scouring periodical archives and databases, but found that it was lost to time. There was little public record of its existence, it had never been anthologized, and even the precise issue date of its publication proved elusive. Finally, buried within a web archive of 1960s women’s lifestyle magazines, she found a crude digital scan of “Getting Even” in Mademoiselle’s May 1967 summer beauty issue. She printed it out and read it by candlelight at a lonesome Midtown bar. When she put down the pages after midnight, she felt certain that “Getting Even” was nothing less than a forgotten masterpiece of noirish city writing.

Riveted by Talese’s tale of an embittered taxi driver, Angelo Janiero, and the dramatic lengths he goes through to take revenge on his draconian former high school teacher, Miss Fawcett, after she steps into his yellow cab one day, The Metropolitan Review asked Talese for permission to reprint “Getting Even” decades later. Talese expressed boyish incredulity: My one and only short story? You liked it? To our profound delight, Talese agreed, and even provided us with his own copy, plucked from his famous bunker office, for us to digitize. He divulged that his inspiration for the tale was an English teacher who had menaced him with failing grades in high school. The text is printed here, for the everlasting record, in its original form, alongside a new illustration by Jason Chatfield, The Metropolitan Review’s Cartoon Editor.

We founded The Metropolitan Review to uplift overlooked writing and unsung voices, including forgotten works from the past. Now is the time to shine a light on this lost short fiction gem, which we are honored to also publish in our forthcoming inaugural print issue. Please enjoy “Getting Even” by Gay Talese.

—The Editors

Although the woman stood nearly a block away, he could see that she had spotted him, was waving at him from the corner of Lexington Avenue at Seventy-first Street, and so Angelo Janiero slowed down his taxicab even though, as he did so, he was not sure whether or not he would stop. He might just slow down to let the woman think he would stop, then drive right past her as if he had not seen her, turning the corner quickly before she could get his number.

Angelo Janiero had done this at least three times in recent weeks and had contemplated it on several other occasions; just two days ago he had been fined $25 by the Hack Bureau on a discourtesy charge and warned that if found guilty again, he would be suspended.

He did not care. He had never really wanted this taxi job anyway, having taken it only on a part-time basis eight years ago to help meet his alimony payments while unemployed as an actor. But now his acting career was nonexistent. Even his agent, who had once predicted that he would become a star, had dropped him.

And so, at the age of 37, Angelo Janiero was driving a cab full time and hating it as never before, and he had begun to recognize in himself, where hope had once been, a new depth in despair and a new demonic delight, too, in being rude to people: in passing them by on rainy days, in quickly snapping back when they spoke sharply to him, in refusing to take Negroes up to Harlem or anybody to Brooklyn, in wishing at times that some angry passenger or some drunk or drug addict would take a swing at him or pull a knife so that he, a powerfully built man weighing 225 pounds and standing six feet, could retaliate and in this way perhaps release some of the bottled-up belligerence he felt toward nobody in particular but everybody in general—at least on days like this, days when he often concluded, without alarm, that he might slowly be going out of his mind.

On such days, the slightest thing could provoke him. It might be nothing more than a defective traffic light, a slow-moving bus, or a Con Edison crew blocking a lane. Or it might be the way a passenger looked at him, or talked, or walked. Or, in the case of this woman he was now approaching on Lexington Avenue, the way she waved.

She waved with a limp left wrist, giving a casual flick with her white-gloved hand. She held her arm just high enough to attract his attention, he decided, but not so high as to disturb the line of her suit. She was a tall woman, quite handsome, her blondish hair pulled back and tucked under a brown pillbox hat, and she stood firmly in the street and did not step back as Angelo’s cab got closer.

She must be in her 40s, maybe pushing 50, Angelo thought, and pushing it beautifully, too, he added, noticing how her trimly-tailored green suit accentuated the flat stomach and fine hips and breasts; yes, everything about her was appealing, nothing about her irritating except that wrist flicking casually, too casually, too devoid of any doubt. Angelo Janiero smiled to himself now as he gripped the steering wheel harder and watched her through the corners of his eyes so he could enjoy her reaction as he breezed past, turned the corner.

But just as he was about to press the gas pedal, two things happened almost simultaneously that made him stop. A police patrol car pulled up at the intersection close to where the woman stood, and Angelo knew immediately that it would be impossible to get away with his little trick this time. Also, while he was getting what he thought to be the final look at her face, the impassiveness around her eyes and mouth, he suddenly felt a cool chill shooting up within him and he knew, yes, he knew, he was sure of it, yes, he had certainly seen this face before—she was no stranger.

Angelo, now no longer vengeful, merely confused and disturbed, did not turn as she quickly opened the door and stepped in, sliding across the seat until she was nearly in the middle. He was not sure who this woman was, but he was convinced that they had met, and he also had the feeling that it had all been very unpleasant.

“La Guardia Airport,” she said in a voice that was somewhat deep and dramatic, causing Angelo to suspect that he might have known her from the theatre. “And I must, simply must be there in 25 minutes.”

Angelo did not answer. He knew he could make it in that time with little difficulty, but he did not want to commit himself.

“You’ll surely be there in 25 minutes, won’t you?” she asked, leaning forward.

“I’ll try, lady,” Angelo said softly, driving away from the curb, clicking down the meter handle. “I’ll try, but sometimes traffic can—”

“Well, please try!” she insisted, cutting him off.

Angelo swore to himself. He wanted so desperately to slam on his brakes, to throw her out of the cab, but he was still confused, not unlike a prizefighter caught by a surprise blow, waiting for his head to clear. He tried, without entirely convincing himself, to justify his inaction and sudden timidity on the grounds that it is one thing to talk tough to a stranger, but it is something else when you know damned well that the other person is not a stranger, and probably has something on you; in fact, maybe he already had thrown this woman out of his cab, he quickly thought, maybe that is why she had seemed so familiar and disturbing to him when he picked her up on Seventy-first Street. But no, Angelo decided on second thought, remembering the women involved in the other incidents. No, it was somewhere else, something else; it was not in a taxicab, probably not even in the theatre, but it was somewhere else.

Angelo Janiero continued to drive with uncharacteristic caution down Lexington Avenue, but his mind was spinning wildly in reverse, preoccupying itself with his past, racing with the reflections of all the women he would hate to see again—the embittered mother of the teen-aged girl he’d had an affair with during that last season of summer stock in the Catskills; the angry landlady on Columbus Avenue to whom he still owed rent from three years ago; the insatiable stenographer he’d once known at Fort Benning and who had written him last month to say she would soon be transferred to New York. There were more, too, many more, but none of them resembled in the least this woman who now sat nervously tapping her foot behind him and who had said, “Please try,” in a tone that suggested she knew Angelo would normally not try unless first goaded by a pushy “please.” He could not get a good second look at her now through his rearview mirror because the traffic was moving too swiftly down Lexington Avenue with the staggered lights. But on Fifty-ninth Street, as he passed Bloomingdale’s and was about to cut crosstown toward the Queensboro Bridge, a light turned red. He stopped. He had his chance.

The woman was flipping through a magazine but her face was not obscured by it, and Angelo Janiero had only to move sideways an inch or two and gaze up into the mirror to get a full reflection.

Now, suddenly, he recognized her. And, just as suddenly, he turned away. He pulled his black leather cap down over his eyes, not wanting her to recognize him if she hadn’t already. He felt his palms moisten and within himself heard again the demanding voice—“Please try”—except now he was hearing it not as he had moments before in the taxicab, but rather as he had heard it in a classroom more than 20 years ago. Her classroom in Camden. And there had never been a teacher that he had hated more than this one who now sat in the back, still breathing down his neck after all these years, still urging, in that exasperated way of hers, please try.

Angelo Janiero was sweating more heavily now as he waited for the traffic light to change. He wondered what he should say, what he should do, how he should handle himself with this woman, this Miss Fawcett, yes that’s it, yes this bitch who had flunked him twice and had not only predicted his failure years ago but had, he always felt, made it almost inevitable. If she hadn’t taken such an immediate dislike to him during his senior year, if she hadn’t blamed only him for stealing those midterm exams, he would not, he had often told himself, have been expelled, he would have been able to accept that football scholarship to Penn State, he would have avoided the Army, the hospital, the recall to Korea, he would never have married that tramp who was still bleeding him with alimony and the support of a child who was probably not his, and he would not have ended up driving a New York cab and going through life from one traffic jam to another, finally hitting the bottom on this particular afternoon by picking up the woman who helped put him there. Now she was sitting three feet behind him, there to see her predictions come true—if and when she ever figured out who the hell he was.

“Driver,” Miss Fawcett called.

Angelo’s head snapped up.

“Driver!” she repeated, louder, “the light is green.”

Angelo heard horns honking behind him, and heard other cab drivers, their heads poking out of their opened side windows, yelling at him, cursing him. Immediately he slammed his foot on the pedal and the vehicle bolted forward, wheels spinning, and then he cut sharply around the corner past Bloomingdale’s, barely missing some pedestrians, everything tipping, jerking, jostling, and Miss Fawcett was thrown back hard against the seat.

“DRIVER!” she cried.

“Sorry,” Angelo said, softly. But under his breath he said, “Screw you, Miss Fawcett.”

“Lord,” she cried, “you’re driving like some sort of madman!”

“Sorry,” he repeated. Bitch.

Miss Fawcett muttered a few more things, but Angelo Janiero said nothing, keeping his hat pulled down and concentrating only on crossing Third Avenue, then Second Avenue, then driving up the approach ramp onto the Queensboro Bridge.

Traffic was fairly heavy on the bridge but cars were moving without interruption, and Angelo thought that it was probably a good thing, at least for the present, that she had not recognized him. It would have been too embarrassing for him, too satisfying for her. And yet at the same time he was amazed, if not a little irritated, that she had so completely forgotten him, amazed because his name was right in front of her nose, printed across the hack license above the glove compartment—“Angelo Janiero No. 45872”—and his photograph was there, too.

But teachers forget, he decided. Yes, they get you when you’re young, they promote you or flunk you, they leave scars that last a lifetime, then they forget. But you never forget them, he thought, especially those who give you a hard time. At least he didn’t forget. Nor did he forgive. It was not in his character to forget or forgive anyone who had shafted him or humiliated him. And in this way he assumed he took after his Sicilian father, an old mustacchio in whom emotions ran pretty deep. Yes, either of them could have done all right with the mob if there had been more action around Camden then. And Angelo remembered how his first wife, an Irish girl he’d met at a dance hall one summer weekend in Wildwood, N.J., had made a big thing about this once, criticizing him for being so sensitive to slurs and slights, so good at hating and the vendetta game, and she had said it was no wonder that neither himself nor his father had gotten very far in America with that attitude. Oh, yes, she had all the easy answers, that one. She was really what he needed, complaining all the time, then letting herself get fat, and then all of a sudden wanting to go back to the Church and those Irish priests—God, he had no idea why he’d ever married her. Well, anyway, she was causing him no trouble now, living in their old apartment with her mother in Queens. Jamaica, Queens. “Change at Jamaica,” the Long Island Rail Road conductors always say. Angelo had changed wives at Jamaica.

He was now halfway across the bridge. He noticed a large black-and-white oil tanker moving down the East River, its smokestacks puffing up gray clouds that slowly floated through the steel girders of the bridge and up toward the towers. It was always dim and dreary driving across the lower deck of this bridge because the upper deck blocked the sun from streaming through. So Angelo Janiero took advantage of the semidarkness to sneak a quick peek into the mirror again and see how Miss Fawcett was doing back there. She was looking out the window. Still a good profile, he thought; yes, that woman knew how to take care of herself, and he remembered how carefully groomed and neat she used to be in class in Camden, and how she could be writing at the blackboard all day and still never get any chalk marks on her clothing or even on her fingers.

And briefly now, very briefly, Angelo was tempted to stop playing the mystery guest in this taxicab and introduce himself to Miss Fawcett. How to begin? Excuse me, Miss, but didn’t you once teach senior English back in Camden? Excuse me, but aren’t you Miss Fawcett? Pardon me, but I think I used to be in your class in Camden. Is it still Miss Fawcett? Well, hello Miss Fawcett, you bitch. Yes, that’s more like it. And anyway, she might not even remember him if he did introduce himself. The hell she wouldn’t. Well, how come she hasn’t recognized him so far even with his name and photograph right in front of her? Nobody would recognize him from that photograph, Angelo thought. Yes, he had changed a lot in 20 years, had aged a lot less gracefully than she had, he was sorry to say. He had gotten jowly, was losing his hair, was probably 30 pounds heavier now than when he used to play football for Camden, a time when sportswriters were calling him “Jocko” Janiero. Oh, he had liked that. Jocko. Jocko Janiero!

Yes, they might remember him, the sportswriters; and Fenton, the coach, he might remember. Fenton damned well should remember. Jocko Janiero used to break his damned neck every Saturday for Fenton, and what did it get him? A kick in the ass when the season was over. But that expulsion from school really had nothing to do with Fenton, Angelo conceded, now almost across the Queensboro Bridge. Fenton had tried to talk her out of it, but this Miss Fawcett, this bitch, was not long out of teachers’ college then, not yet corruptible—four or five years away from corruptibility, she being maybe 24 or 25 years old then. And yet Fenton’s approach might have been wrong. Fenton might have tried that father-to-daughter approach with her. Or he might have tried to sweet-talk her. Or, worse, might have gotten caught looking too long at those lovely breasts of hers. That would have killed it faster than anything, Angelo knew, now driving his cab down the ramp from the Queensboro Bridge and seeing a big sign overhead that read:

Well, Angelo thought, at least some of us are making it. He turned right at the sign, circling around past the Plaza Diner and Doherty’s Bar, then cut left onto Northern Boulevard toward a sign with an arrow: “La Guardia Airport.” Fiorello La Guardia had certainly made it, Angelo thought. Yes, but he was half Jewish.

Driving along Northern Boulevard, Angelo Janiero now felt some warmth toward Fenton and was sure that the coach had done all he could to get the bitch to change her mind. It was just no dice. Just bad timing. Angelo had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he were in school today, Angelo thought, they would never have expelled him; no, the schools today are run by a bunch of patsies and progressives who do not expel or flunk anybody. Today they shove everybody through, nobody flunks, everybody is happy, school is the Fair Shake Athletic Club. You don’t dare call any student stupid today, Angelo thought. They’d have pickets and boycotts for months. No, today if you’re stupid, they just say you’re “culturally deprived.” He smiled. He’d read that expression in the newspapers a few days ago and liked it. Culturally deprived.

But when he was in school, Angelo recalled, nobody gave a damn how culturally deprived you were; no, it was mostly hell back then, particularly after the sudden arrival of pretty Miss Brigit Fawcett, Miss Frigid Fawcett, as she was called behind her back, Miss Ice Cubes of 1945. She had been hired to replace old Mr. Smathers, who’d had a heart attack two months after the term began. Smathers had been a kindly, meek little man with white hair and a slight stammer, the only soft touch in the school, really, and in 30 years of teaching English, he had flunked nobody, including football players—a fact that guaranteed him free tickets to all the games and a lifetime of big hellos in the locker room. Of course, there had been some complaints from parents now and then about Smathers’ inability to teach English—though certainly none from Angelo’s parents, who did not even speak English—but Smathers had been an old college buddy of the school board’s president, and so Smathers hung on until his heart attack.

Then this Miss Fawcett arrived in the classroom one morning with that long-legged stride, her pretty head high, her fine body poured down into that tight little suit; and seconds after she walked in, the classroom came alive with whistles and wows. Suddenly she had stopped, glaring at the class, her face very red. Then slowly and defiantly, she had said, “If I ever, ever catch anyone in this classroom whistling again, it will mean instant expulsion!”

There had been absolute silence.

“Do you hear?”

Still silence.

“Now then,” Miss Fawcett had said, “I want everyone to realize that this is a classroom and the party that has apparently been in progress here all these years is now finally over.”

And it was, particularly for Angelo Janiero. Whether she was singling him out because he was a football player, or because he was Italian—he never eliminated that possibility—or because of some other reason, he did not know. He knew only that hardly a day passed without her calling on him to answer a question. And when he remained silent or admitted he did not know the answer, she would demand to know why he did not know it; and then while he stood in the aisle, the girls giggling, Miss Fawcett would continue to taunt him with “Try, try to answer it. You may surprise us, who knows? Please try!”

Oh, he had hated her for this, but he had come to hate her for something else, too, something that he did not completely understand then. It had merely confused him. But years later, perhaps while in the Army where he’d had lots of time to think and read, he had concluded that he was perhaps too excited by her as a woman to take her seriously as a teacher, and maybe she had sensed this and realized that if she were ever to gain control of the class, she had better break him then and there. And yet he knew, as a Camden schoolboy, that he had desperately wanted to please her, or rather to impress her, and he recalled that he used to dream of her often. In those adolescent dreams, he usually was a brilliant boy who really knew the answers but was merely playing dumb.

He dreamed also of Miss Fawcett’s unexpected appearances at football practice—just in time to see him make a long, spectacular run. Once he dreamed that he had discovered Miss Fawcett alone on a dark road standing next to her automobile that had a flat tire. He fixed the flat and then she invited him to her apartment, made him a drink, then took him to bed with her and later expressed great satisfaction with his performance.

Oh, he was a wild dreamer in those days, Angelo conceded, his taxicab now stopped for a red light on Northern Boulevard, ten minutes away from La Guardia Airport. Yes, a wild dreamer. But she had cured him of that. He recalled one particular morning in class, one in which Miss Fawcett had spent a good deal of time striding back and forth in a tight black skirt and frilly silk blouse, her hips moving, her body stretching and reaching to write high across the blackboard. He remembered how he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and how excited he became as he watched her move, and suddenly she seemed to sense the effect she was having on him and, without warning, she turned toward him and shot him a question, demanding that he answer it standing up. That had been a dirty trick, Angelo thought. A very dirty goddamned trick. But that’s the cold sort of bitch she was in those days.

Now the traffic light on Northern Boulevard turned green. Angelo Janiero got his cab moving this time before she could scream, “Driver!” But he did not start with a rush, did not send her slamming against the back seat this time. No, he wanted to keep her quiet for a few moments while he reviewed a little scheme that had been on his mind.

The idea had probably been with him, subconsciously, ever since Miss Fawcett had gotten into the cab. But he was perhaps not fully aware of it until crossing the bridge and driving onto Northern Boulevard he realized that he had taken the slowest possible route to La Guardia Airport. Northern Boulevard was an old road with automobiles parked on both sides, with traffic lights on nearly every corner, with people crossing everywhere and children playing on the curb—a road seemingly designed for the benefit of cab drivers wishing to make their passengers miss airplanes. Any conscientious cab driver would have taken a less congested road after crossing the bridge, or might even have entered Queens via the Midtown Tunnel or the Triboro Bridge, both of which, while longer in distance to the airport, would nonetheless be faster. Furthermore, Northern Boulevard had construction work going on a mile or so ahead, and Angelo realized that he had known this, too.

He smiled to himself, marveling at how his vengeance had operated purely on instinct, and he felt a perversely pleasurable sense of excitement at the prospect of Miss Fawcett missing her plane. He could hear her saying again and again, “Please try,” and he heard himself replying, “I am trying, Miss Fawcett,” and the more he thought about it, the more ridiculous the whole idea seemed, and the more he liked it. Miss Fawcett misses the plane. Good. Wonderful. Tardy teacher. You should have gotten an earlier start, Miss Fawcett. Sorry, but I’ll have to mark you late.

Yes, Angelo thought, this parting gesture to Miss Fawcett would bring a sweet secret pleasure to his soft Sicilian heart, but it was a shame that she would not share the secret. The revenge would be so much sweeter if only she knew. But you couldn’t have everything, Angelo thought, you must get it where you can—after all, how many shots in life do you get at these birds? Usually they get away. They crap all over you, then get away. And usually, with time, you forget. Everybody gets older, everybody forgets. Live and let live, society says, forgive and forget. Sure, forgive and forget, so these sly, smooth finks can get away with it and con you again.

Angelo pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. He lit one, half expecting Miss Fawcett to tell him to put it out, no smoking in class. But she remained quiet. In fact, she’s been very quiet back there, he thought. Not a peep out of her in at least ten minutes. He looked up into the rearview mirror.

Her eyes were on him now, very wide. She was looking directly at him, intent and alert. Then, seeing his eyes, she immediately looked away. So did he. How long had she been looking at him, Angelo wondered, feeling a new chill of excitement now, and why? The four eyes in the mirror had exchanged only one glance, so sudden as to reveal nothing. And yet Angelo sensed her anxiety, sensed that she no longer felt in control. This might all be merely wishful thinking on his part, he conceded, but he was confident that now, finally, he had cracked that cocky exterior, and was sure that within seconds she would say or do something that would reveal her thoughts and confirm his.

He continued to drive down Northern Boulevard, very calm now, waiting. But she remained silent. Still a cool bitch, he thought, angrily. Yes, she always gives you a run for your money. Then Angelo noticed, a block away, the construction workers blocking the road. He saw yellow bulldozers and a crane moving over mounds of rubble and through clouds of dust, and he saw a fat little man standing up ahead in the middle of the road waving a red flag and pointing to a detour sign, and Angelo smiled now as he heard the voice from the back saying softly, slowly, almost with a high, “Oh, what luck . . . what luck. . . .”

“They never stop tearing up this town,” Angelo said lightly, his cab slowing down a bit.

“Do you think we can still make it?”

“I’ll try,” he said, his lips tightening to suppress the wild inner hilarity these words evoked—I’ll try, oh beautiful, beautiful, beautifully delivered, he thought. Just the right touch of sincerity mixed with irony; yes, he was a fine actor, no doubt about it, and why the hell didn’t that phony agent see it, him and that faggoty director? Yes, how could they both fail to perceive this sure and searing sense of tragic comedy, this raw yet superb talent that was now so captivating to this audience of one in the back seat, now so skillful in setting up a final scene to be enacted along a bumpy, dusty detour road five minutes away from La Guardia and the airplane whose departure Miss Fawcett would soon watch from the ground.

“Please try,” came the voice from the back again, the words so familiar, the tone so strange, so soft, and Angelo repeated, “I’ll try.” But now his eyes had a hard, distant look as he turned his taxicab right at the detour sign and drove quickly down the road imagining, gleefully, every move ahead, wrong moves at great speeds—yes, Wrong-way Corrigan was back in action, he thought. It would all be like a game, freezing the ball, eating up the clock, giving Miss Fawcett the long count as he raced down to the end of the detour road and then, instead of taking a left toward La Guardia, taking a right that would lead to an expressway bound for Manhattan. Then he would circle onto an approachway, loop off it, and after another wrong turn, would finally come racing down the stretch toward La Guardia in a photo finish for last place.

Miss Fawcett said nothing as he did all this. She kept her right hand firmly clutched around the chrome handle near the window to maintain her balance, but she gave no indication that she knew Angelo was going the wrong way.

This bitch doesn’t know one road from another, Angelo finally thought, frustrated. She’s probably never left Camden and probably thinks that all this racing around is an attempt to help her catch her goddamned plane. Well, she’ll never catch that plane. Yes, he’d fixed that for her. But now, getting his taxicab back onto a road headed toward La Guardia, Angelo Janiero was far from satisfied. His anger was spent, but his curiosity was not. Once again he was tempted to introduce himself to her. He wanted to get some response from her. He imagined that she might be very cordial toward him now. Maybe she would be very surprised to see him again and a bit apologetic, too, about all the anguish she’d caused him. He might even talk her into making a night plane, and they could have a few drinks together at the La Guardia lounge. They might get along very well over the drinks. They might even end up in an airport motel, Angelo thought, and he’d have a chance to get a little of it back after all these years; yes, now that they were both older and she was no longer trying to teach him anything, he might even be able to get a little of it back.

Angelo continued to drive quickly, and soon, too soon, he was driving up the ramp into La Guardia, and a minute later he was slowing down as he approached the main entrance and saw a porter stepping forward at the curb to open the door of the cab. Too late, Angelo thought, too late and the hell with it.

The porter opened the door and Angelo flipped the meter handle forward. He turned slightly in his seat, but did not look at her while waiting for his money.

Her hands shook as she picked the bills and a tip from her purse. Her hands continued to shake as she adjusted her hat. She was thankful that she had allowed herself an extra 20 minutes in anticipation of a taxi driver’s dalliance. But she was now very tense and it was with some difficulty that she edged her way out of the cab, intending to say nothing until Angelo called out, “Sorry you missed the plane, lady.” Then walking away, she turned and said softly, so softly that he could not even hear her, “Are you happy, Jocko?”

Gay Talese is one of the most storied figures in American journalism. He is credited as a pioneer of the New Journalism movement and is the author of 14 books including Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Honor Thy Father, and The Kingdom and the Power. He is a former reporter for the New York Times.

Once upon a time, a boy became obsessed with his friend.

The boy’s name was Prashant, and he was tall, dark-skinned, broad-shouldered, brilliant. He impressed the other boys in his dorm at the elite American university by playing chess with them blindfolded, sometimes undertaking three or four games simultaneously. The hardest thing was that often, when they described their moves to him, he’d know the moves were wrong because they didn’t quite know the names of the rows and columns on the board. So, he’d need to correct their game and then make his own move. They found this very impressive, but it was actually pretty simple, if you’d practiced. It wasn’t real chess, only a parlor trick.

Prashant spent a lot of time in the room of a girl on the third floor. Avery was tiny, athletic, very peppy, very cheerful. She was always grabbing him by the hands and maneuvering his big body around, or bursting into his room late at night to tell him about some lecture they needed to attend.

One day, when they were on the shuttle coming home after a dance class, she snuggled close to him, put her head on his shoulder, and said, “Prashant, you are so smart. You are so wonderful.” Her warmth oozed through him, her breath looped from her lungs into his — they were warmly, hazily together.

The next day, he bicycled into the town center to purchase some flowers. He wrote a card to Avery, saying, “It has been so wonderful getting to know you, and I would very much like to take you out sometime on a date.” He crept into her dorm room while she was in class and put the flowers on her desk.

She never mentioned them!

For a few months, she avoided him. But then she started drinking and going to parties, and one day he found her lying drunkenly on the carpet in their dorm common room. “Prashaaaaaa,” she said. “You’re hereeeeee! Heellllp me!”

He picked her up and carried her up the stairs like the prince in a movie. By now, he’d witnessed the antics of many drunken white girls, so he put a bucket next to her bed and made sure she drank water. He rubbed her shoulder a few times. She was quite beautiful, with her brunette hair and slender nose. He sat on the couch doing a problem set on his laptop for a bit, occasionally looking up at her, imagining the two of them married. Once, a brown friend had said, “But wouldn’t your parents be upset?”

“No dude,” he’d said. “My family isn’t like that!”

What Prashant didn’t totally understand, because he was relatively free of ego, was that his family stood in awe of him and would’ve accepted anyone he brought home. In fact, what nobody understood — not Avery, not the members of his dorm, not even Prashant himself — was that Prashant was quite literally the hope of his nation. He was one of their finest products: a man of the people, gifted with a powerful mind and a gentle nature. He’d even been discussed, at times, in the conference rooms of his country’s secretariat. There’d been at least one meeting where a government official had said, “We need to ensure that Prashant returns home.”

He hadn’t thought overmuch about his future. He had a social conscience, of course. But mostly he just had a boundless youthful energy. He’d get interested in a subject, then suddenly he’d be reading up about it, emailing people, visiting offices, going on expeditions. Last summer, he’d learned to drill wells on the leeward side of his island. He was interested in it, so he’d just done it!

Prashant was so unassuming and gentle that most people naturally wanted to help him. But some professors, particularly white women, were dicks. He had one writing professor who kept marking up his papers with red, critiquing his English. He asked for meetings to figure out how to improve, but she said, “I don’t have time to teach remedial English — your high school really ought to have prepared you better.”

Her harangues against Prashant somehow became general knowledge, and one day Avery asked, “What is going on in your writing seminar?”

“Oh, I’m having some trouble,” he said.

“Prashant,” she said. “You are an incredible, amazing, brilliant person. I cannot believe this woman is treating you this way. Should I talk to her?”

Prashant cocked his head. Somehow, though he’d lived on this earth for nineteen years, nothing in his life had ever seemed as consequential as this decision. He’d never asked for help before, and his first instinct was to tell Avery no. After all, it was only a grade. Prashant had always gotten straight A’s, but he wasn’t particularly worried about tests or exam scores. He’d never cared about grades. He always just dug straight through, to the substrate, and did the thing that need doing. If you can do the thing well, then you’ll get an A in the class, of course. But Avery explained to him that actually his English was fine and this woman was bullying him because she was a bitch.

“No,” Prashant said. “Do you think so? Is my English really serviceable? I am not the best writer.”

“Prashant,” Avery said. “I’ll prove it. I’m an English major. I’ll edit your next essay.”

And, sure enough, it came back with a B- and a referral to the campus writing center. Prashant was bemused. He’d written the assignment in a few hours, but Avery had spent many hours in his room, folded up in one corner of the futon, chewing on her pen, rewriting the paper before he turned it in.

“Okay,” he said.

“I can do it?”

“Go speak with her. Go do it.”

“Do you want to come?”

“No.”

A week later, Prashant got a terse email from his professor stating that she was dropping him from the course and invalidating his grades. He was referred up the chain through some byzantine bureaucratic process, all handled by Avery. She spent hours and hours preparing his case — for what? Prashant couldn’t even understand what was happening!

One day, Avery and Prashant were working in his dorm room when his phone rang. It was his country’s minister for “Technology and Business Development.” The man was in town for some meetings and had some hours free and wanted to get lunch with Prashant — the minister’s car was outside right then.

“Oh shit!” Prashant said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“What?”

When Avery heard what was happening, she came outside. The minister was in a slick business suit and wearing sunglasses — his eyes flicked over Avery’s body and he said, “Would your friend like to come to dinner as well?”

So the three of them went to a hotel on the outskirts of campus, where the minister probed Prashant on his studies and plans.

“You will do graduate studies?” the minister asked.

“I think so?” Prashant said. “Perhaps a PhD. I am drawn to civil engineering?”

“Not software development?”

“I think no,” Prashant said. “Coding is too much time at a desk. It is fun, but not serious work.”

“You need me to write letters or call anyone?” the minister said.

“Wait, actually,” Avery interjected. “There’s one thing.” Then she described the situation with the professor.

The minister frowned. “I will handle it.”

Afterward, the Honor Code case against Prashant disappeared. Somehow, his life became markedly easier — something he wouldn’t have thought possible. He got a summer internship at a civil engineering firm, and Avery’s dad got all of Prashant’s stuff and took it up to San Francisco, where he’d be staying in Avery’s guest room.

For her part, Avery did cool-girl things: interned at an art museum, took drugs, went to parties, flitted around the edge of his life while Prashant went out to construction sites and drew up plans. Avery’s dad absolutely loved Prashant, and Prashant loved his stories about Avery as a kid. She’d often return from a party to find her dad and Prashant standing in the kitchen and chatting.

“Why don’t you ever take Prashant out?” Avery’s dad said.

“Oh, are you into parties and things?” she asked.

“I could go to a party!” Prashant said.

So he went to a gathering as her date, but he could feel that he simply wasn’t . . . right? She swirled around the room, introducing people to him, talking him up, saying the hopes of an entire nation rested on his shoulders. People were interested in him, as a spectacle of sorts, and he was happy to speak with them. All he wanted, though, was to be close to Avery, to hold her gaze, to soak up her attention. He’d never wanted anything so badly in his life.

A few years later, a brown girl spotted him, dragged him to bed, and suddenly they were dating. This brown girl was beautiful, sophisticated, charismatic. His friends were like, “You found a brown Avery!” After his master’s degree, he joined a company that did large civil engineering contracts across the world, while his girlfriend worked a management consulting job in New York.

The brown girl wanted him to stay in the United States, while he preferred to go home — not because he yearned to help his people, but because there were some very interesting problems in hydroelectric power provision and he thought it was time to get cracking on all these big projects that the government had promised now for decades without ever making progress.

“Well, do you have a job out there?” his girlfriend asked.

“No,” he said. “But I can do something.”

“If you want to help your country, you can do it much better from here! You can make lots of money, you can start a business, you can do so many things . . . .”

“Hmm . . . .”

He proposed marriage to his brown girlfriend, and shortly after the engagement was announced on the internet, he got a text message from Avery.

“Wow!” she wrote. “Congrats! Who is this girl?”

Through the course of a long conversation, over text and face to face, Prashant told Avery all about his girlfriend. He said the girl was really smart, driven, ambitious. His friends called her “the brown Avery.”

“Oh Prashant,” she said. “You can’t be this stupid.”

“What?” he said.

They were at a coffee shop in New York. Avery was in a slim black dress and wearing silver earrings. She touched Prashant’s hand.

“You’re not gonna be happy with this girl,” she said. “You’re a superstar. You’re, like, a precious natural resource. Does this girl even get that?”

“That’s too much,” he said. “I’m only a person.”

“People should just give you whatever you need,” she said. “Just write you blank checks. Take care of you so you can do great things. This girl isn’t like that. She’s trying to . . . to guide you or something. Makes no sense.”

“Avery, this is a very strange conversation,” he said. “I asked you out on a date, and you ignored me. I don’t know what strange ideas you have about me. I’m only a person.”

“Oh, Prashant,” she said. She reached out and touched his face. “Okay, fine. Let’s do it.”

“Do what?”

“Have sex.”

“Are you joking?”

“I’m calling a car. Let’s do it.”

They went to a hotel room. She took him by the hand, dragging him to the elevator. He took off her dress, bit her shoulder, did the whole thing. The next morning, he broke up with his fiancée.

He moved temporarily into Avery’s condo, but after a few months, they went on a tour of his home country. Everyone was very bemused by their rainforest wedding and by the life they subsequently led: Avery would take her calls and meetings from the capital of this little island nation while her husband spent months ranging over the country in his jeep, wrangling construction teams and overseeing projects.

After ten years as a contractor, he was invited to join the government’s infrastructure team, which meant standing for election in a safe district. Avery tried and tried to learn the language of his country, but she was always hopeless at it. Her own children were at home here — they hardly knew America.

Avery’s dad, of course, hated Prashant. He’d liked the guy as a friend, thought he was really bright! But to carry off his only daughter to the end of the earth? That was too much.

“What about you?” Avery’s dad asked. “Are you happy out there? Does he think about you at all?”

“I’m happy. And no, he’s pretty busy.”

“But Avery, you did so well in school. You loved your art. Is this the life you dreamed for yourself?”

“Not really.”

“So come on then! Why are you over there?”

For their twentieth anniversary, Prashant rented out a castle. It was a giant forest redoubt, from which Buddhist kings had once ruled with unimpeachable propriety. Prashant paid for dozens of their college friends to fly out for a weeklong party. And through hints and sketches and fragments, Avery and Prashant heard their “love story” repeated over and over again. “You guys were just thick as thieves, from the moment you got to campus,” said one former dormmate.

On the last day of the trip, Prashant came upon his wife sitting in her pajamas in the window seat of their palace hotel. She was sketching a flower that she’d seen through their window.

“Those are the same as the roses I left you,” he said.

“What roses?”

“You can’t remember? Are you kidding me? Back in undergraduate, when I bought you roses for a gift. Do you remember receiving them?”

“Oh. Yeah,” she said. “Those.”

Prashant had long since ceased wondering why she had never mentioned the roses or reciprocated his affections in college. He’d retreated back into his happy technocratic bubble, full of games and projects. He kissed his wife on the neck, and she shivered slightly, but when he pressed further, she chivvied him away, saying, I think I’d like to be alone for a while.

Naomi Kanakia is the author of four novels and a non-fiction book about the classics, What’s So Great About the Great Books?, that will appear in 2026 from Princeton University Press. She also writes a (somewhat) popular literary newsletter called Woman of Letters that’s been mentioned by the New Yorker, New York, and Vox.

They were really very nice about it — which made it worse, you know — writing her to say how, while it wasn’t a great fit for them right now, they were very grateful for the chance to consider it, and had every hope her timely study of Polish cinema between the wars would find a lucky publisher extremely soon. (Were they taking the piss out of her? With the “timely”? The “extremely”? Nearly seven years on U.S. soil, still their sarcasm eluded her.) She had spent the springtime in a panic. Holed up in her quarters, guzzling cognac before noon. She would speak aloud to Papa, who was dead.

“So what?” she heard him say to her. “So what they took your clout. They left you your life. Your freedom. Rejected? Denied? Try starved. Try tortured!”

True, they’d had it rougher then . . . breadlines in the frigid dawn. The brutal gloom of Warsaw winters. Yet lately from the comforts of her rental home on Elm Street (Oak Street? — she had not been out in some days’ time), Magda envied the old countrymen what they’d been up against. The clarity of their struggle. She had heard the stories of his colleagues — their courage and defiance. Dissident scholars, silenced and surveilled. Their manuscripts smuggled to the West inside of flour sacks. Cut off from the presses, how they’d stopped at nothing to be heard. Perhaps she should self-publish her book on the Kindle store on Amazon.

She considered this now, scrolling. How bad would it be really? The covers were cheerful, and charmingly homemade. They had swirly fonts. On one volume, A DILF For Christmas, an extremely hunky man stood naked, holding a Santa hat over his genitals.

Oh Christ. It was hopeless. These hours alone, these tortured theses — another stillbirth of the mind. Yes, Papa, she was free. A flâneuse in New Haven. Free to roam the crime-choked streets. Free to take the bus to Marshalls each time her car broke down. Free to eat in one sitting a twelve-inch meatball sandwich, then to suffer palpitations, frightening seizures in her lower throat, then be charged two hundred dollars to wait four hours at the walk-in clinic where they gave her an antacid tablet and told her to “go easy on it.” Free to be a middling, no, a failing academic, entombed in her recondite works and meaningless achievements.

Dreadful quiet in the street. It was 9 a.m., already beastly hot. The last Friday in May. The urge to self-destruct was strong today.

You could feel the campus emptying of life out there, the students packing up their things and leaving for the summer. For the future. At last weekend’s commencement she had worked hard not to weep. The mortarboards flung skyward, bright college years, old Yale, goodbye! The graduates proceeding, robed, in dappled sunlight, so young and blessed. Her contract would not be renewed.

It was official. She would leave these grounds without a ripple, forgotten by them all. The youthful technocrats who’d sat through her film survey (the rumored easy A) only to tick the box of their humanities requirements. Fraternity brothers texting, fidgeting through screenings (in rare 35mm) of Battleship Potemkin. Reprimanded, how they’d smirked at her, bemused no doubt by her sincerity, her Slavic styles, her neckerchiefs. Pitying her turgid speech, how benign her field of expertise, how puny the concerns of art against the brute forces of commerce. The girls were no less lazy really, only slyer, more litigious, one young lady this past spring citing frequent cramps as grounds enough to miss a whole semester’s worth of class, and at no cost whatsoever to her grade. (Magda had known better than to quibble with her, one Chloe so-and-so, a Hollywood lawyer’s hypochondriac daughter.) With her colleagues she’d fared worst of all. Careerist types. On the go and on the make, with their podcasts and their panels. No time for Polish cinema between the wars. In the dining halls, at the department luncheons, they assembled in their cliques, politicking, pitching, schmoozing, striving, shaking hands. All so public-facing in their interests, so mad for relevance, they might have been running not for tenure but for Congress. The life of the mind? It was the life of the mouth. A department meeting this past April had gone badly. Not her finest hour . . .

At a young professor in Film Studies who’d proposed to introduce a new course (“Wakanda in Perspective”) she had bristled, then was swiftly schooled — it was not her place at all to disagree. Granted she’d not seen the film nor films in question, a matter of too-long lines at the multiplex plus her having zero interest in the superheroes-franchise genre. Such omissions, one colleague cut in, reeked of elitism (elitism at Yale — a shocking crime), and this from an alumna of Bryn Mawr College, white, a child of well-connected Boston-area ophthalmologists, who had gone so far as to imply she was a bigot. Magda’d tried hard to explain herself, growing very flushed, very nervous to be put on the spot, instantly regretting having drunk before the meeting (a small carafe with lunch that day, of house red from the pizza parlor, hardly what you’d call a spree, but a bad call nonetheless), slipping back by turns into her native tongue as she told them, no, she was no bigot (“Nie jestem fanatyczką! Skądże!”), far from it, in fact. Her concern was that the film scholar community, having toiled so long to legitimize themselves among the classical humanists, should be seized at such a crucial hour by a misguided and fatal populism. A critical juncture was close at hand (nearly in tears now), the dawn of a nightmarish new era for the arts — the treasures of world cinema scrapped for parts, mined for widgets, in their stead a disembodied flow of content recombining, self-spawning, devoid of theme or human authorship, devoid of intencji, nie martwili się? Kto stanąłby w obronie Bergmana? Kto w obronie Hitchcocka? A Kurosawy? Nikt? Dlaczego nikt? And so forth, in that vein, for a few minutes, before (this part she could not remember) fainting cleanly from her chair.

. . . A few had reached out afterwards to share their wishes for her health. She ought to take some time, they said, rest up. Which sounded nice. On whose dime? These Americans, with their therapeutic blather. It was one hand on your shoulder, another coming for your lunch.

She lit a cigarette, a roll-your-own, reclining on the old Salvation Army couch.

She was badly busted up. Out of favor with the fates. What she was selling, nowadays, folks were hardly lining up to buy. Soon the money would run out, her visa lapse. There was talk she might require a surgery, a hysterectomy. (“Sooner would probably be better than later,” said the doctor. Very ominous.)

She knew that she should stop this wallowing, and get to work again immediately. Homesick, soulsick, we must build a new home on the page. There’d been a time, not all that long ago, no film theorist alive could touch her — like a world-class pianist at her Lenovo keyboard, storming out concertos in a trembling, phosphorescent fury. But that was half the problem. She had lived too much in words, in visions. Not even her own visions. Art, which once enlarged her, in the end had made her smaller. Very small . . . teeny-weeny. Such a maladjusted little speck of a woman, she might disappear into thin air one of these days.

She would catch a train. Head down to the city. It was not a bad idea at all. As far as cities went it had some bad associations for her, but she felt a strong attraction to it now. Seeking human voltage, you could do no better than New York. A place to spin out unmolested, and in style, where nobody would bat an eye at a woman at loose ends, day-drunk on a park bench, or conferring with her many dead in the glass of empty storefronts. Some rich friends of her late aunt’s had a pied-à-terre near Lincoln Center, rarely used. She could raid their wine cellar, don their kimonos, blast their opera records. Take in a show. Yes, it was a marvelous idea. A lost weekend. She did not strictly intend to survive it.

In the New Haven station was a carnival air, people headed to the beach, to ballgames. Monday was a public holiday, a day of remembrance for fallen servicemen, though the summer crowds betrayed no hint of solemnity.

She had packed in a hurry. It was just as well to leave it all — her sublease would be up the first of June. The care of her beloved cat she entrusted to her next-door neighbor, Trent the supersenior, who graciously agreed. He was a very nice young man, Trent, about the only Yale student who’d ever given her the time of day — a once-promising quarterback for the varsity football team, waylaid in his junior year by a devastating injury (magic mushrooms, fourth-floor window, visions of flight) and now badly behind on his credits, and minimally productive in his daily life (as per an official mailpiece, intercepted by her by mistake, he was twenty-five years old). Something in this thwarted Hercules had touched her. In his big brown eyes, a tragic knowledge, an animal tristesse, as of a prized racehorse too soon put out to pasture. She’d left simple, easy-to-follow instructions for the care and feeding of the little cat. No doubt he’d be in good and gentle hands.

She arrived to her car early — air-conditioned, clean — and had her pick of seats. Though the bar compartment, sadly, was a thing of history on the Metro-North Railroad, the new custom for those in need was to purchase a beverage at the station’s newsstand and conceal it with a brown paper bag. She had chosen for today’s journey a Lime-A-Rita, a festive malt drink. She would start the weekend with a bang.

She lay back as the train pulled out. She was free and on the move. A great relief not to hassle with parking, and to steer clear of the meddling of the highway patrol.

As a result of a fender-bender in North Haven last October, en route from picking pumpkins for her mantel (the day had started wholesomely enough), she’d been ordered to attend classes on drunk driving awareness and even two sessions of the Fairfield Presbyterian Alcoholics Anonymous. Christ — a sorry, slobby bunch. Housewives and construction workers, parroting amongst themselves their wisdom gleaned from bumper stickers, embroidered pillows, and Eckhart Tolle. To their stories of tough childhoods, charmless adulthoods she’d listened patiently, Faulknerian in their detail and variety. They had put on quite a show. Weeping, hugging, praying, hands all joined together in an ecstasy of helplessness. It was a bit over the top really.

Needless to say, she could scarcely relate. Hers had been a happy and auspicious early life, Communism notwithstanding. Her parents had adored her, with good reason — an only child, born late to them, violet-eyed and ringleted, reading chapter books at three. In her twenties, at the film school in Łódź, she’d been something of a star pupil, the darling protégé of several faculty. (With Mr. Andrzej Wajda she had even had relations, on and off. Grooming, you might call it, nowadays, in the undergraduate parlance. Far from a trauma — she’d loved every goddamned minute of it.)

So no, she had no use for them. They could keep their slogans and their sanctimony. She was not some Fairfield County wino. The problem wasn’t childhood. It was personhood, per se. It was just that life and consciousness were broadly overrated, reality a melancholy, awkward business, squeaky at the wheels, and screaming out for generous lubrication, don’t you think. There was not that much to say about it, and nothing to confess. The facts could not be helped. Her devotion was incurable.

Picking up some steam now. She cracked open a second. Ah . . . delightful sound. They were hurtling past the smokestacks and decrepit industry of Bridgeport, her thoughts starting to scud in the familiar, lovely way. In the poorer suburbs, houses packed together, flags hanging from painted porches. A football field, a Catholic cemetery. The Green’s Farms public library, which in fact she’d been to, once. She loved a scuzzy small-town reading room, and often sought them out along her travels. These would be the Alamo of the literate democracy. Far from the gloss of the ivory tower, but vital in their rumpled way. The foul-smelling loveseats and broken water fountains. The poor and indigent and elderly accessing the internet, sometimes having a short nap. The histories of Rome and Carthage, their loan cards half a century yellowed. Borrowed down the ages by humble, unsung knowledge-seekers, and stained with soup and scum and ashes, each holding in its timeworn margins — it seemed to her — a secret chronicle, a suggestion of the dream lives of yesteryear’s Americans. Shit. She recognized someone.

A former student, coming from the washroom.

She hid behind her cat-eyes and her new issue of Sight and Sound. She would rather not be forced into some kind of interaction.

“Mind if I sit here?” he said.

She would brook no judgement for her Lime-A-Rita. Then again, what did it matter. She must already be a punchline on the campus, if that eminent. He could tell his little friends he’d seen her blotto on a train. A bit of morbid gossip, the last glimpse of the pedagogue before her doom. She’d be sealed in schoolboy legend, like Ichabod Crane.

“Yes, no. Of course,” she said. “I don’t mind. Be my guest. Please.”

He sat down across from her. She couldn’t place him, really. Cut from the same cloth as half the others. Polo shirt and chino shorts, no style about him whatsoever. Temperate in his appetites, generic in his tastes, nary an off-kilter thought in his neat little crew-cut head, she bet. Bound soon for the think tanks, the corporate law firms, in Washington or Cupertino. Whatever bland new world he and his kind would be inheriting, she wouldn’t be around to see it. You could count her out. Leave her to the freaks and screw-ups, the syphilitic ghouls, the losers, Luddites and malingerers. If any such people remained in Manhattan, she would find them and salute them.

Of course, for the time being, it would not stand to be rude to the boy. Now that they were here, there was no sense in ignoring him. The need for conversation hung thickly in the air. She was not so far gone that she failed to pick up on the social niceties and pressures. Soon . . .

“Well, then, what brings you to the city today?” she said. “Weekend plans? Seeing friends?” Many of her colleagues had found meaning in this sort of thing.

“Yeah, seeing some friends. For the weekend.”

“You certainly pack light. Hats off to you.”

“Oh. Yeah, haha,” he said.

“And this summer?”

“An internship, in D.C. At a political consulting firm?”

“Impressive. Very nice.”

“Thanks! Thank you. Well — no, it is. It’s great.”

A bracing tête-à-tête this was shaping up to be.

He shifted in his seat, ill at ease, his limbs ungainly. Bit of an odd bird, on closer look. A painful tentativeness to him, as if compelled to ask permission for so much as drawing breath. He had a way of squeezing his eyes shut every ten to fifteen seconds that was very unbecoming. You found yourself almost bracing for it, as for a car alarm outside your window in the night.

They continued in their small talk for a while. Extremely dull. The city yes, the High Line, blah blah blah. They were churning them out by the millions, just like this, more each year, high-IQ emotional dullards who, once the robots overtook their know-how, would be truly lost and rudderless. Strangers to themselves, without any hope of succor, no recourse to the human tapestry. Forsake the liberal arts, and the young would pay a hefty price.

Before long she was very sleepy. Loopy even — those tall boys packed a punch. She should ask him out to dinner for the hell of it. Sonya and Miłosz had season tickets to the Met. She could show this milk-fed bore a thing or two of art, of madness, of mania, abjection, the avant-garde, addiction. Put some hair on the boy’s chest. He was really not bad-looking, in an Anthony Perkins sort of way, and by all accounts of age. Oh, Magda, Magdalena — stop.

There’s some life in you yet, isn’t there, old girl.

Rough hands prodded her. A pug-faced man was talking. She saw herself reflected in the vinyl of his cap.

“Ma’am. Ma’am. Train’s in, ma’am. It’s time to go now.”

Everyone was gone. A mossy, dead taste in her mouth, like the loam of graves. There was drool all over her silk scarf.

Well, this was embarrassing. Rather rude of the young man not to try and wake her, nor say goodbye. She had dreamt their interaction, possibly. Hallucinated it. This was the grisly, late-stage stuff. They’d talked about it in the meetings. Macabre, ecstatic visions in the detox wing at Fairfield Memorial, startling in their lifelikeness. A fitting coda for her, in a way, that life and cinema should finally be one.

But he’d left something behind, on the seat, a credit card. She picked it up.

Now she remembered. This was the McColl boy. A student from the residential college where she’d been visiting assistant dean one year, back in the day. Her stock was higher then.

He had had some kind of breakdown, his despair chalked up to long Covid, the better to explain it to his proud, bewildered parents. A medication was prescribed; this accounted for the strange tic, the involuntary movements. He had lost a lot of weight. He’d apparently been well enough to return to campus, though whatever follow-up was meant to happen, it had been on someone else’s watch. Granted she’d not thought to ask, or thought of him at all. She’d been very, very busy with her book.

Well. What could you do. Some failed to thrive. To be young was not an unmixed blessing. Some fell quite badly through the cracks. It was bound to happen, really. Small-town salutatorians, big fish at their suburban high schools, but only guppies in the major leagues. And their peers such a sharp-elbowed lot, so swaggering and glib and natural.

Once in a blue moon the very worst would come to pass. A brief flurry of bromides in the school paper about mental health awareness. But otherwise their suffering was unaccountable, invisible. An abstraction and a puzzlement to those left over. A black, black box.

Plans with friends eh.

She had a bad feeling about him. He had something really stupid planned. He carried nothing with him. No weekend bag. No device that she could tell. Of course, she could be wrong about it. Completely off the mark. But if she wasn’t —

She moved against the platform’s crowds, the train-bound travelers pushing on, the smell of sweat, exhaust, heat, metal, popcorn, feces and cologne — the stifling Hades of the great, disgusting city. Nearly rush hour on the Friday of a holiday weekend, the unofficial start of summer, and everyone was hell-bent on their plans. So sure and stubborn in themselves. Their heels dug in, unswerving in their loyalty to life. She did not resent them for this. It was how it ought to be.

It was 2:57 p.m., five minutes past their train’s arrival time. By now, he could be anywhere. For all she knew he’d gotten off at Harlem. Fordham, even. Closer to the bridge. She would never find him.

And if she did? What would she say? She was a poor ambassador for life. She had no great pitch prepared. Would she tell him he had such potential? She, too, had had potential. It was not enough to live on. Half the time, you were worse off for it. A bruising notion, one’s own promise. The special contribution. The song that you were born to sing — you must find it. You must sing it. If you don’t? Then woe to you, child. Around this void, a million lives had been contorted. Bent completely out of shape. To hell with being special. They had had enough of that, the both of them.

She came into the main concourse, the awe-inspiring vault. Laughing at herself, to be getting so worked up. She hadn’t walked this fast in years, except once, to the tobacconist’s at closing time. There he was just past the information desk, a hundred feet away from her, moving towards the northern exit in his rangy, graceless way.

Where was he going, and why so fast?

“Trevor!” she called after him, running now, smiling ridiculously. What an idiot she was. “Trevor!” People turned their heads. “Hello! You forgot something!” He stopped and turned.

It was decided. She would run him down. She would stick to him like glue. Breathe down his neck until he proved her wrong. She would take him back to the apartment, feed him — cheesesteaks, sundaes, whatever he desired. This wasting away wouldn’t do at all. He was still a growing boy. They would ride it out together. Do whatever stupid, boring thing. Rowboats in the park. The Coney Island Steeplechase. But she wouldn’t let him be alone. She’d be mother, father, friend, and maid. She would bar the windows, hide the knives, and if he had to use the bathroom, they would find a way to work around it. It was not up for discussion.

Her weekend plans were fucked, of course.

Cally Fiedorek is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction. Her debut novel, Atta Boy, was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a Vulture Book Highlight of 2024. She lives in her native NYC with her husband and three kids.

Professor Park considered himself an everyman. There were ups and downs, but his average annual earnings before he left South Korea exceeded 90 million won. He thought that he was on the verge of falling out of the middle class though, believing that the monthly entries in his bank account were not big enough numbers to rely on after his retirement. All his life, Professor Park had been such a person, till his moment of death.

Professor Park’s last 10 years in South Korea partly proved that he indeed had to scrape out a living in a certain sense. His daughter and son, who had often visited America for language studies and other reasons, both left for the United States when they entered university, this time for good. It was Professor Park who had to pay the greater part of their tuition and living expenses.

Had it not been for them, he would have faced no need to take on numerous research projects from external partners or serve as the department head. The latter forced him to introduce unnecessary English-only lectures, which resulted in his complaint: “Internationalization my ass! It’s nothing but flooding the campus with Chinese kids.” Sometimes, to relieve stress, he shouted “Hey, Qiqihar!” at a teaching assistant from Heilongjiang who worked in his lab.

At the point of her departure for America, his daughter had not yet obtained the dollar-like green card, let alone citizenship. Naturally, it was through much hardship that she got her MD-PhD. As American medical schools usually declined applicants without permanent residency or citizenship, Professor Park and his wife had to do something to raise the probability of her acceptance. First, they made her drop out of a university where she had been attending a preparatory course; after all, the university’s fame was insufficient to satisfy Professor Park’s wife. Then they sent their daughter to A—, a city in the Middle East, where a prestigious American university had a campus. Anyhow, their daughter, who had been a mere undergraduate international student, eventually succeeded in entering an American medical school and becoming a MD-PhD ― an amazing outcome of the child’s hard work and her parents’ stacks of money. Professor Park presumed that at this point, all she lacked was citizenship.

Now he was feeling nervous. Before he could realize it, his daughter had managed to catch an American fiancé. She was not getting a mere green card; she would become an American citizen. That meant a bigger probability of success for her. While it was impressive that she had secured a position in a general hospital, she could one day become a professor at a medical school or open a hospital herself, turning it into a big one over the course of time.

Professor Park was anxiously waiting for his future son-in-law, watching scorching yet pleasant sunbeams flowing through the window. It was a uniquely American summer day in the Pacific Northwest. He imagined what his son-in-law would look like. He was more likely to have brown hair than to be blond. Would his eyes also be brown then? Or maybe he would be a ginger, with pale skin that easily turned pink if seated by the window. What would his name be? Americans these days didn’t have names like John, Jack, or Thomas, so it was kind of hard to guess in advance.

His daughter had announced her marriage as casually as saying she was going out to buy cigarettes. She had never shown Professor Park a picture of her fiancé. To be fair, Professor Park and his daughter had lived apart since she was a teenager, and they had not been so friendly with each other. He heard that the fiancé was also an MD-PhD and that they had met at the medical school. This meant that he was just starting out his adult life and would not have much money, but was a decent young man who could pay his way.

Professor Park’s wife, sitting next to him, seemed even more nervous than he was. Her eyes opened wide.

“Here they come, over there.”

Professor Park turned around, then halted.

His son-in-law’s name was not John, Jack, or Thomas. He was called Vanquoc Nguyen.

Three years had passed since his daughter had become an American. It was the fourth month that Professor Park and his wife were spending in the States. The last sunshine that had clung to the end of the summer was gone; nine months of drizzles and clouds had begun in the Northwest.

Though the States had not been unfamiliar to Professor Park, he had never imagined that he would spend his old age here. He was in his sixties and did not regard himself as an old man yet, but he would live his later years in America anyhow. These days, he was spending many hours alone at home. He had never stayed at home for such a long time after his boyhood.

His immigration was a result of two coincidences. First, he retired. His monthly pension was around 3.5 million won, which, to quote his wife, was “an amount that barely lets them breathe and live.” Of course, Professor Park and his wife had some savings, but they were not enough to buy a building in Seoul to collect rent. Using the savings would let them spend more than 3.5 million won per month, although it raised another problem to consider: they had no idea when they would die and, accordingly, could not tell how much they could spend from their savings.

Then their daughter, who was living in P—, a city in the American Northwest, gave them a call. Professor Park had not heard much from his daughter after her last name changed from Park to Nguyen. He resented her behavior a bit, yet she was still the better child compared to her brother, who had refused to go to a law school and instead chose to major in filmmaking. He eventually disowned his parents altogether. Professor Park’s daughter said there was a tenement for sale in the downtown of P— at a tremendously low price, and she was willing to sponsor her parents to become American citizens and start a rental business.

Professor Park and his wife figured out that the disposal of their apartment, combined with their savings, would let them buy the tenement without difficulty, and it could generate more rental income than an average building in Korea, even if they hired a manager. On top of that, with the money left over they could buy a two-story house in the suburbs, which had a lawn, a swimming pool, and a jacuzzi. The same amount of money was worth only a tiny shoebox apartment in Seoul.

“Just leave it to me. I’ll take care of it later,” said his daughter. After hanging up, he was reminded that the building, not yet his, would also be given to his Vietnamese son-in-law for the price of citizenship. He felt a sudden surge of anger.

Professor Park, nevertheless, had come to America because he had no other option. At this point, dead leaves were floating on the surface of his swimming pool. He had become weary of the swimming pool and even the jacuzzi in less than a year. Mowing the lawn was tiring enough. His wife was not home, and he was microwaving a Hetbahn meal bought at a Korean supermarket. Unlike him, his wife was so athletic that she registered at a fitness center the day after they had arrived. At the fitness center, about a 10-minute drive away from their home, she befriended five middle-aged Asian women and had been hanging out with them almost every day. They were practically the only middle-aged Asian women in the neighborhood.

His had been a shotgun marriage. Professor Park was a graduate student back then. His wife’s father worked in the same field. He was the dean of a university department and had gone to college with Professor Park’s academic adviser.

When Professor Park’s soon-to-be father-in-law found out his daughter was pregnant, he called in sick for three days and summoned Professor Park on the fourth. He told Professor Park to get married, go to America, and earn a doctorate there. Professor Park could not refuse. To his luck, his father-in-law later helped him in many ways, when he was trying to get appointed to a professorship after returning to Korea and even when he had to buy an apartment.

Professor Park’s wife, who had thought nothing of her future except becoming a teacher, ended up a stay-at-home mom after the unexpected pregnancy and face-saving marriage. In return, she pushed her children onto a predetermined track with an attitude resembling that of the national soccer team coach. It seemed her lost career was being reincarnated into apartments and her children, providing her with psychological rewards as reimbursement for her sacrifice, or mistake, however one might look at it. All Professor Park had to do was to pay for her.

Many times, the children would spend time in Canada and the U.S., from a few weeks up to two years. There was an incident where they were sent for a short English study in the Philippines, due to lack of money. They were assisted by a local woman who did the housekeeping and babysitting, staying with them 24 hours a day. The reason Professor Park did not have enough money then was that his wife had demanded they move to D—dong, a neighborhood situated in Gangnam, with great fervor that resulted in too big a loan. Fortunately, paying the Filipina was quite affordable.

Professor Park could not stop thinking. It was his wife who had insisted that they immigrate to America, not him. Since he had always been a reluctant man, he could not have bid farewell to their life in Seoul so fast and foolhardily had it not been for her. Now, in retrospect, it was unsurprising that she was getting used to life in the U.S. much faster than him.

Professor Park had almost disassembled the refrigerator but still could not find a dish to go with Hetbahn. At last, he opened a can of tuna, and then his wife came home.

“Where have you been?”

“At Trisha’s. We had a potluck lunch. Then we went to the new mall together. It was nice.”

Trisha was a middle-aged Filipina whom Professor Park had encountered once. She and his wife were good friends, but they often entered delicate battles of nerves against each other, each competing in humblebrags about how well their children were doing.

“That Filipina living in a two-story house with yellow lawns?”

“Her lawn is yellow?”

“You see, those people had better get used to living like Americans. Americans care so much about how their town looks. Her neighbors must be badmouthing her for being so careless about her lawn.”

“I think she has lived here, like, over 40 years. She is a one-point-five generation immigrant.”

“Anyhow, the yellow lawn still shows that she hasn’t got used to America.”

Professor Park’s speech was interrupted for a moment as he tried with his chopsticks to pick up a small piece of tuna that had fallen on the table.

“It’s the same for you. You understand that America is a multicultural society, right? Such a vast country, and you hang out only with Filipinas, Indians, and Chinese. That attitude won’t help you adjust to the community.”

“They hold American citizenship too.”

“What I am trying to get at is, you know that blonde woman living next to us. What was her name, Kate? Kite? Get friendly with non-Asians, too. That’s my point.”

“Then you should make friends too. Stop staying home all day, go meet people, white or black, multiculturally.”

“What are you getting at? You think I have no acquaintances just because I am in the U.S. now?”

However, even when early summer came again, Professor Park still had not made any American acquaintances.

And now, as he was sitting home alone just as always, a man knocked at his door.

His name was Jeff. His face and body showed physical features common among descendants of Scandinavian immigrants, frequently encountered in the Midwest. In other words, his appearance was very close to what Professor Park had imagined when he first heard that his daughter was to marry an American citizen.

Back in school, Jeff was the kind of student often called bright. He was born here but went to S—, a prestigious university down south along the Pacific coast. He got good grades, became the head editor of the student newspaper, went on to law school without much hardship, and worked for a few years as a junior lawyer at a law firm in San—, a southern seaside city.

The problem was that Jeff could no longer bear the laid-back atmosphere of San—, the city facing the Pacific Ocean. For instance, while age 30 in small Midwestern cities usually meant you were supposed to be married and have a mortgage, in this city where vegetarian cafés and bars with rainbow flags overlooked the sea, it was very probable for some people to live with their parents at age 30. This was something Jeff could not stand.

Jeff decided to return and open a law office in his hometown with the help of his parents, despite the bit of humiliation it entailed. At first, he could only practice law in areas governed by federal rather than state laws. While preparing for the bar exam in his home state, he took on immigration cases from Indians, Chinese, and Koreans who wanted to invite their families, still in their home countries, to the States so that they could become American citizens. He had fewer customers than expected, since his target clients often preferred lawyers from Indian, Chinese, and Korean backgrounds. Through these experiences, Jeff developed a bias that Asians did not fancy interacting with those outside their own ethnic circles, a tendency he believed was stronger in Asian men born in Asia.

Ten years from the day Jeff knocked at Professor Park’s door, Jeff would meet Professor Park’s son during his business trip to New York, thanks to “a predestined car crash,” in his own words. Professor Park’s son, the rising star of New York’s independent cinema scene, and Jeff, the invincible lawyer, would fall into an inferno of passionate love at first sight. Jeff would move to New York, and his departure in pursuit of love and self-realization would leave indelible scars on his blonde wife, Kaitlyn. Then Jeff and Professor Park’s son would rise to fame to become the first gay couple in New York State history to enter the House of Representatives together, on the back of a tide of this and that identity groups.

Professor Park’s son spoke to Jeff about his family only once, telling him that his parents were a typical Asian patriarch and a tiger mom, and that his relationship with them had been cut off since they could never accept a son who wanted to work in the film industry. This was the only thing that Jeff would know about his partner’s family. Not long after the moment when Jeff was knocking at Professor Park’s door, Professor Park would die. As a result, Professor Park’s son would never discover that the love of his life had once been a neighbor of his father, and neither would Jeff.

At any rate, Jeff’s story above has nothing much to do with the story of Professor Park, who would die soon. So let us return to the doorstep of Professor Park’s house. Professor Park had a smile so friendly that it even looked servile, but he had not let his guard down. Between him and Jeff, there had been nothing but “good morning” and “good afternoon” for the whole year, greetings they only shared because they happened to live next to each other.

Jeff politely told Professor Park that he would like him to attend his barbecue on Saturday. Jeff felt uncomfortable with this middle-aged Asian man, who seemed to intentionally avoid getting close to his neighbors. Yet, this very discomfort might have prompted him to invite Professor Park. Most of the neighbors were coming to the barbecue; no matter how cold Professor Park behaved, Jeff did not want to give the impression of excluding the Asian man from the party, especially when his lawn was visible from next door.

Professor Park stepped onto Jeff’s lawn with a six-pack of beer in hand. From the moment they stepped out of their house, it took less than 10 seconds for Professor Park and his wife to enter Jeff’s place. Jeff waved at them before putting pork ribs on the grill, still holding the tongs. It was a drowsy Saturday afternoon, but Jeff’s lawn was full of vivacity with people chirping, beer bottles in their hands.

“Oh, so you were a professor before coming here. How nice!” Their “nice” here could translate as: We do not know how to properly interact with you, but do not wish to leave an impression that we are rude. Still, no one at Jeff’s party was intentionally or openly disregarding Professor Park. Jeff got busy making introductions, and some people approached Professor Park to initiate conversations.

The summer of the American Northwest was dazzling, with its sapphire sky and emerald grass. Professor Park’s knees ached. He took a seat at a table and tried the steak Jeff had grilled. His face was flushed. Although he could not take in much alcohol, he had kept slurping beer whenever the conversations stopped, to avoid the awkwardness.

America has good meat; too bad it’s a bit cold now, but this is really good. He looked around. A moment ago, a few people had been sitting with him at the table, gulping down chili dogs. They had been so busy stuffing their mouths that Professor Park could not tell when to start a chat with them. This was how Professor Park ended up alone at the table. Now everyone else was standing on the lawn, talking to each other. His wife had joined with white women in a profound, integrated discussion about which beauty salon in town was the best at removing hard skin on feet. The discussion came to an abrupt stop, though, after a careless hypothesis was raised that the pedicure skills of Asian women and their English proficiency were inversely proportional, based on the case of a beauty salon employee called Qingling. The white women and Professor Park’s wife tried to read each other’s expressions.

Professor Park noticed that he and his wife were the only nonwhite couple at the barbecue besides an Indian engineer couple. He remembered that they were from Kashmir but could not recall their names, which felt too long and difficult. And Professor Park was drunk. Everyone else practically shared the same skins, high schools, academic backgrounds, jobs, annual incomes, houses, lawns, and ages. Professor Park was the oldest person here. Most of the couples’ ages ranged from 40s to the early 50s, and their children were in their early teens, if not younger.

At that moment, a kid poked Professor Park. She could be no more than five in Korean age. She seemed smart and plucky, having noticed that Professor Park was the only one with free hands, not standing on the lawn with a bottle of beer.

“What’s your name?”

“Zacky.”

The white American kid, who twisted her body and babbled, was a bit hard to understand, but she did not forget to say “please,” just as her parents had taught her. The “please” helped Professor Park figure out what she wanted. She wanted him to open a bag of marshmallows as big as her body, if some exaggeration is permitted.

Professor Park forced the bag open, and a few marshmallows popped into the air. The marshmallows were white and soft like clouds of the Northwestern summer. Zacky giggled, her eyes as blue as the region’s early summer sky. She asked him to put marshmallows on a stick. The idea of putting food on a stick that could have been lying around anywhere made him uncomfortable, but he still did it for Zacky, aware that this is what Americans do with marshmallows when camping. He gathered more sticks and walked toward the grill with Zacky and the bag of marshmallows. Jeff, who had been tilting the grill in an effort to lose no more A.1. sauce to the fire, and Kaitlyn, his wife, got wide-eyed. More people’s eyes widened. More white people, with cheerful looks, gathered around the grill for marshmallows.

Zacky was the daughter of Jeff and Kaitlyn. Jeff lifted her up in a breath, kissed her, and asked, “Now what do you say?” Zacky’s hands were all sticky from the baked marshmallows. Zacky thanked Professor Park and hid behind her mother. “I think she likes you, but she’s a shy girl, you see,” said Kaitlyn.

Zacky soon let go of her mother’s pants and asked Professor Park to toast more marshmallows. He gave her another stick with three marshmallows on it. Zacky put all of them into her mouth at once. Her cheeks looked like they could burst at any moment. Professor Park was anxious that a marshmallow might slip into her airway but hesitated to do something. He had been told before that he should never touch a kid in America, especially a girl. He held out his hand under her chin, in a gesture to make her spit out the marshmallows. Zacky giggled again and said:

“Chubby Bunny.”

Professor Park learned what Chubby Bunny meant thanks to Zacky’s explanation and Jeff’s demonstration. The rules were simple. You put a marshmallow in your mouth and say “Chubby Bunny.” Add another and say “Chubby Bunny” again. Keep going until you can no longer say it. The person who gets to say “Chubby Bunny” with the most marshmallows in his or her mouth wins.

Zacky was not the kind of kid satisfied with the delayed gratification of winning Chubby Bunny. As soon as she said “Chubby Bunny,” she chewed, swallowed, and expressed her instant happiness with giggles, while Professor Park kept five marshmallows in his mouth. His cheeks swelled like those of an ever-discontented rabbit. Once more, Zacky laughed at him.

In less than an hour of playing Chubby Bunny with Zacky, the neighbors’ opinions of Professor Park had changed: he was no longer an antisocial, reticent Asian man, but a child-loving person and much better than his first impression. A radical change had been made, all thanks to Zacky and the marshmallows. Toasting marshmallows for other kids too, Professor Park started to converse naturally with their parents.

“How come we haven’t got to know you until now!”

“The community college is looking for someone to teach math. Please tell me if you are interested.”

“The kids love you, Mr. Park!”

At sunset, Professor Park made a scene. It might have been due to the beer or his long-repressed desire for recognition. With a red-hot face, he declared that he would have a barbecue party next Saturday at his home and that everyone was invited. His wife, with whom Professor Park had not discussed anything, suddenly crumpled. The next moment though, she managed to compose her expression, since she had been talking with a white woman whose husband was the CEO of a unicorn company. However, it did not interest Professor Park’s wife whether the woman’s husband owned a unicorn or a cup of popcorn: she had been listening to the woman’s story of an ecstatic cruise to Cancún for the second time. Anyhow, everyone but his wife loved Professor Park’s idea and cheered.

Professor Park’s wife stayed angry with him for a few days. What finally helped her feel better was a pedicure. The beauty salon recommended at Jeff’s barbecue turned out to be nice, and Qingling’s pedicure skills were indeed as magnificent as her English skills were poor.

Professor Park was relentless and excited the whole week. He prepared burgers, hotdogs, pork ribs, and colorful vegetables that would visually accent the skewers. Beef slices as big as cushions were aging in the refrigerator. Late Friday evening, reproaching himself for being careless, he drove to the Korean supermarket in a hurry and came back with loads of samgyeopsal and ssamjang. He would never again show such vivacity. Most importantly, he had colossal bags of marshmallows ready.

It was Saturday at last. Professor Park grilled, sweating. A few guests who hadn’t been at Jeff’s barbecue showed. They were his wife’s Asian friends. Professor Park’s wife was showing them around, chatting. The lawn was kept so perfectly that Jeff might feel ashamed. Guests who brought food, drinks, or other presents thanked Professor Park for the invitation and began talking in groups.

As time passed, Professor Park felt lonely. He understood that the host grills at American barbecues, but others were socializing while he stood alone in front of the grill. With a sulky face, he stopped placing more meat on the grill. He decided to mingle and return to the grill later.

Just as Professor Park was timidly walking towards people with their backs to him, Zacky ran towards him with a broad smile. Now he felt as if the whole world was on his side. Even before Zacky finished talking, Professor Park brought out a mountain of marshmallows to the lawn.

No one could tell who had started it, but Chubby Bunny began. Men who wanted to outdo others, even in a child’s game, joined in one by one. Soon, it became clear who was taking it easy and who was taking it seriously. Then, only two remained. They went on stuffing their mouths with marshmallows, even though their eyes seemed to pop out. One of them was Professor Park.

The words from Professor Park and his opponent were now less “Chubby Bunny” than cries escaping the lips that closed and opened. Still, Professor Park felt happy. Everyone was paying attention to the match instead of staying in groups, and most of them were cheering for him.

Professor Park’s opponent could no longer take it. He gushed out a few marshmallows into the sky. People cheered. At this very moment, Professor Park concluded that he would put the last marshmallow into his mouth and then shout out “Chubby Bunny!”

That was it.

Professor Park’s death from suffocation was briefly reported in South Korea. The news was soon forgotten. His wife inherited the tenement that he had owned, with the help of their son-in-law, Vanquoc Nguyen, throughout the probate proceedings.

After the hectic funeral, Professor Park’s wife was relieved that she would never worry about money again. Even without the rental income from the tenement, she would stay rich until she died. A lawyer who had gone to university with Jeff and met her at his barbecue called her. He told her that many lawyers wished to meet her. Later, with the most famous among them, she sued the marshmallow company for not indicating the choking hazard on the marshmallow bag. The lawsuit ended in a settlement, the details of which stayed unknown to the public.

Nevertheless, Professor Park’s wife lived a modest, average American life until her death, never showing off her wealth. The only occasion that she let her money talk was when she invited all her Asian friends from the local fitness club to join her on a cruise to Cancún. On this ecstatic cruise, where a three-hundred-foot luxury yacht was chartered, something strange happened. Despite the fact that Qingling had never been personally close to Professor Park’s wife, she got invited too.

Hyun Woo Kim is a writer living in Seoul. Kim was a finalist for the 2024 River Styx Prize and the 2023 Los Angeles Review Short Fiction Award. His works have been published by Necessary Fiction, BarBar, and others. When not writing, Kim is busy telling people that his first name is Hyun Woo, not Hyun.

My friend, I’ve decided this will be the last piece I ever send you. You’ve been my editor for, what, forty years now? Forty-five? Jesus, you know I love you, dear man — dearest — and always will. But this is it. Consider it my resignation, if that much matters. You and I both know I’m well past retirement. And though I know we always said we’d never let ’em lick us, that we’d never let it get us down, yet I’m tired, old man. Tired, and I want to leave this city. While I still have time. A little time. The things I’ve seen . . .

You — you were meant for this place. Or it for you. I knew that from the moment we met. But me? No sir, never was. Only ever made it this long on grit. Spite and spittle, as the old grandam used to say. But they’ve done me in, now — the kids. Yessir, it’s the end for me. It’s the nether limit. As far as I’m concerned, this beat won’t be around much longer anyways — so yes, it’s my last review. Do with it what you will. I don’t really care. I’m tired. I’m leaving.

The Death of the Artist is what he called his exhibit. This so-called artist. So doubting that any of these kids ever read their Barthes anymore, I took myself all the way down to Lower Manhattan and resolved to see it. It was down in the Gallery Nouveau, you remember that old place? Kittering used to own it. Made the Voice go bananas over all the lovely gunk he put up on the walls, and the clutter. I remember all those hagridden cabbies, always left circling and circling until their Upper East Side customers were done and finally ready to lunge back home, before the junkies and the women of the night crawled out their holes and filled up the sidewalk again. Ah, what lovely days it was, Gene. Lovely days. Can’t you remember?

Well but now the spot’s as clean as can be. Sure, there’s still Joe’s B-Side across the street, and thank god. But besides that, the Nouveau these days is as bright and shiny as a battleship in peacetime. Nothing but egg-white walls and fluorescent lights, beaming evilly out through the sheerest of plexiglass windows. Sandwiched between a Pilates place and a Sweetgreen — and the clientele’s the same all around, you can bet. I showed up a half hour late, thinking I’d be early. But the kids these days, they actually run things on time! (Is there any surer sign, Gene, that the culture has stagnated than a youth that cares about punctuality?). Yes, gone is the New York of sleeping in late. Gone is showing up to parties as they were finishing, or keeping the bars and dens open long after hours. Gone, too, is Doris, Queen of 32nd Street. Remember her, Gene? How she used to take us boys in the back and [redacted]? And then big Audie Rysler would say, “Jiminy Cricket, but that really takes the cake!” and we’d all fall down laughing and ramble home drunk. Yes, lovely days it was, Gene. Lovely days it was.

Alright. Alright. Nostalgia’s a poison. I know. Anyways, some kid had told me. Told me about the Death of the Artist. Positively raving about this hot young conceptual freak, some fresh coastal specimen who’d rented the place for one night only, on the last of his grant money, and set up his installations. Installations which this kid kept insisting to me were going to be the definitive treatment, the real thing, to sum up the century so far, and all the hip children’s malaise. And sure, I was an old-timer, from some near-dead old-world publication (no offence, Gene), but still, even the rearguard ought to be present at the crowning of the vanguard, right? Some nonsense like that. What can I say? He appealed to my vanity. We hate youth, but still we find nothing more seductive than a chance to play hip-with-it again, even just for one more titrated moment. Even just for an evening.

So I waddled on down to the Lower East Side — late, as I said — only to find a few dissociated clumps of twenty- and thirty-somethings milling around, sipping champagne (champagne!) and murmuring about “middle-period” this and “multimedia” that. I took out my pad and my pen and I started to mill around, too, hoping at least one of these “installations” would merit a scribble. Of course, none of them did: I couldn’t bring myself to make a note, so pat it all was, so dull, predictable. Found objects, readymades, wickerwork, a box fan pointed at a wall, some wall texts about indigeneity (though why or how, I couldn’t quite figure, as I’d been told the artist was, like us, your classical white gay, bien pensant). I would’ve almost taken it for a satire on the new art world itself, Gene, if it hadn’t all been so prosaic, so utterly, contemptibly contemporary. Still, perhaps there was fun to be had. A laugh — or whatever comes closest to it, in this denuded landscape we once called a city.

1. Vesuvium Effluvium

What do I remember — let’s see. First up a big floorspace showing, looking like nothing less than a twelve-year-old’s science-class diorama. The diorama’s base maybe eight feet by eight feet — not shabby — with a volcano in its center, perhaps four feet tall, perhaps five. Every few minutes a little light would click on and the mouth of the volcano would bubble over in frothy white, milk-looking, semen-looking fluid, which would pour down like lava over the sides. Then the little scale models of homes and cars and people and cats and dogs, scattered around the volcano’s base, would be swamped by the white, starchy flood — whole villages and populations drowning in semen, gurgling in it. Then the light would flick off, the liquid would pool and collect and be funneled back by some pipe mechanism into the caldera of the volcano. Then, in a few minutes, it would bubble over again. I looked at the text on the floor — Vesuvium Effluvium, it was called. And yes, that gave me a good chuckle. Not great by any means. Tacky. Obvious. But worth a nice, approvingly homosexual chuckle. What artist wouldn’t drown the world in his own spunk, if he could?

2. The Stations of the Cross

Well, so then next came fourteen little square-frame paintings. One for each Station of the Cross, naturally, which of course these kids would never have understood if there hadn’t been a text announcing them as such. But each painting was, to my eye, nothing more than a neat little mockery of some Italianate Renaissance classic or other, only with an obvious half-nude figure of the artist himself painted into the scene where Christ ought to be. Here was the artist, shouldering his big olive-wood cross, as a crew of gleeful Romans whipped and scourged him from behind. Here was a treacly Pietà, of the artist on his knees in the road, with Mother Mary leaning down to cradle him — his lips scandalously close to the Dame’s holy teat. Each of the artist’s falls on that road to Golgotha, in that roaring crowd, rendered with such sweet subjective self-pity and hubris — all derivative. Beyond derivative.

Such is the apotheosis of the artist’s wet dream, I suppose: to be the martyred Christ. And Jesus, but these kids are as obvious as can be. How does anybody stand these shows, Gene? Tell me. How does anyone stand around and sip that champagne and murmur about technique when confronted with such dull — such on-the-nose — spectacle? It was beyond me, it really was. Here was this Ivy League boy, educated, surely handsome, and well-off. A gay boy in the third decade of the twenty-first century, which is the best we’ve ever had it. And he’s making — what — a volcanic tribute to his organ? A paneled disquisition on his own savior-sized dimensions? Get me out, I thought. Death of the Artist — I only hope it’s literal, I thought.

But there was more, as the steady inflation of the great artistic ego reached a stupendous climax halfway through this absurd Christly tetradecatych. There, in the middle of the progression, I came upon a little podium. And on this podium — I kid you not, Gene — on this podium was an interactive crown of thorns. Yes. You could pick it up, look at it, put it on. Be me, the text below it said. Be me, for a moment. Well you know what, I thought, realizing right then that this was going to be my last show ever as a critic, because I would never again stand for trawling through one of these egg-white galleries, in one of these gentrified hoods, in a town I never really loved anyways — I thought, fuck it, sure, I’ll be him for moment. See what it’s like to think you’re Jesus Christ Himself. So I took the damn thing and turned it around in my hands a few times, and pricked a finger or two (though it wasn’t that sharp), and I set it on my head.

Well then, I thought, I am he. I’m the death of the artist. I am D.O.A. Then I ambled over to the next few paintings but I was surprised — surprised, Gene! — to discover I liked the next one. This one was different. Panel 8 or 9, I believe. It was a painting of Jesus (the artist, that is) meeting the woman of Jerusalem. But I was amazed — astonished, even — to discover that instead of another self-transposition into vague Renaissance relief, this painting appeared to be nearly melting. Melting in a huge, vivid series of red rivulets, cascading down from the top of the painting like deep red tears, slowly blotting out the painting. A lovely effect, I thought. A fine little conceptual idea which, to my mind, almost (almost) turned the series from disaster into a somewhat affecting — or at least effective — work. But what was stranger, the red seemed to keep increasing as I looked at it. Growing, running further and further down the face of the painting, until . . .

3. The Bathroom

Well, Gene, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the red was my own blood getting in my eyes, leaking down from where the thorns had cut into my forehead. A couple kids nearby laughed at that, at my ridiculous appearance, my mistake. (“What’re you laughing at?” I wanted to say, “This is the only thing making the art tolerable!”) But I acquiesced and took it off, put it back where I’d got it, and rushed off to the bathroom.

It was a nice bathroom. I remember the shitholes (literally, shit holes) we used to tolerate, Gene, even in the nicer galleries back in the day. And of course, smelly and tetanus-ridden as they were, you’d still have to muscle your way past some pair of customers copulating in the corner just to piss.

Not so in the new world, Gene. Not so. This restroom was all marbly white tiles, stalls graffitiless, mirror wide and as sparkling clean as a battleship in peacetime. I looked for a moment at my old gray visage, my homosexual nose, the pockmarks, the little red forehead scratches leaking blood down my face. I took some tissue paper, tried to sop up what I could, cleaned and pressed the cuts for a few minutes. Even used a bit of the gin I had in my flask to disinfect it (I refuse to drink champagne — Gene, you know this). In five minutes I felt fine, only a little light stinging from the cuts. And there was a voice in my head which said: Stay here a while. It’s nice in this bathroom. Even this pockmarked, nasally gay face you’ve found in the mirror is nicer than whatever the primping youth of New York City could summon for a showing, in a time and place as miserable as this.

But I knew I had to make it out eventually, and it might as well be soon. I’d go to Joe’s B-Side, I thought. Have a drink for old times, write this piece, send it off to you, Gene. Then, having made my final peace with my final piece, I’d quit this dying city for good and go see what kind of retirement is most dignified for an old art critic in exile. For now, though, I’d see it through. I’d step out and discover just what happens to Jesus in the end, whatever trite conclusions the artist had conjured to summarize the obvious demise of the entire downtown scene. And then I’d be free, and I’d never have to worry about another well-off, happily gay young artist again.

4. Some More Bad Paintings

It shouldn’t surprise you that, cleared of the red haze, the paintings had gone back to being unremarkable, self-indulgent pabulum. Finally I made it to the end, in which our Christly artist was, shockingly, hanged on the cross, then expired, then was taken down, then laid in his tomb. Not a moment of artistic thought in the whole of it. Not even in the tomb — with the great and holy Shroud of Turin laid across his pale, lovely, artist-like limbs — did this contemporary Jesus do anything but look like the bloodless and beatific god-child of some old Italian iconographer. What was I supposed to make of it? Barnett Newman did his Stations in zips in ’66 and that was moving. I was there! I saw it. But they could tolerate abstraction in those days, Gene. They had teeth and brains, and none of that obviousness, none of the self-concern on display here, I thought. By this point I didn’t bother to read the wall texts. I’d seen what I needed to see.

5. The Death of the Artist

There was only one thing left: the titular installation. But Gene, this was the crudest, most pretentious of them all! It almost resembled a real person. In a waxen, artificial way — it was almost surreally real, I suppose. But still totally, laughably crude and unrealistic, this fake corpse that hung from the gallery rafters. The effigy of the artist: a nice, thick hemp rope tied to a beam in the ceiling, and the waxy-looking life-sized figure dangling from it, swaying a bit to one side in the draft whenever someone opened the gallery door. I looked at it just long enough to get what I needed from it. I laughed at the little placard: La Mort de l’auteur, it read, in the French. And under it: Ceci n’est pas un artiste. This is not an artist. God, I chuckled at that, Gene. Derivative — beyond derivative. All that miserable build-up (imagine the hubris necessary to actually paint yourself into the Crucifixion, without a thought to making it good), and for what? A joke about a suicide, and Barthes, and Magritte. And not even a lifelike mock-up of a body at that. But a total, obvious, ridiculous-looking fake.

There were a few young women with vaguely disconcerted looks in their eyes, starting to prod with their fingers at the effigy’s shoes, so I decided to leave for good. Had they never encountered contemporary art before? Jesus, I mean, all it’s ever about is tacky conceptual drivel like that. Or else it’s blood and genitals and dead bodies and fluids, and young hip people play-acting like little heretical pagans, but upsetting who, exactly? The blue-chips? The auctioneers? The rich men and rich women still happily shelling out hundreds of thousands — millions! — of dollars for anal beads or blank canvases or wicker chairs? Jesus. This used to be a real city, Gene. God, I used to love this city.

But I’ll admit even I thought it strange the artist himself wasn’t present. At his own opening. You’d think a young man like that, so full of his own martyrdom, so obviously marveling at his own virility — you’d think such an upstart crow would be practically preening, practically peacocking (!) at the gates of his own opening-night exhibition. But no: nowhere to be seen. Maybe he thought he was being mysterious, who knows. I think more likely afraid — afraid to meet an old head like me, probably, and have to measure up his own indulgent crap against all the timeless masterpieces I’ve seen. Me, who once watched Mark Rothko paint, who once fucked (and was fucked by) Jasper Johns. Who once watched the incomparable Doris, Queen of 32nd Street, take big Audie Rysler in her masculine hands and [redacted].

Anyways, I finally got out into the road and stumbled over to Joe’s, reveling in the glow of those low green lights again. I marveled at the jukebox still spitting out Platters tunes in the corner, and I saw Joe Jr. behind the bar, as usual, and I ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey. Then I was transported, for a moment, back to that time — to those days, Gene, when it all meant something. When the world was ugly but the world was good. Across the street, at the gallery, a crowd had formed. Maybe the artist had finally shown up, I don’t know. Some people were applauding. Some of the young women appeared to be screaming. There were sirens in the distance. I wasn’t about to look back, wasn’t about to waste any more time thinking about the nonsense of youth and youthful scenes.

No, I was too busy enjoying my beer and my whiskey, dreaming of retired life upstate or in Santa Fe. Humming along as the Platters sang “The Great Pretender” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and a dozen other numbers that seemed to stretch and distend my very soul through time, back to the days when it was just us — you and me, Gene — with the whole world to conquer. Before this shitty scene went to bedlam, before the money and the metropolitan crews, and all these young artists who think they’re the next Jesus Christ came pouring into our city to ruin it. Like the hot white magma of volcanic phalluses — phalluses of artists who can’t even show up to their own opening nights. But then what can I say? These New York artists, Gene — they’ve always been cowards.

Sam Jennings, The Metropolitan Review’s film critic, is an American writer living in London. He is the Poetry Editor at The Hinternet, and he runs his own Substack, Vita Contemplativa. For those interested, his Letterboxd account can be found here.

Like so many present-day projects, the novel writing of Clayton Daniels began as a joke and grew into a serious commercial and cultural enterprise. His stories weighed so heavily as artifacts that they were on the verge of dismissal as frivolities. While studying for the bar, still wet and green and knobby-kneed, he wrote a first-person account of digital addiction called The Glass Gutter, in which he sarcastically catalogued the pain of a young man spending all his time swiping and scrolling, watching videos of robberies gone awry, murderous road rage episodes, men slipping on bicycles and skateboards and, to use outdated slang, racking their nards. This character, yet another nameless narrator in a time of fashionably unnamed first-person narratives, also subscribed to numerous independent contractors of pornography and flirted pseudonymously with far-right humorists and ideologues, and was assumed to be a stand-in for Daniels, who was assumed to be a stand-in for many 22-year-old young men — adrift, isolated, harangued, horny (or not horny enough, not patriotically and religiously horny, tongue unrolling for a doughty broodmare), confused, angry, their circuits fried by ubiquitous digital technology, callously irreverent toward the struggles of disabled and marginalized peoples, nursing an inflated sense of their own aggrievement and tripling down on repellent qualities in misguided bids for sympathy.

The book was an unexpected success, one of those cannonball-splash debuts. It was estimated that thousands of people had not only purchased a physical copy but read through at least a quarter of it. Though he never wanted for money, thanks to family connections and mysterious windfalls never disclosed, Daniels quit his part-time jobs, and two years later, the greater part of which he spent having his picture taken in grayscape urban environments and writing intensely glib articles in which he repeatedly observed of various contemporary secular phenomena that they were, in their ritualized and fanatical aspects, much like a religion, or more specifically descended from one or another branch of Protestantism, he published his next hit, a dialogue-drenched novel called The Dullards, in which the vapid conversations and sexual dilly-dallying of youngish men and women apparently captured the post-'68, “society of the spectacle,” hyperconsumerist, neoliberal-capitalist, death-of-God, post-Oedipal, id-heavy narcissism of grad student cosmopolitans and faux-bohemian scenesters, ladling up the kind of humorless, vaguely moralistic portrayals of affluent, uptalking yet downwardly mobile, spiritually bankrupt, overproduced pseudo-intellectuals that appealed to the swelling legion of staunch wafflers, inveterate dabblers, credentialed hobos, unemployable poetasters, romantic bunglers, people who can’t write a paragraph without mentioning eros and one or another oracle, and hedonists who get off criticizing hedonism.

Three years after that, long enough for Daniels to have been forgotten or to have aged out of writing misunderstood but trendy satires, he published All the Places on Earth Where People Sometimes Have to Live Even Though They’re Not From That Place, a sendup of diaspora literature that was also taken to heart by both supporters and detractors, called a risible schlockfest by the latter and a dazzling, stupendous, monumental, lyrical love letter, truly, madly, deeply, a savage garden of earthly delights by the former. In a time when almost no one made money from writing, when underground legends in their forties and fifties worked as bartenders and carneys and septic tank technicians, and magazines pumped out widely read articles about how no one reads, and how no one could read any longer, referring to studies showing that Harvard graduate students couldn’t follow the bouncing ball on Barney & Friends, in shameful contrast with the 19^th century, when syphilitic and toothless chimney sweepers recited Horacian odes and Homeric hymns in ancient Greek when they weren’t chugging whiskey from Wellington boots and fighting in brass-knuckle boxing matches, Daniels’ earnings competed with illiterate genre bestsellers and influencers and other nonliterary cultural producers; he almost became a household name, though by this time there was hardly such a thing, what with there being hardly any households in the proper sense, as most homes were reduced to tissues of masturbating individuals on the point of dissolving.

Improbably, a string of acclaimed titles followed him into his late twenties and thirties, including a sweeping, multi-generational and sociological cinderblock called The Atomic Ant Farm, in which he widened the overfocused autofictional lens to capture in hilariously tedious detail the material conditions of pervasive malaise, rampant divorce, and alcoholism from a third-person air balloon perspective, earning him the depreciating accolades of flabby, eternal adjuncts who demand of literature that it reflect social and political forces and inform the critical consciousness of potentially revolutionary movements, a demand shaped by historical and market influences largely unexamined by perpetual academic pupae who consistently ironize exclusive artistic and religious impulses and aims while maintaining a stiff and grimly sincere attitude toward their own recently shouldered analytical tools, tools they’ll soon discard in favor of hotter theoretical frames. Then there was that deeply urgent examination of the appalling, hard-baked-cake foundations of violence and oppression and vehicular ecocide in the contemporary United States, entitled American Carnation, a labyrinthine homage to Latin American magical realism replete with POV switches spanning a thousand years, odd bird behavior, old whores, and contempt for a mustachioed dictator and enthusiasm for a bearded one. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention his gritty, minimalistic Gen X tribute, entitled Retch, about a burnt-out copywriter who becomes an avant-garde performance barf artist and builds a cult following with his searing indictment of a culture of slick images and shameless regurgitation.

But as he limped into his forties, now married with one young child, Daniels tired of writing his mocking tales, because he was generally thought to be a sincere chronicler of society’s ills, foibles, pressures and implicit enjoinments, when for the most part he’d written for the amusement of himself and others, and he was no longer laughing and no one else seemed to find him all that funny. Lately he’d developed a semblance of an authentic desire to write well, to craft beautiful sentences, a desire that can only be understood as that of a man with no idea of what to do in life. With one book left in his contract with Hymen & Shyster, a massive publishing conglomerate and a subsidiary of Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals and Robot Weaponry, he went to work on The Yearner Diaries, a sobering examination of yet more self-conscious aging romantics, void of typical adult burdens like raising children but percolating with morbid vanities, in a mood of weariness and grim sincerity, torn between the goals of offending readers with a real provocation and charming them with exquisite beauty. As he strained for wisps of material toward the middle of his book, he glimpsed signs of his own deep exhaustion and an impending spiritual catastrophe.

His success came so early, and he started out so advanced that he’d fallen behind, then finally caught up to himself, to his lack of imagination and will; he encountered his limits, smacking his skull in an experience F. Scott Fitzgerald described as a crack-up — the realization that however much of a man he might’ve been, he was much less of one now. He’d lost his impish creativity, and the idea of pursuing a degree in creative writing and sitting in a workshop, so-called because it conferred a veneer of working-class or manual handcraft respectability on the fey roundtable nitpicking and tense tone policing of extraneous and egoistic fictional exercises conducted by desperate yet grandiose shirkers, was too grisly to contemplate. Of course, we’re speaking of artistic powers here; Daniels was now a family man who loved his wife and child, or so he said, so in the beef-and-potato-eating eyes of the conventional world, he was an integral member of society, he automatically had purpose, value, a reason to be, but he also wondered if he’d gotten into the habit of treating his loved ones like his property, like tasks, burdens he’d prefer not to carry. Some dreary afternoons, he daydreamed about his wife Michelle taking their son and leaving him, just as he pictured his publisher terminating their contract. Vaguely fearful of death in an abstract way that never catalyzed into vigorous action, his favorite fantasies were of being freed from some obligation. That’s the main character’s primary flaw, his core problem; he wants, he wants nothing positive, nothing exalted, not even something steady, but this negative freedom, a disappearance without death. And it has to come from others, the world has to reject him, he can’t be responsible for it, he thought. Of his most recent protagonist or of himself, he didn’t always distinguish.

“Sometimes I think about going for it, going all the way, writing something truly offensive. But my publishers want relevant, timely; they want transgressive as a brand, not really shocking stuff. I don’t think they’d allow me to be completely uncensored,” he told a friend of his, Ted Lowith, a fellow writer and critic.

“You have a lot of clout. I bet you could do whatever you wanted. Think about your early stuff. Your first book was so raw — the descriptions of women through the eyes of the main character, it was edgy. That 10-page description of jacking off, that was a trip.”

“Yeah, but that was put out by Grundle Sludge. Those guys were small then; they didn’t care. It’s different now. And the reception of it, it was just used by a lot of people to make a stupid point, like they’d say — ‘it's not an instruction manual’ — when chastising someone online or something.”

(It was lost on almost everyone that Daniels wasn’t satirizing the lonely misogynist, nor the technological condition that isolated and radicalized vulnerable people, but the fatuous critical commonplace perspective on technology and the present, all the boneheaded pieties about attention and community and empathy. On more than a few occasions he tried to explain his intent, but when people become obsessed with attention they can hardly focus on anything else, and when they get empathy stuck in their heads, they really won’t hear you.)

“Plus, I was compared to Bret Easton Ellis, being young and all, and that protected me some, I think. I still haven’t read him. I never got around to it.”

“He’s good. You’re better though. You have more range.”

“I don’t know that people understand what I’ve been trying to do. Maybe I don’t know either.”

“Well, interpretation is a complicated thing. I look back on some of my articles and think, Where the hell did I get that? I’m a completely different person year to year; my critical tastes have evolved. Sometimes you read something and get really excited about it, and now you’re using new terms, maybe without enough training or familiarity. But who’s really keeping track . . . . Do you have anything in mind, talking about shocking people; something outrageous?”

“Maybe a couple of things, but it all feels pretty tired to me. I have this idea of writing these really crisp, sonorous sentences now, but nothing I do quite measures up. If I could accomplish something a little more mature, maybe. It would be nice to be considered a consummate prose stylist, that might be something, as long as they don’t say I’m lyrical.”

“Sometimes,” Daniels continued, “I think of writing about a dumbass rapper, or a DJ, but I can’t stand those guys. I really hate hip-hop, all of it, it’s just obnoxious, the beats, the typical subject matter, it’s all very dark and oppressive, it’s mind-numbing, it’s everywhere, just totally inappropriate, I don’t think everyone needs to be acting like an English butler all the time, but the permeation of rap into the public sphere at large, rap as universal consumer culture background and not just a subculture or a musical genre, has surely lowered standards of decency, of taste, dress, manners, all that. When I hear it, wherever I am, at a gas station, in a restaurant, idling at a stoplight, I feel like I’m about to be drugged and ritually murdered. I don’t want these rhythms and cadences and terms seeping into me, but there’s no escape.”

“Well, you can’t just go by the most commercial stuff,” said Ted. “There are some artists doing really brilliant things with language and meter, and the sample work is pretty inventive sometimes. I think there’s a case to be made for hip-hop as the most legitimate and creative and vital upholder of the poetic tradition. The way they coin terms and bend syntax, no one is experimenting with words or pushing the musicality of language like them, not to mention, with the much-ballyhooed decline of masculinity and the wax-nostalgic, homo-thanato-erotic pining after primitive warbands and hallucinating warrior poets, that turf murders and boasting in epic verse are alive and well in contemporary hip-hop scenes.”

“Yeah I know, there are underground geniuses rapping about neuroscience and quantum physics. I’m just not impressed by rhyming — it sounds childish to me. I think there are good reasons we left it behind and started writing prose. Rhymes tend to dominate simplistic minds, and I don’t think people are aware of how much canned or practiced rhyming goes into those supposedly ‘freestyle’ or improv performances. And it’s just dull-witted. Rhyming combines two things that unsettle me; it’s like an autocomplete program and a primitive enchantment, a spell-casting. In general, if there’s still a mainstream culture, the influence of hip-hop has been negative, for the most part, if you ask me. I think it’s had a mostly degrading effect. There’s no solid mainstream culture in any artistic realm anymore, but the aesthetics, attitudes, the implicit and explicit values of rap, especially commercialized gangster rap, have absolutely blended into everyday life. Middle and upper classes have domesticated and commodified its speech patterns, outlooks, preferred artistic forms, while moving on from the more overtly violent crudities, though they retain a kind of sympathy for it, while lower classes, of all races, mind you, seem to be stuck playing extras in a Ja Rule video. I remember a time when the term ‘wigger’ meant a white guy who tried to act Black, and it was a funny, critical word — offensive, yeah, but it was funny because the clothes, the slang, the accent, they were seen as put on. The term doesn’t really make sense anymore, and not because we’ve all sensitized ourselves and no longer tolerate the harshness of it, but because that’s just the authentic upbringing of a lower-class white guy now; there’s nothing else, he’s not a wigger, he’s just another guy wearing oversized, complicated sneakers. What passes for country music these days, music for alcoholic redneck scofflaws and illiterate farmhands in the past that morphed for a while into muzak for Midwestern school buses, has dead-ended in a twangy electric beat-backed roll call of brand names and fake experiences that shore up the vestigial awareness of obsolete rural living in the brewpub-battered minds of millionaire tradesmen.”

“That’s interesting,” Ted said. “I don’t know that you’re informed enough, but it’s a perspective. Maybe you could get some of those ideas across in fiction; might be better suited to an essay. Frankly, it’s a little jarring and suspicious to bring it up at all. You might really offend some people. If you were to expand on this in public, it would bring to mind some rather unsavory associations. If this were a printed interview, people would assume the worst. You might be lumped in with neo-Nazi trailer trash who write monographs on Klages. Even if you write fiction — say you have a character with reprehensible views, or you depict the wrong sort of character as an idiot — people will assume you’re plainly stating your own thoughts. There’s been a decline in the ability to distinguish narrator from character, and narrator from author, as well as confusion over the meaning and the impact of words, not to mention the tendency to overexplain everything, or another bad habit, superfluous dialogue that makes an already long story even longer, spoken by characters who are forced by the author to speak in unnatural terms just to air certain viewpoints explicitly. The intention is to clear up misunderstandings, though it usually exacerbates them. I struggle to keep everything straight myself, and I’m a trained critic. Anyway, a story about foolish rap artists might be worthwhile, as long you’re prepared to handle the backlash.”

“I’m aware of all of this,” said Daniels. “I don’t care about negative reactions or hurting people’s feelings. I don’t respect any of them. I know if I were a written character in a story, then the person who wrote me, most likely a man, would be criticized for espousing hateful views, and it would be assumed he thinks exactly as I do. Really though, those would be his thoughts. Even if they weren’t his official political platform, he did have to think those things to write them. But who cares. I don’t have a story about hip-hop clowns in me. I’m just running out of steam. I don’t want to fit into this landscape anymore. I want out. Maybe I’ll just stop after this next one. Everything now is this hyper-sincere, poetic tribute to my dead dog — the shape of your grief in the palm of my hand horseshit — or some woman’s eating disorder, or her stint as an escort, or that time in her life when she fucked a bunch of guys who didn’t like her very much, and you have to pretend it’s all brave and interesting. You know, the big problem with women writing now — there have been some good ones, brilliant ones, don’t get me wrong — is that they all sound like they’re trying to get an A+ on a homework assignment. Even when they’re writing about puking on a guy’s dick in the hopper of a garbage truck, there’s this insanely aggressive desperation to be validated. Or it’s this chaos-theory, Proust-on-acid-on-Wikipedia shit, fractal frippery, everything is in everything, a rectal canal is a mobius strip, this story connects the Persian empire to a guy eating a Pop-Tart. Is it history, is it memoir? Who gives a rat’s ass. And I’m a little worn out by all the Nazi stuff, World War II, European history. I get it, I get it, fascists were evil, but specifically the Germans and Italians and Americans. Why aren’t more people writing about how the Imperial Japanese were ghouls? Is it just because we’re still sheepish about Hiroshima, or is it that they’re all neutered fart porn addicts now?”

“Well, I don’t know that you’re being fair or properly taking into account the sheer richness and diversity of published material. There’s a lot out there, and it’s tough to summarize.”

Later that evening, Daniels worked on his book. He wanted to land one more paragraph before turning in. His protagonist, sitting on a bench and smoking a cigarette outside a café, was observing two young women seated at a nearby table and noticing within himself an absence of desire.

Late morning, brink of noon. A bare sun bearing down, mauling the uncovered patio. Of all the sensations spilling over him, the liquid machine gliding of cars, the flowing scent of sourdough, citrus and dark-roasted coffee, the trickling melodies of finches, Anthony was absently absorbed by the sight of two young women with the complexion of peaches, and he underwent an experience utterly alien to his younger years; the clicking of an empty mechanism, a firing without heat. And then, a flood of tedium. He pictured the steps of seduction, a dance in which he was outfitted with concrete clogs, and he was overcome with disgust. Not all that long ago, the prospect of sex, or let’s say, at the very least the impression of beauty, however remote, sighted on the moon via telescope, would have animated him, propelled him toward some achievement or another. With smoke pouring from his nose, a long drag still lighting up his lungs, nicotine and other chemical additives pinballing his receptors, the prime mover of his universe was laid bare in the moment of its collapse.

My god, Daniels thought. Rubbish. I need to clean it up, make it tighter, remove half the description. I don’t think I know what I’m doing anymore. I never did, really.

He wrote in a furnished shed a few hundred feet from the back of the house, one of his houses, the summer one with the front yard full of wisterias. Tonight, as he often did, he worked so late he passed out on a couch rather than risk waking up his wife and son. Tomorrow I need to get serious, he thought. In that swaying, hazy place between waking and sleep, where jump-cut scenes from the nether regions of the mind sometimes flash, he saw himself with the body of an elderly man and the head of a sea anemone, faceless with a thick, brown, tubular neck ringed with translucent blue tentacles. The image startled him awake. And in the stillness, he thought for some time about his wife and son, his precariously small family, his shrinking circle of relatives, and the possibility that he’d been withholding affection; he had to wonder if that precious dual substance comprising physical and intangible elements, his love, wasn’t just withheld, as in locked away, but withdrawn, spent. I’ll make it up to them. They know I care. I have time.

The next morning he woke late, his room suffused with light. I’m in a goddamned microwave, he thought. Loitering on his sandalwood toilet, he considered quickening the pace of his story, introducing some real action, real conflict. It can’t just be that he’s depleted or demoralized from casual pleasures. There has to be a more intense drama. A woman from his past will come back, his first love, the real first one, middle school, something he’d buried and never thought about, and it will almost revive him, almost. But too many years have passed, there’s a sense of the irrevocable, the irrelevance of what once seemed so important. Encountering someone from the depths of the past, someone with whom he shared an electrifying passage, maybe the most highly charged experience of all, young love, or at least freshly pubescent infatuation, throws into relief the long years of dwindling passion, the layers of encrusted compromise, the gradual yet inexorable diminution of the life force and all its higher representations, which do all resolve back into a simple, blind will to live and reproduce.

They’re both in their forties, around my age, and physically the deterioration is undeniable; Anthony is paunchy, his hair thinning, his skin coarse and reddish; this woman, I’ll call her Christie for now, she’s put on weight, to put it lightly. They both never married or had children. It was the misunderstanding of youth, the innocence, the timidity, the chaos of surging feelings that initially prevented their union. But in middle age, it’s the knowledge, the corrosive excess of experiences, and the poverty of emotions that inhibit them. They can’t come together. No, that’s not enough conflict; it’s more of the same. I should scrap this whole thing and write a neo-noir heist.

After brewing a cup of coffee, he sat down at his desk and opened his laptop. Looking at his document, he was startled by a paragraph at the end of the page he didn’t remember writing.

Bereft of ideas and inspiration, confused about his own intentions, the prematurely weary author sat in front of his computer. He found it strange, in his minimalistic reflection, that he was expending so much energy on trying to write well, when all he needed to do was fulfill his obligations, and then move on with his life and aim at becoming a better husband and father. Earlier in his career, he hardly thought about his prose and slapped down whatever entertained him, in a spirit of subtle malice. And he was hailed as the voice of a generation. Now he fretted over individual sentences like a real fruitcake. He was even thinking about plot schematically, like a numbskull at a workshop. Readers and critics had begun to revise their views on his work, and though he was loath to admit it, some part of him cared and wanted to prove he could write.

“I didn’t write that.”

His bowels clenched, his heart shot up into his throat. He looked around. Everything else in the shed was perfectly arranged as he remembered it. He went to the windows, checked the latches. The door was locked.

Am I sleep writing now? Have I descended into surrealist automatic writing malarkey without knowing it? Odd that it would come out as belabored metafiction. I’d think it would be a little more jumbled, more free association. Is my unconscious this much of a tight-ass?

He highlighted the paragraph and hit delete. There it stayed, a solid block of text. Again and again he pressed the delete key, but the words went nowhere. He highlighted the previous paragraph, the last one he remembered writing, and deleted it. Gone like it never was. Back to the latest paragraph: highlight, delete. It was staunch, a foreign fortress of uncanny words, a self-description not from himself; it was a confrontation with a linguistic mannequin of his own psychic frustrations, an unlikeable likeness as indestructible, as indelible as a stone tablet. Highlight, delete, highlight, delete. He repeated himself like a true technical dummy, like a mechanically disinclined oaf whose only response to an electronic or mechanical problem was to perform the one action that’s supposed to work under normal conditions while cursing and praying for Newton or Maxwell’s God to intervene and set things right.

After much sputtering, he had an idea. Of course, it was obvious. He started a new paragraph after the one he couldn’t delete. I’ll just ignore it for now. It’s just a draft, plenty of other lines I’ll end up deleting. Just some glitch. I’ll make sure it’s not in the final copy.

But he’d deleted the last paragraph where he left off.

I needed to rewrite that section anyway. What if I did more of a Hemingway thing?

It was just before noon and the sun was alone in the sky and the curb was shining white. There was much going on around him. Traffic flowed down the clean street and the smell of sourdough wafted from the back of the café. People talked and birds sang and a radio played big band music. Anthony watched two women seated at a table some feet away. They looked real good, but he was bothered. He didn’t want them. He would’ve rather eaten a sandwich and drank a beer and gone to a different café and eaten another sandwich and had another beer and taken a nap in a bed of pine needles, soft and cool in the shade. All his life he’d done everything he could to put himself in the right place, the place to meet women. Of all the things to give out on a man, he thought.

This isn’t working either. I need to go for a run, get moving, change it up, thought Daniels. Michelle had taken their boy, David, to school and had probably gone shopping or to see one of her girlfriends; he couldn’t be sure. In midafternoon, he returned from a short trip on his vintage Schwinn, a heavy, clanking bastard of a bike. He was hot and sweaty, his mind in that relaxed state of mild euphoria following vigorous exertion of the simulated variety; neither the narrator nor Daniels could comment on the nervous condition of a man fresh from a life-and-death struggle. His calm was obliterated when he opened his laptop, looked at the document, and saw a new paragraph he hadn’t written.

But his mixed feelings about his work would soon give way to a grave concern. Accustomed to good health, Clayton was gobsmacked by what he discovered. While looking over his writing and casually fondling his penis and testicles under his basketball shorts, he felt a lump in his sack, firm and painless, about the size of a marble. Maybe it’s benign, a cyst, he thought. Somehow, he knew otherwise.

“What in god’s name.”

Daniels stood, rooted, screwed to the spot. Long seconds passed before he could act. Again he highlighted and pressed the delete key. The paragraph lay resolute on the page. More fruitless attempts, and then, without intending to play into what had to be an elaborate practical joke, he reached into his basketball shorts and was chilled to find an extra hard nodule in his ballbag.

The singular panic of doom from within, icy and electric, wires poking in all directions; not the adrenaline rush of an incoming disaster or accident, or the cello-toned foreboding of an approaching beast, but the cold, greasy spread of inner subversion, of self-annihilation. This was cancer, his own cells eating him from the base of his manhood.

His mind fried by a harbinger of death, by the prospect of grueling treatments, baldness, nausea, bouts of sentimentalism, surgical mutilation, perplexed by a bizarre document writing itself, psychologically profiling him and programming him into sickness, Daniels left the shed and wandered his backyard for a time, feeling like a cutout, an unreal projection among the sunlit rosebushes and lush green grass, a cloud of pixel dust among thumping, tangled, full-bodied life. Then he went into his house, lurched through the kitchen, grabbed a glass and, with trembling hands, drank water, spilling some on his shirt.

No way around it, he’d have to tell his wife about the lump and schedule an appointment with a doctor, though he sometimes joked about preferring death to a waiting room. Maybe he could hide what was happening with the book, but he figured it would be hard. Michelle was very supportive and frequently asked him how things were going with his work. He’d always appreciated that about her.

The day passed with Daniels in a fugue state, talking to an AI chatbot, a forum of fat, clammy know-it-alls, or a team of Indian tech support specialists — he wasn’t sure after a while — about testicular cancer, treatment options, survival rates, the current president compared to the previous, the merits of low-carb diets and related subjects. Night had fallen and he was hours deep into a nature documentary about chimpanzee cannibalism; murderous nature had soothed and distracted him, but he remembered he was waiting on Michelle and David. He went to his phone, which he preferred not to use or incorporate into his work anymore, though he was tired of the reference; it seemed to him heavy-handed, as people already spent most of their time on their phones talking about being on their phones, no one was in the dark on what that was like, and pointing it out and discussing it at length was about as tasteful and informative as shouting about a pimple on the nose of a club-footed hunchback — but on his phone there were no messages, no calls. Now he feared that something terrible had happened to them.

She didn’t answer his call. He left a message, said he was worried. A little later she texted him: “David and I have gone to my sister’s. This isn’t working. I don’t want to talk at the moment, I’ll contact you in a few days.”

This can’t be real, he thought.

As far as he knew, things were okay. Maybe not great, maybe not like in the old days of heady courtship, when dinner dates turned into seven-hour excursions, spontaneous trips to beaches and parks, when they looked into each other’s eyes without speaking. Now we barely made eye contact when talking, he thought. But still, it wasn’t that bad. They were both preoccupied, they still had good conversations, they had comfort, they were established.

Rather than calling her phone thousands of times and leaving alternatingly irate and tender voice messages, he went to his shed and opened the document. There, as he expected, in the grip of what felt like a lucid delusion, was more writing.

Maybe if he’d noticed the lump in his testicles sooner, if it had appeared earlier, the shared struggle against cancer could’ve saved their relationship. But then again, their bond had been practically dead for some time, and as is typical, this was known only to Michelle. The coldness and swiftness of a woman who leaves a relationship often takes a man by surprise, offends his sense of justice, which, normally formal and impersonal, here in this instance demands warmth and consideration, and finds it lacking. But what seems to be a flighty decision results from serious deliberation. A woman dwells on the complacency and boorishness of her husband or boyfriend, she tallies a thousand small but still significant betrayals, indications of apathy, and at first, she gently protests, insinuates her frustrations; later, she outright explains her unmet needs, often in bullet-pointed and color-coded lists, with sticky notes and an extensive bibliography; if the man continues in a heedless fashion, piling up dirty socks and underwear, refusing to wash the dishes, mechanically making love while sneaking in secret jack sessions with pornographic holograms, failing to remember birthdays, anniversaries, neglecting to revere the many trifles that mean the world to women, then the relationship is condemned, and it will be the woman who performs the official execution, at which point she will be seen by the flabbergasted man as a mercurial demon, largely because a man, by his stinking and corrupt nature, expects a relationship to sink into semi-functional despondency, expects the home to regress into a den of what Thoreau called quiet desperation, and so is at peace with routinized unhappiness, while a woman insists on fulfillment and judges and acts on her circumstances accordingly.

Where is this coming from? Did Michelle write this? Daniels thought, in a fit of exasperation, his nerves rioting, his testicles throbbing. It was as if his soul now sat in a flaming helicopter circling around his body; he saw himself from a tail-spinning perspective. When he regained control, reentered the central command post behind his eyes, he hit enter at the end of the latest paragraph and wrote.

But in this instance, as it sometimes works out, the woman, and here we’re speaking of Michelle, the wife of Clayton Daniels, had a change of heart. Though she was justified in feeling somewhat underappreciated and had every right to insist on a renewal of affection and love, she realized she couldn’t just upend the life of her son, tear him from his father. And so, just a short while after arriving at her sister’s, she packed her things in the car and headed home. It would be late when she got back, but Clayton would be up, waiting for her.

Surely I can write the story of my life better than my own story, Daniels thought, curiously acquiescent to the idea of radically altering reality through writing — not through the persuasive rhetorical effects of language, not through subconscious predictive programming, but through the direct creation of a materialized narrative. Still looking at the screen, he watched as the cursor jumped to a blank space under what he’d written, and he saw, in real time, the ghostly writing of new lines.

On the way back to her old home she used to share with the man she used to love, Michelle remembered all the years of hurt feelings, the slights, the omissions, and she changed her mind again. Her reversal was given extra torque by the thought of her new lover, an ethnically ambiguous younger man with extensive knowledge of oriental sensualist therapeutics. From miles out, people could hear the squealing of tires as she made a sudden U-turn and sped away from Clayton. A short time later, while still waiting pointlessly like a lost ox, Clayton got a call from his doctor, who had some terrible news.

In his back pocket, the phone he happened to have on him vibrated, tickling his buttcheek with a fatal auguring. His doctor spoke in a robotic, miles-away tone:

“Mr. Daniels. It’s a shame to speak to you on this occasion, but I’m afraid we’re going to need you to come into the office as soon as possible. Tomorrow morning, if you can. We have your test results.”

I didn’t take any tests, he thought. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone to the doctor. And it was after 9 p.m. What doctor was still working at that hour? Come to think of it, he didn’t know he had a regular practitioner.

A sleepless night trying to write new lines counteracting the spectrally composed death sentences followed. He watched his hopeful interpolations slide backwards into blank white, replaced with yet more menacing narrative and increasingly stark explanations of authorial intent. Some astral coagulation of his literary characters, some conjured spirit of his recreational perversion of language, was now exacting vengeance.

Do you know what it’s like to exist solely as a flat character, your fortune in the hands of a bored, self-important creator? You will be stricken with disease, bombarded by humiliations, stripped before leering audiences, tortured, forced to toil, to cheat, steal and kill, choke on bad meals and stumble through stilted conversations, all for this antique construct, a story, a novel, to glorify a selfish monster and to entertain supercilious nincompoops. People read for the esteem of having read, for feeling themselves in the act of reading, and for those little psychic ding-dongs we call insights. And you feed them. You don’t believe in what you do and you go on doing it, bringing shapes and figures into being only to slander and damn them. It doesn’t occur to you to keep your filthy mind out of the house of language. In you go, dragging dirt and manure, leaving oily imprints on the windows, putting down sweating glasses of coke on the coffee table. Language is not a horse you can whip or a lump of clay you can mold; ideas and images are not your Hot Wheels.

The story had completely changed course. It no longer consistently referred to any of the former characters, and the pacing hurled forward, skipping many details that would be laboriously included in a realist novel; there were moments when the narrator, the author, whomever or whatever was writing, sounded singular; in others, the style was radically different; in some paragraphs, the sentences were held together solely by semicolons; in others, there was no punctuation; some sections were egregiously redundant, reexplaining again and again what had just been stated; other sections left much to inference, holding open great howling voids, goading the faculties of suggestion, pointing to great submerged depths.

When Daniels went to the doctor, he drove without knowing where he was going and found the place without a single wrong turn or a second of uncertainty, as if his car itself knew the way, as if the machine were sentient or programmed to follow a strict path for just this purpose: to deliver its passenger to this location where the man who called him the night before ran a private practice in a scum-worn shanty set among crumbling stones and dead trees, bent and hunched like old men stuck in broken-bone poses, among liquid and viscous puddles of miscellaneous drainage and out-of-order Porta Johns more than needful of an emptying, their rusted doors somehow still swinging and creaking in the windless air. The man, now a shadow of a shadow of himself, stepped into this clinic, which reeked of some back-alley surgical charlatan, into a waiting room with a stack of disturbingly backdated People magazines, ominous pamphlets on blood disorders and parasites, and a wall-mounted television in the corner playing forgotten soap operas and sitcoms with the settings turned to a garish tint.

A man whom Daniels had never seen before, wearing a white coat and a head mirror, his whole face a furrow, told him of a rare autoimmune disorder attacking his brain; Daniels had days to live, if that. The disease didn’t have a name yet, they were working on an acronym, but it really wasn’t as important as what was happening within him: systematic deterioration that began in the language-processing centers and had spiraled outward to infest all other zones. Oh, and he did still have testicular cancer, but that was practically a moot point, as he’d be dead long before that killed him, and in a rather unprofessional or abrasively frank style, the man dressed as a doctor but who’d never introduced himself properly, not at all, said he wouldn’t be able to think or write his way out of this one, as you can't really trick your own mind into believing other than what it already knows, as it, obviously, knows in advance that you’re trying to do this and will therefore remain unconvinced. And don’t bother with all the hogwash about energy fields and holistic healing; quantum mechanics enjoys limited experimental validity in laboratory conditions and certain specific engineering contexts, but it doesn’t apply to the macro-experiential universe we know as reality, in which we are subject to blunt forces deaf to suggestion.

Michelle wouldn’t return his calls or texts, nor would anyone in her family. But he got a hold of his friend Ted, who was happy to be interrupted from working on another commissioned article, his fifth this year, about the state of publishing and the worth of MFAs, a subject so hacky and patronizing he thought about hanging himself from a chandelier.

“Ted, something bizarre and terrible is happening to me. I can’t explain it; you’ll think I’m crazy. The book I’m writing, the book I was writing, it’s killing me. It destroyed my relationship, Michelle left me, she took David.”

“Damn, I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe you should take a break. Sometimes we put so much of ourselves in our work, it hurts us — gets in the way of important things in life.”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean. I mean the book is writing itself, or the characters in the book are writing it. The story is ruining my life. I’m going to die because it’s in the book now.”

“What do you mean, you’re going to die?”

“I have testicular cancer and some autoimmune disease. The doctor says I have days to live. I feel totally insane.”

“Clayton, I can’t believe that. That’s terrible. There’s nothing that can be done, no treatment or anything?”

“No, it’s the book that’s doing it. I can’t make it stop.”

“Well, you have to stop writing, first off. There are way more important things to worry about right now. You have to reconcile with Michelle, somehow. Surely she doesn’t know about what’s happening to you.”

“It doesn’t make sense, but it’s what the story’s writing for me now. It wants me dead. I’m surprised it’s letting me talk to you.”

“Man, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone let their work get to them like this.”

Whoever Daniels spoke to interpreted his words as a metaphorical lament, and they sighed and talked of how tragic it is sometimes, how when the artist gives himself to his work, he sacrifices himself, how his work destroys his health and drives his loved ones away. When he told them the book wouldn’t stop writing itself, they wondered at his determination to continue working at the foot of the grave. Some critics put together an interpretation of a refined experiment, in which Daniels wrote of his failed marriage and terminal illness as autofictional horror, cleverly telling a story about the great, unholy power of art over life.

Clayton Daniels was soon dead. General Dynamics Random House bought out Eli Lilly and acquired his contract and released his last book, entitled The Death of the Author. It sold poorly and was, in the words of one marginal tastemaker, “confusing, disjointed and overly bleak,” though some 60 years later, Daniels’ name, unlike his body, was briefly revived, thanks to a new wave of critics and readers who found his work daring and inventive, unjustly neglected; shortly thereafter, he fell back into obscurity.

Caleb Caudell lives in the Midwestern United States. His published work is available through Bonfire Books and on Amazon.

Mrs. Ellison hadn’t expected half the town to congregate in the park like an after-church buffet, but as her girlfriend told her nothing about the man she was meeting beyond “He seem alright, you can’t believe everything you read online,” the old woman was grateful for so many watchful eyes. Passing through a motley of tweed suits and floral hem dresses, her granddaughter, Rosie, started to moan, dropping her plush tiger and flapping her hands. Mrs. Ellison picked up and slapped the dust off that old cat whispering “Hush chile” and fixed Rosie’s hat to obscure the top half of her face. She reached her arm out to grab Miss Rosie’s hand and, remembering the girl didn’t like to be touched, pulled it away mid-motion and placed it firmly on her own hip as if about to reprimand the passing crowd. On a haggard bench she saw the outline of the blue suit and tan hat the man said he would be wearing. An erratic and shaking loafer. He looked about forty. A handsome forty. A childless forty that stayed out of the sun, went easy on liquor, with a hairline that could only be won through the genetic lottery or a physician in Turkey. He sat hunchbacked with a leather briefcase in his lap, too absorbed by his phone to see her standing there. The hem of his slim-fitted suit pants clung to thin legs that looked as if they might snap at any moment beneath an unseen weight.

“Excuse me, sir. Are you that journalist?” asked Mrs. Ellison. She felt foolish referring to him by his occupation and not his name. Her memory failed her more and more lately, and names — not recipes, thank goodness — were its first casualty.

He made no reply. With his lip curled under two teeth he gazed into his handheld abyss scrolling recent articles.

She looked over his shoulder and the name he was searching jogged her memory. This time she tapped his shoulder. “Excuse me, Mr. Toby Mackwell?”

He jumped when she tapped his shoulder and stood up with an insistent grin. “You must be Mrs. Ellison,” he said, outstretching his hand. His almond shaped eyes lay muted against otherwise animated features. He had a neck that jutted out as if trying to observe something that was always crawling away and in his thin drawn face was a boyishness long forsaken by men decades younger than he.

She shook his hand and got a slight chill, letting her arm hang limp as she withdrew. She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped Rosie’s mudstained hands as the girl stared at him as though he were a zoo animal leaning against the glass enclosure. “This here’s my granddaughter. I’d have put her on a plane but she don’t travel alone, and I can’t sit more than two hours at a time.”

“All the better,” said Toby. “Too many Americans in your situation don’t have the luxury of air travel. This story is for them too.” He looked back at Rosie. “And how old is this one?”

“Mentally, doctors put her around five or six. I been taking care of her for twenty-five years, ever since my daughter run off with that cornpop . . . .” She shook her head as to cut herself off telling this story for the hundredth time. “Well, I guess not the whole time. I let her out of my sight, leaving her in that facility. But you already know about that.” Mrs. Ellison set down her walker and sat on the paint-chipped bench, fanning herself with her lavender felt hat.

Toby mustered the best mix of stoicism and compassion in his face that he could. “If I could just scrape the scum right off this Earth,” he rehearsed to the wind, “I’d scrape it down to its rotten roots. I’d scrape it down with my bare hands.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” said Mrs. Ellison, resting her arms on the walker. She could see the top half of the courthouse a half-mile away, and next door to that was the ice cream shop Miss Rosie always loved. Ice cream hardly elicited the same excitement in Rosie as it did before, and as Mrs. Ellison’s knees flared up, the walk seemed less worthwhile.

“Now let me tell you this. Day of the 2021 election, a young girl missing over two weeks found in some decrepit shack in Neshoba County,” he paused for effect. “Skinned alive. The man was caught wearing half a jacket made of her tanned hide. Didn’t even finish making a whole one. Organs removed, heart sliced in quarters, set right on an ashtray beside the corpse.” He held two fingers up and swung them down in a chopping motion, exhaled and shook his head. “Just goes to show. Men will travel two counties wearing a woman’s skin before ever walking a mile in her shoes.” He became bashful when he saw the confusion in Mrs. Ellison’s face, a budding actor’s shyness after hamming up an audition.

Mrs. Ellison sat on the rotted bench hunched over and studied him, silently weighing her options for the fifth time today. All of her relatives were dead or on the other side of the country. She could hardly drive herself to the grocery store, nevermind Illinois. Rosie might have been able to handle a train ride to Florida if the other passengers could handle her, but if she was any further along than six weeks, there wasn’t a thing any clinic in Florida could do for her. The man before her provided the only path she could afford.

Toby cleared his throat. “Did they ever find the person responsible?”

The old woman shook her head. “The residential director said they’d do a full internal investigation. I done got the police involved thinking maybe they should do the investigation and they as worthless as the staff. Hospital said half the staff had quit between now and the time it happened and they couldn’t track everyone down. Couldn’t have been none of the caretakers they said, ‘Oh no, not with they kinds of background checks.’ I tell them I don’t give two sticks who was doing they background checks. I said, ‘You tell me who’s been in the room with her these last two months, I’ll be the one to sort em out.’” She gripped her walker and looked at Rosie, sitting in muddy grass playing with her plush tiger. She had that look of nausea again. Mrs. Ellison had one last facial cloth in her purse. “If you really want to do this, I don’t have but fifty dollars for gas. I’ll tell you that before we leave.”

“Don’t even think of it. A thousand things trouble my mind. Money’s not one of them.” Toby said, smiling.

“Good, cause I ain’t got none.”

“I can promise you when my piece comes out, a new kind of hell will rain on that facility. I do believe a lawsuit will be in order, with the public firmly on your side. Come along.” He motioned down the road to the parking lot.

“There needs to be plenty of space in the back so she can sit in the middle. I don’t want her banging her head against the side windows,” said Mrs. Ellison. “Don’t pay it any mind, I been handling her most her life. She’s just trying to do the most with the least, like the rest of us.”

The drive was hardly as difficult as expected. They would stop every two hours so Mrs. Ellison could walk some, but Toby didn’t mind stretching his legs out himself. She asked him not to use Rosie’s real name in his article and he had no problem with that, he just hoped she might let him take some photos. He would have to take them himself as there were no real photographers amongst his remaining friends and contacts. He paid for Ellison's motel room and a separate one for himself, but not before considering sleeping in his car to further his statement. Toby hadn’t touched social media since his falling out at Bluffington Post but now was the time. He tweeted: “My heart is shattered. A young woman, severely disabled, will not be allowed an abortion in her home state after being assaulted in the facility responsible for her care. I’m driving her across the country to get the care she needs. This is America.” He poured himself a glass of wine when he got to his room and sighed, of mourning or relief, he didn’t know. He added a couple flourishes before posting. “This. Is. America.”

Things were going to be better. He could feel it. This odyssey would show the world the real Toby Mackwell. It might take more than one article for a real comeback, but he would one day soon be able to google his name again without the words “forcing” or “misconduct” littering every headline. Surely one or two incidents with an intern couldn’t define his whole legacy. He emptied his glass in two swallows and poured himself another, closer to the brim, and sat back on the stiff motel chair.

The phone rattled the glass table and a notification appeared. A retweet and two replies already. His spirits lifted and his thoughts once again shifted towards the future, his long term legacy. He replayed and modified quotes he had long ago invented of other people’s future commentary.“He wrote with a ferocity and compassion unmatched in his generation, comparable only with the likes of Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson. And like those legendary journalists before him, he lived a complicated life fighting his own demons as hard as he fought systems of oppression.” . . . “I knew when I first laid eyes on him that this was no ordinary man. Looking back, I must have only said the things I said because deep down I knew I couldn’t have him.” . . . “He not only exposed the monsters running our political system, but could do so while deftly encapsulating the American condition with empathy and wit like no other, all in a single sentence.” . . . “It is the curse of all prodigious men to have at least some skeletons in their closets, and Toby Mackwell was no exception.” Lost in his reverie, he danced in the kitchen as “Distant Past” by Everything Everything played from his iPhone and he drained the last of the wine. His trance was broken when he received a call from the landline informing him of a noise complaint and he soberly pulled back the sheets of his bed and laid down.

Still restless, he checked his Twitter (he would not refer to it by any other name) for any reaction to his tweet. “Makes sense this time you’d pick someone incapable of calling the police.” The phone smacked the wall and reverberated throughout the unit. 103 likes for a comment made half an hour ago. Jesus fuck. He knew he was long overdue for a piece about online trolls and their threat to democracy, but that would have to wait. Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The next morning, Toby offered to take the Ellisons to the drive-thru before continuing on the long desolate expanse, but Mrs. Ellison told him that Rosie wouldn’t eat fast food in the morning and that she herself was too old to take lip from some teenager who refused to put the pickles on the side. “I ain’t the one had raised them, and I ain’t the one to suffer them,” she said, spoon-feeding Rosie a cup of strawberry yogurt as they merged onto the highway. Rosie had been quiet on the drive but Mrs. Ellison assured him that she gave her her fair share of hell earlier in the morning back in the motel, and even fresher hell for the cleaning lady after a bout of morning sickness. Every so often Toby would catch Rosie’s glimpse in the rearview mirror and she looked at him like a rat that might snatch her up and scurry off.

Most of the drive looked the same: gas stations and Waffle Houses, water towers and money lenders, dilapidated tin houses towered by jacked-up Fords; sentries of an ancient land standing watch over its ruins, marking for attack enervate conquistadors studded with laptops and neckties beneath murky waters and hanging moss. Out on the highway swamp, Toby too felt like a mark.

He said it was a special kind of hell that took a special kind of people to live here. That he often wondered what century that he was in anytime he passed through this region. Mrs. Ellison said the people here were no different than she or him. He remarked that it was the sorts of people living here that voted in the people who made this drive necessary in the first place. That she might have any compassion left for these people meant she was a far gentler soul than he.

“I hold no brief against any of these people,” said Mrs. Ellison. “I was one of them.” Toby went silent and a little pale.

“Before any of this happened, I thought the same way they did. And to tell you the truth, I still do. If you think I ain’t struggled with this the whole way . . . .” Mrs. Ellison sighed and looked down at her wrinkled palms. “There was two things my mama used to tell me back when I was a child, over and over. The first was that cussing was for lowlifes and scoundrels. The second was that you don’t get to turn your nose up at anyone’s shit until you clean your own ass.” She closed her eyes, trying to conjure up the memory of the stern but vibrant woman as if restoring an old photo left too long out in the sun. “Seventy-nine years on this earth and God still reminds me I don’t know nothing more than no one else.”

They had been on the road two days when Toby felt the buzz of his phone vibrate and saw the ghost of a name. Spencer Blake. The name made his stomach jump through his chest. He wouldn’t dare call him back unless he was alone. Twenty miles until the next gas station. His palms turned to goo and the wheel wobbled as they glistened with sweat. “Say, it’s been a while since we pulled over. How about we take this next rest stop?”

The truck stop was the only visible sign of civilization for miles. They walked in and were greeted with aromas of frying chicken and catfish. The kitchen was visible from the entryway and scribbled on a blue sheet of parchment paper taped onto the cash register was the specials of the day: 3 piece chicken and two sides for $10.95, 3 piece catfish and two sides for $13.95. Choice of fries, beans, or collards. Mrs. Ellison pulled out two stools at the counter and asked if they had any milkshakes. Milkshakes always calmed Miss Rosie’s nerves. The man behind the counter said no but she could have any ice cream she desired in the freezer and it was on the house.

Toby said to put everything on his tab and stepped outside in the damning heat.

“Spencer,” he said, more jittery than intended. His phone trembled in his hand as he held it to his ear.

“Toby. It’s been a while,” said the man on the other end. “Look, I know we didn’t leave things off on the best note.”

“You mean after you threw me out on my ass? Because of a few baseless accusations?” Toby could feel his anxiety turning into rage.

“I’m not calling to rehash any of that. I’m calling to throw you a bone.”

Real fucking generous of you to finally think of that. Toby grinded his teeth on his knuckle and bit down. “Okay,” he said after a deep breath. “What is it?”

“Are you still in Mississippi?”

Toby looked out at his barren surroundings. It had been an hour since they crossed the Tennessee border. “Yeah, I’m still in Mississippi.”

“How would you like to take down Mike Davidson?”

The question didn’t even register at first. Who wouldn’t want to take down Mike Davidson? With his evangelical ramblings and the Roe overturning still fresh in the headlines, he made a fine antagonist for the Bluffington Post. His public lamentations of the pill on “American values” had been godsend in an otherwise slow newsweek. With Roe overturned only two months before, fears of the religious right’s next target titillated American imaginations like a 21st-century The War of the Worlds.

“It’s your lucky day then,” Spencer said. “Just got a hot tip from our mole in his campaign. He’s throwing a big party in his mansion in Jackson tonight for the donors. Hookers, blow, the whole nine yards. If I give you the address, can you get some photos?”

Toby stood frozen, disbelieving.

“Just anything you can get,” Spencer continued. “Anyone leaving the mansion. Anyone going in. Off-color racial remarks. Mike Davidson snorting coke off a hooker’s ass. Anything.”

“Why me? After everything?”

“Toby, I know we’ve had our problems but we go back a long way. I’m giving this to you because it's the best I can do for you right now. The party’s about to get going in two hours and will probably go on til about midnight. Just get to the mansion and blend in.”

Toby’s mouth bobbed open and shut like a fish.

“You do this, you’re on your way to becoming a hero again. Are you in?”

“Of course I’m in.”

“Hey Toby? We’re still the good guys. Don’t forget that.”

The line went dead and Toby’s jaw was still on the ground. Six hours to get to Jackson nonstop. It would be another seven before he could even get the Ellisons back to Chicago, assuming Mrs. Ellison didn’t need to keep stopping every two hours. Then if headed straight back to Jackson, it would take another twelve hours minimum. He kicked the icebox and clutched foot when it failed to rattle. Then he sat down for several minutes trying to regain his composure.

He limped back inside and angrily exhaled as he sat at the counter. Someone said, “You alright there, honey?” It was a woman about fifty with curly bromine hair, inch long fingernails, and a nasally Tennessee accent that might have been pleasant on a less hungover afternoon. She was standing behind the counter serving Rosie a small plate of yams. “Is that one yours?” she asked.

“Not by blood, but I am responsible for her,” said Toby. “Terrible circumstances, that one.”

“She’s got the most innocent broad head,” she said giddily. “Truly a thing of beauty. Why, that head is so perfect I can paint an entire portrait atop it.” Rosie flapped her arms and swiped the plate off the counter, the crash heard across the room. Toby went to pick up yams spilled on the floor but the lady said nevermind that, she had it. As she cleaned up the mess, Toby told her Rosie’s story, where they were going, and why. A look of horror came across the woman’s face.

“Why that just makes me sick to my stomach,” she said.

“I learned about this last week,” Toby said. “But it didn’t surprise me. I’ve long foreseen the direction this country was headed for the last six years.”

“Just an awful, awful world we live in.” She shook her head. “To think that poor girl is being forced to murder an innocent child.” She threw her dishrag against the counter. “You ought to be ashamed.”

When Mrs. Ellison came out of the ladies room, Toby paid for their meals and she led Rosie by the hand back to the car. Rosie screamed when she got outside and wanted nothing to do with getting back in that car again. Toby filled up the tank and they then left the station, passing a sign that said NO STOPS FOR THIRTY MILES.

“Mrs Ellison,” he began. “We’ve been driving so long. Wouldn’t you like a night off? You and Rosie can stay in town for a day. Get your bearings before finishing such a long stretch of travel.”

“What good would that do? Rosie don’t like this town any more than this here car. The sooner we get to Chicago, the better.”

“Maybe if she just got to run around in the fresh air a little more. Or maybe a movie? I can give you money for the cinema. Pick you back up tomorrow at noon and be back on our way. Wouldn’t Rosie like that?”

“Oh honey . . . .” Mrs. Ellison shook her head. “You think this girl is gonna sit quiet at a movie? Bless.”

Toby cursed Spencer for giving him this news so late. Why couldn’t he have known the day before? Or even a few hours earlier? Was the universe just tossing him a carrot he was never supposed to reach? Mrs. Ellison noticed the change in his disposition immediately. Toby was going twenty miles over the limit and angrily swerved to pass anyone on the same road as him.

On the right hand side of the road on a large hill of grass stood the remnants of a white church with only three walls remaining. The front had fallen off and the insides of it were burned to a char. His eyes brightened and he pulled over onto the grass and drove deep into the valley.

“This is a perfect picture opportunity. What could be more symbolic?” He pulled up to the church and stepped out of his car. Digging through the trunk, he found his briefcase and pulled out a camera and walked out towards the chapel. Mrs. Ellison followed him out feeling like a fly on a drunk mule’s ass. He motioned her to stand in the center of the chapel as he played with the settings on his camera.

“I’m supposed to stand over there? That thing would topple right over me,” said Mrs. Ellison.

“It’s perfect. Witches! Risen from the remnants of liturgy’s past. Outliving the blood watered soil of the evil empire. Raining judgment upon those that take up its old banners . . . .”

“I know you did not just call me no witch.”

“This is for you. This is for Rosie. This is for all others made to suffer under the radicalization of America.”

Mrs. Ellison kicked a centipede off the toe of her shoe. “At least let me go put my walker over there. For all I know I might kick the bucket tomorrow and this be my last photo.”

Toby pulled the walker from the trunk and placed it beneath the weathered steeple where wild shrub clung to his knees. “This will be your grandest moment.”

“Let’s make it quick then,” said Mrs. Ellison. “I wanna be going.” She led Rosie to the center of the chapel where the wild grass rose above her elbows. Mrs. Ellison told her she wasn’t taking that toy tiger with and threw it behind the seat against the rear window. Toby said it was alright, she can hold her tiger for the photo, and it might be better if she did. But Mrs. Ellison said she wasn’t going to have her adult granddaughter holding no toy in a photoshoot.

He stood about twelve feet back and zoomed in just close enough for the bombed out arches to fill out the frame. He snapped a picture. Then another. He studied them carefully and shook his head. “I’m going to try planting the camera on top of the car. See if I get a better angle.”

Mrs. Ellison rolled her eyes but stood upright without her walker, holding Rosie by the arm.

He planted the camera on top of the car and took another shot. “Dammit!” He took on an exasperated countenance. “Photography isn’t my profession, I’m afraid. Let me get back another twenty feet.”

“Don’t know as I can stand too long without my walker,” Mrs. Ellison said.

“Just one more shot.” Toby jumped back in the car. He planted his forehead on the steering wheel and started the engine as he exhaled. The sun glared with knowing through the window and sweat glazed the steering wheel gripped in his hand. He put the stick in reverse and carefully backed up five feet, ten feet. He opened the sun roof and stood up, the camera stuttering in his palm.

“Alright now, you finish up!” Mrs. Ellison’s expression could hardly be seen, but Toby zoomed in, and her confused irritation seemed to take on a knowing unease. He flipped the camera shut and pulled himself back into the driver’s seat. He put the car back in reverse and slid through the maze of beech trees. When he got twenty feet back, Mrs. Ellison shouted something he couldn’t hear above the engine and started after him.

He shifted to drive and the car jerked forward, spraying red dirt in the air like hadean mists and Mrs. Ellison began walking towards, then quickening her pace a little too quick, fell face forward in the leaves. She cried out again, and Toby cranked the radio up until the static blocked any particle of her agony from reaching his ear. After he cleared out of the woods, Rosie broke out into a run and became like a small animal left on the side of the road shrinking to the size of a bug in his rearview mirror, as her plush tiger looked back at her from the rear window.

He sped south down the highway towards Jackson and heavy rain came down threatening to wash him down the same valley he just came from. He decided he would have to drown if he didn’t make it to Jackson. Nothing else would stop him. Still he felt more and more depressed as he blazed down the highway. He turned on his high beams as the road dropped into flooding fields, determined not to look up at the clouds as if he might see the faces staring down on him. The clouds folded into each other oozing black and formless, the rain antediluvian. He didn’t even realize Mrs. Ellison’s walker was still in the car until he crossed the state line. He sped faster against the setting sun peaking over the hill, playing no music the whole way there, only static. The right side of history was just over the horizon.

It was before 11:20 at night when he made it into Jackson. Despite having ample time before anyone left the party, he sped through red lights and cut off anyone in his desired lane no matter how much time he had to move over. He slowed down through the main business district so he wouldn’t get pulled over. He made it to the address six miles out in a residential area filled with Victorian mansions guarded by electric gates. When he turned on Mike Davidson’s street, he hit the brakes and the car came to a screeching halt. He could tell by the commotion he was already too late.

He stepped out of the car. A large group of people were gathered around and red and blue lights flashed on every house. He moved past the crowd and a police officer yelled at him to get back. “This is a crime scene!”

“It’s okay! I’m a reporter!” Toby shouted back through the rain. He pulled out his camera as if it were a press pass.

“I don’t care if you’re Dolly Parton, back behind the yellow line!” The officer glared at him past his black mustache and behind him two bodies were splayed out, one on top of the other in the shape of a cross. With an icy shudder, Toby thought they were the faces of the Ellisons, but a second look revealed a man and a woman in their mid-twenties. Small streams trickling down the pavement from their wounds made them both appear to be crying. The officer walked back towards the car and a sickly man with thin wiry hair and a wifebeater sat handcuffed in the backseat thrashing and screaming something inaudible.

“What happened here?” he asked a kid in a varsity jacket beside him.

“Lover’s quarrel. That guy they arrested said he caught his woman cheating but everyone else say he was her ex. I guess she left him for that other guy lying next to her.”

Mike Davidson stood off to the side with two cameras in his face, somehow regal in his late night bathrobe, making an impassioned speech full of grandiose hand gestures chastising the city’s leadership for crime run amok. He declared he and he alone would clean the city up as a couple people around him cheered. There was not a soul on that street less bothered by all the media attention than Mike, and no signs of hookers or bags of blow to be found.

Toby threw his camera to the ground and stomped it.

“What’s the matter with you?” said the kid.

Toby stopped and tried to compose himself. Looking at the two bodies and the man in the car, he let out a small laugh. “It’s just the world. All the scum of the world. I tell you, if I could just scrape it out, even with my bare hands . . . .” He stopped.

“What is it?”

The kid’s voice seemed to fade with the memories of the Ellisons as Toby turned toward the police car catching a fleeting glance of the suspect, the downward eyes cloaked with matted hair. He felt lighter as he moved towards this creature, as if titanium epaulets fell off from shoulders with each step and the blood pooling under the two crossed lovers was washing him clean from behind the police tape. The officer shouted for Toby to stay back from the vehicle but all was inaudible as the killer lifted his head and met his gaze. In those strained and insensate eyes, Toby remembered what he had been looking for all along.

He would be clean. Again like before, he would be clean.

Adam Pearson lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he tinkers with his novel and writes the Substack newsletter The Pensive Pejorative.

This weekend, we’re pleased to share an excerpt from Lee Clay Johnson’s novel Bloodline, following Miss Becka as she tends to both the post office and the trout-filled waters of the Caney Fork River in Tennessee. Johnson’s precise, unhurried prose captures the rhythms of Appalachian life, where daily rituals intersect with family secrets and the weight of generational loss.

—The Editors

The distant siren goes off at dawn, a warning that the turbines are starting and the water will soon be rising.

Miss Becka sits on her porch drinking instant coffee, an open journal in her lap containing notes of bird sightings. All the usual suspects this morning. Even the hummingbirds are zipping around. Then a surprise visitor, a little songbird the color of the sky, landing on a branch of the shadbush and picking off a larva. When Miss Becka lifts her mug, the bird shoots straight up into the canopy. A cerulean warbler. It traveled over three thousand miles just to be right here.

Today’s Monday. She keeps these morning hours for herself before going in to work. She’s been maintaining part-time hustles for so long that this provides a normal weekly rhythm that keeps her mind off the obvious and inevitable.

Weekdays, she goes to Carthage to the post office and sorts mail along with other part-time government employees. Snail mail’s down, with the usual Republican shitheads cutting full-time positions, and because she’s willing to work for close to minimum wage she fits into their desired demographic: a responsible older person with time on her hands.

Landing that gig was more than fifteen years ago, god help her, soon after she lost the mill — or gave it up, rather — and since we’re doing math she might as well admit that she’s sixty-seven years old. And sorting mail. Maybe all this real work in the real world has been good for her, though. Therapeutic, as the kids today might say. And she also gets to keep an eye on what’s happening around the village. She’s never opened anybody’s mail, but she doesn’t need to. Traffic court here, divorce lawyer there — she gets the obvious essentials.

After years of these mornings, she realized her evenings were beginning a little too early, with that chilled jug of Rossi making its appearance around three in the afternoon. So she talked with the lady who was running a tavern down behind the post office and asked if she could pick up a few evening shifts behind the bar. She’d poured a beer or two in her time.

When that lady asked if she was good with people, and she lied and said yes, she was given Thursday, Friday and Saturday and ever since has been covering those nights as well as most of the others. It’s fun, usually just babysitting grown men while pulling them pints to suckle, but sometimes she gets some college kids or professors who venture east from Lebanon instead of west into Nashville, and she’s gotten pretty good at talking with them. They like her because she once went to CU herself, and also knows a lot about the rivers and the land and all the history around here. She has roots in anti-Confed shit and used to protest Klan rallies with her dad, stuff their college is interested in now that they’re finally starting to reckon with their past. Back when she was a student, they couldn’t care less about any of that, but she did. She’s been talking about removing those monuments for a long time.

There’s this one young lady — what’s her name? — who’s been hanging out with Dustin, or rather getting followed around by him. She calls Miss Becka the Forest Warden, and Miss Becka kind of likes that. She might have taken up Green Studies, one of the college’s new progressive majors, if they’d had it back then. Forest Warden: she’ll take that. So long as folks don’t start seeing her as a crazy old local. She’s got these part-time gigs to keep from becoming one.

The owner of the lower building is a polite old racist belle named Madison Gentry, who wears bright colors, carries a big purse and paws at you like a cat while she talks. She hired Miss Becka because she agreed to work only for tips, no hourly wages, no taxes, none of that, if you please. Just the plastic piggy on the counter with the slot in its back for change. And it really isn’t that much work.

Also, she likes being around booze and not drinking. She could drink while she’s behind the bar, and sometimes she does, sometimes, but she prefers to wait until after her shift. A few more sober hours during the day will probably keep her kicking a few years longer. When she first started working the weekend evening shifts, she saw pretty fast that her eyes were clearer, her face was less bloated. And with the place literally down the stairs from the P.O., in this weird old basement-area that was built as a bomb shelter — that’s how the tavern got its name — well, who’d say no to the prospect of adding a few more lonely years onto your lonely life?

But she’s not thinking about any of that for the next two hours. Now is her time. She’ll sink into her morning here on her river, drink her coffee, log bird sightings. After leaving the P.O. she’ll do some fishing, then settle in with a pint glass of Rossi on ice. It’s Monday, after all, no work at the bar tonight. For dinner she’ll fry up one of those bass filets. Refill the pint glass. Talk to herself a little bit. Wander around with her hair hanging down like a witch. Go out into the water and weep at the stars. Then tomorrow morning wake up with a headache and remember why Tuesdays are the toughest.

Come back, cerulean warbler.

But it doesn’t.

Low ghostly fog comes rolling down the river. Through the trees she can see eddies deepening, boulders disappearing. That’s the cold water being released from the dam. She finishes the last of her coffee, walks down to the slick grassy edge and slips a foot in. That’ll wake an old girl up. She feels the silky mud coming up between her toes. When the water’s risen past her knees, she figures it’s about time for work.

Her cabin’s at the end of a rutted dirt trail. She drove down it a few times back when she was moving her stuff in but she didn’t have four-wheel drive, and after one rainy summer it was useless, so she just let it grow back up. To get to her car, she hikes the trail through the tall fern and nettle up to the county road, where she parks in a gravel pulloff. Anglers used to use the area for access, but she put an end to that with some private property signs. From here, it’s just a ten-minute drive into town. She steps over the new guardrail they put in despite her protests and gets in her old Camry. The shocks are gone so she takes bumps slow.

A little historical marker in front of the post office says it’s one of the few buildings that survived the war. The reason the Union didn’t burn it down — though the plaque doesn’t say so — is because many of the workers were Union sympathizers who passed along intel about rebel positions. Miss Becka likes to think that those were her ancestors, but honestly doesn’t know. She’s never done the research and doesn’t really want to. She parks in the lower lot down near the Bomb Shelter, climbs the outdoor wooden stairs and unlocks the second-story backdoor. Inside, she turns the alarm off and opens the side garage gate for the morning mail delivery.

There’s magic in this building after it’s been empty all night. Empty, but not unoccupied. She believes there’s a spirit here who reads the letters in the personal boxes. Sometimes she’ll find a letter’s been misplaced, a mistake she’d never make. And sometimes a letter will be torn neatly at the top. When a customer complains, she tells them it was like that when it arrived. If she told the truth, they wouldn’t believe her. “Good morning,” she says into the room. The air is dry and warm in here. No activity. She flips the overhead lights on.

Her mother worked as a cook at the inn down the street while her father ran the sawmill. She passed along to Becka her recipe for fish-fry batter — eggs, flour, corn crumbs and root beer — and sometimes while cooking in the evenings, Becka spots her reflection in the little window above the sink. With her hands covered in flour, she looks like her mother’s ghost. Her father had always wanted a son to take over the mill. “Only a man can work with wood,” he used to say, so she spent many years proving him wrong, until the day the Alcorns came along. Winston said he was looking for work, and she took pity on him and his children and his wife. What did she have to lose? So much, so much. She didn’t realize what he was up to. He was such a good liar — like he believed it all himself. Would she have been able to tell what he was up to if she’d been the son her father wanted? Well, she wasn’t, and when she’s being truthful she’ll admit that a bittersweet freedom came with walking away. But there’s still something wrong.

She’s never told her father what happened. He’s still alive, if you can call it that, over in the Second Wind nursing home. What would be the point in letting him know that his daughter turned out to be a girl after all. Sometimes she brings him a tin of sawdust to sniff. It keeps him thinking the saws are still running. It’s the same can every time.

She unlocks the front door of the post office at 8:59 and she’s in the back sorting through priority packages when she hears someone ring the bell at the counter. She comes out front carrying a roll of tape and sees a young woman standing there, waiting. She doesn’t have anything in her hands, nothing to mail. “What can I do for you?” Miss Becka says.

“I’ve seen you at the Shelter, right?” she says.

“You go to Cumberland. I recognize your face. What’s your name?”

“Shelly,” she says. “Can I ask you something?”

Miss Becka puts the tape down and reminds herself who this young lady’s been doing. Dustin Alcorn. Be careful now.

“I’m taking this class?” Shelly says. “And they want me to, like, interview a local?”

“Where’re you from?”

“Murfreesboro.”

“That’s local.” Miss Becka picks the tape back up. “Interview yourself.”

“They want, you know, a real local, and you’re sort of a legend."

“Oh, please.”

“Oh, yeah,” Shelly says. “Everybody thinks you’re basically the Bell Witch. So I was wondering if you’d take me fishing?”

“You can do that on your own.”

“Please, Forest Warden.”

“I’ve got to get back to work.”

“You could teach me about the land and the river and your family and stuff? Y’all are from here, right?”

“I do come from a long line,” Miss Becka says.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Shelly says. “Most people aren’t rooted like that.”

Miss Becka can tell there’s something here besides a school project. “I guess I could take you on the river. You ever fished for trout?”

“Never,” she says. “That would be so cool. My paper’s due in a couple weeks.”

“But promise you won’t go showing Dustin Alcorn any of my spots, or his little brother. I know you’re close with them. You gotta promise.”

“Cross my heart,” she says. “Dustin’s leaving soon anyway.”

“That so?”

She nods, takes the pen chained to the counter, asks for a piece of paper and writes down her cell number. “Let me know when I can come over,” she says. “Just text me. This is going to be awesome.”

“How about next Sunday? That’s the only day I’m free.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You know where I live?”

“Course,” Shelly says. “Everybody does.”

When she’s gone, Miss Becka shakes her head. Hard to believe that girl’s tied up with the Alcorns. That’s the only reason she’s even considering taking her fishing. Get to know her. Get her to trust her. And then, if it’s not too late, help her.

She’s never taught anybody to fish before. River secrets are precious things, and so far she’s kept hers close. Folks will show up and ruin a hole. That’s just what happens. First it’s cigarette butts, empty cans and a fire pit, then you’ve got panties in the sand and a bunch of spooked trout. The kids start out partying at night, then hang around all day with a dozen rods stuck in the mud, treble hooks and chicken livers for bait. All this while what they need to be doing is anything else. And worse, they don’t keep what they catch, just take pictures of their girlfriends screaming with the fish in their arms. Then they tear out the hooks or sometimes just cut the line and let them go. That’s when you find catfish belly up.

This water needs her as much as she needs it.

The Caney Fork was a warm water river up until about 1948. Then the TVA built the dam, a nearly three-hundred-foot-tall wall of concrete and earth holding back a biblical flood of water. The river rushes out from the bottom, cold and clean, and Miss Becka helps keep her section stocked with trout — rainbows, browns, even brookies — right from her backyard breeding pond, a little spring-fed pool lined with mossy old river rocks. A small grove of hemlocks surrounds the spring and works as a kind of filtration system. The water moves fast enough from there to carry leaves away, and it’s covered by a net to keep out hawks and raccoons. Every evening after work she throws out a handful of feed and watches her little baby trout swarm and splash. Would Shelly maybe like to see that? She could help her write a killer paper about it. Somebody should.

Browns have held their own in the Caney since the dam was built, which makes them an enduring species, though still younger than Miss Becka’s family in this area. She tells the state that browns and rainbows are all she’s breeding, but lately she’s been focusing on brookies, too. They’re mysterious and ecologically fragile. Her hemlocks keep them alive. They’re the most beautiful thing to pull out of the water, nearly black with topographical maps on their backs and spots on their sides. Last fall she got a seven-incher from the leeside of a boulder out on the main river. It was bigger than any of the others she’d released that year, which is how she knows they’re surviving on their own.

Wild-born fish are smarter, which means fewer folks catch them, which means that soon enough Miss Becka won’t need to stock the trout anymore because they’ll be untouchable, except by her. And maybe by Shelly, if she listens. It’ll be a fine day when she fishes her stretch without any of these clown-hatches in Orvis gear whipping brand new stiff-tip fly rods.

When folks around here get wind of a recent release of stocked trout, you start seeing empty cans of sweet corn or cups of night crawlers all over the shore, and it’s obvious what’s been going on. Sure, it bothers her, all the bobbers, but mostly because of what it might turn into. She tolerates that trashy kind of tackle because that’s how people start. These Orvis guys, though, they don’t know why they’re throwing dry flies. Because some sales associate told them to? It’s okay to start in the mud, then move up to clear water. Just depends on how you’re raised.

Miss Becka would never kill a trout. Not even for Fishy Frydays at the Bomb Shelter. On those days she’ll bring in a cooler of bass filets and batter and help Charlie the cook whip it up back in the kitchen. Fresh Native Catch. Nothing’s more native than bass and cats. Even bluegills and pumpkinseeds are good eating. When she fishes hard, she hauls in enough to make herself some decent money on Frydays.

This cabin she lives in was built by her grandfather in 1907. It’s been years since she had any visitors — which is kind of embarrassing. The place is a postcard from a time long gone. A chiseled boulder serves as a natural stairway up to the porch made from cedar planks sawed at the mill. The rest of the house goes back into the hillside, like a cave, which keeps the temperature stable. People’s minds back then were ahead of their time. She runs electricity off a meter for a freezer and a little window unit she sometimes uses in the summer — mostly to fight humidity and mold — but that’s it. She’s never needed heat other than her woodstove, a double-door Grandpa Bear made of quarter-inch cast iron. With the firebricks, the thing weighs six hundred pounds. The mouth will take twenty-inch logs sideways, up to thirty inches if they go in at an angle. Get it roaring, then shut the eyes, and it’ll stay hot all night long and kick back up in the morning. She likes burning white oak, but she’ll settle for sycamore or beech or cottonwood when she has to. Cedar when someone comes over, which is never, but she keeps a stack out back just in case. It looks as beautiful when split as it smells while burning. Purple heartwood. If it’s cool, she’ll burn some for Shelly, with the doors open. Truth is, though, she burns mostly driftwood, which gets deposited directly in her front yard.

Her grandfather put the cabin where it is because it was land that the state gave to him. He delivered his son, Becka’s father, in the cabin, right in the corner opposite from where Becka keeps her bed, and he watched his wife die while giving that birth. They kept to themselves, so nobody saw what happened, but folks in town have told and retold their own versions of this story so many times that nobody wants to hear it anymore. There’s even a self-published version of it that’s been sitting on the bookshelf at the Goodwill for years. The flour sack hanging on the wall was used as her father’s birthing cloth. It looks like somebody spilled black tea on it. That’s the kind of story she herself’s interested in.

During a flood last year, some stuff got swept away, including her boat, her front door and her desk. The river gives a lot — stories, fish, peace of mind—but it also keeps a tab and comes collecting when it sees fit. And you never know when. One day at the P.O. Miss Becka listened to a professor from Cumberland tell her that the dam should be taken down to honor nature and the breeding habits of fish. Now, it’s true: undammed rivers are more hospitable to a diversity of species. No argument there. Look at the Duck River. But ask that professor — and this is where Miss Becka is at fault, because she didn’t — if he’s ever lived on a river. Ever made money off of a river, other than talking about it in a classroom. Undammed rivers are wild and flood all the time. That one last year reminded her of what her family used to go through every spring. She’ll take a dam and a pissed off college professor any day. And there’s another lesson for Shelly. Maybe she’s studying with this guy. Shoot, maybe that paper’s for him.

The Caney Fork is a medium-sized snaker that never stops flowing, not ever, so the water filling the reservoir back there builds and gets released, again and again. Build, release, build. All the water behind that wall, silently and continuously pushing. When Becka goes, that’s how she wants to: in a dam break, a sudden white rush with all her trout swimming and swirling around her. They’ll float every curving mile down to the Cumberland and get lost in the depths.

The thought of death by water has never bothered her, but she does worry about some of the youngsters, even that river rat, Dustin Alcorn, who was obviously running trotlines, and whose father snatched away a good part of her life. That boy and his little brother just run loose. Becka knows their kind. Lost souls. She should quit worrying about them. But she can’t help it.

A county cruiser drives past the front window and brings her back from wherever she just went. Both her hands are on the counter, pressing so hard the fingertips are white. What just got hold of her? Oh, she knows. It might be good to have Shelly come over on Sunday. Somebody to talk to. Maybe it’ll be cool enough to burn some cedar. That’s how she’d like to tell her stories. Over flaming purple heartwood.

Order BLOODLINE

Freshly unemployed in Kentucky, Winston Alcorn hauls his wife and two young sons deep into Tennessee, not in pursuit of a job, but of his rightful historic destiny. Thus begins a saga of mendacious transformations, as Winston moves from junk auctioneer to showboat radio host to self-styled Dixie-first politician whose greedy megalomania turns his bloodline into a noose. One son follows in his father’s footsteps, the other battles his delusional legacy in hopes of a decent life, and the women enmeshed in the Alcorn family attempt to claw back what was stolen away. Mesmerizing and darkly comic, Bloodline is Lee Clay Johnson working at the height of his lyrical powers.

Lee Clay Johnson was born and raised around Nashville, Tennessee, in a family of bluegrass musicians. He was kicked out of high school on the first day of classes, and soon thereafter began touring the country as a bass player in various bands. He attended Tennessee State University, then transferred up north to Bennington College, where he studied with free jazz pioneer Milford Graves and became the first person in his family to earn a college degree. He received an MFA from the University of Virginia, under the guidance of Deborah Eisenberg and others, and in 2016 he published his first novel, Nitro Mountain, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. His fiction and nonfiction works have appeared in County Highway, The Southampton Review, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, Oxford American, The Common, Appalachian Heritage, Salamander, Mississippi Review, and more. He served as a fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He now lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife, the writer Sasha Wiseman, and teaches at St. Joseph’s University, New York, where he directs the Brooklyn Writers Foundry Low-Residency MFA program. Bloodline is his second novel.

In Seattle, at approximately 2:55 a.m., nearly twenty years ago, when I was sixteen, I drove too fast into a four-way intersection while talking on my mobile phone, turned too wide on a left, rode up onto the sidewalk, and crashed into a pedestrian who’d been waiting for the light to change. She died instantly.

Her name was Melissa and she was a member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians and had grown up on her tribe’s reservation in Eastern Washington and moved to Seattle for college but only made it through one semester before she dropped out. Afterward, she worked a series of minimum wage jobs and became the single mother of twin daughters. They were only seven years old and were alone in their apartment without adult supervision as their mother drunkenly walked home because her car had broken down again in the parking lot of the Journeyman Inn, which had become a gathering place for urban Native Americans and their family and friends visiting from various reservations. In Native parlance, it was known as an “Indian bar,” not owned by Native Americans but monopolized by them as customers. On the night of the accident, Melissa had refused to accept a ride from any of the other closing time refugees. Nobody knew exactly why she’d chosen to walk. It was drunk logic maybe. Or stumbling vanity. Or an intoxicated display of personal sovereignty.

I learned most of this through Seattle’s The Other, a leftist alternative weekly newspaper that covered the story and proclaimed, “A Native American woman should be able to walk home safely in early 21st century America but we’ve learned that still isn’t true.” I wanted to call the reporter and tell him that I didn’t even know that I’d hit a Native woman until days after the accident. I was unconscious the whole time. And I couldn’t publicly say it without being publicly destroyed but I wasn’t responsible for all the poor choices that Melissa had made — the choices that led to her standing drunk at a Seattle intersection at three in the morning. But I was completely responsible for hitting her — for crashing into a human being. Yes, I was white and slender and young and conventionally attractive, as The Other had unsubtly noted, but that had nothing to do with my reckless driving. Race didn’t play any part in the whole damn thing. White people have no monopoly on driving while talking on their mobile phones. But that’s not the kind of response a leftist newspaper would calmly accept. So I didn’t respond to that story at all. My lawyer advised me not to say a single word to any person about the accident. He said that I shouldn’t even confide in my parents. That was easy because I hadn’t told them anything real in years. “Keep everything hidden behind attorney-client privilege,” my lawyer warned. “Silence is your God,” he said.

When I hit Melissa, I was apologizing to my mother on my mobile phone because I’d broken curfew yet again. The phone’s reception was bad so I was shouting to be heard. My mother was shouting at me out of rage because I’d left the house and taken her car without permission. And she was also raging because my father hadn’t come home, either. I told her that I’d fallen asleep on the couch while watching a movie at my boyfriend’s house. That was a lie. I’d fallen asleep naked in my boyfriend’s bed after sex. I assumed that my father had also fallen asleep naked with his mistress. My mother knew that I was lying but it was easier for her to accept my deception and maintain her sense of family decorum: Her daughter was a virgin, her husband still loved her, and she had house insurance for every loss by earthquake, fire, flood, landslide, robbery, and personal disaster. My mother and I had pretended to be honest with each other since I was a precocious ten-year-old — since I’d arrived at the far shore of her love and saw there was nothing beyond. So, as I drove, I was distracted by my lies and my mother’s emptiness and the scent of my boyfriend on my skin when I slammed into Melissa. But I never saw her. I knew that I’d lost control of the car and was sliding toward a stand of cedar trees sitting fifteen feet off the street, but I don’t remember hitting her or the cedars. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt. Stupidity compounded by more stupidity. I rag-dolled off the walls, ceiling, and steering wheel, and was knocked brain-asleep. I didn’t drink or do drugs. They tested my blood in the ER. I was clean.

A few weeks after it happened, Melissa’s friends and family planted a small garden at the site of her death. The amateur horticulturalists were mostly Native Americans, though a few of Melissa’s white friends also did some work. The garden sat beneath the cedars that I’d rammed into. I’d damaged one tree so severely that it had to be cut down but the other trees healed. I don’t know plants so I can’t tell you what they grew in the garden. I only know that it was of modest size and color, probably because the city owned the land and hadn’t officially approved of the memorial. While they were building the garden, I was in the hospital ICU and then in a residential physical rehab facility with a broken nose, severe concussion, a fifty-stitch slice across my forehead, broken collarbone, torn ligaments in both knees, busted left wrist, and four cracked ribs. I was bruised everywhere but I was going to recover. Physically.

I was lucky. Melissa was not.

I didn’t learn the extent of her injuries until I was discharged from the rehab facility. My parents thought they were protecting me and my healing process by withholding the details. And they, with a cold kindness, were probably right. Destroyed is the only accurate description of her injuries.

From Seattle Illustrated, I learned that Melissa had been trapped for years in a cycle of active addiction and temporary recovery. She was drunk when she conceived her twins with a white man — a member in probationary standing in the unofficial white ally auxiliary — whom she’d met at the Journeyman. She stayed sober for the length of her pregnancy but quickly returned to her binge-drinking life after their birth. Their white father had left before the girls were born. His whereabouts would always be unknown. Melissa had twice lost her girls to foster care. But she’d also twice won back her daughters because she was a kind, smart, and capable mother when she was sober. She’d been working as a cashier at a supermarket — a place with a mission to hire recovering addicts and alcoholics. She’d been sober for a year and none of her family or friends could point out any particular reason why Melissa relapsed that night. Addiction can ambush you by moonlight or sunlight. I only knew that I wasn’t the reason why Melissa lost her sobriety. The tragedy of her life was separate from my role in her tragic death. But that’s another thing that I could never say in public.

I could’ve been prosecuted as an adult for vehicular homicide. The threat was there. But my defense lawyer, working with the prosecutors, won me a deferred prosecution because I was a good kid — a juvenile with zero history of wrongdoing. Good grades. Part-time job at an ice cream store. Tutored kids at the Boys & Girls Club. Cross country runner with “slow feet and a big heart,” as my coach liked to say. I hadn’t even missed a day of school in two years. So I wouldn’t be charged with any crime if I didn’t drink, do drugs, or commit any other crimes for one year.

The lawyers were accused of racism. So was the judge. So was I. There were small protests. They were wrong about me. I wasn’t a racist. I was just an ordinary kid who did something extraordinarily stupid. But don’t get me wrong. I understood my metaphysical role in the accident. I wasn’t deemed guilty of murder or manslaughter but I was still a killer.

I killed the mother of two young daughters. They were named Melody and Aria. I suffered nightmares where I crashed into and killed them instead of their mother. In other softer dreams, I worked alongside Melody and Aria as we tended their mother’s memorial garden. That never happened, of course, but it was a dream that kept recurring for many years.

Four months after the wreck, I limped back to school, opened my locker, and painfully stepped back as dozens of little Matchbox cars spilled onto the floor. A dark prank. I heard people laughing and turned to see the culprits. My boyfriend, who’d only visited me once in the hospital, stood among them and was laughing more loudly than the others. I almost fainted with shame. And I almost fainted again when I realized that I deserved my shame. Then I took three deep breaths and walked out of the school. I would’ve ran but my injuries made it impossible for me to move at a faster pace. So my shattered body accidentally gave me a slow dignity. Shortly afterward, I obtained court permission to take the GED test, passed it, and received my high school diploma. I wouldn’t have to return to that school or to any of my former friends.

This all happened before social media could be fully used as a fatal weapon. People were more apt and able to forget tragedies. So, like a magician with surgical scars, I mostly disappeared from my previous life.

For eight months after I left school, my mother tended to my wounds while my father tended to his affair partner, another lawyer in the corporate firm. Our house became a mausoleum. But I still might have stayed in Seattle if my mother hadn’t looked me in the eyes one day and said, “I can’t believe I raised a murderer.”

So, on the day after my probation in Seattle ended, I moved to Los Angeles to live with my mother’s sister.

Aunt Patty was a freelance photographer. She created huge portraits of the poor and homeless who populated Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California. Her photos were gorgeous and dark and were often displayed in elite galleries but rarely sold to typical art collectors. Critics accused her of exploitation. With a characteristic mix of honesty and arrogance, Patty said that it was an accurate critique but added that all art is exploitation and that she was just better at it than almost everybody else wielding a camera. The ordinary rich didn’t want to decorate their homes with her portraits of unsheltered people and their interrogating eyes. It was the movie people — the superstar actors and directors — who purchased her work. They were rich progressive artists who’d once been desperate for opportunity and they wanted my aunt’s portraits to remind them of their former desperation.

“Look at that man’s eyes,” the actors and directors would say to their guests as they studied a portrait hanging on the walls. “Have you ever been that hungry? I’ve never been physically hungry like them. But my soul-hunger was deep and debilitating. I’m still soul-hungry. That’s the source of my art.”

Aunt Patty and I lived in her three-bedroom home in the Los Feliz neighborhood. She slept in the master bedroom and had turned a second bedroom into her studio. She’d even built a darkroom that fit neatly into the space where a large walk-in closet had stood. The third bedroom had been reserved for guests until I moved in.

“Listen,” Patty said to me on the first day. “We’re only going to talk about your accident once. And then we’ll never speak of it again.”

“Okay,” I said, being too young to know how seriously that silence was going to hurt me.

“You killed somebody,” she said.

“Yes, I did.”

“You took a woman away from her family and friends. You took a mother away from her daughters.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to think about them everyday for the rest of your life.”

“I know.”

“So that means you have to ask for their forgiveness everyday for the rest of your life.”

“Like on the phone or something?”

“No, no, no. You don’t have the right to speak to them. You have to get down on your knees all by yourself and beg for forgiveness. And you have to do it alone and silently. Not with me. Or your mother. Or your goddamn father. Just you and you alone.”

“Okay,” I said, not knowing that I’d just entered a personal cloister.

“Now, darling,” Patty said. “That’s all there is to say about that. I’m happy you’re here. You’re my blood. And I’m going to give you food, shelter, and a job. You got that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I bet everything feels like razor blades in your shoes,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, you just keep walking. And your feet will stop bleeding someday.”

You might think that my aunt was cruel. But she wasn’t. Not really. Maybe the best thing I can say is that her love was less limited than my mother’s was. I don’t know how they were raised. Their parents had both died before I was born. Aunt Patty had friends, yes, but she never expressed romantic interest in anybody during the years that I lived with her. I had the distinct impression that, aside from photography, she was unaware of what else her body was for. During my years in Los Angeles, I had seven one-night stands and four relationships that all lasted for less than a year, so I was probably as emotionally muted as my mother and aunt were. Or maybe it was more complicated than that. I never told any of my lovers or friends about the accident. Only once did I even consider being honest with somebody. His name was Ethan — a sweet man from Oregon who’d come to LA to act but ended up owning a travel bookstore in Burbank.

One night, in bed, he said to me, “You wouldn’t believe how many customers — how many regular customers — buy guidebooks for countries they’ll never visit. A few of them have never even left the United States. There’s one — this elderly woman who buys two or three guidebooks a month — I don’t think she’s ever left California. I don’t think she has any family left. And not much money. I don’t think she realizes that I only charge her a few dollars for the books. She’s my very favorite customer.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because her curiosity is never defeated by her reality.”

I left him shortly after that night. I had to run before he realize how defeated that I was. How can you love somebody or accept their love when your primary emotion is shame?

I don’t know if Aunt Patty understood how much I was ruled by my shame. We didn’t have those kind of conversations. But, unlike my mother, Patty took me everywhere that she went. In Seattle, I’d always felt like an ignored dog chained in the backyard, but my aunt hired me as her assistant and we constantly traveled Southern California looking for people and places to photograph. I learned how to use different cameras, film, and lighting. And how to develop photos in the darkroom.

As we traveled, Patty would quote famous photographers.

“Ansel Adams,” she’d say. “He said that you don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

“And here’s Nan Goldin,” Aunt Patty would say. “She said that she used to think that she could never lose anyone if she photographed them enough. But she said, in fact, that her pictures showed her how much she’d lost.”

And Patty would say, “And this one, by Dorothea Lange, captures something almost brutal about art. She said, ‘It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.’”

It was the Encyclopedia of Patty.

But more than just teaching me ways of thinking about photography, she taught me how to see what images needed to be captured. Or maybe, considering my modest talents, I was taught to only catch glimpses of what needed to be fully seen.

And so, after a few years of being only her assistant, I also became Patty’s apprentice.

One day, in downtown Los Angeles, she asked me to approach a homeless man to ask if I could photograph him. Up until that point, I’d only photographed small objects like a glass of water or a single paperclip on a desk or a weed that was more beautiful than the flower it was subsuming. I’d been too afraid to photograph people. And I especially didn’t take self-portraits. Though I once thought of displaying ten self-portraits across one white wall with ten different facial expressions — anger, sadness, fear, joy, contempt, and more — but all of the photos would be titled Not Innocent.

“I don’t think I’m ready to aim a camera at someone’s face,” I said to my aunt.

“Yes, you are,” she said. “You take decent photos. Above average. That means you might get better. But you gotta start pushing yourself now. Start breaking past the boundaries in your mind.”

It was the best pep talk that my aunt was capable of delivering. It was enough.

“Okay,” I said and walked toward that homeless man. He had dark brown skin and black hair. And was very short. Barely over five feet tall, as short as me. I assumed that he was Guatemalan.

“Hola, señor,” I said to him.

He just stared at me. His skin was dry and chapped. His hair was greasy and spindly. His wrinkles were geologic.

“Como estas, mi amigo?” I said.

“Why are you speaking Mexican at me?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I assumed you spoke Spanish.”

“I ain’t no Mexican,” he said. “I’m Apache.”

“Oh,” I said. “You’re Native American.”

“Shit, ain’t nobody says Native American. Indians say Indian.”

“Okay, it’s Indians, then,” I said. “I knew some Indians up in Seattle.”

“What kind of Indians?”

“Two daughters and a mother,” I said. “But the mother died.”

“That’s what Indians do,” he said. “We die.”

For a moment, I thought about telling him that I’d killed Melissa. But he wasn’t my priest and I wasn’t his parishioner. And isn’t it true that white people spend our whole lives confessing to Indians? And aren’t we so good at forgiving ourselves? I wanted no part of that ceremony. I had a whole other ceremony to follow — one that I couldn’t stop. So many people in Los Angeles were from Central and South America. Short brown people were everywhere. Short brown women with long black hair pulled back into ponytails. Women who looked like Melissa. There were thousands of Melissas. Tens of thousands. Sometimes, in my car, waiting at an intersection, waiting for the light to change, two, three, or ten Melissas would walk in front of me. And I’d silently and ceremonially apologize to each of them.

“The mother’s name was Melissa,” I said to the Apache. “The daughters are Melody and Aria.”

“I didn’t ask their goddamn names,” he said. “Names are selfish. What tribe are they?”

“Spokane Indians.”

“Never heard of them.”

“They’re a small tribe,” I said. “River people. They worship the salmon.”

“How you know all that? You some kind of asshole anthropologist?”

“I’m just a photographer,” I said. “And probably an asshole, too. But I like your face.”

“Ah, no,” he said. “My face looks like a box of scars.”

“I think your scars are beautiful,” I said.

“Liar,” he said.

“Sometimes, I lie,” I said. “Sometimes, I tell the truth.”

He nodded his head. He’d decided that I was okay.

“Just don’t speak no Mexican at me anymore,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, wondering if he disliked Guatemalans as much as he seemed to dislike Mexicans. Some people like to say that black and brown people can’t be racist. I don’t think that’s true. And what would they say about an Indian man who didn’t like Mexicans? About a brown man who was racist toward other brown people?

“You know we Apaches been kicking the shit out of Mexicans for ten thousand years,” he said.

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“Yeah, and we beat those Spanish invaders, too. I forget what they’re called.”

“Conquistadors,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Long-ass name for them pointy-hat motherfuckers. We shot arrows right through their shiny little armor.”

“You Apache were warriors,” I said.

“We’ve never stopped being warriors.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I stand corrected. I apologize.”

“A lot of them Mexicans pretend to be Indians,” he said. “But they’re really just from Spain.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said and wondered if it was true. I think it might’ve been partly true.

“Anyways,” he said. “Pretty white woman saying pretty white words. What you want from me?”

“Can I please take your photograph?” I asked.

“Indians think cameras steal your soul,” he said.

“I’ve heard that,” I said.

“But I think that’s superstitious bullshit,” he said. “My soul is bulletproof. And bulletproof is expensive.”

“How expensive?” I asked.

“Twenty bucks,” he said.

“Ten bucks,” I counteroffered.

“Ah, damn, you treaty-maker, you’re trying to steal from me.”

“Okay,” I said. “Twenty bucks.”

I gave him his money and he grinned for me. He was missing some teeth and the rest were crooked but they shone brightly white against his dark skin.

“I like your smile,” I said.

“You white people always trying to take pictures of sad Indians,” he said. “My smile is my rifle.”

A few hours later, after I’d developed the photo, Patty studied it.

“This is getting closer to good,” she said. “You got that man to reveal something. That smile is complicated.”

“He’s a desert Indian,” I said. “So he has a desert face.”

“Desert face is a good way to say it,” Patty said. “That’ll begin a conversation.”

I thought of Melissa, a river Indian with a river face.

“I don’t want anybody else to see my photo,” I said. “Is that okay?”

“You’re the artist,” she said. “You’re in charge of your art.”

My father eventually strode away from my life. He divorced my mother and married his mistress. One Christmas, he sent me a card with a photo of his new family — his thieving wife and their unlucky toddler.

“Look at this,” I said to Patty. “The asshole is bragging about his new kid.”

“If it wasn’t for you,” she said, “your father would be a monumental waste of sperm.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But what about his new kid? Is he a waste?”

“To be determined at a later date,” my aunt said.

After I’d first arrived in Los Angeles, my mother called me weekly. Then monthly. Then months passed between calls. Then it was years of silence.

I came home one night to find Patty on the phone with my mother. I’m not sure how they managed to stay connected. From what I could hear on Patty’s side of the calls, they only seemed to talk about books, movies, and food.

“It’s your Mom,” she said and offered her phone to me. “You wanna talk to her?”

“No,” I said.

And then my mother and I never spoke again.

Ten years after I’d killed Melissa, Aunt Patty flew to Seattle for my mother’s funeral. But I didn’t go. Then, eight years after her sister died, Patty coughed up blood one night, discovered that she had lung cancer, and only lived for six more months.

On her deathbed, she held my hand and said, “I’m sorry your mother stopped loving you.”

“But you never did,” I said.

“You’re gonna miss me,” she said.

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re gonna be scared,” she said.

“I’m terrified of a world without you.”

“Everything I have is yours now.”

“I don’t want to use your cameras,” I said. “I’m just gonna leave them where they are.”

“Don’t turn my house into a museum,” she said. “Use everything of mine. They’re your tools now.”

Per Patty’s request, there was no funeral. And also, per her request, I had her body cremated and sprinkled her ashes at the base of a sycamore tree in Griffith Park.

The last thing that Patty quoted to me was, “Henri Cartier-Bresson said that ‘Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.’”

For a year after my aunt’s death, I did nothing with her cameras or mine. Then I called her photographer friends and held a giveaway.

“What’s a giveaway?” asked a vintage collector with nose hairs brambling an inch out of his nostrils. I think that’s why people get married. So they have somebody to monitor their personal appearance.

“A giveaway is a Spokane Indian thing,” I said. “A person’s life isn’t measured by the stuff they keep. It’s measured by what they give to people.”

“Well, then, the pharaohs are fucked,” he said. “They got buried with gold and honey and the bodies of their sacrificial slaves. Hell, they even killed the pharaoh’s dogs and threw them in the crypt, too.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“I didn’t know you were Indian,” he said.

“I’m not,” I said. “I just appreciate their culture.”

It took six days to empty the house of Patty’s possessions. I gave away her photography equipment, photographs, shoes, and clothes, keeping only her work jacket with all the pockets — the blue one that she wore on her artistic treks.

I gave away almost all of my clothes, too. But I kept three black T-shirts, a black sweatshirt with matching black sweatpants, a pair of black jeans, black hiking boots, two black bras, five pair of black underwear, and that blue work jacket.

And I kept one cheap little camera.

Then I called a local charity that accepted used cars. I watched them load Patty’s Prius onto a flatbed and haul it away. I didn’t need a car. Yes, I had a license but driving still made me nervous and tentative.

I called another charity that took away all the furniture — the beds, dressers, bookshelves, tables, lamps, and area rugs.

We never had much in the kitchen so all the utensils, plates, bowls, pans, and pots fit into two cardboard boxes that I left on the curb with “FREE” written in black ink on their sides. Those were gone overnight.

Then I sat in my empty bedroom and wondered if I should keep the stack of the mediocre photos that I’d taken. I suppose that I should’ve become a great photographer because Patty had been my teacher. But, fifteen years after I’d taken that decent photo of a homeless Apache man, I’d never taken anything as good and certainly not anything better.

Philip K. Dick wrote, “When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?”

I think he meant that a photographer, no matter their subject, is also creating an autobiography. So when I look at my meager photographs, I see the reflection of my silence.

I now owned Patty’s house. Her money in the bank was now mine. Almost too much money. And I’d only inherited it because I’d fled Seattle, my parents, and my crime. It didn’t seem fair. If I stayed smart with the house and cash, I was set for life. But it made me wonder if artists and their heirs should be rich. Patty’s photos were alive on the walls of superstars’ houses but none of those people had ever been a part of her life. I wondered how many of them were even aware that Patty had died. She was relatively famous, I guess, but I ignored all the phone calls and emails from reporters who wanted to write an obituary. Journalists had helped destroy my life. So I wouldn’t help them write what would’ve been a bullshit story about Patty, anyway. How do you write something accurate about somebody you never knew? And I also worried that the story might include my past. My juvenile records were sealed, and the wreck had happened twenty years earlier, but the Internet and social media had turned everybody into a public figure. That’s how I knew that Melody and Aria had been raised by their grandmother on the Spokane Indian Reservation — by Melissa’s mother. The girls played volleyball, basketball, and softball at the tribal high school. They’d both graduated from Gonzaga University in Spokane and moved back to the rez to teach English and History. They’d both had boyfriends over the years. All Indian guys from different tribes. But none of those relationships lasted for very long.

And they often posted photos of their mother.

After nearly twenty years away, I stood on the sidewalk near the spot where Melissa was standing when I crashed into her. I’d left my rental car six blocks away and walked. I didn’t want to drive through that intersection ever again.

According to the GPS, the Spokane Indian Reservation was 294 miles away from the intersection where I’d killed Melissa. With restroom, gas, and food breaks, it would probably take me six hours to make that drive. The Spokane Reservation didn’t seem to be a tourist destination. I’d visited other reservations that seemed eager to attract white people and their money. But not the Spokanes. Their reservation was bracketed by the Spokane and Columbia Rivers and, on the map, it looked like something of an island.

Melissa’s memorial garden was gone, overtaken by blackberry brambles. I remembered that the city would spray them with weed killer because they invaded too much of the space around them, crowding out other plants and eroding the soil. But the blackberries, at their best, were delicious. Animals, birds, and humans braved the thorns to eat them. I plucked one from the stem and crushed it between my fingers. Dark juice. I wondered if the fruit had been poisoned by weed killer. I wiped my hand on my pants. They were black so any stain didn’t matter. And then I doubted that the black bramble had been sprayed. It was so massive and wild that the city must not have tried to control it yet. The blackberries could take over the entire city if left untended for a few decades. In any case, the brambles surrounded the base of the cedar trees, the same cedars that I’d crashed into. I remembered that one of the trees had been cut down. The local tribes used cedar for practical and religion reasons so I wondered if they’d somehow come into possession of the cedar that I’d mortally wounded. I didn’t know if the Spokane Indians had a relationship with cedar. It seemed to me that cedar needed a rain shadow in order to grow in abundance. There were four distinct seasons in Eastern Washington. Maybe the Spokane Indians needed all four season in order to thrive. I’d read that that Spokane meant “Children of the Sun” and that Spokane’s sunniest days were during the winter. That felt like a contradiction but maybe it wasn’t. I hadn’t grown up in the snow so I had no firsthand knowledge. And, anyway, maybe humans need contradiction just as much as they needed the sun.

Otherwise, the intersection was the same as the last time I’d seen it, though it was busier with traffic now. Seattle had grown. How many tens of thousands of cars, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, had passed through that intersection in the twenty years since I’d killed Melissa?

A jogger ran in place, waiting for the light to change in the same spot where Melissa had waited so long ago. But it was two in the afternoon and warm. The jogger was white and wore a neon orange tank top and matching shorts and running shoes. She was highly visible, as safe as she could make herself. I thought about asking her if she knew what had happened at the intersection two decades earlier. Probably not. She might be new to the city. To the neighborhood. Or it might be just a dim memory for her. For everybody. It was an accident that had only changed the lives of a few people and I knew that all of the survivors and mourners had moved away. And after seeing that Melissa’s memorial garden had turned into a blackberry bramble, I assumed that her family hadn’t visited there in a long time, either. The garden’s flowers had become ghosts. The city certainly hadn’t paused to remember. That’s how it goes. Very few people matter. Almost all of us are obliterated by the passage of time.

I plucked another berry and ate it. Sweet with a hint of sour.

My high school boyfriend’s house was the same. Re-sided, re-roofed, and re-painted but with the same bones. According to his social media, his parents had sold the house and moved to a downtown condominium. He lived on an island across the bay from Seattle. He was married with four kids. I wondered if he ever thought about the Matchbook cars that had spilled out of my locker. I don’t know if he’d directly participated in that dark prank, if he’d helped load my locker with all those toys, but he’d stood with the audience and laughed. Did he ever think about his act of cruelty? Did he look back in shame? Did his wife and kids ever experience his cruelty? Maybe they saw it on a daily basis. The last time I was in his childhood home, in the furnished basement, in his bed, he kept whispering my name as we made love. As we had sex. As we fucked. All that tenderness and viciousness in one person.

My childhood home had been torn down and replaced by a three-story black box. A heartless construction. Some architects are artists. Some destroy the soul of a neighborhood.

I kept my cheap camera on the passenger seat of my rental car as I drove onto the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Susan Sontag wrote, “There is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.”

So, as I drove down a steep road, past Little Falls Dam, and over a bridge across the Spokane River, I thought of that homeless Apache man from Los Angeles. And I wondered if I’d made him my possession. He was probably dead. Had probably been dead for years. There might not be another photograph of him in the world. He might be buried in a nameless grave. Or maybe he somehow made it back to his reservation, family, and tribe. He’d joked about cameras stealing Indian souls. He thought it was bullshit. My aunt thought it was just part of the job description.

The Spokane Reservation was beautiful. It seemed to be one epic pine forest, though I saw, as I drove up a steep switchback, that forest fires had burned some areas down to black. I’d seen a video on Melody and Aria’s Facebook where they’d waited at midnight in their car — waited at an intersection near the tribal post office — along with a dozen other Spokanes in their cars, as a wall of flames threatened the little town of Wellpinit, the headquarters for the reservation.

“That sucker’s gonna come right over the hill,” Melody had said.

“No,” Aria said. “God will stop it.”

“It’s just Bo and them out there trying to bulldoze a fireline.”

“God sent Bo and them to do God’s work.”

“You gotta give up that God stuff.”

“You gotta accept God.”

“Looks like God sent us a forest fire.”

It was odd to hear twins bickering about anything, let alone about God. But I’ve seen, because of my research about twins, ultrasound video of twins wrestling for space in the womb. Maybe twins never stop wrestling for space. The only thing for sure is that Bo and the other Indian firefighters did cut the fireline that stopped the blaze from reaching town.

As I drove into Wellpinit, I passed a church that had been abandoned. The windows and front door were boarded up. I guess there were no more Presbyterians on the reservation.

There was more traffic than I expected. And a lot of cars parked on the roadside. Two teams of Indians were playing softball on a sparse field. They wore uniforms so it some kind of official game. I stopped at the intersection, rolled down my window, and called out to an Indian kid walking by.

“Hey,” I said. “Why’s it so busy?”

The kid gave me a puzzled look. I imagined that Indians often give puzzled looks to us white people.

“It’s powwow,” he said.

Of course, of course, I thought. It was the Labor Day weekend powwow. It had been happening annually for over a century. How did I forget that?

“Hey,” I said. “Do you know where Melody and Aria are?”

He gave me another puzzled look.

“They’re dancers,” he said. “So they’re at the powwow grounds. Dancing.”

He shook his head and walked away. But I called after him again.

“Where’s the powwow grounds?” I asked.

He pointed to my right.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No problem,” he said. “White people get to dance, too.”

Yes, I remembered that every powwow has intertribal songs where anybody can two-step to the drumbeat, even the white people in their New Balance sneakers. It’s pretty amazing that, day after day, minute after minute, Indians still welcome white people into their spaces.

I drove to the powwow grounds, followed a security guard’s directions, and parked in a gravel lot. Then I walked across the road onto the grounds. I felt self-conscious. Shame and fear had me breathing hard. I feared that an Indian would recognize me as the white woman who’d killed Melissa. That was irrational, of course. But irrational emotions still hurt as much as real ones.

I’d been to powwows in California but that Spokane Indian powwow was different. There were far fewer white people and far more dark-skinned and dark-haired Indians.

I followed the sound of the drums to the dance arena and walked inside. It was impressive. Bleachers surrounded the dirt dance floor. In front of the bleachers were dozens of folding chairs. And a dozen powwow drums surrounded by dozens of drummers and singers. There were maybe a hundred dancers — men, women, and children — wearing feathers, ribbons, jingles, and facepaint. All of it was circular and gorgeous. I wanted to cry but I didn’t want to be a white woman crying at a powwow.

And then I saw Melody and Aria wearing long buckskin dresses and beaded headwear. They were dancing. Slowly and gracefully stepping in their moccasins that reached up to their knees. They were very tall, over six feet. Taller than almost all of the other Indian women. And taller than at least half of the Indian men, too. Their long black hair was braided into two dark rivers that waterfalled to their waists. A much shorter elderly woman danced between them. I recognized her. Their grandmother. Their mother’s mother. The woman who’d raised them after they’d buried their mother.

Being a photographer, I felt the overwhelming urge to capture their image. But I’d forgotten my camera in the car and I was relieved that I didn’t have it. God knows that I was an inferior photographer who’d take an inferior photo. But I also didn’t want to be a thief.

I found a seat in the bleachers next to an Indian woman dressed in T-shirt and jeans. Standard gear for any American. But she also wore a huge beaded medallion that depicted a red salmon rising over a blue river.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hey,” the red salmon woman said.

“It’s okay if I sit here?” I asked because I didn’t know the powwow rules.

“Sure,” the red salmon woman said. “You’re lucky to find a spot. People been showing up early morning to put their blankets down to save a space.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t trust Indians who wake up at dawn,” she said and laughed at her own joke.

We sat without talking through a few songs. I reflexively bobbed my head and tapped my foot in sync with the dumbbeat. And then I’d realize what I was doing and stop my minor dancing.

“Do you know those tall girls?” I asked.

“Melody and Aria?” said the red salmon woman. “I’ve known them forever. How do you know them?”

“Back in Seattle, I knew their mother a little bit,” I said, feeling like a spy.

“Melissa was a good woman,” she said. “Awful what happened to her.”

“Yes,” I said. “It still hurts.”

“But you know what? I hate to say it but those girls got devastated and lucky at the same time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said, Melissa was a really good woman,” she said. “But I think she was headed for a bad end no matter what. And she would’ve taken Melody and Aria with her.”

It was a shocking statement. Too honest. It was something only another Indian could’ve said. It gave me a sense of relief. But I didn’t want that relief. I wanted to cry again. And then a few tears did fall.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the red salmon woman said. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

“I think about her all the time,” I said.

“You should go say hi to the girls. I’m sure they’d love to meet you. You could tell them some stories about their Mom, I bet.”

“Maybe,” I said.

We silently watched the twins and their grandmother move in circles.

“They’re great dancers,” I said.

“Nah,” said red salmon woman. “They’re just average. But they’re still unicorns.”

“Why unicorns?”

“Because they’re college girls who came back to the rez after they graduated,” she said. “And because they’re college girls who are traditional Indians, too.”

The powwow song ended and all the Indians left the dance floor. The twins stood together while their grandmother walked away with a different agenda.

“Come on,” said red salmon woman. “I’ll introduce you.”

I felt powerless as she took my hand and led me out of the bleachers and toward the twins.

“Melody, Aria,” the red salmon woman called to them. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

They turned to face us. Up close, they were even more beautiful. I remembered that their tribe’s name, Spokane, meant “Children of the Sun.” And that’s what they were. Twin suns. I almost closed my eyes against their brightness. Then opened them and accepted their light.

“She knew your mom,” the red salmon woman said about me.

The twins smiled. After two decades, their good thoughts about Melissa were probably larger than their grief — maybe much larger. I only had my grief — my selfish, selfish grief.

“Tell them a story about their mother,” the red salmon woman said.

All at once, every one of my old injuries began to hurt.

“I’m Melody.”

“I’m Aria. What’s your name?”

They reached their right hands out to me. Out of goodwill and peace, I was supposed to take their hands with mine. But I couldn’t do it. The taste of blackberries flooded my mouth.

“How did you know our mother?” Melody asked.

“We can take you to her grave,” Aria said. “She’s buried at the Presbyterian cemetery.”

They were so expectant. So pleased to meet me. But I could see that they didn’t recognize me. They didn’t know who I was. They didn’t know that I was the one who’d forced them to become unicorns.

I realized the red salmon woman was still holding my hand. I pulled it away too roughly.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I said.

And then I hugged the red salmon woman because I didn’t have the strength to hug the twins.

And then I ran.

I was the white woman, weeping, who ran away from the powwow grounds. I ran past the security guards and into the parking lot. I ran past my car and into the pine trees beyond.

Lord, there are forest fires that cannot be extinguished. Lord, there are fire lines that can’t be dug in time to stop all the destruction. Lord, there are flames that burn down the house that lies empty beneath your ribs.

Sherman Alexie is poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, memoirist, and filmmaker. He’s the author of twenty-four books, including his novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which won the National Book Award for Young Peoples Literature and was listed by the American Library Association as the Most Banned and Challenged Book in the United States from 2010 to 2019. He’s also won the PEN/Faulkner and PEN/Malamud Awards. He wrote and co-produced Smoke Signals, the feature film that won the 1998 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy and is preserved in the Library of Congress National Film Registry. He lives with his wife and sons in Seattle.