“Well, good. I think I’d better hurry back then.”
“Nah, take your time. I’ve gotten a lot done. I’ll just be here, waiting on you with bated breath, counting down the seconds.”
“Me too. Two more days!”
I was silent a moment. “Do you still love me?” I asked.
“Of course I do. You still love me?”
“More than ever.”
I hung up, and wondered if that was the truth. Then I spent the rest of the day writing more queries.
3
That night I finally got around to A Fan’s Notes, the book Gene had given me several months before. I’m not sure why I had waited so long, and when I picked it up I had only meant to start it, read a chapter or two, and then go to bed. But before I reached the end of the very first page I realized the book was akin to magic, amazing to the point of discouragement, so brutally honest and beautifully written that I knew I could live ten lifetimes and still not write anywhere near as well as Exley. It was unlike anything I had ever read before. I drank in every word, eyes burning with exhaustion by the time I reached the halfway point at three in the morning, but I couldn’t stop there, not until I finished, all 385 pages of it. And when I finally turned that last page, I was so enthralled and inspired that I wanted to rush out immediately and have the word Exley tattooed somewhere on my body. But the sun was only then beginning to crawl over the horizon, so instead I curled into a ball and had a good hard cry that I reveled in. It had been a long while since my last, and when I finished, I then lay waiting for sleep, hoping for once that it might come easily. But it never does. Still today my mind forever races, wracked with either anxiety or worry or nothing at all, and I don’t remember there ever being a time when I could relax or immediately fall asleep without the benefit of a sedative. And even when I do sleep I’m tight and restless and wake often. It’s not a good thing, but so it goes.
4
My paperwork went through two weeks later. I was to receive $211 each week for the next six months. If I carefully watched my spending, it’d be just enough to get me by and would thus allow me to devote my time to selling the book, and that was all I really wanted.
twenty-six