It took two weeks to receive the seven replies, each and every one accounted for. Out of the last batch, I had gotten one final request, and a few days later, I received one last rejection. To celebrate I went out and bought a bottle of vodka and Jack Daniels and a jug of grapefruit juice. I came home, and though I knew it’d be in vain, I walked upstairs and knocked at Gene’s door. No answer. He’d been gone for a month, no word at all, not a sound from upstairs since the night of my birthday. The rent check sat on my desk gathering dust.

Downstairs I made two drinks, a Greyhound in one glass, whiskey and water over ice in the other. It was stifling hot. I sat at the desk, opened the portfolio Linda had given me, and uncapped Gene’s pen. I drank and stared at the yellow page wondering what I could write. But the tank was empty of ideas, free of ambition. I finished the Greyhound and half the whiskey when Carolyn returned from work.

“Hey there,” she said.

“Hi.”

“What are you doing?”

“Drinking.”

She looked at me closely to gauge how much I’d already had.

“Don’t worry, I’m only on my second. I have ambitions of several more, though.”

She sighed. “Did the mail come?”

“Only this,” I said and threw the last rejection on the bed. She picked it up and relaxed a little when realizing what it was. I wasn’t sure why. “That’s the last of ’em.”

She removed her shirt and added it to the pile of dirty clothes.

“When are you going to send more?”

“I’m not,” I said. “That’s it.”

“What? Why?”

“There’s no point. The book is shit and I know it now and nobody wants it.”

“Stratton, you’ve had eight requests. Why would you quit now?”

“I sent out over seventy queries. I’m not quitting.”

“So send more.”

“Carolyn, there are only so many agents in the world. I’ve gone through most of them,” I said. “I mean, Christ, I even sent a letter to an agent in a place called Red Hook, New York. Do you have any idea where in the hell Red Hook is?”

“No, Stratton.”

“Well, neither do I.”

“But you said there were hundreds.”

“Christ, Carolyn. I don’t know how to find the rest, okay?”

“Don’t get mean.”

I placed my head in my hands and looked at her through the gaps between my fingers. “I don’t know what the hell else I can do. I’m hurting and I feel like a worthless piece of shit. I wrote a book I thought was good, but it isn’t. I can see that now.” I held out my hands, palms up, pleadingly. “I don’t know what else to do, okay?”