The building-and-building part was the challenge. He’d thought starting with a title would somehow inspire him, so he’d come up with Black and White—two noncolors, unlike the splashy titles of his previous books. But he’d begun to think the new title felt ostentatious and overly ambitious. He would feel obligated to explore race relations and the history of the newspaper trade. He hated even the idea of research, let alone the actual practice of finding information, taking notes, and getting it into his story properly and accurately. All of his other novels had been chatty and witty and not about anything, really, just people from deranged families, talking. Or deranged people starting families accidentally. He preferred to simply make things up. Black and White seemed to build up some kind of expectation that he couldn’t possibly fulfill.

Roy walked down Kane Street to the bicycle path that ran along Columbia Street toward Red Hook in one direction and Brooklyn Heights in the other. Deciding which direction to go seemed like a life choice, very Robert Frost, arbitrary yet not. It might mean everything. Red Hook had a reputation for being cool, full of young men with beards making furniture out of salvaged barns and deer antlers, distilling their own barrels of rye, tending beehives on their roofs, or painstakingly smoking cuts of meat from locally sourced livestock. Roy turned right, toward Brooklyn Heights, a staid and pretty residential neighborhood. The sun warmed the path in that direction, beckoning him. Black and White Black and White. The title did nothing but make him feel anxious. Gold would be better. Gold, like the sun. Gold was glamorous and provocative and wide open to interpretation. Gold. Yes, he could change it. There was time. He didn’t even have a contract for this book, because he hadn’t written anything. There was always plenty of time. The problem was putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and writing something.

Joggers whooshed by him, music blaring from the white pods in their ears, their rhythmic footfalls marching out a mixed tune of Zen and impatience. Roy never felt the least bit guilty amidst the exercising throng. He was trim, in a middle-aged, fleshy sort of way. His clothes from his thirties, when he used to cycle around London all the time, still fit. He was proud of that.