Fiachra’s resting posture was ­raked-­in and inert, like the heap of cinders left after a fire has gone out. Bobby knew Fiachra took on this appearance of incinerated introversion only when he was absolutely blitzed. Sober, or moderately soused, he was an animate, wryly handsome ­52-­year-­old poet, essayist and workshop leader, and the senior editor at, in Bobby’s opinion, the country’s sole remotely respectable poetry publishing house. Hammered, he looked two hundred. He raised his ashen lids and grinned wobblingly at Bobby.

‘How is the man?’ he said.

‘Well,’ Bobby said.

‘Hey,’ Jess said.

Jess had a straight fringe and pristine, unreadable blue eyes. She was in college and served as a kind of ­all-­purpose ­intern-­slash-­assistant to Fiachra. She was writing poems, of course. She was sitting with one leg tucked under her on a battered leather chair and appeared to be stone sober.

‘What’s happening, Fiachra?’

‘Ach, we’re celebrating.’

‘Just the two of you?’

‘Well, there’s three of us now,’ Jess said.

‘What are we celebrating?’

‘It’s a dismal Wednesday afternoon, yet we have warmth, seats, wine and friends,’ Fiachra said. ‘And someone’s wrote a book.’

‘Everyone’s written a book,’ Bobby said, but as he did his heart spasmed fretfully in its chamber.

‘Congratulate Miss Tombes,’ Fiachra said. ‘We’re putting her out next spring.’

Jess glanced down into her drink. Bobby had an immediate urge to punch both of them in the face.

‘That’s. Great. That’s. So. Great,’ Bobby heard himself incontinently reiterate.

Jess Tombes. Jess Tombes. Who and what, exactly, was Jess Tombes? Bobby logged what he knew of her: a student, a kid, she was an unfailingly polite and pleasant human, conscientious, patient, and kind with anyone she encountered, so it seemed. She formed rapports easily, ­and – a rarity in the ­scene – Bobby had yet to encounter someone willing to say a bad word about her. She was writing, but had been purportedly reluctant to show the poems to others. (Bobby had offered to critique them, more than once.) He’d heard her read a couple of them one night. They’d been pretty good, actually, maybe, he thought now.

Bobby’s head swam, tritely. It wasn’t even a question of whether or not she was objectively better than him, it’s that Fiachra had thought so, and soon others would too. Fiachra had published a number of individual pieces by Bobby over the years in various journals and anthologies, had put him in every ­live-­reading ­line-­up going. Not that he thought he’d be Fiachra’s next guy, ­necessarily – he just wished now that it was anyone other than the ­baby-­faced Tombes. (Though he knew that this qualification, too, was a lie. He would envy and despise all who were not he, if he was not the one.)