Chapters (60)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Personae
- I: Early Days
- One. Control
- Two. Doubt
- Three. Fate
- Four. Same
- Five. Fine Arts
- Six. In Loco Parentis
- Seven. Settling
- Eight. Neighbors
- Nine. Prospects
- Ten. The Lucky
- Eleven. Instruction
- Twelve. Same
- Thirteen. This Is a Pipe
- Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe
- Fifteen. The Reason
- Sixteen. That Person
- Seventeen. Predictably
- II: Writing Teacher
- Eighteen. Early Poems
- Nineteen. Motivation
- Twenty. Allegory
- Twenty-One. Grief
- Twenty-Two. A Portrait
- Twenty-Three. Veils
- Twenty-Four. Soft Power
- Twenty-Five. Lists
- Twenty-Six. A Break
- Twenty-Seven. Elsewhere
- Twenty-Eight. Custom
- Twenty-Nine. Parity
- Thirty. Fortune
- III: Volta
- Thirty-One. Images
- Thirty-Two. A Very Interesting Young Man
- Thirty-Three. Letters
- Thirty-Four. We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
- Thirty-Five. Love
- Thirty-Six. The Iceberg
- IV: Your Best Reader
- Thirty-Seven. A Novelist
- Thirty-Eight. In Advance of the Broken Arm
- Thirty-Nine. Their Penultimate Encounter
- Forty. Détente
- Forty-One. Worlds
- Forty-Two. Recognition
- Forty-Three. Persistence
- Forty-Four. And Then
- Forty-Five. Mingling
- Forty-Six. You
- Forty-Seven. Persona
- Forty-Eight. Est et Non
- Forty-Nine. The Author
- Epilogue
- Afterword: The Libertine
- Acknowledgments
- About the Authors
Now it was perfectly silent. Stefanie waited. There was nothing.
Stephanie approached a basin.
She was moving her fingers through a weak stream and contemplating her own unlined forehead in the mirror when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, something.
It was behind her, and at first she could not understand how it had gotten “up there.” This was her first thought, how had it gotten “up there.” Though, if she had been thinking clearly at this moment, it would have occurred to her that she was not observing an animal hovering in empty space, upon, as it were, the very air, but was rather seeing a furred face that, though small, hardly larger than a grapefruit, was supported by a substantial furred neck, a neck covered in the same glossy and wavy black fur that covered this small face, this lean frame that stood approximately the same height as Stefanie herself. It was, she might have thought if she had been able to think clearly, like a slight woman, a woman with an abnormally small head for her height, covered all in black fur. Though she was not sure if it was a woman. The face was flat, like the end of a stump. Its eyes were round and wet and black, and whether or not it had a nose, it certainly had a mouth, for now it opened this mouth, revealing a set of short, peg-like teeth, and behind these teeth a very red throat, and Stefanie, perhaps this was where she screamed?
Stefanie regained consciousness before they were able to convey her to the hospital, and so she spent the ambulance ride chatting desperately with a paramedic named Aaron. She was doing a thing where she wanted to practice her game. (Aaron was twenty-eight and covered in small muscles, superclean, possibly gay, but perhaps just from Colorado, at any rate she was going to pretend.) They were talking about how crazy it was. That she must have slipped. But it was so lucky she had screamed. (Had she screamed? She had no memory.) Who would have found her otherwise? And was she showing any symptoms of a concussion? Her head was not tender anywhere. Just a bit tender. Well, they had called the ambulance, Glenn could cover it, might as well take her in. Just keep her a moment. Someone to come and get her.
Stefanie was asking Aaron how he felt about his job, because this was fascinating, his job. Aaron said something about never a dull minute, and Stefanie, she did this thing, it was so unlike her, she said, “But what about a month, Aaron?” She said, “What about a year?”
Aaron began doing something with packets, organizing them.