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
For now the major fact of his existence is the change in his place of residence. At first he’d been beyond irritated by Loudermilk’s suggestion that he think about getting some kind of part-time job. Loudermilk had barely been back from the East Coast for three days before it seemed like he couldn’t shut up about it. Loudermilk was pretending to see things about Harry, like that Harry wasn’t showering with much frequency and was maybe subject to twitches and tremors and that Harry was, Loudermilk had on one occasion observed, at this point not beyond relieving himself in a Mountain Dew bottle taped under the card table in his room at a convenient angle, and so on. To which Harry had replied that the problem was not so much his as the house’s, the lack of properly secreted bathroom facilities, in case this wasn’t already sufficiently obvious to an all-knowing virtuoso of life like Loudermilk. Which remark Loudermilk had parried to the effect that this wasn’t really stopping Loudermilk, in case Harry hadn’t noticed, which, what with Loudermilk having been back for at least thirty-six hours at that point, Harry had to admit that, yes, fine, he’d definitely had a chance to admire Loudermilk’s enthusiastic employ of the plumbing and had Loudermilk been feeding on a constant diet of asparagus and decomposing horse flesh for the last week?
Loudermilk had very calmly and sweetly requested that Harry consider shutting the fuck up. Loudermilk said that he had an idea. He said that he had something that he wanted to show Harry. He dug around in his backpack and extracted a folded printout, which was revealed to be a poster:
WANTED
Janitor
Get paid $$$$ and get an awesome,
awesome place to live at!!!
Delta Psi Kappa needs a janitor now!
There was below this a drawing of what appeared to be a plantation manor surrounded by a heart in pink highlighter, and there was a phone number.
Loudermilk was gazing calmly over at Harry, who by then was holding the poster. “I called them, dude,” Loudermilk was saying. “The Seminars rents their shit out for functions all the goddamn time. This place is a known quantity.”
Harry was examining Loudermilk’s face.
“I really,” Loudermilk was saying, “think that you shouldn’t get weird about this. I think it could be an opportunity for you, Harrison. I would really think you could get into this, if you know what I mean.”
Harry demurred.
“Harry? Pussy, and I am not talking about felines, OK? Ya heard of it?”
Harry said, “Thanks for being disgusting and, as ever, super literal.”