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
“What?”
Harry realizes his mistake. He recalibrates meekly. “I just thought this was the plan.”
“No! This was not the plan. And, P.S., you, Harrison, do not even know what the plan is! The plan was for us to live our simple lives and wet our simple dicks and get our simple cash and now look at what’s happening!”
Harry shrugs.
“Whatever, fucknuts, I’ve been pretty successful in this life thus far. I know a problem when I see one and I’m saying maybe you better beware!”
Harry feels like he might really like to go lie down. He feels dizzy. His face is hermetically sealed.
“This is all your fucking fault!” Loudermilk pauses. Blood is in his face. “You aren’t supposed to let this happen! People are starting to see me.”
Harry wants to say something about how of course people are seeing Loudermilk, because Loudermilk has a corporeal form and he is walking around on the surface of planet Earth, but he realizes that this is not what Loudermilk means. And he also remembers something he read a long time ago about how the devil is the emperor of the air, but he isn’t sure what that has to do with anything.
Loudermilk is currently not doing much more than breathing, and even this seems like a challenge. He hisses, “I need you to do better.”
Harry is about to nod, but at this moment there is an astonishing cracking sound like a gunshot, then a rustling and a long wail and a crashing and a thud.
Loudermilk and Harry lean out of the window.
On the lawn below someone dressed as an abstract expressionist painter is gingerly picking himself up off a tree limb it appears he has been riding astride as if the limb were a tame orca and their current tatty environs were instead the tatty environs known as SeaWorld. The expressionist is cradling one arm and talking to himself as he staggers away.
Loudermilk pulls his head violently back in and yanks Harry back, too.
“You catch that?” Loudermilk barks. “Even that precious ball of bird shits is onto us.”
“At least he doesn’t have a vagina.”
“What?”
Harry smiles.
“Laugh it up, Harrison! What you don’t seem to realize is that we are on very, very thin ice. Everything could fall apart. We could be left with nothing, I’m telling you. We could be totally fucked. They’re watching now,” Loudermilk pronounces in a voice starched with ancient paranoia.
Harry can’t understand why he’s as calm as he indubitably is. Maybe it has something to do with how he, unlike Loudermilk, doesn’t have anything to lose.
Forty. Détente
Forty
Détente