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
Harry is not sure what you’re supposed to do if you end up in a relationship with someone who may at once be a sociopath and/or pathological liar, plus situational narcissist, and/or suffering from a personality disorder, and then you also feel like they are the only person in the world who’s ever understood you. Harry had enough problems to begin with, and now he has to wonder why he chose to exacerbate things. Not that he felt he had a choice at the time. On the one hand, now he’s basically trapped in a sorority in the Midwest in a town where almost no one knows of his existence; on the other, at least he feels calm enough to actually contemplate what the hell is going on. Are there any healthy people in this world? And, if Harry were to find them, would they accept him? Since Harry, if benign, yet has a certain amount of difficulty with the idea that he is not pretty sick himself.
Harry is about to get up and fix some instant coffee when there is a small noise. It’s a brief clacking sound, and it sounds like “Pack!” It’s at the edge of his window. It happens again: “Pack, pack, pack!” in quick succession. It takes Harry a second to realize that someone in the backyard is bombarding his retreat with bottle caps from the sorority’s lawn.
Harry looks down at the page in front of him. He has been toying with a couple of abstract remarks that may or may not become lines in his next poem:
You might need handles—just handles of a different sort
Some of his military credibility will rub off
He likes the line about handles. It’s definitely weird; it offers itself up strangely, with a single concrete term. It’s all Harry can do to sever his attention from the page to heed the missiles. The cap-thrower might, Harry reminds himself, be Loudermilk, in which case, he should go to the trouble of poking his head out, perhaps ask what in the hell is going on.
The caps continue.
Harry leans awkwardly over the counter to open the window.
A cap sails into the room and lands on the floor behind Harry.
Harry waits a moment, puts his head out.
Standing in the yard is someone who is, very definitely, not Loudermilk. The person has made a collection of bottle caps in the front of his shirt, employing the garment as a cap hammock. It’s no small feat, given that the person is also carrying a sheaf of papers, while additionally having a broken arm.
Harry supposes that he shouldn’t be surprised at the return of Anton Beans. And, when he reflects on it, what actually surprises him isn’t Beans’s presence, but rather his own reaction to it. Harry finds himself completely unperturbed.