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
“Yeah, well, the place is pretty much empty today, but I just thought I’d let you know.”
“Well, OK. I’ll see you in a little while, Eloise.”
“Bye, Dr. Lehren.”
“Goodbye, Eloise.”
They both hang up, and Richard is sure now that he’s put on some weight. His wife shuts off the water. Perhaps she has washed some of her own dishes as well. They look at each other for a minute, smiling, heads tilted to the same side.
Richard put on shoes; he stepped into his loafers; he tucked in his shirt. “Hey, so Eloise is coming over. I hope you don’t mind.”
His wife is moving dishes around in the sink and then comes to the door of their bedroom. “I’m sorry, did you say something?” Her hands are wet. She is holding them away from her body. Her shoulders are raised.
“I said Eloise is coming over and I hoped you didn’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind.” She turns back to the kitchen. “Everything’s all right?”
“I have no idea.”
“Oh?”
“She wants to use our phone.”
“What was wrong with the one she was calling you from?”
“I think she wants to talk to Jen.”
“Glad to be of service, I guess.”
“Apparently she can’t call from work.”
“Right. Well, you don’t have anything in particular to do.” She isn’t only trying to tease him. She is giving him permission, and Richard moves after her into the kitchen. He likes how she dries her hands on a towel before putting them back in the sink and turning the water back on and washing more. “I’ll see you in a little while,” she says.
“Bye.”
He goes into the garage. The cave smell makes him start whistling. He knows it will be close to rain outside. He likes the weather when it is like this, unpleasant. He believes he can be happy in a dull climate. He swings himself into the Jeep and powers down all the windows before backing out.
The basin, the tiny ski resort where both of his daughters worked on the weekends during the winter when they turned fifteen, is less than twenty minutes away. The sky is a sheet. At the other house across the road they are moving boxes. A woman comes after two men, carrying a vacuum cleaner across her shoulders like a big gun. Richard opens his mouth and waves his arm at them. The woman turns toward him and watches him as his car gets up to thirty-five and goes around the bend. The men, he sees in the rearview mirror, do not pause and are putting their boxes in the bed of a truck. Lots of brown trees shoot into his line of sight.