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, Eloise? I’ll come up.” Richard takes his right hand off the button. “Just a second,” he says to the man on the roof. The other man in the gloves is still crouching over his battery. Richard hurries back to him and touches his shoulder. When the man turns, Richard holds out the walkie-talkie and says, “Thank you.”
“No problem,” the man tells him. “You going up?”
“If that’s all right. I don’t want to get in the way of your repairs.”
“No, no, nothing’s broke. We’re just making some adjustments. Yeah, really my car’s fucked and no one needs what’s in the sheds out here. It’s supposed to be for the ski patrol. We’re just, well, Wallace is fine-tuning it, but yeah, you should ride up there. See Eloise.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s a great view. Oh hey.” Now the man is concerned, looking at Richard’s chest. “You’re gonna be cold. Here, you take this.” The man pulls his windbreaker over his head and sticks his arm out to Richard. The windbreaker is in his first, and it swings from side to side, and the man’s comb-over rolls away from his head. “C’mon. Take it. I’m going inside.”
Richard takes the windbreaker from the man in the gloves. It is much thicker than he had expected, almost like rubber. Richard gathers it into a doughnut and sticks it over his head. “Thanks again. Where can I give this back to you?”
“You leave it with Wallace when you come back down. Have a good ride.”
“I will,” says Richard. The man looks down at his battery, and Richard begins the process of convincing the windbreaker over his upper body. It is an anorak. It cannot be parted in the front. Then Wallace starts calling him, “Hey, hey!” Wallace stops the lift and smiles and waits for Richard.