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
“But it’s raining.” She drags out the rain of raining. “It’s raining. And you came all the way up here.”
“It wasn’t raining before,” he says stupidly.
“No, this is no good.” She’s looking around her. The trees are small and far apart. “There’s no place comfortable. Shit,” she says, and pulls at her coat.
“Look, Eloise, maybe we should just go back down the mountain.”
“No. I have to do this here.”
“Oh,” he says.
“Look, I need to ask you something. That’s why I called.” The woods are shaking. The sound of weight on paper is everywhere.
“But you couldn’t ask me over the phone?” he tries.
“No. Your wife hates me and you would have been too surprised.”
“Yes?”
“Shit,” she says. “Yeah. I need money. No, this is the wrong way to do this. Shit. This was my brother’s idea. Dr. Lehren, please, I need a loan. I’m sorry. I’m so worried about things right now, I can’t do anything right.”
“No. It’s OK. We can lend you some money.” Then he says, “You aren’t in trouble, are you?”
Her face turns up. “No,” she says. “I just need money.” And very quickly, so he can’t laugh with her, she laughs.
She is angry, and he walks toward her. “We’re happy to help out. We’ve known you for nearly eight years now. We’ll talk about this.”
“OK,” she says. “I guess I’m acting crazy,” and she turns and starts walking out of the trees, back to the lift.
“It’s just like for one of our own daughters. We’ll help you out.” But it’s not like for one of his daughters, and rain has made him a necklace at the tight neck of the other man’s coat.
Clare closes the document. As she remembers it, it had been an exercise in style: How precise could she be in her descriptions, how flat a protagonist could she get away with, what sorts of interventions could she make into this most American form. And then, unrelated to style, at least not directly: Whether she could manage to say something about class. Most unusual among her formal “touches” here is a mix of present- and past-tense narration. Clare knows she had a reason for indulging the whim, that it wasn’t a whim, but she cannot recall that reason now. Kafka had somewhere done something similar. Perhaps that was it, a man with five letters in each of his names, just like her, a mirror image: Franz Kafka, Clare Elwil, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, yes. His matching letters: f times two, a times three. Her matching letters: l times three, e times two. Chiasmus, Christmas, etc.! Clare wins the game! But never mind.