“All right, Danny. I’ll see you around.” Emma didn’t waste any more time on him and was practically shaking her head as she turned back to a couple of her girlfriends from the basketball team. Game over.

Dan’s shoulders brunted down as he watched her walk away. Real smooth, Joe Camel. Buzzed or sober, you sure have a way with the ladies. Emma looked good coming and going.

Rick smirked. “I think she wanted you to ask her out.”

“I know.”

But it was too late. He had already picked his tribe. And so Dan and his crew piled into Sticky’s car and drove off into the Dallas night.

October 15

[ OCTOBER 15 ]

Room 120, Canisius Hallway, in media res.

Oglesby’s class had turned to the unknown arts of Joyce’s Portrait. Grimacing, the English teacher tapped the glands of his neck, contemplating whether to stick with his lesson plan of epiphanies, stream of consciousness, and free indirect speech. He gazed across the dark, fierce faces of the sophomores and decided that wouldn’t reach them today. What idea or ambition would draw them out? he asked himself. He turned toward the window and the gray curtain of the morning. He bounced the white wood of Ashplant against the tight pile of the blue carpet. In this way, he summoned his lecture.

“Gentlemen, who do we have to thank for this book?”

They gazed at him blankly as Oglesby coiled around some deeper circle of thought. Rob McGhee raised his hand.

“Well, there’s Joyce. But are you looking for some larger answer? Like the Jesuits . . .”

Chin sunk in his fist on top of Ashplant, Oglesby didn’t acknowledge the response. “Did you know that Joyce tried to destroy this book? Here’s another portrait of the artist: He was struggling. And he received a letter from a publisher saying that they couldn’t print Dubliners because it was considered libelous. That means damaging and false to a person’s reputation. In this case, the British king, and Ireland was still part of his kingdom. So Joyce’s confidence was shot. He was living in a self-imposed exile, slightly depressed, slightly paranoid, always broke, and fighting with his wife, Nora, who told him to quit writing.”

Oglesby broke out of his pensive stance and went roving down the main aisle of the classroom.

“And so he was arguing with his wife about all of this and he just snapped and yelled: ‘All right, I’ll give up writing.’ And he stuck the manuscript for Portrait into the burning stove.”

Oglesby frowned as he considered the snoutish face of Jay Blaylock. He returned to the teacher’s desk to collect his thumb-blackened copy of Portrait, which he held up for emphasis.