“And then last night I’m sleeping in the bus, ’cause the driver can’t find this place and we’re lost, and it’s the first sleep in three days, and real cold, and they give me clothes and shit for blankets, but I’m sleeping, but it turns out later that you, Paige, are standing outside the bus telling ’em how they’re gonna drown!”

“I’ve been trying to get that in,” I said.

Dottie said, “Well, you made it, you’re safe now.”

“Goddamn, I’ll say,” Raymond said.

Up from the dining table and standing behind Raymond, Dottie caught me with a look and mouthed: “Wow!” and “Is he cute!”

“So you had John Donne with his sonnets that he called divine meditations. Probably because he lifted the idea from Loyola, who made up a three-part meditation for his Jesuits. In Loyola’s, each part inspired something—memory, empathy, resolve. A combination prayer and workout for the imagination.”

“Whoa, stop the speedboat, man overboard,” Raymond said.

I apologized. “I’m a little nervous,” I said.

“I am not un-nervous, darlin’,” Raymond said. “But at least I’m comfortable at last.”

I had come in here to deliver a food tray for Raymond. He lay under three quilts on the Shaker four-poster Dottie bought from an auction house in Pennsylvania. This was usually my suite, in fact; the only heated bedroom in the inn besides Dottie’s.

“It’s what time?” he asked me.

“Two. You slept about three hours.”

“And I’m ready to hunt bear,” he said. “This is ideal.”

“Except, Raymond? Raf’s due tomorrow.”

Raymond looked at the food tray on his lap. Because he didn’t touch it, didn’t even seem to see it, I knew he was mining a pretty deep shaft of thought.

“You got to quit believing that’s ever gonna work, Paige. You and Raf.”

“Why? Do you know something I don’t? Tell me what!”

“Most people,” Raymond said, “finally, they come to simple dreams, you know? Of getting money, or building a good house, or land, or a kid growing up great. They gotta leave behind the ones where they’re famous—like a hero jock or movie star—and see that the world’ll never know who they are or that they even lived. It’s a bad moment, havin’ to swallow that one. Especially for such big strategists as Raf and me, ’cause we were gonna make films, and act in ’em, and write books, fuckin’ you name it.”

I said, “But that bad moment passes.”

“For some. For Raf, it never. And he’s got you around, with your poetry you publish, reminding him. He can’t afford to be happy with you. That’d be caving in.”

“I’m a minor artist, a footnote in modern poetry.”