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Back The Gulf Save as PDF
Chapters (35)
  1. Cover
  2. Advance Praise for The Gulf
  3. The Gulf
  4. The
  5. Copyright
  6. Dedication
  7. The Gulf
  8. Part
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. Part
  13. 4
  14. 5
  15. 6
  16. 7
  17. 8
  18. 9
  19. 10
  20. 11
  21. Part
  22. 12
  23. 13
  24. 14
  25. 15
  26. 16
  27. 17
  28. 18
  29. 19
  30. 20
  31. 21
  32. 22
  33. 23
  34. Acknowledgments
  35. About the Author

She was good at repetitive, precise tasks, and she could fold anything, even a fitted sheet, as smoothly as paper. It was something her mother taught her—if you’re going to have a lot of stuff, you have to learn how to put it away properly. The family linen closet was given over to Marianne to arrange when she was only eight or nine, and Marianne announced that she’d like to be a professional organizer. This was before such a job existed, or was widely known. “You mean a maid?” her mother laughed.

Now she supposed that was only the first in a long line of inappropriate ambitions that practical reality revealed to be less desirable than she’d imagined. A professional organizer was really a maid. A poet was actually just a teacher of other poets. Director of an inspirational writing program? Try coconspirator with modern-day Jims and Tammy Fayes.

Marianne took out her phone and typed a hasty message.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Question for RUTH

Hey, did those GWGW people actually help you with fund-raising? Did it all work out?

Immediately, the phone pinged.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Question for RUTH

Thank you for your email! Darryl and Ruth Boyette are on retreat with Healing Waters Baptist Church, with limited access to email. Please be patient, and they’ll get back to you soon. Peace and blessings, R&D

9

Davonte would have preferred to stay back at the Ranch, but he boarded the bus with everybody else, all the racists and crybabies and rich old ladies he’d been avoiding at meals. He was sure that his time here, limited as it was, would be better spent exercising or working on his manuscript—on Eric’s advice, he’d started telling the story into his digital voice recorder—or checking in with his life coach. He didn’t care much for museums, the hushed snootiness of them, the way you were expected to file through, looking at one painting, then the next, reading from a tiny plaque on the wall and nodding your head as if the dates and names meant something to you. And a circus museum sounded even worse. Davonte hated clowns, acrobats, tall men. Painted faces spoke to him of hidden agendas, deviance. Cirque du Soleil, which his agent made him see in Vegas, had given him weeks of nightmares.