Longhand Man, Nora called me, because I wrote my first novel in notebooks. (Not just the first one.) I type too fast; it’s better for me to write novels and screenplays by hand. Em wrote in longhand, too, but for a different reason. Em didn’t like typewriters because they were noisy; typewriters were like talking. When Em wrote by hand, she could write quietly; writing, for Em, was like pantomime.

And before Matthew Zimmermann went to Vietnam, he also knew that the snowshoer’s parents had offered me what they called a “research job.” The little Barlows, a nonstop writing team, believed I would benefit from some exposure to the “adaptation process.” The Kiss in Düsseldorf, the first of John and Susan Barlow’s Nazi-era novels, was being adapted as a movie. The two Barlows were writing the screenplay; they were calling me their “literary assistant.” As it would turn out, my “research job” wasn’t quite as vague as it sounds. I was supposed to be of assistance to the writing team, and to the film’s director. The snowshoer was cynical about my learning anything of literary value from his parents, but I was interested in the “adaptation process”; whatever one thought of their writing, the little Barlows were screenwriters, and their director had made some interesting films. The director wasn’t an unknown.

So Zim knew, before he went to the war, that I would be living like a nomad for the foreseeable future. All writers are nomads, I would one day believe, but Zimmer knew more than I did; he would even instruct Elmira to mail my invitation to his memorial in care of Elliot Barlow. Zim had told Elmira to be sure the snowshoer was invited, too. (But not my mother. Zim knew my mom wouldn’t want to go. She’d told him she wasn’t saying goodbye; Zimmer knew my mom only wanted to hug him and kiss him like crazy if he came back alive.)