“Em and I don’t like the looks of the tall one, kiddo,” Nora told me. I could see that Em had slipped into the hindmost spot in the signing line—purposely, to annoy the tall woman. Mary let Nora know that the tall woman was a depressed fiction writer, but Nora said Em had guessed the writer part. “Em knew something was wrong with her,” was the way Nora put it.

“No visible injuries, no casts or anything—she’s too thin to get stuck in a shower,” Nora pointed out. “She’s so tall, she could hurt herself washing her hair—her legs are so long, the penis-bending possibilities are innumerable, kiddo,” Nora told me. As the end of the signing line came closer, I watched Em and the other fiction writer trading places for the hindmost position. Em was as persistent as a terrier. The tall woman didn’t have a chance; she wasn’t going to outlast the pantomimist, physically. We could see her trying to talk to Em; we knew that wouldn’t work. Em would be last in line. Em stood so closely behind the depressed writer, Em’s forehead was almost touching the slight indentation between the taller woman’s shoulder blades. The woman was wearing a sheer white blouse. The fabric was so sheer, you could see her old-fashioned bra through her blouse. I didn’t want to think about the depressed writer’s breasts, but I found myself imagining she must have been wearing her mother’s bra.

Mary Marinelli hadn’t read my mind; her dedication as a nursing mom gave her empathy for other women’s breasts. “The poor thing—that old lady’s bra is all wrong for her,” Mary said to Nora.

Nora was forty-three; she didn’t wear bras. “Everything will always be all wrong for her—she’s a writer,” Nora said.

“The poor thing,” Mary repeated. I’m guessing the poor thing part was the only part of their conversation the tall woman and Em would have overheard, but Em and I had heard before what Nora thought of writers—not to mention the way Nora said the writer word. Em and I didn’t doubt that everything would always be all wrong for writers. As for the poor thing part, Em adamantly agreed. When Em nodded, her head bumped the long back of the tall woman with the small breasts and the sad bra. The depressed writer had painstakingly drawn an ornate-looking picture frame around her name, which she’d written on an otherwise blank notecard. (She had not included her name with the question I regretted reading on the notecard from the discard pile.) Her name was Wilson; there was what looked like a wedding ring on the ring finger of her left hand.

“Mrs. Wilson?” I asked her, just to be sure—before I inscribed her name on the title page of my novel.