Maybelle brought her blocked husband smoked fish wrapped in butcher’s paper. Also wonderful pears. Also gossip, sweet as candy. But the truth is, though it is very seldom admitted to, there is very little anyone can do for anyone else. Interesting excursions can be planned, people invited to dinner, noodle puddings produced, orange juice squeezed, lamps left burning, bed covers turned invitingly down. Kisses can be dropped on the tops of heads, and news brought from one person’s world to another, but in the end it’s a matter of waiting things out in an improvised shelter and thinking as kindly of yourself as possible.

Mimi Cornblossom (purple curls, orange garments) is the heroine show-biz star of Meershank’s new book, published the third week in December, and bearing the generic title Blockbuster; it made this year’s fall list by a split hair’s breadth. A rollicking read, a hydra-headed offering, it has the same off-the-kitchen-wallishness as Meershank’s pre-block books, and also a style that’s teased and tenderized by all-night writing sessions, late-hour editing, and a dangerous drive to the printers over narrow, icy streets. It’s a broth of old injuries and pleasures, of the wounded heart and its stitched-up hole. Actual writing time? A dozen November days; for Meershank a record.

The prologue has Mimi waking one morning with a tune in her head, a tune she can’t place. It’s a talky, sparky tune, full-lipped and bright. She carries it with her to The Narcissus Pool where she works as a manicurist, and all day long as she pushes back cuticles and trims and files and polishes she feels a set of lyrics beating at her temples, stabbing her through the stomach.

It’s driving her crazy trying to figure out where this song comes from, its Latin sunniness and breezy flash. She hums and jerks, and breaks an emery board across the nail of an elderly client, forgets to eat lunch, jingles the coins in her uniform pocket, eyes the clock, stares out the window.

She asks everyone she sees about the song: her best friend Virgie Allgood, her fiance Ken Kool, her little nephew Lester Lou. “That’s a great tune,” they all say, but no one knows where it comes from.

It skips into her dreams, waxy, amber, hollow. There’s a forward lean on it now, and some unexpected punctures that by morning have been repaired. She smiles in the mirror, wincing at her own hot puzzled face. Two days ago her head was empty and now it’s filled with a chorus and kickline. What is this?

She puts in a call to her favorite rock station and does a version for Big Larry. “Wild,” is what he says. Then, “Solid!” Then, “Hey, you got yourself a real high spinner there.”