Driving up the helix-shaped parking garage, Ciaran Fox crept through floor after darkened floor, searching for a vacancy. Looking for a parking space in a jammed lot was just like trying to come up with a new idea for a novel, he thought as he turned the taut, leather steering wheel of his Mercedes gently, rounding the concrete curve and accelerating up yet another ramp: every time you thought you might have found one, it turned out to be taken by someone else. Sweet Jesus, why was it so fucking hard to find a space to wedge his goddamn, shitting car into? Seven floors of gleaming steel, SUVs parked hip to hip like cows eating out of their troughs. It was the women, he thought, clotting up the place with their absurdly unnecessary off-road vehicles. Did any of them actually need to drive today? Carbon footprints as big as bathtubs, and for what? To shop, in all probability.

Ciaran emerged at the vivid sky. The final floor. And there it was. His space. A nasty, inconvenient little gap between two gleaming monsters. Ciaran detested parking. His wife was, he had to admit, far cooler when it came to backing into tight spaces. He imagined Maeve watching him as he reversed and moved forward, reversed and moved forward, tugging furiously at the steering wheel left, then right, then left, then right, like a desperate sea captain trying to right a ship in a battering storm. At last, he turned off the engine, his heart hammering. His face felt coated in sweat. The car was parked so close to the SUV on his side that he could only open his door an inch. He had to clamber over the seats and squeeze out on the passenger side.

He walked down Dame Street head down, hands in his pockets. Like a man pawing the grass for a lost contact lens, he was searching his mind desperately for an idea, a memory, a notion, a headline. What if he never wrote another novel? He hadn’t written well in eight months, and it was two years since his last book was finished. Every morning, he thudded down in front of the computer and typed out words, but they were dry and tasteless as old raisins. No juice, he had no juice in him anymore. He had used his childhood, his first marriage, every love affair before Maeve. He had tried to write historical fiction, but he couldn’t make it real for himself. He wasn’t that kind of writer. What if he had used himself up? He was beginning to panic.