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Table of Contents

Temptation

The Woman in the Fifth

Leaving the World

Excerpt of Five Days

About the Author

About Atria Books

Ask Atria

CONTENTS

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Readers Club Guide

Introduction

Questions and Topics for Discussion

Enhance Your Book Club

A Conversation with Douglas Kennedy

For Fred Haines

“It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”

—GORE VIDAL

PART One

ONE

I ALWAYS WANTED TO be rich. I know that probably sounds crass, but it’s the truth. A true confession.

Around a year ago, I got my wish. After a ten-year bad luck streak—a toxic accumulation of endless rejection slips and “we’re going to pass on this” and the usual bevy of near-misses (“you know, we were really looking for this sort of thing last month”), and (of course) never getting my calls returned—the gods of happenstance finally decided I was worth a smile. And I received a phone call. Check that: I received the phone call that anyone who has ever scribbled for a living always dreams of receiving.

The call came from Alison Ellroy, my long-suffering agent.

“David, I sold it.”

My heart skipped five beats. I hadn’t heard the words “I sold it” for . . . well, to be honest about it, I’d never heard that sentence before.

“You sold what?” I asked, since five of my speculative scripts were currently doing the Flying Dutchman rounds of assorted studios and production companies.

“The pilot,” she said.

“The television pilot?”

“Yep. I sold Selling You.”

“To whom?”

“FRT.”

“What?”

“FRT—as in Front Row Television; as in the smartest, hottest producer of original programs on cable . . .”

My heart now needed defibrillation.

“I know who they are, Alison. FRT bought my pilot?”

“Yes, David. FRT just bought Selling You.”

Long pause.

“Are they paying?” I asked.

“Of course they’re paying. This is a business, believe it or not.”

“Sorry, sorry . . . it’s just, how much exactly?”

“Forty grand.”

“Right.”

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

“I am enthusiastic. It’s just . . .”

“I know: it’s not the million-dollar deal. But that kind of a slam-dunk for a first-timer is, at best, a twice-a-year event in this town. Forty grand is standard money for a TV pilot . . . especially for an unproduced writer. Anyway, what are they paying you at Book Soup these days?”

“Fifteen a year.”

“So look at it this way: you’ve just made almost three years’ salary in one deal. And this is only the start. They’re not just going to buy the pilot . . . they’re also going to make it.”

“They told you that?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Do you believe them?”

“Honey, we’re living in the forked tongue capital of the universe. Still, you might get lucky.”

My head was spinning. Good news, good news.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said.

“You could try ‘Thank you.’”

“Thank you.”

I didn’t just thank Alison Ellroy. The day after I received that phone call, I drove down to the Beverly Center and dropped $375 on a Mont Blanc fountain pen for her. When I gave it to her later that afternoon, she seemed genuinely affected.

“Do you know this is the first time I’ve received a gift from a writer in . . . how long have I been in this business?”

“You tell me.”

“Try three decades. Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything. So . . . thanks. But don’t think you’re going to borrow it to sign the contracts.”

My wife, Lucy, on the other hand, was appalled that I had dropped so much cash on a present for my agent.

“What is this?” she said. “You finally get a deal—at industry minimum, I might add—and you’re suddenly Robert Towne?”

“It was just a gesture, that’s all.”

“A three-hundred-seventy-five-dollar gesture.”

“We can afford it.”

“Oh, can we? Do the math, David. Alison gets a ten percent commission from the forty grand. The IRS will skim thirty-three percent off the balance, which will leave you just under twenty-three grand, plus change.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I did the math. I also did the math on our combined debt to Visa and MasterCard—twelve grand, and rising monthly. And on the loan we took out to cover Caitlin’s tuition last term—six grand, and also rising monthly. I also know that we’re a one-car family in a two-car town. And the car in question is a twelve-year-old Volvo that really needs transmission work which we can’t really afford, because—”

“All right, all right. I was recklessly generous. Mea maxima culpa. And, by the way, thanks for pissing on my parade.”

“Absolutely no one is pissing on your parade. You know how thrilled I was yesterday when you told me. It’s what you—we—have been fantasizing about for the last eleven years. My point, David, is a simple one: the money is already spent.”

“Fine, fine, point taken,” I said, trying to put an end to this.

“And though I certainly don’t begrudge Alison her Mont Blanc pen, it would have been nice if you had maybe thought, in the first instance, about who’s been keeping us out of Chapter Eleven all these years.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. But hey, good times ahead. We’re in the money.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said quietly. “We deserve a break.”

I reached out to stroke her cheek. She smiled a tight, tired smile. With good reason, because the last eleven years had been, for both of us, one long slog up a steep incline. We’d met in Manhattan in the early nineties. I’d arrived there a few years earlier from my native Chicago, determined to make it as a playwright. Instead I found myself stage-managing off-off-Broadway and paying the rent by stacking inventory at the Gotham Book Mart. I did get an agent. He did get my plays seen. None were produced, but one script—An Ordinary Evening in Oak Park (a dark satire on suburban life)—did get a staged reading by the Avenue B Theatre company (at least it wasn’t Avenue C). Lucy Everett was in the cast. Within a week of the first reading, we decided we were in love. By the time the play had its three performances, I had moved into her studio apartment on East Nineteenth Street. Two months later, she landed a role in a pilot sitcom for ABC that was being shot on the Coast. Being wildly in love, I didn’t have a moment’s hesitation when she said, “Come with me.”

So we moved to LA and found ourselves a cramped two-bedroom apartment on Kings Road in West Hollywood. Lucy made the pilot. I turned the tiny second bedroom into my office. The pilot was ditched by the network. I wrote my first speculative screenplay, We Three Grunts—which I described as a “darkly comic heist caper” about a bank job pulled off by a bunch of ageing Vietnam vets. It went nowhere, but it did get Alison Ellroy in my corner. She was one of the last of an endangered species—the independent Hollywood agent, operating not out of some hyper-architectural monolith, but from a small suite of offices in Beverly Hills. After reading this “darkly comic” screenplay, and my earlier unproduced “darkly comic” stage stuff, she took me on as a client—but also gave me the following piece of advice:

“If you want to scratch a living writing in Hollywood, remember that you have to write generic . . . with the occasional ‘darkly comic’ flourish. But only a flourish. Bruce Willis gets to crack wise, but he still blows away the chiseled-jawed German terrorist and then rescues his wife from the burning building. Got the idea?”

I certainly did. And over the next year, I turned out three spec scripts: an action film (Islamic terrorists seize a yacht in the Mediterranean, containing all three children of the president of the United States); a family drama film (mother dying of cancer tries to achieve closure with her grown children whom she was forced by her wicked mother-in-law to abandon when they were young); and a romantic comedy (a Private Lives rip-off, in which a newly married couple fall for each other’s siblings while on honeymoon). All three scripts played by the genre rules. All three scripts had “darkly comic” moments. All three scripts failed to sell.

Meanwhile, after the television pilot sank without a trace, Lucy found that the casting doors weren’t exactly swinging open in her direction. She got a commercial here and there. She came very close to landing a part as a sympathetic oncologist in a Showtime movie about a marathon runner battling bone cancer. She was also up for a role as a screaming slasher victim in some screaming slasher movie. Like me, she lurched from disappointment to disappointment. Simultaneously, our bank account began to hit the red zone. We had to find proper paying jobs. I talked my way into a low-impact thirty-hour week at Book Soup (probably the best independent bookshop in LA). Lucy was persuaded to try telemarketing by a fellow unemployed SAG member. Initially she hated it, but the actress in her responded to the “hard sell” role she was forced to play on the phone. Much to her horror, she turned out to be an ace telemarketer. She made okay money—around thirty grand a year. She kept going up for auditions. She kept failing to connect. So she kept on telemarketing. Then Caitlin came into our lives.

I took time off from Book Soup to look after our daughter. I also kept writing—spec screenplays, a new stage play, a television pilot. Not one of them sold. Around a year after Caitlin’s birth Lucy let her SAG membership lapse and graduated to the rank of telemarketing trainer. I was back at Book Soup. Our combined post-tax income just touched 40k per annum: chump change in a city where many a player spent 40k a year on his pumped pectorals. We couldn’t afford to find a new apartment. We shared an ageing Volvo that dated back to the first Reagan administration. We felt cramped—not just by our lack of physical space at home, but also by the ever-growing realization that we were now trapped in small lives with ever-narrowing horizons. Of course, we delighted in our daughter. But as the years accelerated—and we both started to cruise into our late thirties—we began to regard each other as our respective jailers. We tried to cope with our varying professional failures and the knowledge that, while everyone else we knew was reaping the booty of the Clinton boom years, we were stuck in nowheresville. But though Lucy had given up all future hopes of an acting career, I kept churning out stuff—much to her exasperation, as she felt (rightly) that the major breadwinning burden was on her back. She kept urging me to give up the Book Soup gig—to burrow my way into some proper job. And I resisted, telling her that the bookshop job suited my writing life.

“Your writing life?” she said with the sort of sarcastic edge that went way beyond withering. “Don’t talk crap.”

Naturally, this triggered one of those thermonuclear marital disputes in which years of built-up resentments, enmities, and domestic frustrations suddenly scorch the earth beneath both pairs of feet. She said I was self-absorbed, to the point of putting my going-nowhere writing career in front of Caitlin’s welfare. I countered that besides being a model of domestic responsibility (well, I was), my professional integrity was still intact.

“You’ve never sold a single script, and you dare talk to me about being a professional?” she said.

I stormed out. I drove and ended up just north of San Diego, walking the beach at Del Mar, wishing I had the recklessness to continue south across the border into Tijuana and vanish from my disaster of a life. Lucy was right: as a writer I was a failure . . . but I still wasn’t going to abandon my daughter on a furious whim. So I went back to my car, pointed it north, and arrived home just before sunrise. I found Lucy wide awake, curled up on the sofa in our cluttered living room, looking beyond forlorn. I collapsed into the armchair opposite her. We said nothing for a very long time. Finally she broke the silence.

“That was awful.”

“Yes,” I said. “It was.”

“I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Nor did I.”

“I’m just so damn tired, David.”

I reached for her hand. “Join the club,” I said.

So we kissed and made up and fed Caitlin her breakfast and got her on the school bus, and then both went off to our respective jobs—jobs that gave us no pleasure whatsoever and didn’t even pay well. By the time Lucy arrived home that night, domestic detente was reestablished—and we never mentioned that malignant fight again. But once things are said, they are said. And though we tried to behave as if things were on an even keel, a chilly undercurrent now ran between us.

Neither of us wanted to confront this, so we both stayed busy. I knocked out a thirty-minute pilot for a sitcom called Selling You. It centered around the tangled internal politics at a public relations agency in Chicago. It was peopled by a group of smart, edgy neurotics. And yes, it was “darkly comic.” Alison even liked it—the first script of mine she had praised in years—even though it was still a little too “darkly comic” for her taste. Still, she gave it to the head of development at FRT. He, in turn, handed it to an independent producer named Brad Bruce, who was starting to make a name for himself as a generator of edgy, out-there sitcoms for cable. Brad liked what he read . . . and I got that phone call from Alison.

Then things began to change.

Brad Bruce turned out to be that rare species—a guy who believed that irony was the only way to cope with life in the City of Angels. He was in his late thirties, a fellow midwesterner from Milwaukee (God help him), and we hit it off immediately. Better yet, we quickly established a fluid working style. I responded positively to his notes. We riffed well off each other. We made each other laugh. And even though he knew that this was the first script I’d managed to sell, he treated me like a fellow veteran of the television wars. In turn, I worked hard for him because I knew that I now had an ally . . . though I also understood that if the pilot didn’t get made, his attention would move elsewhere.

Brad was a forceful operator, and he actually got the pilot made. What’s more, it was everything a pilot should be: tightly acted and directed, stylishly shot, and funny. FRT liked what they saw. A week later, Alison called me.

“Sit down,” she said.

“Good news?”

“The best. I just heard from Brad Bruce. He’ll be calling you in a nanosecond, but I wanted to be the messenger. So listen to this: FRT are commissioning an initial eight episodes of Selling You. Brad wants you to write four of them and be the overall script supervisor on the series.”

I was speechless.

“You still there?”

“I’m just trying to pick my jaw up from the floor.”

“Well, keep it there until you hear the numbers on offer. Seventy-five grand per episode—that’s three hundred k for the writing. I figure I can get you an additional one fifty for supervising the other episodes, not to mention a ‘created by’ and between five and ten percent equity in the entire show. Congratulations: you are about to become rich.”

I quit Book Soup that night. By the end of the week, we had put a down payment on a delightful little Spanish vernacular house in Mid-Wilshire. The geriatric Volvo was traded in for a new Land Rover Discovery. I leased a Mini Cooper S, promising myself a Porsche Carrera if Selling You made it to a second season. Lucy was dazzled by our change in circumstances. For the first time ever, we were awash in material comforts. We could buy proper furniture, spiffy appliances, designer labels. As I was under extreme deadline pressure—I had only five months to deliver my four episodes—Lucy took over the decoration of the new house. She had also just started training an entire new platoon of telemarketeers—which meant that she too was working twelve-hour days. The only free time we had was devoted to our daughter. This was no bad thing—because as long as your days are ultra-full you can continue to gloss over the telltale cracks in a structurally damaged marriage. We both kept busy. We talked about the wondrousness of this lucky break and acted as if everything was back on track between us . . . even though we both knew that this was hardly the case. And there were many melancholic moments when I often found myself thinking, Far from making things better between us, the money has pushed us even further apart.

Nearly a year later, when the first episode of Selling You was screened and became an instant critical hit, Lucy turned to me and said, “I suppose you’ll leave me now.”

“Why would I do that?” I said.

“Because you can.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

“Yes, it will. Because it’s what the success scenario demands.”

Of course she was right. But it didn’t happen for another six months, by which time I had traded my Mini Cooper for that Porsche I had promised myself. Not only had the show been renewed, but I suddenly found myself the subject of considerable public attention—as Selling You had become the hip, cutting-edge, must-see show of the season. The reviews were fantastic. Esquire ran a 500-word story about me in their “Guys We Like” section, which referred to me as “the Tom Wolfe of cable television.” I didn’t exactly object. And I didn’t say no when the Los Angeles Times asked to interview me for a piece that detailed my long years in professional purgatory, my extended stint at Book Soup, and my sudden ascendancy into “that small select league of smart LA writers who don’t do Generic.”

I had my assistant clip this story and messenger it over to Alison. Attached to it was a Post-it, on which I’d scribbled, “Thinking of you generically. Love and kisses. David.”

An hour later, a messenger arrived at my office with a padded envelope from Alison’s agency. Inside was a small gift-wrapped box, and a card: “Fuck you . . . Love, Alison.”

Inside the box was something I had coveted for years: a Waterman Edson fountain pen . . . the Ferrari of writing instruments, with a list price to match: $675. But Alison could afford it, as the deal she’d closed for my “creative participation” in the second season of Selling You was worth just under $1 million . . . less her ten percent of course.

Alison was quoted in that LA Times profile of me. Per usual, she was deeply droll, telling the interviewer that the reason she never dropped me as a client during all the bad years was that “He knew when to not call—and believe me, there are few writers in this town with that skill.” She also surprised me by saying something touching: “He’s living proof that talent and extreme perseverance can sometimes triumph in Hollywood. David kept at it long after many another aspiring writer would have folded. So he deserves everything: the money, the office, the assistant, the recognition, the prestige. But most of all he’s now getting his phone calls returned, and I’m fielding constant requests for meetings with him. Because everyone who’s smart wants to work with David Armitage.”

As I was deep in the planning stage of the second season of Selling You, I was turning down most requests for meetings. But, at Alison’s urging, I did go to lunch with a young executive at Fox Television named Sally Birmingham.

“I only met her once,” Alison said, “but everyone in the industry is earmarking her for the big time. She has a big war chest at her disposal. And she absolutely adores Selling You. In fact, she adores it so much she told me that she would be prepared to give you a quarter of a million for any thirty-minute pilot of your choice.”

That made me pause for thought.

“Two hundred and fifty k for one pilot?” I asked.

“Yep—and I’d make certain it was pay or play.”

“She knows I couldn’t even look at any new projects until the new season is wrapped?”

“She anticipated that. And she told me she’s willing to wait. She just wants to sign you up for the pilot now—because, let’s face it, it would also up her market value to have snagged David Armitage. Think about it—all going well, you’ll be taking six weeks off between seasons two and three. How long is it going to take you to knock out a pilot?”

“Three weeks max.”

“And the other three weeks, you sit on a beach somewhere, if you can actually sit still so long, thinking to yourself that you just made a quarter of a million in twenty-one days.”

“All right—I’ll do the lunch.”

“Smart guy. You’ll like her. She’s superbright and beautiful.”

Alison was right. Sally Birmingham was superbright. And she was beautiful.

Her assistant had called my assistant to set up the lunch date at The Ivy. Thanks to the usual traffic jam on the 10, I arrived a few minutes late. She was already seated at a very good table. She stood up to greet me, and I was instantly captivated (though I worked damn hard not to show it). Sally was tall, with high cheekbones, flawless skin, cropped light brown hair, and a mischievous smile. At first, I pegged her as the sort of dazzlingly patrician product of East Coast education and high-end breeding who undoubtedly had her own horse by the age of ten. But fifteen minutes into our conversation, I realized that she had managed to undercut the Westchester County WASP background with a canny mixture of erudition and street smarts. Yes, she had been raised in Bedford. Yes, she had gone to Rosemary Hall and Princeton. But though she was ferociously well read—and something of a cinephile—she also had an astute understanding of Hollywood in all its internecine glory and told me she actually delighted in playing the “player” game. I could see why the big kahunas at Fox Television so valued her: she was a class act, but one who spoke their language. And she also had the most amazing laugh.

“Want to hear my favorite LA story?” she asked me.

“I’m game.”

“All right—I was having lunch last month with Mia Morrison, head of corporate affairs at Fox. She calls the waiter over and says: ‘So tell me your waters.’ The waiter, a real pro, doesn’t blanch. Instead he starts listing them: ‘Well, we’ve got Perrier from France, and Ballygowan from Ireland, and San Pellegrino from Italy . . .’ Suddenly, Mia interrupts him: ‘Oh, no, not San Pellegrino. It’s too rich.’”

“I think I’ll steal that.”

“‘Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.’”

“Eliot?”

“So you really did go to Dartmouth?” she asked.

“I’m impressed by your background research.”

“I’m impressed by your knowledge of Mr. Eliot.”

“But surely you’ve picked up the references from Four Quartets throughout my show?”

“I thought you’d be more of a ‘Waste Land’ kind of guy.”

“Nah—it’s too rich.”

Not only did we have instant rapport, but we also talked widely about just about everything. Including marriage.

“So,” she said glancing at the ring on my finger, “are you married or are you married?”

Her tone was light. I laughed.

“I’m married,” I said. “Without the italics.”

“For how long?”

“Eleven years.”

“That’s impressive. Happy?”

I shrugged.

“That’s not unusual,” she said. “Especially after eleven years.”

“You seeing someone now?” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“There was someone . . . but it was a minor diversion, nothing more. We both ended it around four months ago. Since then . . . just flying solo.”

“You’ve never taken the conjugal plunge?”

“No . . . though I could have done something disastrous—like marrying my boyfriend at Princeton. He certainly pushed the issue—but I told him that college marriages usually only have a two-year life span. In fact, most relationships burn out when passion turns prosaic . . . which is why I’ve never lasted more than three years with anyone.”

“You mean, you don’t believe in all that ‘there is one person meant for you’ destiny crap.”

Another of her laughs. But then she said, “Well, actually I do. I just haven’t met the guy yet.”

Once again, the tone was blithe. Once again, a glance passed between us.

But it was only a glance, and we were quickly back in our conversational whirl. I was astonished by the way we couldn’t stop talking, how we riffed off each other and shared such a similar worldview. The sense of connection was astonishing . . . and a little terrifying. Because—unless I was reading things very wrong—the mutual attraction was enormous.

Eventually, we got down to business. She asked me to tell her about my proposed pilot. My pitch was a sentence long:

“The harassed professional and personal life of a middle-aged female marriage counselor.”

She smiled. “That’s good. First question, is she divorced?”

“Of course.”

“Troubled kids?”

“A teenage daughter who thinks that Mom is a serious jerk.”

“Nice. Does our marriage counselor have an ex-husband?”

“Yes—and he ran off with a twenty-five-year-old yoga instructor.”

“We’re obviously talking about an LA setting.”

“I was thinking San Diego.”

“Good call. The Southern California lifestyle without the LA baggage. Is the marriage counselor dating?”

“Relentlessly—and with disastrous results.”

“And meanwhile, her clients . . . ?”

“They’ll raise a smile, believe me.”

“A title?”

“Talk It Over.”

“Sold then,” she said.

I tried not to smile too broadly.

“You know I can’t start work until after the second season . . .”

“Alison briefed me on that already . . . and that’s fine with me. The important thing is I’ve got you.”

She briefly touched the top of my hand. I didn’t move it away.

“I’m pleased,” I said.

She met my stare. And asked, “Dinner tomorrow night?”

We met at her place in West Hollywood. As soon as I was through the door, we were tearing each other’s clothes off. Much later, as we lay sprawled across her bed, sipping a postcoital glass of pinot noir, she asked me, “Are you a good liar?”

“You mean, about something like this?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, it’s only the second time it’s happened in the eleven years I’ve been with Lucy.”

“When was the first time?”

“A one-night stand back in ninety-nine with an actress I met in the book shop one night. Lucy was back east at the time, visiting her parents with Caitlin.”

“That’s it? Your only extramarital transgression?”

I nodded.

“My, my—you do have a conscience.”

“It is a weakness, I know—especially out here.”

“Are you going to feel guilty now?”

“No,” I said without hesitation.

“Why’s that?”

“Because things between Lucy and myself are now very different. And also . . .”

“Yes?” she asked.

“ . . . because . . . well, because it’s you.”

She kissed me softly on the lips.

“Is that a confession?”

“I guess it is.”

“Well, I have one too. Ten minutes after meeting you yesterday, I felt: this is the guy. I felt it all last night and all today as I counted down the hours to seven o’clock and you walking through my door. And now . . .”

She ran her right index finger down the curve of my jaw.

“ . . . now I’m not going to let you go.”

I kissed her. “Is that a promise?” I asked.

“Girl Scout’s honor. But you know what this means . . . in the short term, anyway?”

“Yes—I’m going to have to start learning how to lie.”

Actually I had already started, having covered my first evening with Sally by telling Lucy that I was flying to Vegas overnight to do a little look-around for a future episode. Sally didn’t even mind when I used her phone at eleven to call home and tell my wife that I was happily ensconced in the Bellagio and missing her terribly. When I arrived home the next evening, I studied Lucy carefully for any telltale signs of suspicion or doubt. I also wondered if she had perhaps called the Bellagio to see if I was actually registered there. But she greeted me pleasantly and didn’t drop any hints about my whereabouts last night. In fact, she couldn’t have been more affectionate, pulling me off to bed early that night. And yes, the guilt chord did ring between my ears. But its reverberations were silenced by an even louder realization: I was madly in love with Sally Birmingham.

And she was in love with me. Her certainty was overwhelming. I was the man with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. We would have brilliant fun together. We would have great careers, wonderful children. And we’d never lapse into the passionless ennui that characterized most marriages—because how could we ever be anything but ardent about each other? We would be golden—because we were meant to be.

There was only one problem, though—I was still married to somebody else. And I was desperately worried about the effect that any future domestic decampment might have on Caitlin. Sally was completely understanding.

“I’m not telling you to walk out now. You should only make that move when you’re ready—and when you think Caitlin’s ready. I’ll wait. Because you’re worth the wait.”

When you’re ready. Not if. An explicit when. But Sally’s definitiveness didn’t disturb me. Nor did I think events were moving too quickly after just two weeks. Because I shared her certainty about our future together. Just as I privately fretted about the pain and damage I was about to inflict on my wife and child.

To Sally’s credit, she didn’t once pressure me into leaving home. Or, at least, not for another eight months—by which time all my work on the second season was finished, and I had become completely expert in covering my extramarital tracks. When deadline pressure on the three episodes I was writing became particularly intense, I decamped for two weeks to the Four Seasons Hotel in Santa Barbara, on the pretext of needing to lock myself away for a concentrated work blitz. And work I did—though Sally spent one of the weeks with me, not to mention both weekends. When the show moved to Chicago for a week of exterior filming, I decided to stay on for a few days afterward to catch up with my old network of friends, though, in truth, that weekend Sally and I hardly left our suite at the W. Through careful juggling of our respective schedules—not to mention the use of a room at the Westwood Marquis—we were able to spend two lunchtimes a week with each other, and at least one evening at her apartment.

I was often amazed at just how good I had become at covering my tracks and inventing storylines. Granted, it could be argued that, as a professional storyteller, I was simply practicing my craft. But in the past I had always considered myself an appalling liar—to the point where, a few days after my one previous extramarital encounter in ’99, Lucy turned to me and said, “You’ve slept with someone else, haven’t you?”

Of course, I blanched. Of course, I denied it all vehemently. Of course, she didn’t believe a word I said.

“Go on, tell me I’m hallucinating,” she said. “But I can see right through you, David. You’re transparent.”

“I am not lying.”

“Oh, please.”

“Lucy . . .”

But she walked out of the room and didn’t mention the matter again. Within a week, my intense guilt (and my equally intense fear of discovery) had dissipated—cushioned by my silent vow never to be unfaithful again.

It was a vow I kept for the next six years—until I met Sally Birmingham. But after that first night at her apartment, I felt little guilt, little anguish. Perhaps because my marriage had become governed by the law of diminishing returns. Or perhaps because, from the outset of my romance with Sally, I knew that I had never felt so ardent about anyone before.

This certainty made me an expert in subterfuge—to the point where Lucy never once questioned me about my whereabouts on a night when I was “working late.” In fact, she couldn’t have been more affectionate, more supportive during this time. No doubt our improved material circumstances had enhanced her affection for me (or, at least, that was my interpretation). But once I delivered the final drafts of my episodes and began editing the other scripts that had been written for the new season, Sally began to make increasingly loud noises about “regularizing” our situation and moving in together.

“This clandestine situation has to end,” she told me. “I want you for myself . . . if you still want me.”

“Of course I want you. You know that.”

But I also wanted to postpone the final day of reckoning—the moment when I sat down with Lucy and broke her heart. So I kept stalling. And Sally started getting impatient. And I kept saying: “Just give me another month.”

Then, one evening, I got home around midnight—after a long pre-production dinner with Brad Bruce. When I walked in, I found Lucy sitting in the living room. My suitcase was by her armchair.

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “And it’s a question I’ve wanted to know for the past eight months: is she a moaner, or is she one of those ice-maiden types who, despite the drop-dead looks, really hates the idea of anyone touching her?”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, trying to sound bemused.

“You mean, you honestly don’t know the name of the woman you’ve been fucking for the last seven—or is it eight—months?”

“Lucy, there is no one.”

“So, Sally Birmingham is no one?”

I sat down.

“That certainly gave you pause for thought,” she said, her voice even-tempered.

I finally spoke. “How do you know her name?”

“I had someone find out for me.”

“You what?”

“I hired a private investigator.”

“You spied on me?”

“Don’t play the moral outrage card, asshole. You were obviously seeing someone else . . .”

How did she know that? I had been so careful, so circumspect.

“ . . . and when it was clear from your constant absences that this was something more than just a little ego-enhancing fling, I hired a private eye . . .”

“Wasn’t that expensive?”

“Thirty-eight hundred dollars . . . which I will reclaim, one way or another, in the divorce settlement.”

I heard myself saying: “Lucy, I don’t want a divorce.”

Her voice remained steady, strangely calm. “I don’t care what you want, David. I am divorcing you. This marriage is finished.”

I suddenly felt a desperate fear—even though she was doing the dirty work for me and instigating the beginning of the end. I was getting exactly what I wanted . . . and it scared the hell out of me. I said, “If you had only come to me at the outset . . .”

Her face tightened. “And what?” she said, the anger now showing. “Tried to remind you that we had eleven years’ history, and a daughter, and that, despite all the crap of the last decade, we’d actually come through and were finally living well?”

She broke off, on the verge of tears. I reached for her. She immediately pulled away.

“You’re never touching me again,” she said.

Silence. Then she said, “When I found out the name of your squeeze, do you know what I first thought? ‘He’s really trading upward, isn’t he? The senior head of comedy at Fox Television. Magna cum laude from Princeton. And a babe to boot.’ The private investigator was a very thorough guy. He even supplied pictures of Ms. Birmingham. She’s very photogenic, isn’t she?”

“We could have talked this out . . .”

“No, there was nothing to talk out. I certainly wasn’t going to play the poor little woman in some country song, begging her faithless husband to come on home.”

“So why did you stay silent all this time?”

“Because I was hoping you might come to your senses . . .” She broke off again, clearly trying to keep her emotions in check. This time I didn’t reach for her.

“I even gave you a deadline,” she said. “Six months. Which, like a fool, I extended to seven, then to eight. Then, around a week ago, I could see you had decided to leave . . .”

“I hadn’t reached that decision,” I lied.

“Bullshit. It was written all over you . . . in neon lights. Well, I decided to make the decision for you. So, get out. Now.”

She stood up. So did I.

“Lucy, please. Let’s try to . . .”

“What? Pretend the last eight months didn’t happen?”

“How about Caitlin?”

“My, my, you’re finally thinking about your daughter . . .”

“I want to talk to her.”

“Fine—you can come back tomorrow . . .”

I was going to argue my case for staying the night on the sofa and trying to discuss everything in the saner light of day. But I knew she wouldn’t listen. Anyway, this was what I wanted. Well, wasn’t it?

I picked up my suitcase. I said, “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t accept apologies from shits,” Lucy said and stormed upstairs.

I sat in the car for ten minutes, immobile, wondering what I should do next. Suddenly, I found myself on my feet, racing back to my front door, and pounding my fist against it, yelling my wife’s name. After a moment, I heard her voice behind the door.

“Go away, David.”

“Give me a chance to—”

“What? Tell me more lies?”

“I’ve made a terrible mistake . . .”

“Too bad. You should have thought about that months ago.”

“I’m just asking for the opportunity—”

“There is nothing more to say.”

“Lucy . . .”

“We’re done here.”

I dug out my house keys. But as I tried putting the first one into the lock, I heard Lucy throw the inside bolt.

“Don’t think about trying to get back in here, David. It’s over. Just leave. Now.”

I must have spent the next five minutes thumping the door again, pleading my case, begging her to take me back. But I knew that she was no longer interested in hearing what I had to say. Part of me was absolutely terrified at this realization—my little family, destroyed by my own vanity, my newfound success. Yet another part of me understood why I had traveled down this destructive path. I also knew what would happen if the door suddenly opened now and Lucy beckoned me inside: I would be returning to a life without edge. And I remembered something a writer friend told me after he left his wife for another woman. “Of course the marriage had a few problems—but none that were so overwhelming. Of course there was a bit of ennui—but that’s also par for the course after twelve years of togetherness. Fundamentally, there was nothing that wrong between us. So why did I go? Because a little voice inside my head kept asking me one simple question: Is this everything life is going to be?”

But this recollection was superseded by a voice bellowing inside my head: I can’t do this. More than that, I thought: You’re so conforming to male cliché. And you’re also upending everything that is important in your life for a headlong dash into the unknown. So I fished out my cellphone and desperately punched in my home number. When Lucy answered, I said, “Darling, I’ll do anything . . .”

“Anything?”

“Yes, anything you ask.”

“Then fuck off and die.”

The line went dead. I glanced back at the house. All the lights downstairs were off. I took a deep, steadying breath, then walked to my car and got inside. I dug out my cellphone and stared at it, knowing if I made the call I was about to make, I would be crossing the frontier marked “No Way Back.”

I made the call. Sally answered. I told her that I had finally done what she’d been asking me to do: I had told my wife it was over. Though she asked all the touchy-feely questions about how Lucy took the news (“Not well,” I said), and how I was faring (“I’m glad it’s behind me”), she sounded genuinely thrilled. For a moment I wondered if she saw all this as some sort of victory—the ultimate merger and acquisition. But the moment passed when she told me how much she loved me, how hard this must have been for me, and how she would always be there for me. But though I was reassured by these declarations, I still felt a desperate hollowness—to be expected under the circumstances, but disquieting nonetheless.

“Get over here now, darling,” she said.

“I have nowhere else to go.”

The next day, Lucy and I agreed in a terse phone call that I would pick up Caitlin after school.

“Have you told her?” I asked.

“Of course I told her.”

“And?”

“You’ve just destroyed her sense of security, David.”

“Hang on,” I said. “I’m not the one ending the marriage. That was your decision. Like I said last night, if you’d just give me a chance to prove—”

“No sale,” she said, and hung up.

Caitlin wouldn’t let me kiss her hello when she saw me outside her school. She wouldn’t let me hold her hand. She wouldn’t speak to me when we got into the car. I suggested a walk along the seafront at Santa Monica. I suggested an early dinner at Johnny Rockets in Beverly Hills (her favorite restaurant). Or maybe a trip to FAO Schwarz in the Beverly Center. As I reeled off this list of potential options, the thought struck me: I’m already sounding like a divorced dad.

“I want to go home to Mommy.”

“Caitlin, I’m so sorry about—”

“I want to go home to Mommy.”

“I know this is awful. I know that you must think I’m—”

“I want to go home to Mommy.”

I spent the next five minutes trying to talk her into hearing me out. But she wouldn’t listen to me. She just kept repeating the same line over and over again: “I want to go home to Mommy.”

So, eventually, I had no choice but to do as she asked.

When we reached the front door of our house, she fled into Lucy’s arms.

“Thanks for brainwashing her,” I said.

“If you want to talk to me, do it through a lawyer.”

Then she went inside.

Actually I ended up talking to Lucy through two lawyers from the firm of Sheldon and Strunkel, who came highly recommended from Brad Bruce (he’d used them for his previous two divorces, and had them currently waiting in the wings if marriage number three tanked). They, in turn, talked to Lucy’s lawyer—a woman named Melissa Levin, whom my guys described as an exponent of the “Let’s eviscerate the sonofabitch” school of legal practice. From the outset, she didn’t simply want to seize all my material assets; she also wanted to make certain that I came out of the divorce hobbled and boasting a permanent limp.

Eventually, after much expensive wrangling, my guys managed to curb her scorched-earth tendencies—but the damage was still pretty formidable. Lucy got the house (and all my equity in it). She also received a whopping $11,000-per-month alimony and child support package. Given my newfound success, I could afford this—and I certainly wanted Caitlin to have everything and anything she wanted. But it did appall me to think that, from this moment forward, the first $200k of my gross income would be spoken for. Just as I wasn’t pleased about the clause that Levin the Impaler also included in the settlement: allowing Lucy the right to move with Caitlin to another city, should her career require it.

Four months after our fast-track divorce was finalized, she exercised that option when she landed a job heading the human resources division of some software company in Marin County. Suddenly, my daughter was no longer down the road. Suddenly, I couldn’t play hooky from my desk for an afternoon and take off with her after school to Malibu or to the big ice-skating rink in Westwood. Suddenly, my daughter was an hour’s flight away from me—and as the season went into production, I found it impossible to see her more than once a month. That bothered me to the point where, on those frequent nights when I couldn’t sleep, I’d pace the floors of the large West Hollywood loft that Sally and I rented and ponder why I had fractured my family. I knew all the reasons: a marriage that had become inanimate . . . the dazzling style and brilliance of Ms. Birmingham . . . the seductive momentum that accompanies success (and the desire to slam the door on all those past years of failure). But in those four-in-the-morning moments of private despair, I couldn’t help but think: I shouldn’t have fallen so easily when pushed. Surely I could have talked Lucy into taking me back. Surely we could have made a go of it again.

But then, come morning, there would be a script to finish, a meeting to take, a deal to ink, an opening to attend with Sally on my arm—in short, the relentless forward momentum of success. It was a momentum that would allow me to temporarily dodge the lingering guilt, the silent, ever-present uncertainty about everything in this new life of mine.

Of course, news of my changed domestic setup was on the Hollywood bush telegraph within moments of my departure from the family home. Everyone said all the right solicitous things (to my face, anyway) about the difficulties of ending a marriage. The fact that I had “run off” (to use that meretricious expression) with one of the most high-profile young television executives in town didn’t do my standing any harm. I had traded upward—and, as Brad Bruce told me, “Everyone knew you were a smart guy, David. Now everyone’s going to think you’re a really smart guy.”

My agent’s reaction, however, was typically caustic. Alison knew and liked Lucy—and in the wake of the deal for the first season of Selling You, she had warned me to dodge all home-wrecking temptations. So, when I broke the news that I was about to start a new life with Sally, she fell silent. Finally she said, “I guess I should congratulate you for waiting over a year before doing something like this. Then again, it’s what always happens out here when somebody has the big breakthrough.”

“I am in love, Alison.”

“Congratulations. Love is a wonderful thing.”

“I knew you were going to react this way.”

“Sweetheart—don’t you know that there are only ten stories in the world? And, right now, you’re acting out one of them. But I will say this—at least your story has a different twist to it.”

“How’s that?”

“In your case, the writer’s fucking the producer. In my jaded experience, it’s always the other way around. So bravo—you’re defying the laws of Hollywood gravity.”

“But Alison—it was you who got us together in the first place.”

“Tell me about it. But don’t worry—I’m not going to demand my ten percent on your future joint earnings.”

Alison did point out, however, that as Sally and I were now an item, it was best if we let the proposed Fox pilot (which I still hadn’t written) lapse.

“It is going to look like her wedding gift to you—and I can just imagine some Peter Bart wannabe making a big issue out of it in Daily Variety.”

“Sally and I have discussed this already. We agreed that it’s best if we forget the pilot for Fox.”

“What charming pillow talk you must have together.”

“It was over breakfast.”

“Before or after working out?”

“Why do I put up with you?”

“Because, ‘as a friend’ I really am your friend. And also because I watch your back . . . to the point where the advice I have just given you is going to cost me almost forty grand in commission.”

“You’re such an altruist, Alison.”

“No—just plain stupid. Still, here’s one final piece of counsel from your ten percent big sister: Keep your head down in the coming months. You’ve had it too good recently.”

I tried to heed her advice but Sally and I were playing the “power couple” game. We were “the perfect exemplars of the New Hollywood”: the sort of Ivy League, literate folk who also happened to thrive in the combustible world of television. Well-heeled but trying to look like we abhorred all ostentation. Our loft was minimalist in design; my Porsche and Sally’s Range Rover were symbolically astute vehicles—“upscale, but smart” cars driven by “upscale, but smart” people who had obviously achieved a significant level of professional success. We got invited to the right parties, the right premieres. But whenever I was interviewed, I spoke about how we weren’t seduced by the lure of celebrity or the need to maintain a high public profile. Anyway, we were both far too busy to crave the fast lane. Los Angeles is largely an early-to-bed city. So—with Sally planning the new comedy slate for the autumn, and with the second season of Selling You now deep into production—we hardly had time for social pursuits, let alone each other. And Sally, as I discovered, lived her life as if it were a perpetual time-and-motion schedule, to the point where, though she never said it, I knew that she had even silently scheduled three “lovemaking windows” per week. Even those random moments when she suddenly jumped my bones started to feel curiously premeditated—as if she had almost calculated that, on a rare morning when she wasn’t doing breakfast with someone, we could just about find the ten or so minutes required to reach mutual orgasm before she started her workout.

Still, I wasn’t complaining. Because—bar the constant twinge of regret I felt about Lucy and Caitlin—everything was going my way.

“We all should have your problems,” my new friend Bobby Barra told me on a rare late night (well, it was a Friday) when I drank one martini too many and confided in him that I was still being nagged with silent guilt about busting up my marriage.

Bobby Barra loved the fact that I was using him as father confessor. Because that meant we were tight. And Bobby Barra liked the idea of being tight with me. Because I was now a name, a personage, one of the few true winners in a city of desperate aspiration and pervasive failure.

“Look at it this way. Your marriage belongs to that segment of your life when nothing you did really worked. So naturally, you had to jettison it once you crossed over to the charmed side of the street.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said, sounding unconvinced.

“Of course I’m right. A new life means new everything.”

Including new friends like Bobby Barra.

TWO

BOBBY BARRA WAS rich. Seriously rich. But not “fuck you” rich.

“What do you mean by ‘fuck you’ rich?” I once asked him.

“You talking attitude or numbers?” he said.

“The attitude I can figure out. Give me the numbers.”

“Hundred mil.”

“That much?”

“It’s not that much.”

“Sounds like enough to me.”

“How many millions in a billion?”

“Actually I don’t know.”

“One thousand.”

“One thousand million makes a billion?”

“You’ve got the math.”

“So a billion’s ‘fuck you’ rich?”

“Not just ‘fuck you’ rich—‘fuck you and ten generations of your family’ rich.”

“That’s pretty rich. But if you’ve only got one hundred mil . . . ?”

“You can still say ‘fuck you’ but you’ve got to choose your audience more carefully.”

“You must be ‘fuck you’ rich by now, Bobby.”

“‘Fuck you’ adjacent.”

“That sounds pretty good to me.”

“It’s still not ‘fuck you.’ I tell you—you start hanging with the really big boys—Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Phil Fleck—and a hundred mil is kids’ stuff. A tenth of a billion. What’s that to guys who are worth thirty, forty, fifty bil?”

“Chump change?”

“Bingo. Chump-fucking-change. Nickel-and-dime productions.”

I allowed myself a smile.

“Well, speaking as a mere mortal who only earned a million last year . . .”

“Yeah—but you’ll get there . . . if you let me help you.”

“I’m all ears.”

Bobby Barra was full of advice when it came to the market—because that’s what Bobby Barra did for a living. He played the market. And he played it so well that now, at the age of thirty-five, he really was “fuck you adjacent.”

What made his newfound wealth all the more impressive was that it was completely self-created. Bobby referred to himself as “the Dago from Detroit”: the son of an electrician at the Ford Dearborn plant who hauled himself out of Motor City as soon as he passed his driver’s test. Before that—at an age when most kids were thinking about the indignities of acne—Bobby was ruminating about high finance.

“Let me guess what you were reading at age thirteen?” Bobby Barra asked me around the time we became friends. “John Updike.”

“Give me a break,” I said. “I’ve never worn a Shetland sweater in my life. But Tom Wolfe . . .”

“That figures.”

“And you? What were you reading at thirteen?”

“Lee Iaccoca . . . and don’t fucking laugh.”

“Who’s laughing?”

“Not just Iaccoca, but Tom Peters, and Adam Smith, and John Maynard Keynes, and Donald Trump . . .”

“Quite a cultural cross section there, Bobby. Do you think Trump ever read Keynes?”

“Nah—but the guy knows how to build a casino. And he is seriously ‘fuck you.’ Which, from the moment I read his book, is what I decided I wanted to be.”

“So why didn’t you go into the building game?”

“Because you got to play the goombah thing—you know, cousin Sal’s got an uncle Joey who’s got a nephew Tony who can put the muscle on the Hebrew who owns the vacant lot which you want to buy . . . Get the picture?”

“Sounds very white-shoe to me.”

“Listen, corporate assholes play the same fucking game—only they do it with Brooks Brothers suits and Wharton MBAs and leveraged buyouts. Anyway, I didn’t want the goombah thing and I also knew that Wall Street wasn’t going to like my vowels and my grease-monkey background. So the way I figured it, LA was a far better gridiron for a guy like me. Because, face facts, this is the ‘money talks, bullshit walks’ capital of the world. Plus: out here, no one gives a shit about whether you sound like John Gotti’s mutant son. The bigger the bank account, the bigger the dick.”

“As John Maynard Keynes himself once remarked.”

Full credit to Bobby: he paid his way through USC by working three nights a week as a general drone for Michael Milken in the last-gasp glory days of his junk bond bonanza. Then, after college, he got hired by some dubious character named Eddie Edelstein, who ran his own small brokerage house in Century City and eventually got shipped off to a Club Fed for a major SEC no-no.

“Eddie was my guru—the best fucking broker west of the Continental Divide. The guy had a nose for an IPO like a pit bull. And when it came to calling a margin . . . take it from me, this guy was a total artist. Of course, the dumb putz then has to go fuck it all up by pocketing 100k after slipping this South African broker—a fucking Afrikaner Nazi—the inside dope on some smelting-and-refining company IPO. Turns out the Nazi was actually an SEC guy in disguise. Under-fucking-cover. I told Eddie to scream entrapment—but it was no use. Three to five—and even though it was one of those open prisons where he was allowed to bring a tennis racket, it still killed him. Cancer of the prostate, aged fifty-three. You floss your teeth, Dave?”

“Sorry?” I said, a little bemused by the sudden change of conversational direction.

“On his deathbed, Eddie gave me two pieces of advice: never trust a guy who says he’s an Afrikaner but sounds like he was raised in New Jersey . . . and if you want to avoid prostate cancer, always floss your teeth.”

“I’m not following this.”

“You don’t floss, all that plaque and shit trickles down your throat and ends up lodging in your prostate. That’s what happened to poor Eddie: ace broker, ace guy . . . but he should’ve flossed.”

I started flossing seriously after this conversation with Bobby. I also frequently questioned why on earth I liked hanging with him so much.

I knew the answer to that question: because (a) as a broker, he’d started making me some money, and (b) he was never less than entertaining.

Bobby had come into my life during the first season of Selling You. After the show’s third episode was aired, he wrote me c/o FRT on his official company stationery, to say that my program was the smartest thing he’d seen in years and also offering his services as a broker. “I am not some I promise you the earth gonif. I am not some I will make you rich by the time you eat that brownie operator. But I am the smartest broker in town—and, in time, I will make serious money for you. Also, I am completely honest, and if you don’t believe me, please call . . .”

And the letter listed a bevy of A-and B-list Hollywood types who had allegedly become Roberto Barra clients.

I scanned this letter. Before tossing it into my circular file, however, I did smile. Because of the two dozen or so pitch letters I’d received since Selling You hit the small screen—letters from upscale car dealers, real estate agents, tax consultants, personal trainers, and the usual come channel with me New Age goons, all congratulating me on my newfound success and offering their services—Bobby’s was the most brazen, the most downright immodest. His final sentence was ridiculous:

I’m not just good at what I do. I am brilliant at what I do. If you want to see your money make money, you’ve got to call me. If you don’t, you will regret this for the rest of your life.

The day after opening this pitch, I received a copy of the same letter, with a Post-it attached to it:

Figuring that you probably threw away the letter you received from me yesterday, here it is again. Let’s make money, Dave.

Well, I had to admire the guy’s chutzpah . . . though I did find the daily phone calls he subsequently made to my office rather tedious (on my instructions, my assistant, Jennifer, made certain that I was permanently in a meeting whenever he phoned). Just as I wasn’t swayed when he sent me a case of Au Bon Climat wine. Of course I did the polite thing—I dropped him a brief thank-you note—and then a week later, a case of Dom Pérignon arrived. With a card.

You’ll be drinking this stuff like 7Up if you let me make you some real money.

Brad Bruce happened to be in my office when the champagne arrived.

“Who’s the admirer . . . and does she have a phone number?” he asked.

“Actually, she’s a he.”

“Forget about it.”

“Nah—it’s not like that. The guy wants to get me into bed financially. He’s a broker. A very persistent broker.”

“Name?”

“Bobby Barra.”

“Oh yeah, him.”

This stopped me short.

“You know him?”

“Sure. Ted Lipton uses him,” he said, mentioning the vice-president of FRT. “Ditto . . .”

He reeled off a bunch of names, many of whom had been listed in that initial letter he sent me.

“So the guy’s legitimate?” I asked.

“Highly—from what I’ve heard. And he obviously knows how to hustle. Wish my broker would send me champagne.”

That afternoon, I called Ted Lipton. After talking a little shop, I asked him for an opinion on Roberto Barra:

“Got me a twenty-seven percent return last year. And yeah—I trust the little fucker.”

I didn’t have a broker at the time—because in the insane rush of events since the first season was commissioned, I hadn’t had a moment to consider such niceties as how to invest my newfound money. So I asked my assistant to find out everything she could about Roberto Barra. Within forty-eight hours, she came back with the inside dope: satisfied clientele, no criminal record, no business with bad guys, SEC Seal of Good Housekeeping.

“Okay,” I said after reading her report. “Set up lunch.”

Bobby Barra turned out to be vertically challenged—five foot two—with tight black curly hair and immaculately dressed in a black suit of Italianate cut (surprise, surprise). He took me to Orso. He talked fast and funny. He surprised me with his literacy—both in terms of films and books. He flattered me—and then joked about flattering me. He said, “I’m not going to give you that as a friend LA bullshit,” then five sentences later deliberately dropped “as a friend ” into the conversation. “You’re not just a TV writer, you’re a serious TV writer . . . and in your case, that’s not an oxymoron.” He was brilliant company—a world-class spiel merchant who mixed erudition with tough-guy repartee (“You ever need someone’s legs broken,” he said sotto voce, “I know two Mexican kids who will do it for three hundred bucks, plus their car fare”). Listening to him talk, I couldn’t help but think that he was like one of those Chicago sharpies about whom Bellow wrote so brilliantly. He was slick. He was smart, and just a little dangerous. He name-dropped relentlessly but also sent himself up for being “such an unapologetic star-fucker.” I could see why all those A- and-B listers wanted to do business with him. Because he exuded mastery over his chosen domain. And because in this, the ultimate enclave of self-salesmanship, he stood out as the biggest self-promoter of them all.

“All you need to know is this: I’m obsessed with making money for my clients. Because money is about choice. Money is about the ability to exercise one’s discretion. To confront the random nature of destiny with the knowledge that, at least, you have the necessary arsenal to counteract life’s endless complexities. Because money—real money—allows you to make decisions without fear. And say to the world: fuck you.”

“Wasn’t that Adam Smith’s argument in The Wealth of Nations?”

“You like Adam Smith?” he asked.

“I’ve only read the coverage.”

“Fuck Machiavelli, fuck Success Is a Choice. Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is the greatest of all capitalist manifestos.”

Then he took a short intake of breath and began to speak in a voice that could be best described as Detroit stentorian:

“All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any man or order of man . . . Defense, however, is of much more importance than opulence.”

He paused, took a sip from his glass of San Pellegrino, then said, “I know I’m not exactly Ralph Fiennes, but . . .”

“Hey,” I said, “I’m impressed. And you did it all without a teleprompter.”

“Here’s the thing: we’re living in the biggest era of ‘natural liberty’ known to man. But what Smith said is so damn true: before you go lavish, make certain you’ve got the cash to watch your back. And that’s where I come in. Financially speaking, I’m not just going to watch your back, I’m going to build you a fortress made of capital. Which means that, no matter what cards you are dealt in the future, you will still be in a position of strength. And let’s face it, as long as you’re in a position of strength, nobody’s going to be using you as a doormat.”

“So what are you proposing exactly?”

“I’m going to propose nothing. I’m simply going to show you how I achieve results. So, here’s how I’d like to play this: if you are willing to trust me with a nominal sum of money—say, fifty grand—I promise you to double it within six months. You write my company a check for fifty grand, I send you the necessary paperwork, six months later you get a check for one hundred k minimum . . .”

“And if you fail . . .”

He cut me off. “I don’t fail.”

Pause. I asked, “Let me ask you something: why have you put all this effort into snagging me?”

“Because you’re hot, that’s why. And I like hanging with the A-team. Here I go name-dropping again, but have you ever heard of Philip Fleck?”

“The multibillionaire recluse? The film director manqué. Who hasn’t heard of Phil Fleck? He’s infamous.”

“Actually, he’s just a guy like the rest of us. A guy with twenty billion dollars . . .”

“That’s certainly ‘fuck you’ in your book, Bobby.”

“Phil is Hall of Fame ‘fuck you’—and a seriously good friend of mine.”

“That’s nice.”

“He’s a big fan of yours, by the way.”

“You kidding me?”

“‘Smartest writer on TV,’ he told me just last week.”

I didn’t know whether to buy this line or not. So I just said, “Say thanks for me.”

“You think I’m talking star-fucking shit again, don’t you?”

“If you say you’re a friend of Phil Fleck’s, I believe you.”

“Do you believe me enough to write me a check for fifty grand?”

“Sure,” I said, sounding uneasy.

“So write me the check.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. Take the checkbook out of your jacket pocket . . .”

“How do you know I’ve got my checkbook with me?”

“Well, in my experience, the moment a guy makes some serious money—especially after years in the swamps—he starts carrying his checkbook around with him. Because he can suddenly buy a lot of big stuff that he couldn’t buy before. And there’s something a lot classier about writing a check than tossing down some platinum-dyed piece of plastic . . .”

I inadvertently touched the breast pocket of my jacket.

“Guilty as charged,” I said.

“So, write the check.”

I pulled out the checkbook and my pen. I placed them on the table. I stared down at them. Bobby impatiently tapped the checkbook with his index finger.

“Come on, Dave,” he said. “It’s time to deal. This is one of those critical moments that helps define the future. And I know what you’re thinking: ‘Can I trust the guy?’ Well, I’m not going to sell myself any more. Just let me ask you this: do you have the courage to be rich?”

I picked up the pen. I opened the book. I wrote the check.

“Smart guy,” Bobby said.

A few days later, the official documentation for my investment arrived from Roberto Barra and Partners. Two months went by before I heard from him again: a quick “Hey, how’s it going?” call, which told me that the market was buoyant and “we are winning.” He promised to call again in another two months. He did so—almost to the day. Another fast, pleasant conversation, in which he sounded rushed but upbeat about the market. Then two months later, a FedEx envelope arrived at my office. It contained a bank check made payable to me, for the sum of $122,344.82. A note was attached to it.

“We actually did a little better than 100 percent. Now let’s party.”

I had to admire Bobby’s style. After pitching me successfully, he then backed off completely . . . until he had results. In the wake of this amazing return, I immediately reinvested the lot with Bobby, then threw another 250k his way when the second season came through. We started hanging out together on an occasional basis. Bobby still wasn’t married (“I make a bad prisoner,” he told me), but he always had some piece of arm candy in tow: usually a model or a wannabe actress. Inevitably she was blond and sweet and Princess Not-So-Bright. I used to give him shit about conforming to the “money dude” archetype.

“Hey, once I was just a short wop from Motor City. Now I’m a short wop from Motor City with money. So, naturally, I’m going to use that fact as a way of shtupping all those cheerleaders who used to consider me a grease monkey.”

After spending one or two evenings with Bobby and his squeeze du jour, I let it be known that I wasn’t really interested in his idea of the fast lane. So we restricted our monthly boys’ night out to a low-key dinner à deux—during which I’d sit back and let Bobby regale me with his nonstop spiel on just about everything. Sally couldn’t understand why I liked him. Though she approved of the way he was investing my money, her one and only meeting with Bobby was something of a social disaster. Having been very supportive during my breakup with Lucy, he was keen to meet Sally once the proverbial dust had settled . . . especially as he was well aware of her player status at Fox Television. So, around three months after we officially became an item, he suggested dinner at La Petite Porte in West Hollywood. From the moment we all sat down together, I could tell that Sally had instantly filed him away under “peasant.” He tried to charm her with his usual palaver. “Everyone who’s anybody knows the name of Sally Birmingham,” he fawned. He attempted to show off his bookish credentials, asking her to name her favorite Don DeLillo novel. “I don’t have one,” she shot back. “Life’s too short for his brand of literary self-importance.” He even played his “I know A-list people” card, mentioning how Johnny Depp had phoned him from his home in Paris yesterday to discuss some stock options. Once again, Sally narrowed him in her sights and said, “What an interesting life you lead.”

It was an unnerving spectacle, watching Sally quietly puncture Bobby’s manic attempts to win favor. Yet what was most intriguing about this demolition job was the patrician smile Sally retained throughout. Not once did she say, “You’re full of shit.” Not once did she raise her voice. But by the end of the evening, she had cut him down to Toulouse-Lautrec size and let it be known, in her own quiet way, that she considered him low grade, petit bourgeois, and not worth her time.

On the way home that night, she reached over to me in the driver’s seat and stroked the back of my head and said, “Darling, you know I adore you, but never put me through something like that again.”

Long silence. Finally I said, “Was it that bad?”

“You know what I’m saying. He may be a brilliant broker . . . but socially speaking, he’s a fool.”

“I find him amusing.”

“And I can understand why—especially if you ever end up writing something for Scorsese. But he’s a people collector, David—and you’re this month’s objet d’art. If I were you I’d let him handle my investments and nothing more. He’s cheap and meretricious: the sort of hustler who might splash on Armani aftershave in the morning but still stinks of Brut.”

I knew that Sally was being cruel—and didn’t like seeing this unsympathetic side to her. But I said nothing. I also said little to Bobby when, a few days after the dinner, he called me at my office to announce that he was projecting a twenty-nine percent return this year.

“Twenty-nine percent,” I said, stunned. “That sounds positively illegal.”

“Oh, it’s legal all right.”

“Just joking,” I said, picking up on his defensiveness. “I’m very pleased. And grateful. Next time I’ll buy dinner.”

“Is there going to be a next time? Sally really thought I was a jerk, didn’t she?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“You’re lying, but I appreciate the sentiment. Believe me, I know when I strike out with someone.”

“The chemistry just didn’t work between you guys, that’s all.”

“You’re being polite. But hey, as long as you don’t share her sentiments . . .”

“Why should I? Especially when you’re making me twenty-nine percent.”

He laughed. “It’s always the bottom line, isn’t it?”

“You’re asking me that?”

Bobby was shrewd enough to never again mention the subject of that disastrous dinner, though he always asked after Sally whenever we spoke. And once a month, I had dinner with him. Twenty-nine percent is twenty-nine percent, after all. But I genuinely liked Bobby and saw that behind all the gimcrack salesmanship, the slick bravura, he was just another guy traveling hopefully, trying to make his own mark in a deeply indifferent world. Like the rest of us, he filled the time with his own turbocharged ambitions and worries, in an attempt to believe that, somehow, what we do during that momentary spasm called life actually counts for something.

Anyway, I was so damn busy with the second season that, aside from our monthly dinner, I was out of touch with Bobby. By the time Selling You season two went into production, I’d reached the conclusion that my life was running on a treadmill: fourteen-hour workdays, seven days a week. The few hours left over in the day were dedicated entirely to Sally. But she wasn’t exactly complaining about our lack of quality time together. For Sally anything less than a seventeen-hour day was lazy.

The only real highlights in this breakneck schedule were the two weekends a month I’d spend in Sausalito with Caitlin. The breach between us didn’t take long to heal. On my first visit to her new home, she was distant with me. But we had a terrific day out in San Francisco, and her initial aloofness melted a bit. Early that evening, as we were having dinner in a restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf, she said, “I have to ask you a question, Daddy.”

“Shoot,” I said.

“Do you miss me and Mommy?”

I felt an immense sadness come over me.

“Only every hour of every day,” I said, taking her hand. She didn’t pull away but instead squeezed mine back.

“Can’t you live with us again?” she asked.

“I wish that was possible, but . . .”

“Is it because you don’t love Mommy anymore?”

“I’ll always love your mother . . . but sometimes people who love each other find it difficult to live together. Or they grow apart. Or . . .”

“You could grow back together again,” she said.

I smiled at the great turn of phrase.

“It’s never that simple, Caitlin. People can do things that others find hard to forgive. Or they realize that they need to lead a different kind of life now.”

She withdrew her hand and stared down at the table.

“I don’t like not having you around.”

“And I don’t like not having you around,” I said. “And I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all better. But I can’t. Still, we will be together two weekends a month. During all your vacations you can spend as much time as you like with me . . .”

“You’ll be working during my vacations.”

“I’ll make certain I’m not.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“And you’ll visit me every two weeks?”

“Without fail.”

And I never missed a visit. On the contrary, there was no damn way that anything was going to get in the way of my twice-monthly trip to see my daughter.

Another six months shot by. The second season was in the can. Early reaction within FRT was tremendous. Alison had already started taking calls from Brad Bruce and Ted Lipton about the third season—and we were still two months away from the launch of our second season. Life was chaotic but good. My career was cruising. My ardor for Sally hadn’t dimmed . . . and she still seemed entranced by me. My money was making money. And though Lucy still cold-shouldered me whenever I visited Sausalito, at least Caitlin seemed delighted to see her daddy and had even started spending one weekend a month with us in LA.

“What’s wrong with you?” Alison asked me over lunch one day. “You seem happy.”

“I am.”

“Should I alert the media?”

“Is there anything wrong with being happy?”

“Hardly. It’s just . . . you’ve never really done happy, Dave.”

She was right. Then again, until very recently, I’d never gotten what I’d wanted before.

“Well,” I said, “maybe I can start doing happy now.”

“That would make a change. And while you’re at it: take a little time off. Success has made you look seriously wrecked.”

Once again, she was right. I hadn’t made acquaintance with that thing called a “vacation” in over fourteen months. I was tired and in deep need of a break. So much so that when Bobby rang up in mid-March and said to me, “Feel like going to the Caribbean this weekend . . . and you can bring Sally,” I instantly said yes.

“Good,” Bobby said. “Because Phil Fleck wants to meet you.”

THREE

A COUPLE OF FACTS about Philip Fleck. He was born in Milwaukee, forty-four years ago. His father owned a small paper-packaging plant. When Dad dropped dead of a heart attack in 1981, Philip was recalled home from NYU film school to take over the family business. Though he was reluctant to shoulder this responsibility—as he was determined to become a movie director—he acceded to his mother’s wishes and became the company boss. Within ten years, he had turned this minor regional company into one of the major retail packaging players in the United States. Then he took the company public and made his first billion. After that, he started to dabble as a venture capitalist, deciding in the early nineties to back an obscure horse called “the Internet.” He chose his investments wisely—and by 1999, he was worth over $20 billion.

The year 2000 was his fortieth. And it was also the year that he suddenly decided to vanish from view. He resigned the chairmanship of his family packaging company. He stopped being seen in public. He hired a security company to make certain that his privacy wasn’t invaded. He eschewed all requests for interviews or public appearances. He fled behind the large apparatus which ran his entrepreneurial empire. He vanished from view, disappearing so completely that many thought he was either dead, crazy, or J. D. Salinger.

Then, three years ago, Philip Fleck reappeared in public. Correction: he himself didn’t reappear, but his name suddenly became common currency again when his first film, The Last Chance, hit the screens. He wrote, directed, and financed the thing himself—and in the one interview he gave to Esquire before the film’s release, he called it “the culmination of ten years’ planning and thought.” The film was an apocalyptic tale about two couples on an island off the Maine coast who face a crisis of metaphysical proportions when a nuclear accident wipes out most of New England. They are trapped offshore, hoping that the deadly toxins will not be blown their way. As they fight and argue and fuck, they begin to debate “the true meaning of temporal existence” . . . and, natch, their impending deaths.

The film received suicidally bad reviews. Fleck was accused of being portentous and risible, a talentless rich guy who had bankrolled one of the most absurd vanity films ever made.

After this warm critical reception, Philip Fleck dropped out of sight again—only seeing a very few members of his so-called inner circle of pals—though his name did appear briefly in the news again when word leaked out that he had finally gotten married . . . to his script editor on The Last Chance. (A quick aside—when Brad Bruce saw the marriage notice in the Milestones section of Time, he turned to me in our production office and said: “Maybe the guy married her because she was the only person who didn’t laugh at his fucking awful script.”)

Though the critics may have dented Philip Fleck’s pride, they still couldn’t do much harm to his bank account. In last year’s Forbes survey of the 100 Richest Americans, he came in eighth, with a current net value of $20 billion. He owned homes in Manhattan, Malibu, Paris, San Francisco, and Sydney, not to mention his own private island near Antigua. He had his very own 767 jet. He was an avid art collector, with a penchant for twentieth-century American painters—specifically, sixties abstractionists like Motherwell, Philip Guston, and Rothko. Though he gave widely to charity, he was best noted for his obsession with the movies—to the point where he had heavily funded such well-known organizations as the American Film Institute, the Cinémathèque Française, and the film department at NYU. He was a true cinephile—someone who, in that Esquire interview, admitted that he had seen over 10,000 movies during his lifetime. On rare occasions, he’d even been spotted haunting such famous small Parisian Left Bank cinemas as the Accattone and the Action Christine—though, from all accounts, it was difficult to pick him out in a crowd, as he was a notoriously ordinary-looking guy.

“Forget the designer wardrobe upgrade [as the Esquire journalist wrote in that spiky profile of Fleck]. Up close and personal, he’s a chunky average Joe with a personality bypass. The guy is Mr. Taciturn. You can’t tell if he’s suffering from terminal diffidence or the sort of misanthropic arrogance which comes with stratospheric wealth. But with his mega-millions, he has no real need to engage with the rest of the world. You meet Philip Fleck, you survey his domain—his vast financial muscle—in all its infinite grandeur, and then you look him over carefully, and you think: occasionally, the Gods do smile down on geeks.”

After Bobby had proposed the weekend at Fleck’s Caribbean hideaway, I had my assistant find me that Esquire interview. As soon as I finished reading it, I called Bobby at his office and asked him, “Is that journalist still alive?”

“Just . . . though I gather the city desk at the Bangor Daily News doesn’t really compare with the heady world of Hearst Magazines.”

“If I’d gotten those reviews, I would have signed up as a kamikaze pilot.”

“Yeah, but if you had twenty billion in the bank . . .”

“Point taken. Surely, after the shit flung at him over The Last Chance, he doesn’t want to get back into the directing game again.”

“If there’s one thing I know about Phil, it’s this: he may be Mr. Brooding . . . but the guy doesn’t give up, and he never gives in. He’s relentless. If he wants something, he gets it. And right now, he wants you.”

Yes, this was the underlying reason—the subtext—behind my summons to Fleck’s Caribbean retreat. I yanked this out of Bobby during his initial phone call, inviting me to meet the great recluse.

“Here’s the deal,” Bobby said. “He’s hanging out for a week at his place off Antigua. It’s called Saffron Island—and, I’m telling you, it’s paradise de luxe.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “He’s built his very own Taco Bell on the island . . .”

“Hey, what’s with the sarcasm?”

“I just like giving you shit about your mega-rich friend.”

“Listen, Phil’s really an original, a one-off. And though nowadays he guards his privacy like a nuclear test site, among his pals, he’s a regular guy.”

And (according to Bobby) he really liked Bobby. “Because I’m also such a likeable guy.”

“No offense,” I said, “but I still don’t get how you managed to infiltrate his inner circle. I mean, he makes the late Mr. Kubrick sound accessible.”

So Bobby explained that he’d been “put together” with Fleck three years ago during the preproduction for his movie. As Fleck was completely footing the bill, he was working on ways of turning the whole setup into an enormous tax write-off. One of Fleck’s associate producers had been one of Bobby’s clients—and recognizing his financial genius (yes, those were Bobby’s exact words), he suggested that Fleck speak with him. So Bobby got the summons to San Francisco to “a modest little mansion on Russian Hill.” They eyed each other up. They schmoozed. Bobby outlined a plan whereby, if Fleck made the movie in Ireland, he could jettison the entire $20 million budget from his return the following year. And the IRS wouldn’t be able to say dick about it.

So The Last Chance was made on some godawful little island off the coast of County Clare, with interior work shot in a Dublin studio. Though it was a disaster for all involved, at least Bobby Barra came away with a major prize: his friendship with Philip Fleck.

“Believe it or not, we talk the same language. And I know he respects my financial judgment.”

Enough to let you play with his money? I was about to ask—but I held my tongue. Because I was pretty certain that a man of Philip Fleck’s mega-means probably had twelve Bobby Barras on his payroll. What I couldn’t figure out exactly was what such an isolated figure saw in a hustler like Barra. Unless, like me, he found him diverting and considered him potential material.

“What’s the new wife like?” I asked Bobby.

“Martha? Very New England. Very bookish. Not bad looking, if you like the Emily Dickinson type.”

“You know Emily Dickinson?”

“We never dated, but . . .”

I had to hand it to Bobby. He was fast.

“I’ll tell you this, entre-fucking-nous,” he said. “No one was surprised when Phil decided she was the one. Before that, he was into arm candy in a big way—though he always looked awkward with some model who had trouble spelling her own name. Despite all the money, he’s never been much of a babe magnet.”

“How nice that he met someone then,” I said, thinking that, despite her alleged Belle of Amherst credentials, this Martha woman must be one shrewd gold digger.

“Anyway, the point of this invitation is a simple one,” Bobby said. “As I told you before, Phil loves Selling You, and he simply wants to meet you, and he thought you might like a couple of days with your lady under the Saffron Island palms.”

“Sally can come too?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“And this is simply a meet-and-greet, nothing more?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Bobby said, a slight note of hesitancy slipping into his voice. “Of course, he may want to speak with you a bit about the business.”

“That’s okay by me.”

“And if you wouldn’t mind reading a script of his before heading out there.”

“I knew there was a catch.”

“It’s not much of a catch. All he’s asking for is a ‘courtesy read’ of a new script.”

“Look, I’m not a script doctor . . .”

“Bullshit. That’s exactly what you do on all the episodes of Selling You that you don’t write.”

“Yeah—but the difference is: it’s my series. Sorry to sound up-my-ass, but I really don’t administer CPR to other people’s work.”

“You are up your ass—but the thing here is no one’s asking you to play doctor. Like I said, it’s a courtesy read, no more. More to the point, the writer in question is Mr. Philip Fleck. And he is willing to fly you in his own private jet to his own private island, where you will have your own private suite with your own private swimming pool, your own private butler, and the kind of six-star service you will never find anywhere else, and in exchange for this week of absolute sybaritic luxury, all that is asked of you is that you read his screenplay—which, I should point out, is a mere hundred and four pages, because I have the damn thing in front of me—and after you read it, you simply have to sit down with him sometime under the Saffron Island palms, sip a piña colada, and talk for around an hour to the eighth-richest American about his screenplay . . .”

He paused for breath. And also for effect.

“Now I ask you, Mr. Armitage—is that such a fucking stretch?”

“All right,” I said. “Messenger the script over.”

It arrived two hours later . . . by which time Jennifer had pulled the Esquire profile off the Internet, and I was definitely intrigued. There was something so irresistible about the paradox that was Philip Fleck. So much money. So little creative ability. And—if the Esquire writer was to be believed—such a desperate need to show the world that he was a man of genuinely creative gifts. “Money means nothing without validation,” he told the journalist. But say it turns out that, for all your billions, you are actually talentless? What then? And I guess there was a schmucky part of me that thought it would be rather amusing to spend a few days observing this supreme irony.

Even Sally was intrigued by the idea of spending a week in the proximity of such extreme wealth.

“Are you absolutely sure this is not some ruse that little Bobby Barra has cooked up?” she asked me.

“For all his big-time talk I doubt that Bobby actually has access to his very own 767, let alone a Caribbean island. Anyway, I did get a copy of Fleck’s script—and I had Jennifer run a SATWA check on it. Fleck is registered as the author—so, yeah, the whole thing seems perfectly legit.”

“What’s it like?”

“Don’t know. I only got it right before leaving the office.”

“Well, if we’re leaving on Friday, you’d better find the time to do some serious notes on it. You are going to have to sing for our supper, after all.”

“So you are coming?”

“A free week on Phil Fleck’s island idyll? Damn right I am. I can dine out on this for months.”

“And if it all turns out to be utterly tacky?”

“It’ll still be a story worth telling around town.”

Later that night, after insomnia sprung me out of bed at two in the morning, I sat in our living room and cracked open Fleck’s screenplay. It was called Fun and Games. The opening scene read:

INT. PORNO SHOP—NIGHT

BUDDY MILES, fifty-five, lived-in face, cigarette permanently screwed into the side of his mouth, sits behind the counter of a particularly scuzzy porno shop. Though pinups and the lurid covers of assorted magazines bedeck the area where he sits, we quickly notice that he’s reading a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. The opening movement of Mahler’s Symphony 1 is being played on the boom box next to the cash register. He lifts a mug of coffee, tastes it, grimaces, then reaches below the counter and brings up a bottle of Hiram Walker bourbon. He unscrews the top, pours a shot into the coffee, replaces the bottle, and sips the coffee again. This time it passes muster. But as he looks up from the mug, he notices that a man is standing in front of the counter. He is dressed in a heavy winter parka. A balaclava helmet covers his face. Instantly BUDDY notices that the hooded figure is pointing a gun at him. After a moment, the hood speaks.

LEON

That Mahler you playing?

BUDDY

(nonplussed by the gun) I’m impressed. Ten bucks says you can’t guess the symphony.

LEON

You’re on. It’s Symphony Number-the-one.

BUDDY

Double or nothing you can’t guess the conductor.

LEON

Treble-or-nothing.

BUDDY

That’s a little steep.

LEON

Yeah, but I’m holding the gun.

BUDDY

Can’t argue with that. Okay, treble or nothing. Who’s the guy waving the stick?

LEON pauses for a moment, listening carefully to the recording.

LEON

Bernstein.

BUDDY

No sale. Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony.

LEON

You fucking with me?

BUDDY

Check it out yourself.

LEON—still training the gun on BUDDY—opens the top of the boom box, pulls out the disc, and studies its label with distaste, eventually chucking it away.

LEON

Damn. I never get that Chicago sound.

BUDDY

Yeah, it takes a while to adjust your ears to it. Especially all that big brass. Listen, are we going to get done whatever you want to get done?

LEON

You read my fucking mind. (He moves closer to Buddy.) So go on, open up the register and make me happy.

BUDDY

No problem.

BUDDY opens the register. LEON leans over, using his free hand to grab the cash. As he does so, BUDDY slams the drawer on his hand and simultaneously pulls out a sawed-off shotgun from beneath the counter. Before LEON knows it, he has a shotgun at his head and his hand trapped in the cash register. He moans in pain.

BUDDY

I think you should drop the gun, don’t you?

LEON does as ordered. BUDDY lets go of the drawer of the cash register, but still keeps the gun at LEON’S head as he reaches over and pulls off his balaclava helmet. LEON is now revealed to be an African-American, also in his mid-fifties. BUDDY stares at LEON, wide eyed.

BUDDY

Leon? Leon Wachtell?

Now it’s LEON’S turn to look wide-eyed. Suddenly the penny drops for him too.

LEON

Buddy Miles?

BUDDY lowers the gun.

BUDDY

Sergeant Buddy Miles to you, asshole.

LEON

I don’t believe it.

BUDDY

And I don’t believe you didn’t recognize me.

LEON

Hey, it’s a long time since ’Nam.

CUT TO:

I stopped reading. I put the script down. Immediately I was on my feet, heading toward the large closet off the entrance of our loft. After digging around assorted boxes, I found what I was looking for: a footlocker, crammed with my old scripts from all those years in Nowheresville. I opened the locker. I plunged into the deep pile of failed screenplays and never-produced television pilots and eventually I unearthed We Three Grunts—my first spec script, written before Alison took me on as a client. I returned to the sofa. I opened my script. I read page one.

INT. PORNO SHOP—NIGHT

BUDDY MILES, fifty-five, lived-in face, cigarette permanently screwed into the side of his mouth, sits behind the counter of a particularly scuzzy porno shop. Though pinups and the lurid covers of assorted magazines bedeck the area where he sits, we quickly notice that he’s reading a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses and the opening movement of Mahler’s Symphony 1 is being played on the boom box next to the cash register. He lifts a mug of coffee, tastes it, grimaces, then reaches below the counter and brings up a bottle of Hiram Walker bourbon. He unscrews the top, pours a shot into the coffee, replaces the bottle, and sips the coffee again. This time it passes muster. But as he looks up from the mug, he notices that a man is standing in front of the counter. He is dressed in a heavy winter parka. A balaclava helmet covers his face. Instantly BUDDY notices that the hooded figure is pointing a gun at him. After a moment, the hood speaks.

LEON

That Mahler you playing?

BUDDY

(nonplussed by the gun) I’m impressed. Ten bucks says you can’t guess the symphony.

And the scene went on exactly as it was written in Philip Fleck’s screenplay. I grabbed Fleck’s script. I balanced it on one knee, while opening my own script on the other knee. I did a page-by-page comparison. Fleck had completely copied my original screenplay, written some eight years before the one he had registered with the Screen and Television Writers’ Association last month. This wasn’t mere plagiarism; this was word-by-word, punctuation mark–by–punctuation mark plagiarism. In fact—given that the two scripts were printed in the same typeface—I was pretty damn certain that he simply had some minion type a new title page with his own name on it before submitting it to the Association.

I couldn’t believe it. What Fleck had done wasn’t simply outrageous; it was downright scandalous—to the point where, with SATWA backing, I could have easily exposed him publicly as a literary pirate. Surely someone as hyper-conscious of his privacy as Fleck would realize that the press would love to draw-and-quarter him on a plagiarism charge. And surely he also knew that, by sending the script to me, he was inviting (at best) my outrage. So what asshole game was he playing?

I glanced at my watch. Two forty-one. I remembered something Bobby once said to me: “I am here twenty-four/seven if you need me.” I picked up the phone. I called his cell number. He answered on the third ring. In the background, I could hear blaring techno music and the sound of an accelerating engine. Bobby sounded buzzed out of his head: either nose candy or something from the Ritalin school of pharmacology.

“Dave, you’re up late,” he said.

“Is this a good time?”

“If I told you I was doing ninety on the ten with a Hawaiian babe named Heather Fong copping my joint as we speak, would you believe me?”

“No.”

“And you’d be right. I’m just heading home now after a long night discussing the Nasdaq with a couple of very bright Venezuelans . . .”

“And I’ve been up reading. What the fuck does Fleck think he’s doing, copying my script?”

“Oh, you got that, did you?”

“Oh, I got it all right—and Mr. Fleck’s in big trouble. To begin with, I could get Alison to file a lawsuit . . .”

“Hey, I know it’s almost three in the a.m., but get an irony check, huh? Fleck was paying you a compliment, asshole. A major compliment. He wants to make your script. It’s gonna be his next project. And he’s going to pay you big-time for it.”

“And is he also going to palm the script off as his own?”

“Dave, the dude is worth twenty billion. He ain’t no dumb cracker. He knows that your script is your script. All he was doing was telling you, in his own skewed way, that he really digs it . . .”

“Wouldn’t it have been just a little bit easier if he had simply called me up and told me how much he liked the script . . . or if he’d done the usual thing of having his people talk to my people?”

“What can I say? Phil keeps everybody guessing. But hey, if I was you, I’d be pleased. Alison can now screw vast amounts of money out of him for the script.”

“I’m going to have to think about this.”

“Oh, bullshit. Now listen—go take a sense of humor pill and get some sleep. This will all seem pretty damn amusing in the morning.”

I hung up. I suddenly felt very tired. So tired that I didn’t want to think any more about the game that Philip Fleck was playing. But before falling into bed, I did leave the two scripts on our kitchen counter. They were both open to page one. Beside them was a note to Sally:

Darling:

Your thoughts, please, on this curious case of duplication.

Love you . . .

D xxx

Then I crept into our bedroom, got back into bed, and passed right out.

When I woke five hours later, I found Sally sitting at the end of our bed, proffering me a cappuccino. I muttered incoherent early morning words of thanks. She smiled. I noticed that she was already showered and dressed. Then I also saw that she had the two scripts under her arm.

“So, you really want to know what I think of this?” she asked.

I took a sip of coffee, then nodded.

“Well, to be honest about it, the whole thing’s a bit generic, isn’t it? Quentin Tarantino meets one of those dumb caper movies of the seventies.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Look, you asked for an opinion, I’m giving you one. Anyway, it’s a piece of juvenilia, right? And let’s face it, the opening scene is overwritten. I mean, maybe you find references to Mahler amusing, but face facts, they’re not going to work with the multiplex crowd.”

I took another sip of coffee, then said, “Ouch.”

“Hey, I’m not saying it’s talentless. On the contrary, it’s got all the hallmarks that have made Selling You such a winner. The thing is, you’ve come a long way since then.”

“Right,” I said, sounding hurt.

“Oh, for God’s sake, you don’t expect me to praise something that really isn’t that good, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“But that wouldn’t be honest.”

“What does honesty have to do with it? All I was asking for was your thoughts about Fleck’s attempted plagiarism.”

“Plagiarism? Will you listen to yourself? You’re like every writer I’ve ever met. Totally humorless when it comes to their own work. So he played a little hoax on you and decided to see how you’d react to his ‘purloining’ of your script? Don’t you get it? Don’t you see what he’s trying to tell you?”

“Of course I do: he wants co-credit on my screenplay.”

She shrugged. “Yes—you’re right. That’s the price you’re going to pay if you let him make the script. And you should give him half credit.”

“Why?”

“You know why: because that’s the way the game is played. And also because—if truth be told—it’s not the best movie ever written . . . so why not give him partial credit?”

I said nothing. Sally came over and kissed the top of my head.

“Don’t sulk now,” she said. “But I’m not going to lie to you. It’s a stale old product. And if the eighth-richest man in America wants to buy it off you, take his big bucks . . . even if it means that he ends up with a co-writing credit. Believe me, Alison’s going to agree with me on this one.”

• • •

“Well, you’ve got to hand it to the guy,” Alison said when I called to tell her about Fleck’s little stunt. “It’s a perversely original way of getting your attention.”

“And of telling me that he expects to be the co-writer.”

“Big deal. This is Hollywood. Even the valet parking guys think they deserve co-credit on a screenplay. Anyway, it’s not your best work.”

I said nothing.

“Oh dear, a sensitive silence,” Alison said. “Is the auteur a little touchy this morning?”

“Yeah. A little.”

“FRT has spoiled you, David. You now think you’re Mr. Creative Control. But remember: if this script gets made, we are talking about the big screen. And the big screen means the big compromises. Unless, of course, Fleck decides to turn your movie into some art house shit . . .”

“It’s a caper movie, Alison.”

“Hey—in Fleck’s hands, it could still be a candidate for existential dread. You ever see The Last Chance?”

“Not yet.”

“Give yourself a laugh and go rent it. It’s probably the most unintentionally hilarious film ever made.”

I did just that, picking up the movie from my local Blockbuster that afternoon and watching it alone before Sally got home. I slipped the DVD into the player, opened a beer, sat back, and waited to be entertained.

I didn’t have to wait long. The opening shot of The Last Chance is a close-up of a character named Prudence—a lithe, willowy babe, dressed in a long flowing cape. After a moment, the camera pulls back and we see that she’s standing on a rocky promontory of a barren island, staring out at a mushroom-cloud explosion on the distant mainland. As her eyes grow wide at the intensity of this nuclear holocaust, we hear her saying, “The world was ending . . . and I was watching it.”

Hell of an opening. A few minutes later, we’re introduced to Prudence’s island companion, Helene—another willowy babe (albeit with horn-rimmed glasses) who’s married to a mad artist named Herman, who paints huge abstract canvases depicting apocalyptic scenes of urban carnage.

“I came here to escape the material bonds of society,” he tells Helene, “but now that society has totally vanished. So we’ve finally gotten our dream.”

“Yes, my love,” Helene says. “That is true. We have gotten our dream. But there is a problem: we are going to die.”

The fourth member of this jolly quartet is a Swedish recluse named Helgor, who’s doing a Walden Pond/Thoreau thing in a backward cottage on a corner of the island. Helene has the hots for Helgor, who has sworn off sex, not to mention electricity, electronically amplified sound, flush toilets, and anything that hasn’t been grown in organic soil. But, upon hearing that the world is ending, he decides to stop the fornication abstinence thing and lets himself be seduced by Helene. As they slide to the stone floor of his hovel, he tells her:

“I want to sup off your body. I want to drink your life force.”

Of course, it turns out that Mad Herman is shtupping Prudence and that she is with child. In a brilliantly observational moment, she tells him, “I feel a life expanding within me while death envelops everything.”

Helene finds out about Herman’s adultery with Prudence, and Helgor spills the beans about screwing Helene, and there are fisticuffs between the two boys, followed by half an hour of brooding silences, followed by an eventual reconciliation and a long-winded debate on the nature of existence, shot on a large outdoor stone patio, with the characters moving from white squares to black squares like (duh) figures in a chess game. As the postnuclear fires rage on the mainland, and the toxic nuclear clouds begin to descend on the island, the quartet decide to meet their destiny head-on.

“We should not end life by suffocation,” Mad Herman argues. “We should embrace the flames.”

With that, they all pile into a boat and head off into the inferno, with the strains of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey escorting them into their very own Götterdämmerung.

Fade to black. Credits.

When the movie was finished, I sat in my armchair for several minutes stupefied. Then I called my agent and launched into a rant about its inherent badness. Alison finally said, “Yeah, it’s a real doozy, isn’t it?”

“I can’t work with this guy. I’m canceling the trip.”

“Hang on for a moment,” she said. “There’s no reason not to meet Fleck. After all, it’s some fun in the sun, right? More to the point, why not sell him We Three Grunts . . . or Fun and Games or whatever the hell he wants to call it? I mean, if you hate what he does with it, we can get your name taken off the credits. In the meantime, I know I can fuck him out of a lot of money. I’m going pay-or-play on this one, Dave. A cool million. And I promise you he’ll pay it. Because even though we both know that registering your script under his name was a form of sweet talk, he still won’t want that made public. Without us even asking, he’ll pay big-time to keep it quiet.”

“You really have a low opinion of human nature.”

“Hey, I’m an agent.”

After I finished talking to Alison, I called Sally. Her assistant put me on hold for around three minutes, then got back on the line, sounding tense, saying that “something had come up” and Sally would call me back in ten minutes.

It was nearly an hour before she did ring me back. From the moment she got on the line, I knew that something was wrong.

“Bill Levy’s just had a heart attack,” she said, her voice shaky.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. Levy was her boss—and the man who’d brought Sally into Fox Television. He was her corporate father figure, and one of the few professional people she felt she could trust. “How bad is he?” I asked.

“Pretty bad. He collapsed during a planning meeting. Fortunately, there was a company nurse on the premises, and she was able to administer CPR before the ambulance came.”

“Where’s he now?”

“UCLA Medical. In intensive care. Listen, everything’s been thrown into chaos here by what’s happened. I’m going to be home late.”

“Fine, fine,” I said. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

But all she said was “Got to run” and hung up.

She didn’t arrive back until after midnight, looking drawn and enervated. I put my arms around her. She gently disengaged herself from my grip and flopped on the sofa.

“He made it—just,” she said. “But he’s still in a coma, and they are worried about brain damage.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, offering her something strong and alcoholic. But she only wanted Perrier.

“What makes this situation even shittier,” she said, “is the fact that Stu Barker has been put in charge of Bill’s division for the time being.”

This was bad news—Stu Barker was an ultra-ambitious asshole who had been gunning for Levy’s job for the past year. He also didn’t think much of Sally, because she was such a Levy partisan.

“So, what are you going to do?” I asked.

“What I have to do in a situation like this—draw my forces around me and keep that bastard Barker from undermining everything I’ve built up at Fox. And, I’m afraid, this also means that the week at Chez Fleck is definitely out for me.”

“I thought as much. I’ll call Bobby now and say we can’t make it.”

“But you should go.”

“With you facing a crisis like this one? No way.”

“Listen, I’m going to be working flat out for the next week. I mean, with Barker in charge of the division, the only way I’m going to keep things together is by being at the office fifteen hours a day.”

“Fine. But at least I’ll be waiting home for you at night, with tea, sympathy, and a martini.”

She reached over and squeezed my hand.

“That’s very sweet of you. But I want you to take this trip.”

“Sally . . .”

“Listen to me. I really am better off on my own. It means I don’t have to be focusing on anything else—and I can put all my energy into keeping my job. More to the point, you can’t turn this opportunity down. Because, at worst, it will be a laugh . . . and a very luxurious one at that. At best, the paycheck will be huge. Given that Stu Barker would like nothing better than to push me out of the company, the money might come in handy for us, right?”

I knew that Sally was talking garbage. She was one of the most employable television executives in town. But though I tried to argue her into letting me stay, she was adamant.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” she said.

“I’m not,” I said, trying to sound sanguine about her need to get me out of the house. “If you want me to go to Planet Fleck, so be it.”

“Thank you,” she said, kissing me lightly on the lips. “Listen, sorry to do this, but I’ve set up a late-night conference call with Lois and Peter,” she said, mentioning two of her closest Fox associates.

“No problem,” I said, getting up from the sofa. “I’ll be waiting for you in the bedroom.”

“I shouldn’t be too long,” she said, picking up the phone.

But when I fell asleep two hours later, she still hadn’t come to bed.

I woke at seven the next morning. She was already gone.

There was a note on the pillow beside me: “Off to an early strategy meeting with my team. I’ll call later.”

And she had scrawled an “S” at the bottom. No term of endearment. Just her initial.

An hour or so later, Bobby Barra phoned to arrange for one of Fleck’s chauffeurs to pick us up tomorrow morning and bring us to Burbank Airport.

“Phil took the 767 when he left for the island on Sunday,” he said. “So I’m afraid it’s just the Gulfstream.”

“I’ll live. But it looks like I’m coming alone.” And I explained Sally’s career crisis at Fox.

“Hey, fine by me,” Bobby said. “I mean, no offense, but if she has to stay behind, I’m not exactly going to be crying into my margarita.”

Then he told me to expect the chauffeur to arrive at my door by eight tomorrow morning.

“Party, party, guy,” he said, hanging up.

I packed a small bag. Then I went to the Selling You production office and looked at the early assembly of the first and second episodes. Sally never called once. When I got home that night, there were no messages from her on our voice mail. I spent the evening rereading We Three Grunts. I scribbled some notes about ways I would like to improve its structure, its narrative pacing—and make it a little more up to date. Using a red felt-tip pen, I started excising some of its bulkier dialogue. In screenwriting, the less you say, the better you say it. Keep it economic, keep it simple, let the pictures do the talking—because the medium you’re writing for is the pictures. And when you have pictures, who needs a lot of words?

By eleven that night, I had worked my way through half the script. Still no call from Sally. I considered ringing her cellphone. I dismissed the idea. She might interpret the call as either clingy, needy, or paternalistic (in a why aren’t you home? sort of way). So I simply went to bed.

When the alarm went off at seven the next morning, I found another note on the pillow beside me.

“Crazy time. Got home at one last night, and I’m now running out to a six-thirty breakfast with some of the Fox legal people. Call me at eight on my cell. Oh . . . and get a suntan for me.”

This time she did scrawl Love, S. at the end of the note. That cheered me up. But when I rang her an hour later (as requested), she was brisk.

“This isn’t a good time,” she said. “Will you be taking your cell with you?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll get back to you then.”

And she hung up. I forced myself not to be troubled by her brusqueness. Sally was a player. And this was how players behaved when things went to the mat.

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. I found a liveried chauffeur waiting outside next to a shiny new Lincoln Town Car.

“And how are you today, sir?”

“Ready for some fun in the sun,” I said.

FOUR

BOBBY AND I were the only passengers on the Gulfstream. However, there were four crew: two pilots and two hostesses. The hostesses were both blond, both in their twenties, and both looked as if they were onetime drum majorettes. They were named Cheryl and Nancy, and they both worked exclusively for “Air Fleck,” as Bobby referred to the gentleman’s fleet of planes. Before we took off, Bobby was already on the make with Cheryl:

“Do you think I might be able to get a massage en route?”

“Sure,” Cheryl said. “I’m studying osteopathy part-time.”

Bobby flashed her a sly smile. “And say I wanted a very localized massage?”

Cheryl’s smile tightened. Then she turned to me and said, “Sir, would you like a drink before takeoff?”

“That would be nice. Do you have any sparkling water?”

“Come on, Dave,” Bobby said, “you’ve got to toast a trip like this with a little French fizz. Air Fleck only serves Cristal . . . isn’t that right, dear?”

“Yes, sir,” Cheryl said. “Cristal is the champagne on board.”

“Two glasses of Cristal then, dear,” Bobby said. “And please . . . make them king-size.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “And should I ask Nancy to take your breakfast order before takeoff?”

“That would work,” Bobby said.

As soon as Cheryl disappeared into the galley, Bobby turned to me and said, “Cute ass, if you like the pert cheerleader type.”

“You’re a total class act, Bobby.”

“Hey, I was just flirting.”

“You call asking for hand relief a form of flirting?”

“I didn’t ask directly. I was being subtle.”

“You’re about as subtle as a car crash. And who asks for a king-size Cristal? This isn’t Burger King, you know. Rule number one of being a good guest, Bobby: don’t try to sleep with the help.”

“Hey, Mr. Hoity-Toity, you’re the guest here.”

“And what does that make you, Bobby?”

“The habitué.”

Cheryl showed up with the two glasses of champagne. Accompanying them were small triangles of toast, dappled with black fish eggs.

“Beluga?” Bobby asked.

“It’s Iranian beluga, sir,” Cheryl said.

The pilot came on the loudspeaker, asking us to buckle up for takeoff. We were seated in thick overstuffed leather armchairs, bolted to the floor but fully swivelable. According to Bobby, this was the small Gulfstream—a mere eight seats in the forward cabin, with a small double bed, a work station, and a sofa adorning the rear cabin. The plane was being flown this morning solely for our benefit. But I wasn’t complaining. I sipped my Cristal. The plane finished its taxi and came to a halt. Then it gathered up momentum and charged down the runway. Within seconds we were airborne, the San Fernando Valley disappearing beneath us.

“So what’s it going to be?” Bobby asked. “A movie or two? A little high-stakes poker? A Chateaubriand for lunch? They might even have lobster tails . . .”

“I’m going to do some work,” I said.

“You’re a lot of fun.”

“I want this script in improved shape before our host sees it. Do you think he’s got a secretary on the island?”

“Phil’s got an entire business services division there. You want the script typed up, no problem.”

Nancy came out for our breakfast order. Bobby asked, “Could you do a fluffy egg-white omelette with scallions and just a touch of Gruyère?”

“Sure,” Nancy said. Then she graced me with a smile. “And for you, sir?”

“Just grapefruit and toast and black coffee, please.”

“Since when did you become a Mormon?” Bobby asked.

“Mormons don’t drink coffee,” I said, then excused myself to work in the back cabin.

I dug out the script of We Three Grunts and my red pen. I set up shop at the desk. I read through the first half, reasonably pleased with the changes I had made to date. What struck me most about the original 1993 draft was the way I had needed to spell everything out—to ram home a point with a pile driver. There were decent patches of dialogue, but God, how I needed to show my cleverness, my bravado. At heart, this was nothing more than a generic heist movie. But I’d tried to disguise the fact by decorating the action with smart-assed repartee—which did nothing but call attention to itself. It oozed self-consciousness. And continuing the work I had done to date, I stripped it right back—excising vast chunks of overexplanatory dialogue and unnecessary plot points—turning it into something tougher, grittier, more sardonic . . . and definitely sharper.

I worked steadily for five hours. My only interruptions were the arrival of breakfast and the sound of Bobby’s Hugh Hefner smoothie voice placing further ludicrous orders (“I know this might be a stretch, dear . . . but could you do a banana daiquiri for me?”), or working the phones, barking orders to some minion back at Barra HQ in LA. Cheryl made the occasional appearance in the back cabin to top off my coffee cup and ask if I needed anything.

“Do you think you might be able to gag my friend?”

She smiled. “With pleasure.”

In the forward cabin, I could hear Bobby shout into the telephone, “Listen, you dumbshit guinea, if you don’t sort out our little problem pronto, I’m not just going to fuck your sister, I’ll fuck your mother too.”

Cheryl’s smile tightened again. I said, “You know, he’s really not my friend. He’s just my broker.”

“I’m sure he makes you a lot of money, sir. May I get you anything else while I’m here?”

“I’d just like to use the phone once he’s off it.”

“No need to wait, sir. We’ve got two lines.”

She picked up the phone on the desk, punched in a code, then handed it to me.

“Just dial the area code and the number, and you’ll get straight through.”

As Cheryl left the cabin, I dialed Sally’s cellphone. After two rings, I was connected to her voice mail. I tried to conceal my disappointment by leaving an up-tempo message.

“Hey there, it’s me at thirty-three thousand feet. I do think we should buy ourselves a Gulfstream for Christmas. It’s the only way to travel—though preferably without Bobby Barra, who’s trying to win an Oscar for Best Performance by a Sleazy Male. Anyway . . . the point of this call is to see how everything is going at Fortress Fox, and also to tell you that I really wish to hell you were seated opposite me right now. I love you, darling . . . and when you’ve climbed out of the corporate trenches for a minute, give me a call on my cell. Later, babe . . .”

I hung up, feeling that empty feeling that always accompanies speaking to an answering machine. Then I went back to work.

As we were beginning our descent into Antigua, I had finished my overhaul of the script. I flicked through the changes I had made, generally pleased with its tighter narrative structure, its punchier dialogue . . . though I knew that, as soon as I read the retyped version, I’d immediately start wanting to make more changes. And if Philip Fleck really decided to film it, he would, no doubt, demand a completely new draft, which would lead on to a second draft, a polish, a third draft, another polish, the arrival of a script doctor, his draft, his polish, then a third writer brought in to beef up the action, then a fourth writer to hone plot points, then Fleck might suddenly decide to shift the entire action from Chicago to Nicaragua, and turn the entire thing into a musical about the Sandinista Revolution, replete with singing guerrillas . . .

“Mr. Greta-fucking-Garbo returns,” Bobby said as I reentered the front cabin. “Remind me never to travel with you again.”

“Hey, work is work—and Fleck will have a new draft of the script to look at tomorrow. Anyway, from the sound of it, you were busy too. Was that an associate you were threatening?”

“Just a guy who screwed up a little deal for me.”

“Remind me to never get on the wrong side of you.”

“Hey, I don’t fuck clients—and I’m using the ‘literal and figurative’ definition here too.” He flashed me one of his smiles. “Unless, of course, the client fucks me. But why should that happen, right?”

I smiled back. “Why indeed?” I said.

The captain came on the loudspeaker, asking us to buckle up for landing. I peered out the window and saw a large swathe of blue defining the landscape below. Then we banked sharply as sea gave way to a shantytown—dozens of small, grim cubed dwellings, looking like a sprawl of corrupted dice. After a moment, they vanished too—and we were descending fast through the palms, the pock-marked tarmac rising up to meet us, the sun incandescent, unforgiving.

We taxied to a stop far away from the main terminal building. As Cheryl opened the door and pressed the electronic button that lowered the stairs, we were hit by a rush of rank tropical heat. I noticed two men waiting for us: a heavily tanned blond guy dressed in a pilot’s uniform, and an Antiguan policeman. He had an ink stamp and pad in one hand. As soon as we disembarked, the pilot said, “Mr. Barra, Mr. Armitage . . . welcome to Antigua. I’m Spencer Bishop, and I’ll be piloting you to Saffron Island this afternoon. But first, we need you to clear Antiguan immigration. Would you show this gentleman your passports, please?”

We handed them over to the immigration officer. He didn’t bother to check our photographs or even notice whether our respective travel documents were valid. He simply stamped an entry visa on the first blank page he found, then handed them back to us. The pilot thanked the officer and proffered his hand. As the officer shook it, I noticed that he palmed a folded American banknote. Then the pilot touched me lightly on the shoulder and pointed to a small helicopter, parked one hundred yards from the plane.

“Let’s get you guys on board,” he said.

Within minutes, we were strapped into our seats, talking to each other via headsets, as the rotary blades did their loud concussing thing, and the pilot pulled down the throttle, and the airport vanished, and the blue began again. I stared out of the window at the aquamarine horizon, dazzled by its purity of color, its sheer boundlessness. As we flew closer, this fragment became more visually defined—an island around half a mile in circumference, dappled by thick palms, with a sprawling low-level house smack in the middle. I glimpsed an extended dock, against which a few boats were moored. There was a long strip of sand near the dock. And then, suddenly below us, was a circle of tarmac, with a large X in its center. It took a moment or two for the pilot to maneuver us above it. Then he landed us right on the X with a light, but noticeable, bump.

Again, two functionaries were awaiting us—a man and a woman, both in their late twenties, both blond and heavily tanned and wearing the same tropical uniform—khaki shorts, white Nikes with white socks, a mid-blue polo shirt with the words Saffron Island discreetly monogrammed in italics. They looked like upscale camp counselors. They were standing next to a new dark blue Land Rover Discovery. When they smiled, they showed off perfect dental work.

“Hey there, Mr. Armitage,” the guy said. “Welcome to Saffron Island.”

“And welcome back, Mr. Barra,” the woman said.

“And welcome back to you too,” Bobby said. “It’s Megan, right?”

“You’ve got a great memory.”

“I never forget a beautiful woman.”

I cast my eyes heavenward but said nothing.

“I’m Gary,” the guy said. “And, as Mr. Barra already said, this is Megan . . .”

“But you can call me Meg.”

“And we’re going to be looking after you both during your stay here. Anything you want, anything you need, we are the people to call on.”

“Who’s assigned to who?” Bobby asked.

“Well,” Gary said, “since Meg looked after you the last time, Mr. Barra, we thought that we’d let her take care of Mr. Armitage during this visit.”

I glanced at Megan and Gary. Their fixed smiles betrayed nothing. Bobby pursed his lips. He looked disappointed.

“Whatever,” he said.

“So let’s get your bags on board,” Gary said, moving quickly on.

“How many bags did you bring, Mr. Armitage?” Megan asked me.

“Just one . . . and, please, my name is David.”

Bobby and I sat in the Land Rover—the motor running, the air conditioning already cranked up—as the two camp counselors loaded up our bags.

“So, let me guess,” I said, “you put the moves on Meg the last time you were here.”

Bobby shrugged. “Hey, it comes with having a penis, right?”

“She’s really the pumped pectorals type, isn’t she? Did she get you in a half nelson when you tried to grab her ass?”

“It didn’t get that far . . . and can we drop this?”

“But Bobby, I love hearing about your romantic exploits. They’re so touching.”

“Put it this way—I wouldn’t come on to her, if I was you. She’s got biceps like GI Joe.”

“Why would I want to come on to her, when I’ve got Sally waiting for me back home?”

“Oh, Mr. Monogamous Virtue here. Mr. Great Husband and Father.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Hey, it was a joke.”

“Sure it was.”

“Touchy, touchy.”

“Did you take lessons in being a moron, or does it just come naturally?”

“Sorry if I hit a sensitive spot.”

“I am not sensitive about . . .”

“Leaving your wife and kid?” he said with a smile.

“You shithead.”

“The prosecution rests.”

Meg opened the front passenger door.

“How are you guys doing?” she asked.

“We’re having our first fight,” Bobby said.

Gary climbed in the driver’s seat and put the car into gear. We traveled down an unpaved road, the canopy of trees quickly closing over us. After a minute or so, I turned around and looked behind me. The little landing strip had vanished. Up ahead of us was nothing but jungle.

“Now gentlemen,” Gary said, “I have some news. Mr. Fleck is delighted you’re with us, and he wants you both to have a great stay on the island. Unfortunately, however, he’s had to go away for a few days . . .”

“What?” I said.

“Mr. Fleck left yesterday for a few days.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Bobby said.

“No, Mr. Barra—I am definitely not kidding.”

“But he knew we were coming,” Bobby said.

“Of course he did. And he regrets he had to leave on such short notice . . .”

“Did some big business thing come up?” Bobby asked.

“Not exactly,” Gary said with a slight laugh. “But you know how keen he is on fishing. And when we got word that the marlin were biting down off the coast of St. Vincent . . .”

“St. Vincent?” Bobby said. “But that’s, like, a two-day cruise from here.”

“More like thirty-six hours.”

“Terrific,” Bobby said. “So, if he gets there tonight and fishes tomorrow, he won’t be back for another three days.”

“I’m afraid that’s about right,” Gary said. “But Mr. Fleck wants you to kick back and enjoy everything Saffron Island has to offer.”

“But we came—at his request—to see him,” Bobby said.

“And you will see him,” Gary said. “In a couple of days.”

Bobby nudged me with his elbow. “What the hell do you think of this?”

I knew what I wanted to say: “ . . . and you kept telling me you were his great friend.” But I didn’t want any more verbal fisticuffs with Bobby. So instead I just said, “Well, if I had to choose between a writer and a marlin, I’d definitely go for the marlin.”

“Yeah, but fish don’t have to worry about a client base and the current fucked-up state of the Nasdaq.”

“Now, Mr. Barra—you know that our Business Services Center can patch you right into the center of any market you want. And we can open a dedicated line for you and your clients on a twenty-four/seven basis, should you want one. So, really, there’s nothing to panic about.”

“And,” Meg interjected, “the weather forecast for the next week is perfect. Not a hint of rain, light southerly breezes, and the mercury should hold steady at eighty-five degrees.”

“So you can keep track of the market and get a tan,” Gary said.

“Are you pissed off?” Bobby asked me.

Of course I was. But, once again, I decided to play it nice and temperate. So I shrugged and said, “I guess I could use some sun.”

The Land Rover continued to bump along the jungly track. Then it came to a clearing. We parked next to an open-air shed, beneath which were three other Land Rovers and a large white transit van. I was going to ask why there was a need for four Land Rovers and a transit van on a tiny island . . . but, once again, I said nothing. Instead, I followed Meg as she led us up a small footpath, paved in chunky pebbles. After ten yards, we came to a small footbridge, which traversed a large ornamental pond. I glanced down and noticed that it was loaded with a wide variety of tropical fish. Then I looked up and gasped. For there, in front of me, was the massive expanse of Chez Fleck.

From the air, it appeared to be a large timber structure. Up close, it revealed itself as an extravagant piece of modern design—a low-level sprawl of huge windows and lacquered wood. At either end of this tropical mansion were two cathedral-like towers, framed on all sides by four towering panes of glass. Between these two winglike structures was a smaller series of V-shaped towers, each with a large picture window. We followed a wooden boardwalk to the opposite side of the house. As we turned the corner, I suppressed another gauche gasp—as a vast natural rock swimming pool had been set directly in front of the mansion. Beyond this, the blue began—as the house had a clear, unimpeded view of the Caribbean Sea.

“Good God,” I said. “That’s some view.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “It’s serious ‘fuck you.’ ”

His cellphone started ringing. He answered it. After muttering a hello, he was instantly engaged in business.

“So what’s the margin? . . . Yeah, but this time last year they were trading at twenty-nine . . . Of course I’ve been monitoring the Netscape guys . . . do you really think I’m going to walk you into a sucker punch? . . . you remember the market blip way back in ’97 . . . February fourteenth, 1997, right after the Lewinsky stupidity hit the fan, and there was a minor correction for around seventy-two hours. But the long-term implications . . .”

I listened on, dazzled by Bobby’s mastery of fact and figures and the smooth delivery that he used for clients (as compared to the ferocious way he bullied minions). I noticed Gary and Meg also listening in to his consummate salesmanship. I wondered if they were thinking what I was thinking: how could such a sharp man of the marketplace turn into such a crass clown when faced with serious money? And why did he insist on playing the Neanderthal when it came to women? Then again, money and sex make fools of us all. Perhaps Bobby had decided that he didn’t mind letting the world see how—when it came to his obsessions—he was positively naked in his stupidity.

He snapped shut his cellphone, then unclenched his shoulders and said, “Never take on a dermatologist as a client. Every blip in the market is a melanoma to them. Anyway,” he said, nudging Gary, “you heard me promise the prick an answer in ten . . .”

Gary picked up the walkie-talkie on his belt and spoke into it.

“Julie, I’ve got Mr. Barra en route. He’ll want the full Nasdaq index up on screen by the time we reach you . . . in about three minutes. Over?”

A voice crackled on the walkie-talkie’s speaker. “He’s got it.”

“Lead the way,” Bobby said to Gary, then swerved his head toward me and added: “Catch your act later, if you still deign to talk to a low-grade like me.”

As soon as they were gone, Meg said, “Shall I show you to your room now?”

“Fine by me.”

We went inside. The main entrance hall was a long, airy corridor, with white walls and bleached wood floors. As I walked in, I found myself immediately face to face with one of the key works of twentieth-century American abstract art: an arresting canvas of mathematical equations set amidst a brilliantly textured gray surface.

“Is that Mark Tobey’s Universal Field?” I asked Meg.

“You know your art,” she said.

“I’ve only seen it in books. Amazing.”

“If you like art, you should check out what we call the Big Room around here.”

“Do we have the time now?”

“This is Saffron Island—there’s as much time as you want.”

We turned left and walked down the corridor, past a long framed collection of classic Diane Arbus photographs. The Big Room was just that—one of the two vast, cathedral-like wings, with a forty-foot ceiling, completely clad in glass, and a massive indoor palm tree sprouting from the floor. Like everything I had seen so far, the Big Room was a testament to expensive good taste. There was a Steinway grand piano. There were long sofas and overstuffed armchairs in discreet off-white shades. There was a massive aquarium, built flush into one of the white stone walls. There was artfully subtle lighting. And there was a lot of art on the walls . . . the sort of work that you generally expected to encounter at MOMA or the Whitney or the Getty or the Art Institute of Chicago.

I moved around the room like a visitor at a museum, boggled by the work on show. Hopper. Ben Shahn. Two mid-period Philip Gustons. Man Ray. Thomas Hart Baker. Claes Oldenburg. George L. K. Morris. And a collection of Edward Steichen’s landmark Vanity Fair photographs from the thirties.

On and on it went. There must have been at least forty works hanging on the walls of the Big Room. I couldn’t even begin to fathom the amount of money expended to create such a collection.

“It’s unbelievable what he’s got here.”

A voice out of nowhere said:

“You should see what’s on display at the other houses.”

I looked up and found myself staring at a small squat guy, in his mid-forties, around five foot five, with shoulder-length hair, braided into a greasy ponytail. He wore a pair of denim cut-offs, Birkenstock sandals, and a T-shirt stretched over his pot belly, with a picture of Jean-Luc Godard, beneath which was the quotation: “Cinema is truth at 24 frames per second.”

“You must be Dave Armitage,” he said.

“That’s me,” I said.

“Chuck Karlson,” he said, walking over and proffering his hand. I took it. It was wet to the touch. “I’m a big fan of yours.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“Yeah—Selling You is, for my bucks, the best thing on television. Phil thinks so too.”

“You’re a friend of his?”

“An associate, actually. I’m his film guy.”

“And what does a ‘film guy’ do?”

“Primarily I look after his archive.”

“He’s got a film archive?”

“You bet—with around seven thousand films on celluloid and another fifteen thousand split between video and DVD. Outside of the American Film Institute, it’s the best archive in the country.”

“Let alone the Caribbean.”

Chuck smiled. “He only keeps around two thousand movies here on Saffron.”

“I guess with no multiplex in town . . .”

“Yeah—and, you know, Blockbuster doesn’t exactly ship Pasolini movies out here.”

“You like Pasolini?”

“To me, he’s a god.”

“And to Mr. Fleck?”

“He’s God the Father. Anyway, we’ve got all twelve of his films—so whenever you like, the screening room’s yours.”

“Thanks,” I said, thinking that The Gospel According to St. Matthew (the only Pasolini I’d seen) was about the last thing I wanted to watch on a Caribbean island.

“By the way, I know Phil’s really looking forward to working with you.”

“That’s nice.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s a great script.”

“Which one? His or mine?”

Another of his major smirks. “They both have equal validity.”

That’s certainly diplomatic of you, I thought, considering they’re both the same.

“Listen, speaking of the script,” I said, “I’ve done a bit of work on it over the past few days and was wondering if I might get it typed up.”

“No problem. I’ll get Joan to drop over to your room and pick it up. See you at the movies, Dave.”

Meg now led me to my room. En route, I asked her about herself. She said that she was from Florida and had been part of “the Saffron Island crew” for the past two years. She used to work on a cruise ship out of Nassau, but this was a lot more pleasant. And easy—because, by and large, the crew were the only people here.

“You mean, Mr. Fleck doesn’t use the island very often?” I asked.

“Only about three or four weeks a year.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“It’s empty . . . though, occasionally, he might lend the island to one of his friends. But that’s maybe another four weeks a year maximum. Otherwise, we’ve got the place to ourselves.”

“How many are you?”

“A full-time staff of fourteen.”

“Good God,” I said, thinking what the annual wage bill must be like . . . especially given that the island was in use less than two months per year.

“Well, Mr. Fleck’s got the money,” she said.

My room was in one of the smaller V-shaped turrets that defined the center section of the house. “Small” was an inaccurate way of describing this loftlike space. White stone walls. Hardwood floors. Floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out directly on the water. A king-size Mission bed. A large living area, with two enormous sofas. A full bar, stocked with everything upscale. A bathroom with a sunken bathtub, a sauna, and one of those showers—encased in clear Plexiglas—that shot water at five different corners of the body. Above the bedroom, accessed by a circular metal staircase, was a complete office area, with all the requisite communications gadgets.

But, without question, the gadgety coup de théâtre was the three flat computer screens in my room. They were conveniently located on the desk, on an end table in the living room, and by the bed. Each screen was completely interactive. You touched it with your finger and it came to life, informing you that this was your very own in-room audio and video center. I tapped the screen, and then the prompt marked Video Library. The letters of the alphabet were then displayed. I touched A—and a list of thirty films appeared on the screen: everything from Godard’s Alphaville to Joseph Mankewicz’s All About Eve to Joseph Strick’s Ulysses. I touched Alphaville. Suddenly, the state-of-the-art Panasonic flat-screen television (suspended on a wall) came to life. After a second, Godard’s skewed futuristic classic filled the screen. I hit the back button on the screen. The alphabet appeared again. I touched C and selected Citizen Kane. Within seconds, Alphaville had ended and I was watching Welles’s classic opening tracking shot—the high sequestered walls and gates, behind which lurks the vast mansion of a modern-day Kubla Khan.

But Charles Foster Kane never had a toy like this on-command movie system.

A knock came at the door. When I shouted “Come in,” Meg entered.

“Mind if I unpack your things now?” she asked.

“Thanks, but I can do that myself.”

“It’s all part of the service,” she said, hoisting my bag. “I am your butler.”

She shot me the slightest of smiles—one that just hinted at a trace of irony behind the casual, yet highly professional, facade.

“See you’ve figured out the movie system. Kind of nifty, isn’t it?”

“Just a little. It’s an amazing selection of films.”

“Mr. Fleck has everything,” she said, disappearing into the adjoining dressing room with my bag. I went upstairs to the office area. I unpacked my laptop and plugged it directly into the Internet link. As Meg had promised, this fiber-optic system was just a little faster than a single exhalation of breath. Within a nanosecond, I was online and retrieving my e-mail. Among the messages from Brad Bruce and Alison was the one I was hoping for.

Darling,

It’s crazy here. But I am still holding my own.

Missing you.

S.

I had several immediate thoughts about this e-mail. The first was: Well, at least she did make contact. The second was: Well, at least she did say she was missing me. And the third was: Why didn’t she sign it “love”?

Then the rational side of me kicked in, and I reminded myself once again that she was in a major LA-style Sturm und Drang. And in Hollywood, a professional crisis of this ilk was immediately transformed by all involved into something approaching the siege of Stalingrad.

In other words, she was preoccupied.

There was another knock on the door. A woman in her early thirties, with short-cropped black hair and a deep tan, walked in. She was also dressed in the regulation Saffron Island T-shirt and shorts. Like Meg, she also looked like one of those clean-limbed, fresh-faced women who probably once did time as a sorority sister at some Big Ten University and no doubt dated a fullback named Bud.

“Hey there, Mr. Armitage,” she said. “I’m Joan. You settling in okay?”

“Just fine.”

“Hear you’ve got a script for us to type up.”

“That’s right,” I said, grabbing the screenplay out of my computer bag and heading downstairs to the living room. “I’m afraid I don’t have the original disk . . .”

“No worries about that. We can retype the whole thing.”

“Won’t that be a lot of work?”

She shrugged. “Things have been a little slow here recently. I could use the work.”

“You’re going to have to decipher my hieroglyphics,” I said, flipping open to the third page and pointing to my numerous excisions and additions.

“I’ve seen worse. Anyway, you’re going to be here for a few days, right?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll call you if I get stuck anywhere.”

As she left, Meg came out of the dressing room, carrying two pairs of my trousers.

“These got a little crushed in your bag, so I’ll get them freshly pressed. Now are you in the mood for a proper dinner or just something light?”

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly nine p.m., though my brain was still four hours behind on LA time. “Something very light, if it’s no trouble . . .”

“Well, Mr. Armitage . . .”

“David, please.”

“Mr. Fleck likes us to use Mr. with his guests. So how about a dozen oysters and a bottle of . . .”

“Gewürztraminer. But just a glass.”

“I’ll get the sommelier to bring a bottle. If you don’t drink it all, no big deal.”

“There’s a sommelier here?”

“Every island should have one.” Another of her little smiles. “Back in a bit with your oysters.”

Then she left.

A few minutes later, the sommelier rang. His name was Claude. He said that he was happy to help me choose a Gewürztraminer—and he had around two dozen in his cellar. I asked him to suggest one. He began an elaborate goût-par-goût rundown on his choix préferés, informing me that he especially favored a 1986 Gisselbrecht: “un vin d’Alsace exceptionnel,” with a perfect balance of fruit and acidity.

“You know I just want a glass,” I said.

“We will still send up the bottle.”

As soon as I was off the phone, I went online, found a website for vintage wines, and typed Gisselbrecht Gewürztraminer 1986. A photograph of the wine in question appeared on my laptop screen, along with a detailed description, informing me that among premier cru Gewürztraminers, this was top of the pops. And I could order a bottle for a mere $275 “at a special discount price.”

As I was beginning to discover, life on Fleck’s Caribbean retreat was played according to a money-no-object set of rules.

I sat forward again in the desk chair and punched out a fast e-mail to Sally:

Darling,

Greetings from the nouveau riche land of Oz. This place is both wonderful and absurd. It’s the high-rent version of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” I have to admit it: the guy’s got taste . . . but after just a half hour here, I’m already thinking: there’s something deeply skewed about having everything you want. Of course, just to let us know who’s got the ultimate upper hand in life, Fleck is not in situ just at the moment. Instead, he’s playing Hemingway and chasing some big white fish somewhere, leaving yours truly to cool his heels here. I don’t know whether to be affronted or to simply consider this the ultimate freebie. For the moment, I’ve decided to adopt the second mind-set, and do useful, hyperactive things like work on my tan and catch up on my sleep. I only wish I was catching up on my sleep in bed next to you. I can be reached directly at 0704.555.8660. Please call when you manage to find a moment’s break in the chariot race. Knowing you, I’m certain you’ve worked out a strategy that will see you through this little crisis. You’re smarter than smart, after all.

I love you. And I wish you were here.

David

I sent the e-mail. Then I picked up the phone and called my daughter in Sausalito. My ex-wife answered the phone. She was as friendly as usual.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said tonelessly.

“That’s right, it’s me. And how are you?”

“What does that matter?”

“Look, Lucy, I don’t blame you for still being pissed with me . . . but isn’t there a statute of limitations for this kind of thing?”

“No. And I don’t like being palsy with assholes.”

“Fine, fine, have it your way. The conversation’s closed. May I speak to my daughter, please?”

“No, you can’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because it’s Wednesday evening—and if you were a responsible parent, you would remember that on Wednesday evening your daughter has ballet class.”

“I am a responsible parent.”

“I am not even going to go there.”

“Fine by me. Now I’m going to give you a number where I’m staying in the Caribbean . . .”

“My, my, how well you treat that Princeton slut . . .”

My hand tightened around the phone.

“I’m not going to dignify that reprehensible comment with an answer. But if you want to know the truth . . .”

“Not particularly.”

“Then just take the number and ask Caitlin to call me back.”

“Why does she need to call you when you’re seeing her the day after tomorrow?”

My anxiety level—already high, courtesy of this warm, cordial conversation—jumped a notch or two.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I’m not due a visit until two weeks from Friday.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you fucking forgot . . .”

“Forgot what?”

“Forgot that, as agreed between us, you’d be taking Caitlin this weekend because I’m going away to a conference . . .”

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. She was right. And this was not going to be pretty.

“Hang on . . . when did we discuss this? Six, eight weeks ago?”

“Don’t try to play that ‘it was so long ago’ amnesia card with me.”

“But it’s the truth.”

“Bullshit.”

“What can I say—except a major mea maxima culpa.”

“Not accepted. Anyway, a deal’s a deal—so you’ve got to be back here in thirty-six hours.”

“Sorry, but that’s not possible.”

“David—you are coming back, as agreed.”

“I wish I could, but . . .”

“Don’t fuck with me here . . .”

“I am about five thousand miles from you. I have business to do here. I cannot leave.”

“If you don’t do this . . .”

“I’m sure you can fly your sister down from Portland. Or hire a nanny for the weekend. And yes, I will pick up the tab.”

“You really are the most selfish pig in history.”

“You are entitled to your opinion, Lucy. Now here’s my number out here . . .”

“We don’t want your number. Because I doubt if Caitlin will want to speak with you.”

“That’s for her to decide.”

“You killed her sense of security the day you walked out. And, I promise you, she’ll end up hating you for it.”

I said nothing, as the phone was shaking in my hand. Finally Lucy spoke again.

“I’m really going to get you back for this.”

And she hung up.

I put down the phone. I put my head in my hands. I felt an appalling wave of guilt.

But I still wasn’t going to rush back across the continent, just so Lucy could attend a conference for a day and a half. Yes, the matter had slipped my mind. But Jesus, it was nearly two months since she’d mentioned it. And it wasn’t as if I had ever missed any of my designated weekends with Caitlin. On the contrary, she’d been asking to spend more time with Sally and myself in LA. So much for her I doubt she’ll want to speak with you crap. Lucy’s sense of grievance knew no frontiers. As far as she was concerned, I was Mr. Bad Guy—and though I might have acted selfishly by deciding to have an affair, she would never confront her own structural weaknesses that helped push our marriage over the edge (or, at least, that’s what I was told by the therapist I saw during the divorce).

Another knock at the door. I shouted, “Come in.” Meg arrived, wheeling in an elegant stainless steel cart. I came downstairs. My dozen oysters were accompanied by a basket of brown bread and a small green salad. The bottle of Gewürztraminer was in a clear Plexiglas cooler.

“Here it is,” she said. “How ’bout I set it up on the balcony? You can catch the last of the sunset.”

“Sounds fine to me.”

She opened the French doors off the living room. I found myself staring at a blood orange sun turning liquid and trickling slowly into the darkened waters of the Caribbean Sea.

I slumped into a chair on the balcony and tried to block out the jumble of emotions I was feeling in the wake of that vitriol-charged phone call with Lucy. I must have been radiating stress, because as soon as she finished setting up the table, Meg said, “You look like you could use a drink.”

“How right you are.”

As she uncorked the wine, I asked, “What’s Mr. Barra been getting up to?”

“He’s been on the phone nonstop. And he’s been shouting all the time.”

“Please tell him I’ve gone to bed early tonight,” I said, thinking that I really couldn’t take another dose of Bobby today.

“You’ve got it.”

She uncorked the wine. She poured a tiny amount into the long fluted glass.

“Off you go,” she said cheerfully.

I lifted the glass. I did all the standard operating stuff: swirling the wine, giving it a good sniff, and then letting just the smallest drop touch my tongue. Immediately I felt something close to a high-class electrical charge. It tasted so damn good.

“That really works,” I said. But it should, at $275 a bottle.

“Glad to hear it,” she said, filling the glass. “Anything else I can get you?”

“Nothing at all . . . but thanks for everything.”

“Hey, it’s all part of the service. Just pick up the phone anytime you need anything.”

“You’re spoiling me.”

“That’s the idea.”

I raised my glass. I looked out at the waning sun’s final meltdown. I took a deep breath and caught that frangipani and eucalyptus aroma that announces life in the tropics. I sipped the absurdly expensive, absurdly wonderful wine. And I said, “You know, I really do think I could get used to all this.”

FIVE

I SLEPT LIKE THE dead and woke with that curious elation that accompanies nine comatose hours of rest. Propping myself up against the pillows, I realized just how piano-wire taut I had been ever since my breakthrough and its resulting cataclysms. Success is supposed to simplify your life. Inevitably, it complicates it further—and perhaps we need the complications, the intrigues, the fresh strivings for even greater success. Once we’ve achieved what we’ve always wanted, we suddenly discover a new need, a new sense of something lacking. And so we travail on, in search of this new accomplishment, this new change of life, in the hope that, this time, the sense of contentment will be permanent . . . even if it means upending everything else we’ve built up over the years.

But then, when you’ve reached this new plateau of achievement, you find yourself wondering: can you sustain all this now? Might it slip away from you? Or—worse yet—might you tire of it all and discover that what you had in the past was actually what you wanted all along?

I snapped out of my melancholic reverie, reminding myself that—in the words of that well-known Hollywood insider, Marcus Aurelius—change is nature’s delight. And most guys I know (especially writers) would sell their mothers to be in my position right now. Particularly when I was able to press a button to raise a blind, behind which lay the azure blue of a Caribbean morning. Or when I could lift the phone and have anything I wanted sent to my room.

And then there was the pleasant discovery that Bobby Barra had suddenly left town in a hurry.

I found out this little piece of information when I finally forced myself out of bed to use the bathroom and noticed an envelope pushed under my door. I opened it and discovered the following scrawled note:

Asshole,

I was going to ring you last night, but Meg said you’d already gone to bed with your teddy bear. Anyway, five minutes after we arrived yesterday word came from Wall Street that the chairman of some new armaments outfit due to IPO next week had just been indicted by the Fed for everything from embezzlement and fraud to sodomizing a dachshund. Anyway, as luck would have it, my associates and I have around $30 million riding on this IPO, which means that I have to hightail it to New York right away and play fireman before the entire fucking deal goes up in smoke.

Which, in turn, means that you will be denied my company for the next couple of days. I’m certain you’re heartbroken, bereft, and popping champagne corks as you read this. We seem to have gotten on each other’s wick yesterday. Of course, you were totally in the wrong. Of course, I also hope that we’re still friends.

Enjoy the island. You’re a complete jerk if you don’t. I’ll try to get back here in a couple of days—by which time Herr Host should be back with all the minnows he’s snagged.

Go easy. You really do look like shit—so a couple of days in the sun should make you look less shitty.

Later,

Bobby

I couldn’t help but smile. Bobby really knew how to reel in his friends just when they were about to permanently write him off.

Breakfast arrived, accompanied by a bottle of 1991 Cristal.

“Drink as much or as little as you want,” said Meg, setting up the plates on my balcony.

I actually drank two glasses, and ate the plate of tropical fruit, and sampled the basket of exotic muffins, and drank the coffee. I listened to Grieg’s Lyric Pieces for piano as I ate, discovering that there was a discreet speaker built into the balcony wall. The sun was at full wattage. The mercury seemed to be in the mid-eighties. And, bar a quick check of my e-mail, there was nothing on the agenda for today—except sitting in the sun.

I regretted my decision to go online. Because the morning’s communiqués from cyberspace were anything but cheery. First came a strident missive from Sally:

David,

I was surprised and hurt by your description of my current imbroglio at Fox as nothing more than a “little crisis.” I am fighting for my professional life right now, and what I need more than anything is your support. Instead, you were patronizing, and I was so incredibly disappointed by your response. I so want to know that I have your confidence and your love.

I have to fly to New York this morning. Don’t try to buzz me, but do send me an e-mail. I want to believe that this is all just a bad call on your part.

Sally

I read her e-mail twice, stunned by her complete misinterpretation of my words. I went into my AOL filing cabinet and reread my e-mail of the previous night, trying to figure out how the hell she could have taken offense. After all, all I’d written was:

Knowing you, I’m certain you’ve worked out a strategy that will see you through this little crisis. You’re smarter than smart, after all . . .

Oh, I get it. She hated the idea that I would consider her battle royal to be little—whereas my attempted implication was that, in the great scheme of things, this crisis would eventually seem like small beer.

Jesus Christ, talk about touchy. But I was in a no-win position here, and I knew it. To date, Sally and I had had that rare thing: a relationship free of misunderstandings. I certainly didn’t want this to be the first. So, knowing that she would not react well if I told her, “You totally misread my meaning,” I decided it was best to fall on my sword. Because if there was one thing that many long years of marriage had taught me, it was this: if you want to sweeten the atmosphere after a disagreement, it’s always best to admit you were wrong . . . even if you think you were right.

So I clicked on the Reply button and wrote:

Darling,

The last thing in the world I want to do is upset you. The last thing in the world I think is that anything you do is little. All I meant was you’re so brilliant at anything you tackle that this crisis—though large right now—would eventually be regarded in the future as small, because you’ll manage to work it out so well. My fault was not expressing this sentiment clearly. I realize I’ve hurt you. And I now feel awful.

You know I think you are wonderful. You know you have my complete love and support for everything and anything you do. I am so damn sorry that my inappropriate choice of words sparked this misunderstanding. Please forgive me.

I love you,

David

All right, I was groveling a bit. But I knew that, for all her professional stridency, Sally had a most permeable ego—and one that needed constant bolstering. More to the point, at this early stage of our relationship, stability was all. I repeated my mantra of the past few days: She’s under extreme pressure. Asking her the time of day right now would probably be misinterpreted. But she will calm down when the situation calms down.

Or, at least, that’s what I was banking on.

Once I dispatched that e-mail, I turned to the next one. It was from Lucy, which essentially was straight out of the “Fuck You, Strong Letter Follows” school of communication:

David:

You will be pleased to know that Caitlin was in a flood of tears yesterday when I told her that you wouldn’t be coming this weekend. Congratulations. You’ve broken her heart again.

I have managed to convince Marge to fly down from Portland to look after Caitlin for the two nights I will be away. However, she could only find a Business Class ticket at the last moment, and she must also put Dido and Aeneas in the local cattery for the weekend—and the total cost, including airfare, comes to $803.45. I will expect a check from you imminently.

I think your behavior on this occasion underlines everything I’ve felt about you since you became acquainted with that bitch goddess called success: you are completely motivated by self-interest. And what I said to you last night on the phone still holds: I will get you back for this.

Lucy

Instantly I reached for the phone and punched in some numbers. I glanced at my watch: 10:14 a.m. in the islands, 7:14 a.m. on the Coast. With any luck, Caitlin wouldn’t have left for school yet.

My luck held. Better still, my daughter answered herself. And she sounded thrilled to speak to me.

“Daddy!” she said happily.

“Hey kiddo,” I said. “Everything okay?”

“I’m going to be an angel in our Easter play at school.”

“You’re already an angel.”

“I’m not an angel. I’m Caitlin Armitage.”

I laughed.

“I’m sorry I’m not coming this weekend.”

“But this weekend Auntie Marge is coming to stay with me. But her cats have to go to a cat hotel.”

“So you’re not angry at me?”

“You’re coming next week, right?”

“Without fail, Caitlin. I promise.”

“And can I stay in your hotel with you?”

“Absolutely. We’ll do whatever you want all weekend.”

“And will you bring me a present?”

“I promise. Now can I talk to Mommy?”

“Okay . . . but as long as you don’t fight.”

I sucked in my breath.

“We’ll try not to, sweetie.”

“I miss you, Daddy.”

“I miss you too.”

A pause. Then I could hear the phone being handed over. There was a long silence, which Lucy finally broke.

“So, what do you want to talk about?” she asked.

“She really sounded devastated, Lucy. I mean, totally gutted.”

“I have nothing to say to you . . .”

“Fine by me. I don’t really want to talk to you either. But don’t you ever try to lie to me about her emotional state again. And I warn you, if you try to turn her against me . . .”

The line went dead as Lucy slammed down the phone. So much for a mature, adult exchange of views. But, at least, I did feel so damn relieved that Caitlin hadn’t at all been distressed by my inability to make it up to see her this weekend. The issue of Aunt Marge and her $803 weekend tariff was another matter. Marge was a circumferentially challenged New Age goof who lived by herself with her beloved cats and her crystals and her recordings of Nepalese goat chants in her one-bedroom ashram. I will say this for her—she did have a good heart. And she adored her only niece, which made me happy. But eight hundred bucks to cart her size 42 waist down to San Francisco . . . not to mention providing five-star accommodation for her precious feline friends (who the hell christens a pair of cats Dido and Aeneas?). Anyway, I knew that, like it or not, I’d have to fork over the dough—just as I also knew that Swami Marge was probably going to pocket half the $800. But I wasn’t going to argue. I had already effectively won the argument with Lucy. Just to hear Caitlin tell me she missed me wiped out all of the morning’s accumulated angst and put me in a good mood again. And now I had an entire Caribbean island to myself.

I picked up the phone. I asked if a newspaper might be available. I was informed that the New York Times had just arrived by helicopter. “Please send it on up.” I touched the audio/video screen. I went to the music library. I chose some piano sonatas by Mozart. The paper arrived. Meg set up a sunbed for me on the balcony. She disappeared into the bathroom and reemerged with six different brands of sun cream, covering all the potential burn factors. She refilled my champagne glass. She told me to call when I wanted lunch.

I read the paper. I listened to the Mozart. I toasted gently in the sun. After an hour, I decided it was time for a swim. I picked up the phone. I was connected with Gary.

“Hey there, Mr. Armitage. Having a good day in paradise?”

“Not bad at all. I was just wondering, is there a specific place for swimming on the island? Besides the pool, that is?”

“Well, we’ve got a great little beach. But if you were in the mood for snorkeling . . .”

Twenty minutes later, I was aboard the Truffaut (that’s right, like the French director)—a forty-foot cabin cruiser with a crew of five. We steamed along for around thirty minutes until we came to a coral reef near an archipelago of tiny islands. Two of the crew helped me into a wetsuit (“It’s a little chilly in the water today,” one of them explained), then kitted me out with flippers, mask, and snorkel. One of the crew was also dressed in scuba gear.

“Dennis here is going to guide you around the reef,” Gary told me.

“Thanks, but there’s really no need,” I said.

“Well, Mr. Fleck kind of insists that guests never swim alone. Anyway, it’s all part of the service.”

That was an expression I heard over and over again on Saffron Island. It’s all part of the service. Having my very own swim-along guide to the coral reefs was all part of the service. Having an entire four-man crew looking after me on the cabin cruiser was all part of the service. So too was the shelled lobster they served me (and me alone) on board the boat, accompanied by a Chablis premier cru. When we were back on dry land later that afternoon, and I asked if they had this week’s copy of the New Yorker on hand, they dispatched the helicopter to Antigua to buy a copy for me (even though I strenuously attempted to persuade them not to go to all that trouble—and expense!—for one damn magazine). But, once again, I was told that it was all part of the service.

I returned to my room. Laurence, the island’s chef, called me and asked what I would like for dinner. When I asked him to suggest something, he simply said: “Anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Just about.”

“Suggest something.”

“Well, my specialty is Pacific Rim cuisine. And since we have plenty of fresh fish . . .”

“I’ll leave it up to you.”

Minutes later, Joan called from Business Affairs. She was halfway through my script and had around ten queries regarding my appalling handwriting. We went through them all. Then she told me that the script would be retyped by midday tomorrow, as Mr. Fleck was due back in the late afternoon—and as soon as he heard that I had revised the screenplay, he’d want to read it immediately.

“But won’t you be up half the night typing?” I asked.

“All part of the service,” she said, adding that, with my permission, she’d have a copy of the newly revised script brought in with my breakfast tomorrow. If I could read it through, she could make any amendments later that morning.

I stretched out on the bed. I nodded off. When I came to, an hour had slipped by . . . and a note had been slipped under my door. I went to retrieve it.

Dear Mr. Armitage,

We didn’t want to disturb you, but outside your door you’ll find the copy of the New Yorker you requested, as well as the catalogue for the island’s film library. We thought you might like to set up a screening of something tonight. If so, give me a call at extension 16. Also—when it suits you, could you please call Claude the sommelier. He wants to discuss your wine choice for dinner tonight. You can also tell him when you’d like to eat. The kitchen is completely flexible on this matter. Just let them know.

Once again, it’s a pleasure having you with us. And, as I said last night, I really do hope to see you at the movies . . .

Best,

Chuck

I opened the door. I collected the film catalogue and the copy of the New Yorker, which had been airlifted in at my request. I flopped back on the bed, wondering how they knew that I was napping—and therefore shouldn’t be disturbed. Was the room bugged? Was there a hidden camera somewhere? Or was I just being paranoid? After all, maybe they simply deduced that, after a strenuous, workaholic day in the sun, I needed a little siesta. Maybe I was overreacting to all the attention I was being paid.

An old literary anecdote suddenly came to mind: Hemingway and Fitzgerald sitting in a Paris café, watching a bunch of swanky folks sauntering by. “You know, Ernest,” Fitzgerald said grandly, “the rich are different from you and me.” To which Hemingway gruffly replied: “Yeah—they’ve got more money.”

But now I realized what that money actually bought them was a cordon sanitaire, within which you could fend off all the tedious mundanities with which the rest of the world had to grapple. Of course, it gave you power as well—but ultimately, its dominion was to be found in how it separated you from the way everyone else lived their lives. I still kept trying to grapple with that figure—$20 billion—and with the statistic (quoted to me, naturally, by Bobby) that Fleck’s weekly interest from his fortune was around $2 million . . . and that was after tax. Without touching a penny of his fortune, he had a net income of around $100 million per annum to play with. What a complete absurdity: $2 million a week as spending money. Did Fleck remember what it was like to worry about making the rent? Or having to scramble about to pay the phone bill? Or putting up with a ten-year-old car that never shifted into fourth gear, because you couldn’t afford to get the busted transmission fixed?

Did he have any sort of aspirations . . . when all his earthly wants had been already met? And how did a lack of material ambition alter one’s worldview? Did you concentrate on the more cerebral things in life, aspiring to great thoughts and deeds? Maybe you became a latter-day philosopher king, a Medici prince? Or did you turn into a Borgia pope?

I was becoming pampered after just one day at Chez Fleck. And—dare I say it—I was liking it. My latent entitlement complex was coming to the fore—and I was rapidly accepting the idea that there was an entire staff on this island ready to meet just about any request I made. On the boat, Gary told me if I felt like going to Antigua for the day, he’d be happy to arrange a trip on the chopper. Or, for that matter, if I needed to go farther afield, the Gulfstream was sitting idle at Antigua Airport and could be summoned whenever required.

“That’s very kind of you,” I said. “But I think I’ll just stay here and kick back.”

And kick back I most certainly did. That night after the chef’s exquisite Pacific Rim–style bouillabaisse (accompanied by an equally astonishing Au Bon Climat chardonnay), I sat alone in the cinema and watched a double bill of two classic Fritz Lang films: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and The Big Heat. Instead of popcorn, Meg popped in occasionally with a tray of Belgian chocolates and a 1985 Bas Armagnac. Afterward, Chuck came into the screening room and went into a long spiel about Fritz Lang’s adventures in Hollywood. He was so damn knowledgeable regarding just about everything on celluloid that I encouraged him to join me in an Armagnac and tell me a bit about himself. It seemed he’d first met Philip Fleck when they were both students together at NYU back in the early seventies.

“This was way, way before Phil was anything like rich. I mean, I knew his dad owned this paper-packaging place back in Wisconsin—but mainly, he was just another guy who wanted to direct, living in a crappy apartment on Eleventh and First Avenue. He spent his free time at the Bleecker Street Cinema or the Thalia or the New Yorker, or any of those other long-vanished Manhattan revival houses. That’s how Phil and I became friends—we kept running into each other at these little cinemas, and we thought nothing of watching four films a day.

“Anyway, Phil was always determined to do the auteur thing, whereas my big dream was simply to run my very own cinema, and maybe get the occasional article into some fancy European film magazine like Sight and Sound or Cahiers du Cinéma. Then, during our second year at NYU, Phil’s dad died, and he had to head back to Milwaukee to run the family business. We lost contact with each other completely, though I certainly knew what was going on with him—because when he made his first cool billion by taking the paper company public, it was all over the papers. And then, when he pulled off all those investment coups and became . . . well, Philip Fleck . . . I couldn’t get over it. My old cinephile pal, now a multibillionaire.

“Then, one day, out of the blue, I get this phone call from Phil himself. He’d tracked me down to Austin where I was, like, the assistant film archivist at U Texas. Not a bad job, even though I was only making about twenty-seven grand a year. I couldn’t believe it was him on the phone.

“‘How the hell did you find me?’” I asked him.

“‘I’ve got people who do that sort of stuff for me,’ he said. And then he got right to the point: he wanted to create his very own film archive . . . the biggest private one in America . . . and he wanted me to run it for him. Before he even told me what he was going to pay me, I accepted. I mean, this was the chance of a lifetime—to create a great archive . . . and for one of my best buddies.”

“So now you go where he goes?”

“You’ve got it in one, pal. The chief archive is at a warehouse near his place in San Francisco, but he’s also got divisions of it at each of his other houses. I’m in charge of a team of five who run the main archive, but I also travel with him wherever he goes, so he can have me on tap whenever he wants me. He takes film very seriously, Phil.”

I bet he does. Because you’ve got to be an extreme movie buff to employ your very own full-time archivist to cart along behind you, just in case you get a late-night craving for an early Antonioni or simply must talk about Eisenstein’s theory of montage while watching the sun set over the Saffron Island palm trees.

“Sounds like a great job,” I said.

“The best,” Chuck said.

I had another seamless night’s sleep—a true sign that, after just a day here, I really was beginning to unwind. I didn’t set an alarm clock or book a wake-up call. I simply woke when I woke—which was close to eleven a.m. again, and discovered another note shoved under my door.

Dear Mr. Armitage,

I hope you slept really well. Just to let you know that we heard from Mr. Fleck this morning. He sends you his best wishes and his regrets that he is going to be delayed for another three days. But he will definitely be back here on Monday morning and hopes you will continue to enjoy the run of the island until then. He said, should you want to do anything, go anywhere in particular, set up any activities of any kind, we should accommodate you.

In other words, Mr. Armitage, pick up the phone and phone me whenever. We’re at your service.

Hope we can make this another great day for you in paradise.

Best,

Gary

So the marlin were biting and Philip Fleck had decided that I still wasn’t as important as a bunch of fish. For some strange reason, I didn’t care. If he wanted to keep me waiting, so be it.

Before I tackled such demanding things as deciding what to order for breakfast, I steeled myself for a brief encounter with my e-mail. But this morning’s communiqués didn’t bring grief. On the contrary, there was a most reconciliatory e-mail from Sally:

Darling,

Apologies, apologies. In the midst of battle, I forgot who my true ally was—to the point where I was feeling irascible about everything. Thank you for your wonderful e-mail. Thank you even more for understanding.

I’m in New York, billeted at the Pierre . . . which isn’t exactly the worst address imaginable. I came here at the behest of Stu Barker, who needed to go to New York to meet some of the major suits at Fox’s corporate HQ. And he wanted me to be there, to discuss our planned autumn slate. Anyway, we flew domestic (he shrewdly didn’t want to come across like some big swinging arriviste by insisting on a company jet the moment he stepped into Levy’s shoes). All the way to New York, he couldn’t have been more charming—a complete volte-face. And he told me that he really wanted to work with me, really needed me on his team—and he wanted to put the years of enmity behind us. “My mishegas was with Levy, not you,” he told me.

Anyway, we’ve got the big Fox meeting a couple of hours from now. Naturally, I’m anxious because (to be blunt about it) it’s important that I shine—in front of both the big boys and my new boss. I wish you were here to hug me (and do other things as well . . . but I won’t get crude in cyberspace). I’ll try to call later today, but I think we’re going to fly back to the Coast right after the meeting. I hope you’re getting a tan for the two of us. Fleck Island sounds amazing.

I love you,

Sally

Well, that was an improvement. Obviously, Stu Barker turning palsy-walsy also improved her spirits—but there’s nothing like an apology from the woman you love to kick off the morning on a high note.

But there was even better news to come—because while I was online, the New Mail prompt began to flash on my screen. I switched over and found the following message from Alison:

Hey, Superstar,

Hope you’re pleasantly sunstruck and lolling in a hammock right now—because I’ve got some major good news:

You’ve just been nominated for an Emmy.

God help all of us who will now have to contend with your even more inflated ego (joke).

I’m thrilled for you, David. I’m also thrilled for me, because I know I can jack up your fee for the next season by 25 percent. Which, if you do the math . . .

To quote King Lear, you’ve done good, fella. Can I be your date for the awards . . . or will Sally throw a hissy?

Love,

Alison

By the end of the day, I was pleasantly delirious from all the congratulations I’d received. Brad Bruce rang me on the island, telling me how delighted the entire Selling You team was for me . . . even though they were still rather pissed at the Emmy people for making me the show’s one nomination. The head of FRT comedy—Ned Sinclair—also rang. Ditto two of the actors. And I received congratulatory e-mails from around a dozen friends and associates in our so-called industry.

Best of all, Sally ducked out of her meeting in New York to phone me.

“Halfway through the meeting, an assistant to one of the Fox guys came in with a list of the Emmy nominations. Of course, the suits immediately pored over it, to see how many nominations the network received. Then, one of them looked up at me and said: ‘Isn’t your boyfriend David Armitage?’ And that’s when he told me. I nearly screamed. I am so damn proud of you. And I have to tell you, it also made me look pretty damn good in front of the big boys.”

“How’s it going in there?”

“I can’t really talk right now . . . but, by and large, we’re winning.”

We? As in Sally and the delightful Stu Barker—the guy she once described as the Heinrich Himmler of television comedy?

“Sounds like the two of you have really bonded,” I said.

“I still don’t trust him whatsoever,” she said in a whisper. “But, at the same time, it’s better to have him on my side than aiming his tactical nukes in my direction. Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with office politics . . .”

“You never bore me, my love.”

“And you are the sweetest, most talented man alive.”

“Now I really will get a swelled head.”

“Do. You deserve it.”

“Listen,” I said, “Mein Host is still big-fish hunting in the adjacent islands, and he won’t be back until Monday. But I’ve been given carte blanche on the island, which means that I could actually get them to send the Gulfstream to New York to pick you up and bring you back down here.”

“Oh God, I’d love to, sweetheart . . . but I’ve got to go back to LA with Stu. It’s kind of critical that I keep this bonding thing going. And he wants to do some serious planning stuff with me at the office on Sunday.”

“I see,” I said.

“If it hadn’t been for this crisis at work, you know I’d be there with you right now.”

“I do understand.”

“Good,” she said. “Anyway, I just wanted to say how fantastic your news is . . . and that I love you . . . and that I really do have to get back to this meeting. I’ll call you tomorrow when I’m home.”

And before I had a chance to say good-bye myself, the line went dead. My five-minute window with Sally had closed.

My insecurity was quickly subdued by another night of being waited on, and by drinking an absurdly good Morgon ’75, and by watching another double feature (Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole and Kubrick’s The Killing), and by being presented with a cake (personally designed by the island’s pastry chef) in the shape of an Emmy Award.

“How did you know about my nomination?” I asked Gary when he brought the cake into the screening room, accompanied by six of the staff.

“Hey, news travels fast.”

This was a world where everything was known about you, where all requests were granted, where no detail was considered too small. You received exactly what you wanted, when you wanted it. In the process, you became the walking equivalent of a detached retina—blinded to external realities.

Not that I minded being a tourist in such a rarefied realm. But though I had vowed not to do any work on the island, when Joan from Business Affairs showed up with my freshly typed script, I found myself quickly sprawled in the hammock on my balcony, red pen in hand. The new version was around eight pages shorter. Its pace was brisk, jazzy. The dialogue was snappier—and less self-knowing. The plot points were hit with ease. But—on a second reading—I found much of the third act now felt contrived: the aftermath of the robbery and the way all involved turned on each other seemed just a little by the book. So, over the course of the weekend, I redrafted the entire final thirty-one pages—and fell into the self-absorbed chasm of work. Despite the continued gorgeous weather, I locked myself in my room for all but three hours a day and finished the job by six p.m. Sunday night. Joan from Business Affairs showed up shortly thereafter and collected the forty or so pages of yellow legal paper upon which I had drafted the reworked act three. I celebrated with a slug of champagne. I spent an hour lolling in a hot tub. Then I dined on soft-shell crab and drank half a bottle of some wonderful New Zealand sauvignon blanc. Around ten that night, Joan showed up with the retyped pages.

“You’ll have them back by midnight,” I said.

“Thank you, sir.”

I delivered the pages by the deadline required and fell into bed. I slept late. The newly bound screenplay arrived with breakfast, along with a note:

“We’ve just heard from Mr. Fleck. He’s received your screenplay and he’s planning to read it as soon as possible. Unfortunately, he is again delayed at sea but will be returning on Wednesday morning and looks forward to seeing you then.”

My first reaction to this missive was a simple one: Go fuck yourself, pal. I’m not going to sit around here, waiting for you to grace me with your presence. But when I called Sally on her cellphone in LA and told her that Fleck was yanking my chain by delaying his return, she said, “What do you expect? The guy can do what he wants. So, of course, he will do what he wants. Anyway, my love, you are just the writer . . .”

“Hey, thanks a lot.”

“Come on, you know how the food chain works. The guy might be an amateur, but he’s still got the money. And that makes him king of the hill . . .”

“Whereas I’m the serf in this scenario.”

“Hey, if you’re that pissed at the guy, throw a tantrum and demand the Gulfstream back to LA . . . but don’t expect to see me for the next three nights, as I’m up paying a house call on our affiliates in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.”

“When did that come up?”

“Yesterday evening. Stu decided we should go on a little inspection tour of our leading Pacific markets.”

“You and Stu seem to have really bonded.”

“I think I’ve won him over, if that’s what you mean.”

That’s not what I meant—but I didn’t want to press the issue for fear of sounding possessed by the proverbial green-eyed monster. But Sally knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Do I discern a hint of jealousy in your voice?” she asked.

“Hardly.”

“You know why I have to schmooze this guy, don’t you?”

“Of course, of course . . .”

“You know I am trying to keep the barbarians from the gate, right?”

“I know . . .”

“And you should also know that I am incredibly in love with you, and wouldn’t dream of—”

“All right, all right . . . Apologies.”

“Accepted,” she said crisply. “And I’ve got to get back to this meeting. Talk to you later.”

And she hung up.

Jerk. Jerk. Jerk. You and Stu seem to have really bonded. What a brilliant comment. Now you’ll have to do a little bit of extracurricular groveling to keep her happy.

I picked up the phone and called Meg. I asked about sending a bouquet of flowers to LA. No problem, she told me. And no, I didn’t need to give her a credit card number: “We’ll be happy to take care of that for you.” Did I have any preference? No—just something stylish. And the message on the card? I needed something reconcilatory and fawning but not too deferential, so I decided upon:

You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you.

Meg assured me that the flowers would be delivered to Sally’s office within the hour. Sure enough, ninety minutes later, an e-mail arrived from Ms. Birmingham:

Now that’s what I call a stylish apology. Love you too. But try to lighten up, eh?

Sally

I attempted to follow her advice. I called Gary and arranged for a day of sailing around a small nearby archipelago of islands. Fleck’s cabin cruiser was crewed up for this voyage. Scuba gear was also onboard in case I wanted to go diving. And the assistant chef came along to whip up lunch. They also rigged a hammock between the masts, upon which I napped for an hour. When I woke to the offer of a cappuccino (instantly accepted), I was also handed a printout of an e-mail from Chuck the Movie Guy:

Hey, Mr. Armitage!

Hope you’ve not got anything planned tonight, because I’ve just heard from Mr. Fleck, and he wants me to set up a screening of a very special film for you this evening. Could you let me know what time would suit, and I’ll have the popcorn ready.

When I said to the yacht’s steward that I’d like to speak with Chuck personally, he patched me in on the ship-to-shore telephone.

“So what’s the movie?” I asked him.

“Sorry, Mr. Armitage—but that’s a surprise. Mr. Fleck’s orders.”

So I presented myself at the screening room at 9 p.m. that night. I sank into one of the overstuffed leather armchairs, balancing a Waterford Crystal bowl of popcorn between my legs. The lights went down—and the projector flickered into life. The soundtrack played a lush, 1940s recording of These Foolish Things, then the screen was filled with a title card in Italian, announcing that I was about to sit through Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo—The 120 Days of Sodom.

Of course, I’d heard about Pasolini’s infamous last movie—a postwar reworking of the Marquis de Sade’s deranged novel. But I’d never seen it. Because after its initial screenings during the mid-seventies, the film was banned just about everywhere in the States . . . including New York. And when you get banned in New York, you know you’ve concocted something that’s just a little too hot to handle.

Within about twenty minutes, I understood why the New York authorities had a few moral qualms about this movie. Set in the Fascist republic of Salo (created by Mussolini during his last stand at the end of the war), the movie kicked off with four Italian aristocrats (of largely seedy demeanor) agreeing to marry each other’s daughters. This was the mildest of moral transgressions instigated by this quartet—because they were soon scouring the northern Italian countryside for young nubile adolescent boys and girls, who’d been rounded up for them by Fascist guards. Their victims were then transported to a stately home where their captors announced that they were now living in a realm above the law—a place where they would be required to participate in an orgy every night, and where anyone caught in a religious act would be put to death.

And so, the aristos began to have their way with their victims. They buggered boys and staged a mock wedding between a virginal girl and one of the adolescent boys, forcing the couple to consummate the “marriage” in front of them. But just when the guy was about to penetrate his bride, the aristos rushed forward, deflowering these children themselves.

It got worse. During one “orgy,” the chief aristo defecated on the floor, then insisted that the child bride from the previous scene eat his feces. Believing that everybody should join the party, they forced all their captives to defecate into bedpans and then served up a banquet of turds on fine china. But just when I started imagining that things couldn’t turn even more warped, they tortured and annihilated all their victims in the courtyard of the stately home—gouging out eyeballs, garrotting a young woman, burning another’s breasts with a candle, cutting off tongues. And as the strains of These Foolish Things returned to the soundtrack, two Fascist male guards begin to slow-dance with each other.

Fade to black. Final credits.

As the lights came up, I found myself in an actual state of shock. Salo wasn’t just out there . . . it was completely beyond there. What disturbed me even more was that this was not some cheap-ass snuff movie, made by a couple of lowlifes for five thousand bucks in a San Fernando Valley warehouse. Pasolini had been an ultra-sophisticated, ultra-serious director. And Salo was an ultra-serious exploration of totalitarianism, taken to the outer limits of taste. I had just borne witness to the worst imaginable excesses of human behavior, while sitting in a lushly appointed screening room on a private Caribbean island. And I couldn’t help but wonder: What the fuck was Philip Fleck trying to tell me?

But before I could come to grips with this, I heard a voice behind me.

“You could probably use a drink after that.”

I turned around and found myself staring at a woman in her early thirties—attractive in a severe, New England sort of way, with horn-rimmed glasses and long brown hair pulled up in a bun.

“I think I need a very strong drink,” I said. “That was . . .”

“Horrendous? Appalling? Nauseating? Abominable? Or maybe just good old-fashioned gross?”

“All the above.”

“Sorry about that. But, I’m afraid, that’s my husband’s idea of a joke.”

I was immediately on my feet, my hand outstretched.

“So sorry I didn’t recognize you. I’m . . .”

“I know who you are, David,” she said, proffering me a small smile. “And I’m Martha Fleck.”

SIX

SO . . . WHAT’S IT like being talented?”

“Sorry?” I said, taken slightly aback.

Martha Fleck smiled at me and said, “It’s just a question.”

“A very direct question.”

“Really? I thought it was a rather nice question.”

“I’m not particularly talented.”

“If you say so,” she said with another smile.

“But it’s the truth.”

“Well, modesty is an admirable thing. But the one thing I know about writers is that they’re normally a mixture of doubt and arrogance. But the arrogance usually wins out.”

“Are you saying that I’m arrogant?”

“Hardly,” she said, shooting me another smile. “Then again, anyone who gets up in the morning and faces a blank screen needs a fantastic sense of his own self-importance. Drink? I’m certain you need one after watching Salo . . . though my husband considers it to be a flat-out masterpiece. Then again, he did make The Last Chance. I presume you’ve seen it?”

“Uh, yes. Very interesting.”

“How diplomatic of you.”

“It’s good to be diplomatic.”

“But it makes for less-than-lively conversation.”

I said nothing.

“Come on, David. It’s time to play To Tell the Truth. What did you really think of Philip’s movie?”

“Not the . . . uh . . . best thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You can do better than that.”

I scanned her face for a sign. But all I saw was that amused smile. I said:

“Okay, if you want the truth, I thought it was pretentious crap.”

“Bravo. And now you get that drink.”

She reached down and touched a small button on the side of her chair. We were sitting in the “great room” of the house, having adjourned there at her suggestion. She was seated underneath a late Rothko—two large merging squares of black offset by a thin, centrally positioned crease of orange; a slight hint of dawn promise amidst all the darkness.

“Are you a Rothko fan?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

“So’s Philip. Which is why he had to own eight of them.”

“That’s a lot of Rothkos.”

“And a lot of money—around seventy-four million for the set.”

“An impressive sum.”

“Pocket money.”

Again another of her little pauses, in which she watched me watching her. Yet her tone was constantly light and coy. Much to my surprise, I was finding her seriously attractive.

Gary arrived.

“Nice to have you back, Mrs. Fleck. How was New York?”

“Fun.” She turned to me. “Shall we do some serious drinking, David?”

“Well . . .”

“I’ll take that as a yes. How many brands of vodka do we keep, Gary?”

“Thirty-six, Mrs. Fleck.”

“Thirty-six vodkas. Isn’t that droll, David?”

“Well, it is a lot of vodkas.”

She turned back to the help. “So Gary, reveal all: what is the ultra-supreme of all our supreme vodkas?”

“We have a triple-filtered Stoli Gold from 1953.”

“Let me guess—it was Stalin’s reserve stock.”

“I can’t vouch for that, Mrs. Fleck. But it is supposed to be quite remarkable.”

“Then please serve it up . . . with a little Beluga on the side.”

Gary gave a slight bow of the head, then left.

“You weren’t on the boat with your husband, Mrs. Fleck?” I asked.

“My name is Martha . . . and as I’ve never had an affinity with Hemingway, I saw no need to spend several days at sea, chasing whatever big fish Philip was after.”

“So New York was a business trip?”

“I really am impressed with your diplomacy, David. Because when your husband is worth twenty billion dollars, most people wouldn’t expect you to have any work whatsoever. But yes, I was in New York to meet with the board of a little foundation I run to help indigent playwrights.”

“I never knew such a species existed.”

“Aren’t most playwrights down on their luck . . . unless they bump into luck? Like you did.”

“Yes . . . but it was still luck.”

“I am getting terribly worried about your extreme modesty, David,” she said, lightly touching my hand.

“You were a script editor, right?” I asked, withdrawing my hand.

“Oh, you are a well-informed gent. Yes, I was what’s known in the regional theater trade as a dramaturge—which is a pretentious Germanic way of saying that I doctored scripts and worked with writers, and occasionally found an interesting play worth developing in the slush pile of submissions.”

“And that’s how you met . . . ?”

“Mr. Fleck? Yes, that’s where I bumped into my marital fate. In that place of twinkling lights and romantic allure called Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Do you know Milwaukee, David?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“A charming town. The Venice of the Midwest.”

I laughed. “Then why were you there?”

“Because there’s a halfway decent repertory theater there. They were in need of a script editor. I was in need of a job—and they offered me one. The money wasn’t bad either—twenty-eight thousand a year. More than I made anywhere else. But, then again, the Milwaukee Rep was pretty well funded, thanks to their local-boy-made-good Mr. Fleck, who was on a personal crusade to turn his hometown into his very own Venice. A new art gallery. A new communications center at the university, with—naturellement—its very own film archive. Just what Milwaukee was craving. And, of course, a spanking new playhouse for the local professional theater. I think Philip spent around two hundred fifty million on all three projects.”

“That’s very benevolent of him.”

“And very shrewd as well since he managed to offset everything against taxes.”

Gary returned, wheeling in a trolley upon which sat a small bowl of caviar artfully surrounded by chipped ice, a plate of small pumpernickel bread rounds, the bottle of vodka, and two stylish shot glasses. Gary removed the bottle from the ice and formally presented it to Martha. She glanced at the label. It looked venerable and Cyrillic.

“Do you read Russian?” she asked me. I shook my head. “Nor do I. But I’m sure 1953 was a vintage year. So, go on, Gary, pour away.”

He did as commanded, handing us each a brimming glass. Martha raised hers and clinked it against mine. We threw back our shots. The vodka was very cold and very smooth. I felt myself wince with pleasure as it frosted the back of my throat and then traveled straight to my brain. Martha seemed to have a similar reaction.

“That works,” she said.

Gary refilled our glasses, then offered us each a pumpernickel round piled with caviar. I tried mine. Martha asked, “Does it meet your approval?”

“Well . . . it does taste like caviar.”

She told Gary she could wield the bottle herself now. After he withdrew, Martha poured me another shot and said, “You know, before I met Philip, I never knew a thing about luxury brand names, or the difference between . . . I don’t know . . . a bag by Samsonite or by Louis Vuitton. That stuff never seemed important to me.”

“And now?”

“Now I possess all sorts of arcane mercantile knowledge. I know about the price of Iranian caviar—one hundred sixty dollars an ounce. I also know the glass in your hand is Baccarat, and the chair you’re parked on is an original Eames design, which Philip bought for forty-two hundred dollars.”

“Whereas before you knew all these things . . . ?”

“I was taking home eighteen hundred a month, living in a small one-bedroom apartment, and driving a twelve-year-old VW Rabbit. To me a designer label meant The Gap.”

“Did it bother you, having no money?”

“It never really crossed my mind. I was in the nonprofit sector, so I dressed like a drabbie and I thought like a drabbie, and it didn’t worry me in the slightest. But would I be wrong in thinking that you hated being broke?”

“Having money is easier.”

“That is true. But when you were working at Book Soup, didn’t you envy all those successful writers you saw browsing around the shop, with their seven-figure deals and their Porsches in the parking lot, and their Cartier watches, and—”

“How did you know about Book Soup?” I asked, interrupting her.

“I read your file.”

“My file? You have a file on me?”

“Not exactly. More of a dossier—which Philip’s people put together when you agreed to come out here.”

“And what exactly was in this file?”

“Just press clippings, and an up-to-date biography, and a list of all your credits, and a bit of background information that Philip’s people gleaned here and there . . .”

“Such as?”

“Oh, you know—basic need-to-know stuff like what you prefer to drink, the kind of movies you like to watch, the state of your bank accounts, your investment portfolio, the name of your therapist . . .”

“I am not in therapy,” I said angrily.

“But you were. Right after you left Lucy and moved in with Sally, you spent six months talking with a doctor—what was his name again?—Tarbuck, perhaps? A Donald Tarbuck who practices right off Victory Avenue in West LA. Sorry . . . am I talking out of turn?”

I suddenly felt very uneasy. “Who told you all that?” I asked.

“No one told me anything. I just read it . . .”

“But somebody must have told your people all this. So who was it?”

“Honestly I haven’t a clue.”

“I bet it was that little bastard, Barra.”

“I’ve obviously upset you, which certainly wasn’t my intention. But let me assure you that Bobby’s no stool pigeon, and you haven’t landed yourself in the former East Germany. My husband simply happens to be a very thorough guy who wants to have a very thorough rundown on anyone he’s thinking of hiring.”

“I didn’t apply for any job.”

“Point taken. Philip was simply interested in working with you and thought he should find out a few basic details . . . as everyone does these days. End of story. Okay?”

“I’m not being paranoid . . .”

“Of course not,” she said, pouring us both another shot. “Now get that down you.”

We clinked glasses again and drank. This time the vodka slipped down with ease—a hint that my throat and my brain had both started to go numb.

“Happier now?” she asked gently.

“It’s good vodka.”

“Do you consider yourself a happy type, David?”

“What?”

“I was just wondering if, deep down, you doubt your success and wonder if you really deserve it?”

I laughed. “Do you always play the agent provocateur?”

“Only with people I like. But I’m right, am I not? Because I sense that you don’t believe in your accomplishments and you secretly rue leaving your wife and child.”

A long silence, during which I reached for the vodka bottle and poured two fresh shots.

“I think I ask too many questions,” she finally said.

I lifted my drink and threw it back.

“But may I be permitted to ask you one more?” she said.

“Which is what?”

“Tell me what you really thought of Philip’s movie.”

“I did tell you . . .”

“No, what you said was, ‘It’s pretentious crap.’ What you didn’t explain was why you considered it pretentious crap.”

“You really want to know?” I asked. She downed her drink and nodded. So I told her exactly why it was the worst film I’d ever seen, taking it apart scene by scene, explaining why the characters were fundamentally absurd, why the dialogue gave new meaning to the word “artificial,” and why the entire enterprise was nothing short of ludicrous. The vodka must have triggered some garrulous switch in my brain, because I talked nonstop for around ten minutes, pausing only to accept two additional refills from Martha. When I finally finished, there was a massively long silence.

“Well . . . you did ask me for my opinion,” I said, the words slightly slurring.

“And you certainly gave it.”

“Sorry.”

“Why apologize? Everything you said is absolutely right. In fact, what you just said is exactly what I told Philip before the film went into production.”

“But I thought you worked closely with him on the script?”

“I did—and, believe me, compared to the original draft, the final shooting script was a vast improvement . . . which is not saying much, as the film itself was such a disaster.”

“Didn’t you have any sway with him?”

“When does a lowly script editor ever have sway with a director? I mean, if ninety-nine-point-five percent of all writers in Hollywood are treated like the hired help, then the script editor is considered virtually subhuman.”

“Even by the guy who’s fallen for you?”

“Oh, that didn’t happen until way after the movie.”

She then explained how Fleck showed up one day at the theater he’d built in Milwaukee for a little meet-and-greet with the staff . . . his staff to be specific, as his annual subsidy was meeting the wage bill. Anyway, during the course of this royal walkabout, the theater’s artistic director whisked him into the small cubbyhole that Martha called her office for a fast “Hello, nice to meet you.” When they were introduced—and Fleck heard that she was the theater’s script editor—he mentioned that he’d just finished writing a movie and could use a professional’s advice about its alleged strengths and weaknesses.

“Of course I instantly told him I would be honored to read it—because what else was I going to say? I mean, he was our patron saint, our Man Upstairs. Secretly, I thought, Oh God, a vanity script, written by Joe Super Rich. But I also really didn’t think that he’d actually ever send the script around . . . because as the gentleman had so much money, he could probably buy script advice from Robert Towne or William Goldman. But the next morning, bang—the script landed on my desk. There was a Post-it attached to the front page: ‘I’d greatly appreciate it if you give me your honest appraisal of this by tomorrow morning.’ And it was signed P.F.”

So Martha had no choice but to spend the rest of the day reading the damn thing, and then spend the entire night in a state of ever-heightening anxiety, as she realized that though Fleck’s script was, without question, garbage, if she wrote exactly what she thought, she could kiss her job good-bye.

“I was up until five in the morning, trying to fashion a report that somehow got the message across that this was hopeless but managed to do so in as neutral a way as possible. But the fact was I just couldn’t think of a single good thing to say about it. Eventually, with the sun coming up, I ripped up my fourth attempt at an impartial report, and thought: I’m going to treat the guy like any other bad aspiring writer and tell him exactly why he’s gotten it so wrong.”

So she sat down and wrote a killer of a report, had it messengered over to the theater, and went to bed, thinking that when she woke up, she’d have to start looking for a new job.

But instead, the phone rang at her apartment at five that afternoon. It was one of “Fleck’s people”—telling her that Mr. Fleck himself wanted to see her and the Gulfstream would be taking her to San Francisco that evening. Oh . . . and the theater had been informed that she wouldn’t be in for the next few days.

“Now, up until this point, I had never flown anything but coach, so the limo to the airport and flight on the Gulfstream were just a little out of the ordinary. So too was Philip’s town house in Pacific Heights, with the staff of five and the screening room in the basement. Of course, all the way to San Francisco, I was wondering why he wanted to see me—and wondering whether he was flying me out west as a sort of power trip: ‘I’m bringing you here by private jet so I can have the luxury of firing you face to face.’

“But when I reached his house, he couldn’t have been more charming . . . which, given Philip’s natural taciturnity, is something of a stretch. Holding up my report, he said: ‘You certainly don’t kiss ass, do you?’ Then he asked me to spend the next seven days working with him to improve the script. And he asked me to name my price. I told him I was already getting paid by the theater in Milwaukee, so I didn’t expect anything from him . . . except hard work. ‘To me, you’re just another writer, and one with a script that needs a major overhaul. So if you’re willing to listen, I’m willing to help you.’

“So we spent the next seven days pulling the thing apart and putting it back together again. Philip placed his entire life on hold to work with me—and he really did listen. He also seemed to be responding to my criticisms—because, by the time the week was over, we’d managed to cut most of the bilge from the screenplay, tighten up the structure, and make the characters semi-believable. I told him I still thought that the entire enterprise was far too highfalutin. But there’s no doubt that it was a better script than before.

“And there was also no doubt that there was an unspoken thing between us. Philip may be preternaturally reticent . . . but once he gets to know you, he can be quite funny. And I really liked his smarts. For a guy who’d built up a multibillion-dollar empire, he knew so much about movies and books, and he really was determined to throw a lot of money at the arts. Anyway, on our last night together, we got into a marathon drinking session . . .”

“Vodka?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, raising her eyebrows playfully. “My poison of choice.”

I met her stare. “And let me guess what happened next.”

“Yes. Only when I woke the next morning, Philip was gone . . . though there was a really romantic note on the pillow: ‘I’ll be in touch.’ At least he didn’t sign it P.F.

“So back I went to Milwaukee, and I never heard a damn word from him. Six months later, I read somewhere that The Last Chance had gone into production in Ireland. Eight months later, it opened at the only art house in Milwaukee—and, naturally, I went to see it, and couldn’t believe what Mr. Fleck had done. Not only had he thrown out eighty percent of the changes we made, but he’d also put back half the bad dialogue we’d managed to cut. Of course, I wasn’t the only person who thought he’d made the wrong choices, as the papers were full of truly derogatory stuff about the movie and how Philip had just broken up with a supermodel whom he’d been seeing for the last year . . . which immediately explained why I hadn’t heard from the gentleman after that one night in his bed.

“Anyway, I was so disgruntled—both by the way he’d undermined all the work we’d done, and the fact that he’d never called me again—that I sat down and punched out a tough letter that expressed considerable displeasure at his professional and personal ill-treatment of me. I really didn’t expect to get a reply. But then, about a week later, he showed up on my doorstep one night. And the first words out of his mouth were: ‘I was wrong about everything. Especially you.’”

“And after that?”

“We were married within six months.”

“How very romantic,” I said.

Another of her little smiles as she poured us the final two shots from the bottle.

“So the moral of this story is . . . what?” I asked. “You’re not to blame for your husband’s lousy movie?”

“Touché, again.”

I threw back the shot. Now I didn’t even feel it trickle down my throat. Because I was feeling nothing at all.

“Let me let you in on a secret. The reason my husband is keeping you waiting here is that he can’t stand being around anyone who’s talented.”

“I think anyone who’s made as much money as he has deserves to be called talented.”

“Perhaps. But the talent he craves—the gift he dreams about having—is the talent you have. I hugely admire it too. Why do you think I flew back here tonight? It was the chance to meet you. I really think Selling You is a landmark show.”

“I’m flattered.”

“My pleasure.”

She looked directly at me and smiled again. I glanced at my watch. She said: “If it’s way after your bedtime, don’t let me keep you up. I can get Gary to bring you in some warm milk and cookies. And I’m sure we have a spare teddy bear around here somewhere, in case you need companionship.”

She arched her eyebrows slightly, more amused than amorous. Or maybe more amorous than amused. Or maybe she was just raising her eyebrows for no reason whatsoever. Hell, I couldn’t tell anything anymore, as I was now dead drunk.

“I think I just need to see my bed,” I said. “Thank you for the vodka.”

“All part of the service,” she said. “Sweet dreams.”

I said good-bye and staggered toward my room.

I don’t remember how I got there. Nor do I remember passing out, fully clothed, on the bed. But I certainly do remember jolting awake around four in the morning, and just about making it to the toilet, and retching nonstop for around five minutes, and stripping off all my clothes and standing under a hot shower, and eventually staggering back to bed, still dripping wet, and sliding under the covers, and thinking about my conversation with Martha Fleck, and eventually passing out again, and not waking up until sometime around midday, and thinking that my brain was now suffering from near-nuclear meltdown, and also trying to make sense of everything that happened the night before: from being force-fed Salo in all its shit-eating glory, to that flirty booze-fueled conversation with Martha.

But as I struggled to reassemble the skewed jigsaw that was last night, I also reached a decision: I was going to leave the island today. I’d been kept waiting around for too long, and for no particular reason, and I didn’t want to indulge a rich man’s whims any longer. So I picked up the phone and rang Gary and asked him if it was possible to arrange my transfer to Antigua this afternoon, with an onward connection to Los Angeles. He said he’d get back to me. Then, five minutes later, the phone rang. It was Martha.

“Have you ever made the acquaintance of something called Berocca?”

“Hello, Martha.”

“Good morning, David. You sound a little shell-shocked.”

“I wonder why. But you sound amazingly awake.”

“That’s because of the wonderful restorative properties of Berocca. It’s a soluble vitamin, with a horse-size dose of Vitamin B and C—and it’s the only known cure for a hangover I’ve ever encountered. They make them in Australia, where they know about hangovers.”

“Please send two over right away.”

“They’re en route as we speak. Just don’t chop them up with a credit card and snort them up a rolled fifty-dollar bill.”

“I don’t do that sort of thing,” I said, sounding defensive.

“That was a joke, David. Lighten up, please.”

“Sorry . . . and, by the way, I really did enjoy the evening.”

“Then why do you want to leave us this afternoon?”

“News obviously travels fast.”

“I hope this decision wasn’t prompted by anything I said.”

“Hardly. I think it’s more to do with the fact that your husband has kept me waiting here for just over a week. And I have a life to be getting on with . . . and a daughter I need to visit in San Francisco this Friday.”

“That’s easily taken care of. I’ll have the Gulfstream booked to fly you direct on Friday morning. With the time change in your favor, you’ll get there by mid-afternoon, no problem.”

“But that means cooling my heels here for another two days.”

“Look, I understand why you’re peeved at my husband. As I said last night, he is playing a game with you . . . like he plays games with everybody. And I feel very bad about all this, because it was me who suggested that he should try to work with you. I’m such a great fan of yours. Besides Selling You, I’ve actually read all your early theater stuff . . .”

“Really?” I said, trying not to sound flattered, but failing.

“Yes, I got one of my assistants at the foundation to track down all your play scripts . . .”

That must have taken some work, I thought, considering that none of those plays were ever published. But if there was one thing I now knew about the Flecks, it was this: if they wanted something, they got it.

“ . . . and I also really want to talk with you about the rewrite you’ve just done on the movie for Philip.”

Which, evidently, Joan had slipped to her.

“You’ve read it already?”

“First thing this morning.”

“How about your husband?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “We haven’t talked for a few days.”

I was about to ask why but thought better of it. So instead I said, “Did you really come back from New York to meet me?”

“It’s not very often that we have a writer I admire staying on the island.”

“And you really like the new version of the script?”

She let out a dark laugh. “Searching for reassurance?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Well, I think the job you’ve done is terrific.”

“Thank you.”

“Believe me, I’d tell you otherwise.”

“I’ve no doubt about that.”

“And if you do stay, I promise not to force vodka down your throat again . . . unless, of course, you want it forced down your throat.”

“Not a chance.”

“Then we’ll be alcohol-free Mormons all day. In fact, I’ll even call you Elder David if you wish . . .”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “All right, all right. I’ll stay one more day. But if he’s not here tomorrow, I’m gone.”

“It’s a deal,” she said.

The Berocca arrived a few minutes later—and much to my surprise, it actually did lessen my hangover agony. But so too did the afternoon I spent with Martha. Given the amount of Stoli she’d thrown back the night before, she looked damnably alert, almost radiant. She arranged lunch on the main balcony of the house. The sun was high, but a light breeze tempered the heat. We ate cold lobster and drank Virgin Marys and talked our heads off. Martha had dropped the coquettish tone that had characterized the previous night, and revealed herself to be funny, erudite, and someone who could talk about a dozen different subjects with great intensity and brio. More tellingly, she really knew her stuff when it came to the business of playwriting—and she had a lot of smart, intelligent points to make about the new version of We Three Grunts. Much to my amazement, she really had read the entire David Armitage oeuvre . . . including two forgotten plays of the early 1990s, which had been given one-off readings by obscure off-off-Broadway companies and had been gathering dust in their script archives since then.

“Hell, even I haven’t read those plays in years,” I said.

“Well, when Philip told me he wanted to work with you, I thought it would be smart to see what you’d been up to before you were famous.”

“And is that how you managed to find We Three Grunts?”

“Yes, I’m to blame for putting it into Philip’s hands.”

“And was it also your idea to put his name on my script?”

She looked at me as if I were deranged. And said, “What on earth are you talking about?”

I explained about her husband’s little stunt with my screenplay—how it had arrived (via Bobby) with his name on the title page.

She exhaled slowly—through clenched teeth.

“I am so sorry, David,” she said.

“Don’t be. It’s not exactly your fault. And the fact is, I still accepted his offer to come out here . . . which shows you just what a fool I am.”

“Everyone gets suckered in by Philip’s money. And it allows him to play the games he loves to play. Which is why I feel bad about this. Because when he called me to ask about you, I should have known that he’d start messing you around too.”

“He called you to talk about me? Aren’t you kind of married?”

“Actually, we’re kind of separated.”

“Oh, right.”

“It’s not official or anything. And it’s certainly something that neither of us wants to be made public. But for around the last year or so, we’ve essentially been living apart.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. Because it was my decision. Not that Philip exactly begged me to reconsider or pursued me to all four corners of the earth. That’s not his style, anyway. Not that he has any style to begin with.”

“Do you think it’s permanent?”

“I don’t know. We talk from time to time—maybe once a week. If he needs me for a public appearance—a big charity benefit, some heavyweight business dinner, or the annual invitation to the White House—I put on the appropriate dress and the appropriate fixed smile and let him hold my arm, and we playact the happy couple. And, of course, I live in all his houses and use all his planes—but only when he’s not using them. The fact that he has so many houses and so many planes means that it’s easy to avoid each other.”

“It’s gotten that bad between the two of you?”

She paused for a moment and stared out at the interplay of sunlight and water on the glistening surface of the Caribbean Sea.

“From the outset, I knew that Philip was just a little odd. But I fell in love with his oddness. And his intellect. And the vulnerability that he keeps hidden behind his taciturn rich man facade. For the first couple of years, we really did get along. Until, one day, he started going into retreat. I couldn’t figure it out at all. Nor would he explain it to me. The marriage was like a shiny new car that, one morning, simply refuses to start. And though you try everything to get it moving again, you start worrying: might this be a lemon? And what makes this worry even worse is the realization that, despite everything, you still love the idiot you’ve married.”

She fell silent, staring out again at all that water.

“Of course,” she said, “looking at that view, you must think: everyone should have her problems.”

“A bad marriage is a bad marriage.”

“Was yours very bad?” she asked.

Now it was my turn to avoid eye contact.

“You want the facile answer or the honest answer?” I asked.

“That’s your call.”

I hesitated for a moment, then said, “No, in retrospect, it wasn’t that awful. We’d lost our way a bit—and I think there was a certain amount of built-up resentment on both sides because she had been carrying us financially for so long. And my success didn’t really simplify matters between us. Instead, it just created more of a gulf . . .”

“And then you met the astonishing Ms. Birmingham.”

“Your researchers are very thorough.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“Of course.”

“Is that the facile or the honest answer?”

“Put it this way . . . it’s very different from my marriage. We’re a ‘power couple,’ with all that that implies.”

“That sounds like a pretty honest answer to me.”

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four o’clock. The afternoon had slipped by in a nanosecond. I glanced up at Martha. The sun had angled itself in such a way that her face was bathed in a soft glow. I looked at her carefully and suddenly thought: She is actually beautiful. So smart. So damn witty. And (unlike Sally) so self-deprecating. More to the point, we were so attuned to each other’s sensibility. Our rapport was instant, all-pervasive, so . . .

Then a second thought immediately popped into my head: Don’t even think about going there.

“Penny for them,” she said, interrupting my reverie.

“Sorry?”

“Your thoughts, David. You seemed to be somewhere else.”

“No—I was definitely here.”

She smiled and said, “That’s nice to know.”

At that moment I realized . . . what? That she’d been watching me watching her . . . that there was “an unspoken thing” between us? . . . the makings of a really messy coup de foudre? . . . Grow up, you idiot, I heard the Voice of Reason whisper in my ear. So what if there’s an attraction? You know what would happen if it was acted upon. Terminal fallout, followed by the longest nuclear winter imaginable.

Now it was her turn to glance at her watch.

“My God, look at the time,” she said.

“Hope I haven’t kept you from anything,” I said.

“Hardly. Anyway, time flies when the conversation flies.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“Is that a cue to break our vow of sobriety and order us something French and fizzy?”

“Not just yet.”

“But later, perhaps?”

I heard myself saying, “If you’re not doing anything . . .”

“My social diary isn’t exactly full down here.”

“Nor mine.”

“So if I suggested something . . . a little outing, perhaps . . . you’d be game?”

Don’t do it, Mr. Voice of Reason hissed in my ear. But, of course, I said, “Fine by me.”

An hour later, with the sun in steep decline toward night, I found myself sitting with Martha on the deck of the cabin cruiser, sipping a glass of Cristal and steaming toward the horizon. Before we embarked, she’d told me to bring a change of clothes and a sweater.

“Where, exactly, are we going?” I’d asked her.

“You’ll see,” she said.

Around half an hour later, a tiny island came into view: hilly, verdant, festooned with palms. From the distance, I could make out a dock, a beach, behind which was a trio of simple buildings—built in pseudo–Easter Island style, with thatched roofs.

“Quite a little hideaway,” I said. “Who does it belong to?”

“Me,” Martha said.

“You serious?”

“Absolutely. It was my wedding present from Philip. He wanted to buy me some huge, absurd Liz Taylor–style rock. But I said that I wasn’t really a Star of India gal. So he said: ‘How about an island?’ And I thought, well, that’s pretty damn original.”

When we docked, Martha led me ashore. The beach wasn’t large, but it was perfectly white and sandy. We walked up to the little development of buildings. The main structure was circular, with a comfortable lounge (all bleached wood and bleached fabrics), and a large veranda, with sun loungers and a large dining table. A kitchen took up the rear of the building. On either side of this central structure were two bures: Polynesian-style cottages, each furnished with a king-size bed, stylish cane armchairs, more bleached fabrics, and a bleached-wood bathroom. House and Garden Goes Tropical.

“Quite a wedding gift,” I said. “I presume you had a hand in the design of the place?”

“Yes, Philip flew in an architect and a builder from Antigua and essentially gave me carte blanche. And I told them that, of course, I wanted a five-star facsimile of Jonestown . . .”

“You mean, you’re going to start your own cult?”

“I think there’s a clause in my prenup that specifically forbids me from founding my own religion.”

“You have a prenuptial agreement?”

“When you marry a fellow worth twenty billion dollars, his people definitely insist that you sign a prenuptial agreement . . . which, in our case, was about the same length as the Gutenberg Bible. But I hired an exceptionally tough lawyer to negotiate my end of the deal . . . so, if things do fall apart, I am well covered. Ready for a little island tour?”

“Isn’t it getting dark?”

“That’s the point,” she said, taking me by the hand. On our way out of the bure, she grabbed a flashlight positioned by the door. Then she led me up a narrow path that began behind the main building and headed straight uphill through a jungly thicket of palms and labyrinthine vines. The sun was still casting a fading glow, but the nocturnal tropical soundtrack of insects and ornithology was in full swing . . . an echo chamber of hisses and unearthly shrieks that brought out my deep city-boy fears about the call of the wild.

“Are you sure this is a smart thing to be doing?” I asked.

“At this time of the night, the pythons aren’t out yet. So . . .”

“Very funny,” I said.

“You’re safe with me.”

Up and up we climbed—the flora and fauna now so thick that the path felt like an ever-darkening tunnel. But then, suddenly, we emerged on top of the hill we’d been ascending. The foliage gave way to a cleared summit. Martha had timed our arrival perfectly . . . because there before us was the incandescent disk of the sun, perfectly outlined against the darkening sky.

“Good God,” I said.

“You approve?” she asked.

“It’s quite a floor show.”

We stood there in silence. Martha turned to me and smiled and took my hand in hers and squeezed it. Then, in an instant, the world was dark.

“That’s our exit cue,” Martha said, turning on her flashlight. We headed slowly downhill. She continued holding my hand until we reached the compound. Then, just before we went inside, she let go—and went off to speak to the chef. I parked myself on the veranda, staring out at the darkened beach. After a few minutes, Martha returned, accompanied by Gary. He was carrying a tray with a silver cocktail shaker and two frosted martini glasses.

“And I thought we were going to practice abstinence tonight,” I said.

“You didn’t exactly say no to the two glasses of champagne on the boat.”

“Yes—but martinis are in a different league from champagne. It’s like comparing a Scud missile to a BB gun.”

“Once again, no one’s forcing it down your throat. But I figured you wouldn’t mind yours made with Bombay gin, straight up with two olives.”

“Did your people research that one as well?”

“No—that was just a straightforward guess.”

“Well, you were right on the money. But I promise you—I’m just drinking the one.”

Of course, Martha didn’t have to twist my arm to down a second martini. Nor did she have to bribe me into sharing the bottle of another absurdly wonderful wine and grilled fish. By the time we were working our way through a half bottle of muscat from Australia, the two of us were in riotous form, trading absurd stories about our respective adventures in the movie and theater games. We talked about our childhoods in Chicago and the Philadelphia suburbs, and Martha’s failed attempts to become a theater director after graduating from Carnegie Mellon, and my fifteen years of endless professional setbacks, and the assorted romantic confusions that characterized our twenties. When we started swapping bad date tales, we were on our second half bottle of muscat. It was late and Martha had told Gary and the rest of the staff to call it a night. So they all retired back to their quarters behind the kitchen, and she said, “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

“I think, at this point, it might be a stagger.”

“Then a stagger it is.”

She grabbed the second half bottle of muscat and two glasses and led me down the hill from the compound, and on to the beach. Then she sat down on the sand and said:

“I promised you a short stagger.”

I joined her on the sand, looking up at the night sky. It was an exceptionally clear night, and the cosmos seemed even more vast than usual. Martha filled our glasses with the sticky golden wine and said:

“Let me guess what you’re thinking as you gaze upward. It’s all trivial and meaningless, and I’m going to be dead in fifty years . . .”

“If I’m lucky . . .”

“All right, forty years. Ten fewer years of insignificant endeavor. Because, in the year 2045, what will anything we do now matter? Unless either of us starts a war or writes the defining sitcom of the new millennium . . .”

“How did you know that was my ultimate ambition?”

“Because it’s been clear from the moment I clapped eyes on you . . .”

She paused, and touched my face with her hand and smiled, then thought better of whatever she was about to say.

“Yes . . . ?” I asked.

“From the moment I saw you,” she said, her tone flippant again, “I knew you had your mind firmly fixed on being the Tolstoy of the sitcom.”

“Do you always talk such nonsense?”

“Absolutely. It’s the only way to keep cosmic irrelevance at bay, which is why I want you to tell me something about your wife.”

“Like what?”

“Was Lucy one of those real at first sight romances?”

“Absolutely.”

“And was she the first great love of your life?”

“Yes. Without question.”

“And now?”

“Now the great love of my life is my daughter, Caitlin. And Sally, of course.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“And Philip . . . ?”

“Philip was never the great love of my life.”

“Okay—but before him?”

“Before him was someone named Michael Webster.”

“And he was it?”

“Hook, line, and sinker. We met when we were undergraduates at Carnegie. He was an actor. When I first laid eyes on him, I thought: he’s the one. Fortunately, it was mutual. So mutual that, from sophomore year on, we were inseparable. After college, we tried to make it in New York for seven years—but spent most of the time scrambling. Then he got a job for a season at the Guthrie—a fantastically lucky break, made even luckier by the fact that I managed to wangle a position in their script department. Anyway, we both really took to Minneapolis; the director of the Guthrie really liked Michael and renewed his contract for a second season. Some casting director from LA wanted him for a role in a Movie of the Week thing. We were talking about maybe starting a family . . . In other words, everything was finally panning out for us. And then, on a really snowy night, Michael decided to run down late to the local 7–Eleven for a six-pack of beer. Coming home, his car hit a patch of black ice and slammed into a tree at forty miles an hour, and the idiot had forgotten to put on his seat belt . . . and he went right through the windshield and headfirst into the tree.”

She reached for the bottle of muscat. “A refill, perhaps?”

I nodded. She topped off our glasses.

“That’s a terrible story,” I said.

“Yes. It is. Made even more terrible by the four weeks he spent on life support, even though he was officially brain-dead. Both his parents were long gone, his brother was stationed with the Army in Germany, so it came down to me to make the decision. And I couldn’t bear the idea of letting him die. Because I was so out of my mind with grief that I was under the delusion there would be some miraculous resurrection, and the great love of my life would be restored to me whole.

“Eventually, some battle-ax nurse—a real tough old broad who’d seen it all in the intensive care ward—insisted I join her for an after-work drink at the local bar. At the time, I was spending twenty-four hours a day by Michael’s bedside—and hadn’t slept in about a week. Anyway, this broad all but frog-marched me to the nearest boozer, insisted I throw back a couple of stiff whiskies, and then gave it to me straight: ‘Your guy is never going to wake up again. There’s going to be no medical miracle. He’s dead, Martha. And for your own sanity, you’ve got to accept that awful fact and pull the plug.’

“Then she bought me a third whisky and got me home. Whereupon I fell completely apart and finally passed out for around twelve hours. When I woke up late the next morning, I called the hospital and told the resident in charge that I was prepared to sign the necessary papers to turn off Michael’s life support.

“And a week after that—in a moment of complete sorrow-deranged misjudgment—I made an application for the script-editing job that had just opened at the Milwaukee Rep. The next thing I knew, I was offered the job and en route to Wisconsin.”

She drained her glass.

“I mean, traditionally, you’re supposed to go to Paris or Venice or Tangier if you’re unhinged by grief. What did I do? I went to Milwaukee.”

She broke off and stared out at the sea.

“Did you meet Philip shortly afterward?”

“No—about a year later. But during the week we spent together working on his script, I got around to telling him about Michael. Philip was the first man I’d slept with since his death—which made the way he dropped me afterward about ten times worse. I’d written him off as beyond arrogant . . . especially after I saw what he’d done to our script . . . until he showed up at my door that night, my irate letter in his hand, begging forgiveness.”

“Did you instantly forgive him?”

“Hardly. I made him pursue me. Which he did—with extreme diligence and, dare I say it, great style. Much to my surprise, I actually found myself falling for him. Maybe because he was such an isolated character—yet one who, I gradually discovered, liked me for what I was, for how I thought and saw the world. And he also needed me. That was the biggest surprise of them all—the fact that this guy, with all his money and the ability to get anything he wanted, told me that he knew I was the best thing that could happen to him.”

“So he won you back?”

“Yes, he eventually did—the way Philip eventually wins everything . . . through sheer bloody-minded persistence.”

She drained her glass.

“The problem is,” she said, “once he’s won something, he loses interest.”

“Foolish man.”

“Ha.”

“No, it’s the truth,” I heard myself saying. “How could anyone lose interest in you?”

She held me in her gaze, then reached out and stroked my hair. And said:

“Dominion lasts until obtained—

Possession just as long—

But these—endowing as they flit

Eternally belong.”

“If you name the writer, you get a kiss,” she said.

“Emily Dickinson,” I said.

“Bravo,” she said, then put her arms around my neck and drew me close and kissed me gently on the lips. Then I said, “My turn. Same deal applies.

“Confirming All who analyze

In the Opinion fair

That Eloquence is when the Heart

Has not a Voice to spare—”

“That’s a toughie,” she said, draping her arms back around my neck. “Emily Dickinson.”

“I’m impressed.”

We kissed again. A slightly longer kiss.

“Back to me now,” she said, still keeping her arms around me. “You ready?”

“Absolutely.”

“Pay close attention,” she said. “This is a tricky one.

“How soft this prison is

How sweet these sullen bars

No despot but the King of Down

Invented this repose.

Of Fate if this is All

Had he no added Realm

A Dungeon but a Kinsman is

Incarceration—Home.”

“That is a stumper,” I said.

“Go on, take a wild guess.”

“But say I get it wrong? What then?”

She drew me even closer. “I’m counting on you to get it right.”

“It wouldn’t be . . . Emily Dickinson?”

“Bingo,” she said, and pulled me right down onto the sand. We began to kiss deeply, passionately. After a few unbridled moments, however, the Voice of Reason began to sound air-raid warning signals between my ears. But when I tried to disentangle myself from her embrace, Martha pinned me down against the sand and whispered, “Don’t think. Just . . .”

“I can’t,” I whispered back.

“You can.”

“No.”

“It’ll be just for tonight.”

“It won’t—and you know it. These things always have repercussions. Especially . . .”

“Yes?”

“Especially when . . . you know and I know this will not be just one night.”

“Do you feel that way too?”

“What way?”

“That way . . .”

I gently removed her arms from mine and sat up.

“What I feel is . . . drunk.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” she said softly. “Look at all this: you, me, this island, this sea, this sky, this night. Not a night, David. This night. This unique, unrepeatable night . . .”

“I know, I know. But . . .”

I put my hand on her shoulder. She took it and held it tightly.

“Damn you for being so sensible,” she said.

“I wish . . .”

She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips. “Please shut up,” she said. Then she got to her feet. “I’m going to take a walk,” she said.

“Can I join you?”

“I think I’ll make it a solo walk, if you don’t mind.”

“You sure?”

She nodded.

“Are you going to be okay out here?”

“It’s my island,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Thank you for tonight,” I said.

She gave me a sad smile and said, “No—thank you.”

Then she turned and headed off down the beach. I thought about chasing after her, about taking her in my arms again and kissing her, and blurting out a lot of jumbled thoughts about love and the nature of timing and how I didn’t want to complicate my life any further, and how I so wanted to kiss her . . .

But instead, I did the rational thing and forced myself up the hill. Once inside my hut, I sat on the edge of the bed, put my face in my hands, and thought: This has been one strange week. That’s all I thought, however, because my cognitive abilities were numbed by the alcoholic equivalent of toxic shock. Had I been able to properly fathom what had just transpired—not to mention the massively unsettling thought that maybe, just maybe, I was a little in love with her—I might have started to feel unhinged.

But I didn’t get an opportunity to indulge my guilt. Because, for the second night running, I passed out fully clothed on my bed. Only this time, my exhaustion was so complete that I didn’t stir until 6:30 a.m., when there was a light tapping on the door. I muttered something vaguely resembling English, then the door opened and Gary walked in, carrying a tray with a coffeepot and a large glass of water. I noticed that, though still wearing last night’s clothes, I had been covered by a blanket. I wondered who’d been in earlier to play the Good Samaritan.

“Morning, Mr. Armitage,” Gary said. “How are we feeling this morning?”

“Not good.”

“Then you need two of these,” he said, popping a pair of Berocca tablets into the water. When they were fully dissolved, he handed me the glass. I downed the contents in one long gulp. As it sped down my gullet, images of the previous night’s endeavors began to play across that vacant lot better known as the inside of my head. As I replayed our embrace on the beach, I had to resist the temptation to shudder. I didn’t succeed . . . though Gary pretended not to notice and instead said:

“Might a cup of very strong black coffee be most useful right now?”

I nodded. He poured the coffee. I sipped it, nearly gagging on the first mouthful. But the second sip went down easier, and by the time I was working on the third, the Berocca was starting to lift the fog from my brain.

“Did you have an enjoyable night, sir?” Gary asked me. I studied his face with care, wondering if the obsequious little bastard was trying to tell me something . . . if he had been on the veranda with a pair of binoculars, watching us imitate a pair of goofy adolescents on the beach. But his face betrayed nothing. Nor would I.

“Yeah, great,” I said.

“I’m sorry to be getting you up so early, but—as you requested—the Gulfstream will be flying you to San Francisco this morning. Would you mind if I just briefly run through travel arrangements?”

“Go ahead . . . but you might have to repeat them a couple of times.”

He gave me a thin little smile, and said, “Now Mrs. Fleck told us that you need to be in San Francisco by around four this afternoon to meet your little girl after school.”

“Yeah, that’s right. How is Mrs. Fleck this morning?”

“En route to New York right about now.”

I didn’t think I was hearing this clearly. “She’s what?”

“Heading to New York, sir.”

“But how . . . ?”

“The way she usually gets to New York, sir. By one of our airplanes. She left the island last night. Shortly after you went to bed.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

“Oh.”

“She did, however, leave you a note,” he said, proffering a small white envelope with my name written on the front. I resisted the temptation to open it, and simply put it on the pillow beside me.

“She also asked me to make all the arrangements for your flight to the Coast. So, here’s what we’ve organized—we’ll get you back to Saffron by around nine, with the helicopter to Antigua scheduled for ten thirty and departure on the Gulfstream to San Francisco at eleven fifteen. The pilot’s informed me it’s a seven-hour-forty-minute flight, but with the four-hour time change, you should arrive around three ten. We’ve arranged for a limo to collect you at the airport and to be at your disposal all weekend. And we’ve also arranged, with our compliments, a suite for you and your daughter at the Mandarin Oriental.”

“That’s far too extravagant of you.”

“You can thank Mrs. Fleck—she set it up.”

“I’ll do that.”

“One final thing—during the ninety minutes you’re back on Saffron, Mr. Fleck will look forward to meeting you.”

“What?” I said, my hands suddenly cold and clammy.

“Mr. Fleck will be meeting you at nine.”

“He’s back on the island?”

“Yes, sir. In fact, he arrived back late last night.”

Great, I thought. Just great.

SEVEN

AS THE BOAT sped back toward toward Saffron Island, my anxiety level began to rise. No doubt this had something to do with finally meeting the guy who had been keeping me waiting for the past seven days. But it also probably had something to do with my host arriving home to discover that his wife and his guest had taken off to her own private island for the night. Then there was the little matter of my drunken beachside embrace with Martha. The fact that she had returned to Saffron late last night would have assuaged any suspicions that we spent the night together, but I did wonder whether one of the staff had seen us kissing in the sand and had dutifully informed Fleck that his wife and his guest had been reenacting the famous Burt Lancaster/Deborah Kerr surfside clinch in From Here to Eternity—a scene that Fleck the film buff would know only too damn well.

Cut!

I gripped the bars that encircled the deck of the cabin cruiser and told myself to calm down. I reminded myself that a hangover always left me feeling vulnerable and prone to paranoid fantasies. In the great, expansive catalogue of sexual stupidities, drunken necking on a beach rated as a minor misdemeanor. Hell, I had met temptation and resisted it. So give yourself a pat on the back, and stop this self-flagellation. And while you’re at it, stop postponing the inevitable, and open Martha’s letter.

So I did just that. It was a card, written in neat, cramped writing. On the first side of it was the following:

I can wade Grief—

Whole Pools of it—

I’m used to that—

But the least push of Joy—

Breaks up my feet—

And I tip—drunken—

Let no Pebble—smile—

Twas the New Liquor—

That was all!

I turned the card over and read:

I think you know the poet, David.

And yes, you’re right: timing is, sadly, everything.

Take care,

Martha

My first reaction was, Well, that could have been a lot worse. My second reaction was, She is wonderful. And my third reaction was, Forget all about it . . .

When the boat docked at Saffron Island, Meg was there to greet me. She had packed up all my things, she said, and had everything ready to load aboard the chopper. But if I wanted to check my suite before leaving . . .

“I’m sure you’ve found everything,” I said.

“Then Mr. Fleck is waiting for you in the Great Room.”

I followed her up the dock, into the house, and down the corridor to that vast, cathedral-like lounge. Before entering the room, I took a deep steadying breath. But as I walked in, I found that I was alone.

“Mr. Fleck must have stepped away for a moment. Could I get you something to drink?”

“Just a Perrier, please.”

Meg left, and I parked myself in the same Eames chair that Martha told me cost $4,200. After a minute or so, I stood up and began to pace the room, glancing at my watch, telling myself I shouldn’t be getting anxious, because, after all, this guy was just a guy. Though he might be a guy with big bucks, nothing he said or did or thought about me would have any impact on my career. More to the point, he’d sent for me. I was the talent. He was the buyer. If he wanted what I was selling, fine. If not, I’d live.

Two minutes went by, then three, then five. Then Meg returned, carrying a tray. But instead of my Perrier, there was a tall glass of tomato juice, adorned with a celery stalk.

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“It’s a Bloody Mary, sir.”

“But I ordered a Perrier.”

“Yes, but Mr. Fleck felt you should have a Bloody Mary first.”

“He what?”

Suddenly, I heard a voice from on high: specifically, from the balcony that overhung this room.

“I thought you might be in need of a Bloody Mary,” the voice said, a low, slightly hesitant voice. After a moment, I heard footsteps on the circular steel stairs that led to the balcony. Philip Fleck walked down the steps slowly, favoring me with a vague smile. Of course, I knew his face from countless press photographs, but what initially surprised me was his chunky stature. He couldn’t have been more than five foot five, with sandy brown hair flecked with gray and a boyish face that showed all the signs of high-carbohydrate overconsumption. He wasn’t exactly fat—but he was most definitely fleshy. His clothes were hip-preppy-casual—a faded blue button-down shirt, worn loosely over a pair of well-washed tan chinos, with white Converse low-top sneakers on his feet. Though he’d allegedly just spent a week on a fishing boat under a sizzling Caribbean sun, he was surprisingly pale, making me wonder if he was one of those skin cancer obsessives who feared melanomas lurking behind even the slightest darkening of his pigment.

He proffered his hand. I took it. His grip was soft, unforceful—the grip of someone who didn’t care whether or not you liked the impression he was making.

“You must be David,” he said.

“That’s me.”

“Then, from what I hear, a Bloody Mary is definitely in order.”

“Really? And what precisely did you hear?”

“I heard from my wife that the two of you did some serious drinking last night.” He looked in my direction but not directly at me—as if he were a bit myopic and couldn’t focus on any near-distant object. “Did I hear right?”

I chose my words with care. “It was a slightly wet evening,” I said.

“Slightly wet,” he said, his voice still soft and ever so tentative. “What a nice turn of phrase you have. But given the ‘slight wetness’ of the previous night . . .”

He motioned toward Meg and the drink on the tray. Part of me wanted to refuse it. But the other part told me to play along . . . especially as I really was in sudden need of a hangover cure.

So I took the Bloody Mary off the tray, raised it in Fleck’s direction, and downed it in one long gulp. Then I replaced it on the tray and smiled directly at him.

“You were obviously thirsty,” he said. “Another, perhaps?”

“No thanks. One did the job.”

He nodded to Meg and she withdrew. He motioned for me to sit in the Eames chair. He took up a position opposite me on the sofa but situated himself in such a way that he didn’t have to look at me, but instead could talk in the diagonal direction of the nearest wall.

“So,” he said quietly, “a question for you . . .”

“Fire away,” I said.

“Do you think my wife’s an alcoholic?”

Oh boy . . . “I wouldn’t know.”

“But you spent two evenings drinking with her.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And she drank heavily on both occasions.”

“But so did I.”

“So are you an alcoholic too?”

“Mr. Fleck . . .”

“You can call me Philip. And you should know that Martha spoke quite highly of you. Mind you, she herself was quite high at the time. But that’s part of Martha’s charm, wouldn’t you agree?”

I said nothing. Because I didn’t know what the hell to say.

And Fleck was content to let us lapse into uncomfortable silence for the better part of a minute before I finally broke it.

“How was the fishing?” I asked.

“Fishing? I wasn’t fishing.”

“You weren’t?”

“No.”

“But I was told . . .”

“You were misinformed.”

“Oh. So if you weren’t fishing . . . ?”

“I was elsewhere. São Paulo to be exact.”

“Business?”

“No one ever goes to São Paulo for pleasure.”

“Right.”

Yet again, the conversation seized. Yet again, Fleck stared diagonally at the opposing wall.

Finally, after another endless minute of silence, he spoke.

“So . . . you wanted to see me,” he said.

“I did?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“But . . . you invited me here.”

“Did I?”

“Absolutely.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I mean, I thought you wanted to see me.”

“About what?”

“The script.”

“What script?”

“The script I wrote.”

“You write scripts?”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“Do I sound like I’m trying to be funny?”

“No—you sound like you’re trying to play a game with me.”

“And what sort of game would that be?”

“You know why I’m here.”

“Tell me again . . .”

“Forget it,” I said, standing up.

“Pardon?”

“I said—forget it . . .”

“Why did you say that?”

“Because you’re messing with me.”

“Are you angry?”

“No—I’m just leaving.”

“Have I done something wrong?”

“I’m not going to get into it.”

“But if I’ve done something wrong . . .”

“This conversation’s closed. Good-bye.”

And I headed toward the door. But Fleck’s voice stopped me.

“David . . .”

“What?” I said, turning around. Fleck was now looking straight at me, a big mischievous smile on his face, holding a copy of my script in his right hand.

“Gotcha,” he said. And when I didn’t immediately break into a hundred-watt hey, what a great joke grin, he said: “Hope you’re not too pissed at me now.”

“After waiting here for a week, Mr. Fleck . . .”

He cut me off.

“You’re right, you’re right—and for that, my apologies. But hey, what’s a little Pinteresque banter between colleagues.”

“We’re colleagues?”

“I certainly hope so. Because, speaking personally, I want to make this script.”

“You do?” I said, trying to sound neutral.

“I think what you’ve done in the new rewrite is quite remarkable. Because it’s like a deconstructed caper movie with a really rigorous political underpinning. And what you’re really getting at is the malaise inherent in laissez-faire consumerism, an ennui that has become such a defining mainstay of contemporary American life.”

This was news to me—but if there was one thing I’d learned about the writing trade it was this: when a director started enthusiastically telling you what your movie was about, it was always best to nod your head in sage agreement . . . even if you thought he was talking utter shit.

“Of course,” I said, “first and foremost, it is a genre movie . . .”

“Precisely,” Fleck said, motioning for me to sit back down in the Eames chair. “But it subverts the genre—the way Jean-Pierre Melville redefined the existential hit man legend in Le Samourai.”

The existential hit man legend? Sure.

“At heart, though,” I said, “it is about a couple of guys in Chicago trying to rob a bank.”

“And do I know how to film that bank job.”

For the next half an hour, he gave me a shot-by-shot storyboard of how he’d film the bank job (using Steadicam—and grainy color film stock “to get a real sense of guerrilla filmmaking”). Then he talked casting ideas.

“I only want unknowns. And for the leads, I’m really considering these two amazing actors I saw last year at the Berliner Ensemble . . .”

“How’s their English?” I asked.

“We can work on that,” he said.

I could have mentioned the slight credibility problem of having heavily accented Germans playing a pair of grizzled Vietnam vets, but I held my tongue. In the course of his epic monologue, he mentioned that he was thinking of budgeting the film at around $40 million—an absurd sum for an alleged piece of guerrilla filmmaking. But who was I to question the way he wanted to squander his money? And I remembered what Alison told me before I came out here.

“I know I can fuck him out of a lot of money. I’m going pay-or-play on this one, Dave. A cool million. And I promise you he’ll pay it. Because even though we both know that registering your script under his name was a form of sweet talk, he still won’t want that made public. And without us even asking, he’ll pay big-time to keep it quiet.”

I was actually succumbing a bit to his zealousness, the way he made me feel as if I had written not a mere frolic but one of the great defining human documents of the age. Martha was right—when Fleck wanted something, he pursued it with complete fervor. But I also remembered what she said about how he lost interest once he had gotten what he wanted. And I was still a little bemused by the way he’d tried to unsettle me at the beginning of our conversation—though, to his credit, he did stop halfway through his oration to apologize for “pulling my chain.”

“I’m afraid it’s a bad habit of mine,” he said. “When I meet someone for the first time, I like to wrong-foot them a bit . . . just to see how they’ll react.”

“And did I pass the test?”

“An A plus. Martha told me you were a class act—and she knows her writers. Thanks again for spending so much time with her over the last couple of days. She’s such a big fan of yours, and I know she really enjoyed the opportunity to talk with you at such great length.”

Not to mention playing a kissing game with me involving the poems of Emily Dickinson. But Fleck’s face betrayed no knowledge of such events. Anyway (I told myself), they were unofficially separated. He probably had mistresses in each of his many ports of call. So what if he found out I’d been necking with his wife? He loved my screenplay. If he imposed his goofy ideas on it, I’d pull my name from the credits . . . after cashing his check.

But before we could speak any further on the subject of his wife, I decided to change the subject.

“I meant to thank you for introducing me to Pasolini’s Salo,” I said. “It might be the worst first date movie of all time, but it’s still quite a film, and one you certainly don’t get out of your brain easily.”

“For me it is, without question, the greatest film made since the War. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“That’s a big statement . . .”

“And I’ll tell you why it deserves that accolade. Because it deals with the foremost issue of the last century . . . which is the need to exercise absolute control over others.”

“I don’t think that was just a twentieth-century preoccupation.”

“True—but in the last century, we made a great leap forward in terms of human control . . . we harnessed the power of technology to establish total hegemony over others. The German concentration camps, for example, were the first supreme example of hyper-technological death—for they created an exceedingly efficient apparatus for human extermination. The atomic bomb was also a triumph of human control, not only for its capability for detached mass destruction, but also as a political tool. Face facts, we all bought into the Cold War apparatus of the secret security state, thanks to the threat of the bomb . . . and it allowed governments on both sides of the ideological divide the perfect means for keeping the hoi polloi constrained, while also giving them the raison d’être for setting up a vast intelligence network to stifle dissent. Now, of course, we have the vast information capabilities necessary for even greater control over individuals. Just as Western societies use consumerism—and the endless cycle of acquisitiveness—as a means by which to keep the populace preoccupied, subdued.”

“But what does this have to do with Salo?”

“It’s simple, really—what Pasolini was showing was fascism in its purest pretechnological form: the belief that you have the right, the privilege, to exert complete control over another being to the point of completely denying them their dignity and essential human rights; to strip them of all individuality and treat them like functional objects, to be discarded when they have outserved their capability. Now the demented aristocrats in the film have been replaced by larger powers: governments, corporations, data banks. But we still live in a world where the impulse to dominate another individual is one of the foremost of all human motivations. We all want to impose our own worldview on everyone else, don’t we?”

“I suppose so . . . but how does this whole, uh, thesis, relate to my . . . our . . . heist movie?”

He looked at me and smiled the smile of someone about to impart a fantastic, highly original suggestion—and who had been just waiting for the right moment to spring it on me.

“Say . . . and this is just a suggestion, but one I want you to consider very seriously . . . say our two Vietnam vets manage to pull off an initial bank job but then make the mistake of getting a little ambitious and decide to go after the loot of an ultra-secretive billionaire.”

Takes one to know one, I thought. But Fleck didn’t flash me a grin of self-irony. He just kept talking.

“Anyway,” Fleck continued, “let’s say that this billionaire lives in a hilltop fortress in northern California . . . with one of the largest private art collections in the States, which our guys have decided to rip off. But when they finally break into this guy’s citadel, they are immediately taken prisoner by his platoon of armed guards. And they discover he’s set up a libertine society for himself and a bunch of his chums—with his very own sex slaves, both male and female. As soon as they’re captured, our two guys are enslaved themselves . . . but immediately start plotting a way of liberating themselves and everyone else from this draconian regime.”

He paused and smiled at me. “What do you think?” he asked.

Careful now. You don’t want him to see you wince.

“Well,” I said, “it sounds a bit like Die Hard meets the Marquis de Sade. A question, however: do our two guys get out alive?”

“Does that matter?”

“Of course it does . . . if you want this to be a somewhat commercial movie. I mean, given that you’re thinking about spending forty million dollars, you are going to want to aim it at the multiplex crowd. Which means that they are going to have to have someone to root for. Which means that one of the vets walks out of there after blowing all the bad guys away . . .”

“And what happens to his friend?” he asked, his voice suddenly terse.

“You let him die heroically . . . and preferably at the hands of the demented billionaire. Which, of course, gives the Bruce Willis character an even bigger personal grudge against his captor. At the end of the movie, after blowing away all his minions, Willis and the billionaire finally square off. Naturally, Willis has to walk away from the ruins of the mansion with some babe on his arm . . . preferably one of the sex slaves whom he’s emancipated. Roll credits. And you’ve got a guaranteed twenty-million-dollar opening weekend.”

Long pause. Philip Fleck pursed his lips.

“I don’t like that,” he said. “I don’t like that at all.”

“Personally speaking, nor do I. But that’s not the point.”

“What is the point then?”

“If you want to turn this heist movie into a ‘two guys get captured by a rich loony’ movie, and you also want the film to make money, then you are going to have to play by certain mainstream Hollywood rules.”

“But this is not the movie you wrote,” he said, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Tell me about it,” I said. “As you well know, the film I wrote—and rewrote—is a dark, funny, slightly dangerous Robert Altman–style comedy; the sort of thing that would be a perfect vehicle for Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland as the old Vietnam vets. What you’re proposing . . .”

“What I’m proposing is also dark and dangerous,” he said. “I don’t want to make some generic piece of shit. I want to reinterpret Salo in a twenty-first-century American context.”

“When you say ‘reinterpret’ . . . ?” I said.

“I mean lure the audience into believing that they are watching a conventional heist movie, and then bam! throw them into the blackest heart of darkness imaginable.”

I studied Fleck with care. No, he wasn’t being ironic or wry or even grimly fanciful. The guy was absolutely serious.

“Define what you mean by ‘heart of darkness,’” I said.

He shrugged. “You saw Salo,” he said. “What I’d be aiming for is the same extreme cruelty . . . pushing the boundaries of taste and audience tolerance to the furthest extremes.”

“Like, say, the turd banquet . . . ?”

“Well, naturally, we wouldn’t want to directly ape Pasolini . . .”

“Of course we wouldn’t . . .”

“But I do think there should be some sort of terrible degradation involving fecal matter. Because there’s nothing more primal than shit, is there?”

“I’d certainly agree with that,” I said. I kept expecting him to say Gotcha! again, and give me a hard time about wrong-footing me for the second time. But he was deadly earnest. So I said, “But you do know that if, say, you actually show a guy taking a dump on the floor, you won’t just fail to get the movie passed by the ratings people . . . you might fail to get it released.”

“Oh, I’d get it released,” he said. True . . . because he could pay to get anything done. Just like he could also drop $40 million on another extremist vanity project. The guy could do whatever he wanted . . . because his money insulated him from the usual run-of-the-mill worries about returning a profit on a movie (let alone getting the damn movie widely seen).

“You know, however, that the sort of film you’re proposing will only play in Paris or maybe in some art house in Helsinki, where the suicide rate is high . . .”

Fleck tensed slightly. “That’s a joke, right?”

“Yeah. I was joking. All I’m saying is—”

“I know what you’re saying. And I am aware that what I am proposing is radical. But if someone like me—given the resources at my disposal—plays it safe, how will art ever progress? Face facts, it has always been the wealthy elite who have funded the avant-garde. I’m simply funding myself. And if the rest of the world chooses to revile what I’ve done, so be it. As long as it’s not ignored . . .”

“You mean, like your first movie?” I heard myself saying. Fleck tensed again, then glared at me in a way that made him seem simultaneously wounded and dangerous. Oops. I had just put my foot in it . . . big-time. So I quickly said, “Not, of course, that it deserved such treatment. And I doubt what you’re proposing now—with our script—would be ignored. You might have the Christian Coalition burning effigies of you, but I’m certain attention would be paid. In a major way.”

Now he was smiling again, and I was relieved. Then he hit a button on the table. Meg arrived within seconds. He asked for a bottle of champagne.

“I think we should toast our collaboration, David,” he said.

“Are we collaborating on this?”

“That’s what I’m assuming. I mean, you are interested in continuing to work on the project, aren’t you?”

“That depends . . .”

“On what?”

“The usual stuff: our mutual schedules, my other professional obligations, the contractual terms your people work out with my people. And then there’s the issue of money.”

“Money wouldn’t be an issue.”

“Money’s always an issue in the movie business.”

“It’s not with me. Name your price.”

“Sorry?”

“Name your price. Tell me how much you’d want to rewrite the script.”

“This is an area I never really dabble in. You’ll have to talk to my agent . . .”

“I’m going to say it again, David: Name your price.”

I took a deep, nervous breath. “You’re talking about one rewrite to your specifications?”

“Two drafts and a polish,” he said.

“Then you’re asking for a substantial commitment of time,” I said.

“And I’m sure you’ll charge accordingly.”

“And we’d be talking about your ‘Salo in Napa Valley’ scenario?”

A tight little smile. “I suppose one could refer to it as that,” he said. “So . . . the price, please.”

Without flinching, I said, “two-point-five million.”

He studied his fingernails. And said, “Sold.”

Now I did flinch. “You sure about that?”

“It’s a done deal. So, shall we get started?”

“Well . . . uh . . . I don’t usually start work until a contract is signed. And I’d have to talk things over with my agent.”

“What’s to talk about? You named a price. I’ve accepted it. Let’s go to work.”

“Now?”

“Yes—this instant.”

But an hour from now, I’m supposed to be aboard one of your private jets, heading west to see my daughter; a weekend together that I can’t (and won’t) miss.

“Well, I know my agent’s out of town right now . . .”

“But surely we can track her down somewhere. And if not, I’ll still arrange for half of the two-point-five million to be transferred to your bank account this afternoon.”

“That’s incredibly generous—and honorable—of you. But that’s not really the problem. The thing is, I’ve got an important family commitment back on the Coast.”

“Is it life or death?” he asked.

“No—but if I don’t show up, it’s going to really upset my daughter—and my ex-wife will use my no-show as a way to legally flay me.”

“Fuck her,” he said.

“It’s not that easy.”

“Yes, it is. Anyway, two-point-five million dollars will buy you a lot of legal assistance.”

“But there’s a child involved too.”

“She’ll live.”

Perhaps. But I might not be able to handle the guilt.

“Here’s what I propose,” I said. “Let me go to San Francisco now, and I can be back here first thing Monday morning.”

He started regarding his fingernails again. “I won’t be here,” he said.

“Well then, I could meet you wherever you are.”

“Next week’s impossible.”

“How about the week after?” I said, and suddenly regretted making that offer. Because I had violated rule number one of writing for the movies: I’d sounded far too eager . . . which, in turn, meant that I appeared to need the work or really want the money. Which was true—but in Hollywood (and especially around a tricky guy like Fleck), you had to behave as if you could live without the million-dollar deal. So much of the game was about striking an attitude of complete self-command and never admitting doubt or (horror of horrors) actually needing someone else. In this instance, I didn’t need this writing gig—and, in fact, had grave doubts about its creative legitimacy. But how could I resist the absurd paycheck . . . especially when I would also get Alison to structure the contract in such a way that I would have no problems with taking my damn name off the screenplay and could subsequently deny all knowledge of Fleck’s warped, fecal-obsessive tamperings with my original baby.

The thing was, Fleck himself now realized that he had me in a delightful conundrum: stay the weekend and get working on a $2.5 million writing contract. Or leave and . . .

“I’m afraid this is the only weekend I have free,” he said flatly. “And, to be blunt about it, I’m rather disappointed by your attitude, David. I mean, you came out here to work with me, didn’t you?”

I adopted a calm, reasonable tone of voice.

“Philip . . . just to set the record straight again. You flew me out here to discuss my script. You also kept me waiting seven days . . . an entire week, during which we could have done a vast amount of work on the script. Instead . . .”

“You were actually waiting here seven days?”

Oh God. Back we go into the Twilight Zone.

“I did mention this at the start of our conversation,” I said.

“Then why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“I have no idea, Philip. But I was certainly given to believe that you did know I was cooling my heels here.”

“Sorry,” he said, suddenly all vague and distant again. “I didn’t have a clue . . .”

What a complete, total liar. I couldn’t believe his ability to suddenly disengage and to act as if he was suffering from memory lapse or a strange interlude . . . to the point where he hardly even acknowledged my presence. It was as if he abruptly blacked you out once you said (or did) something that didn’t fit in with his plan, his worldview. As soon as that happened, he pressed a mental Erase button, and you were consigned to the bin marked “nowhere.”

“Well,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Are we done here?”

“That’s up to you.”

He stood up. “We’re done. Anything else you need to tell me?”

Yeah—you’re an asshole supreme.

“I think the next move is yours,” I said. “My agent’s name and number are on the pad. I’m happy to proceed with the rewrite on the terms discussed between us. Since I won’t be starting work on the next season of Selling You until two months from now, this is a good moment to get the work you want done. But, once again, it’s your call.”

“Fine, fine,” he said, looking over my shoulder at one of his functionaries, who was holding a cellphone in one hand, silently motioning that he needed to take this call. “Listen . . . thanks for coming out. I hope it was useful to you . . .”

“Oh, absolutely,” I said, a noticeable edge of sarcasm entering my voice. “It was so useful.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“Hardly,” I said, sounding even more sarcastic.

“You know what your problem is, David?”

“Enlighten me.”

“You can’t take a joke, can you?”

And he broke into another of his Gotcha! grins.

“You mean, you do want to work with me?” I asked.

“Absolutely. And if it means waiting a month, so be it.”

“Like I said, I can get going whenever . . .”

“Then let my people talk to your people, and once all the contractual stuff is sorted out, we’ll arrange a free weekend somewhere, during which the two of us can thrash out the entire rewrite. Does that sound good to you?”

“Yeah, fine,” I said, not knowing what to think anymore.

“Well, if you’re pleased, I’m pleased,” pumping my hand. “Nice to be in business with you. And I really think we’re going to come up with something truly out there. Something they won’t forget in a hurry.”

“I’m sure.”

He patted my shoulder. “Have a good flight back, my friend.”

And he was gone.

Meg—standing quietly in a corner of the room—stepped forward and said, “The chopper’s ready when you are, sir. Anything else we can do for you before you go?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I said, but then thanked her for looking after me.

“I hope the time here was useful to you, sir,” she said, the smallest flicker of a smile crossing her lips.

The chopper got me to Antigua. The Gulfstream got me to San Francisco. We landed on schedule just after three p.m. As promised, a limousine was waiting and brought me to Lucy’s house in Sausalito. Caitlin came running down the path and threw herself into my arms. Her mother emerged from the house, glowering at me, glowering at the limousine.

“Are you trying to impress us?” she asked, handing me Caitlin’s weekend bag.

“Lucy, when have I ever been able to impress you?” I asked.

Caitlin looked anxiously at each of us, her eyes imploring us not to start. So I ushered her into the limousine, informed Lucy that we’d be back at six on Sunday evening, and then told the driver to take us to the Mandarin.

“Why do you have this big car?” Caitlin asked me as we crossed the bridge back into San Francisco.

“Someone who likes my writing gave it to me for the weekend.”

“Will you be able to keep it?”

“No—but we can make the most of it this weekend.”

Caitlin seriously approved of the penthouse suite at the Mandarin Oriental. So did I. It overlooked the Bay, the two bridges, the lustrous downtown skyline, the entire melodramatic sweep of the city. As we pressed our noses against the suite’s vast windows and peered out, Caitlin asked me, “Can we stay here every weekend you visit me?”

“I’m afraid this is a one-off.”

“The rich man again?”

“The very one.”

“But if he keeps liking you . . .,” she said hopefully.

I laughed. “Life doesn’t work that way,” I said, wanting to add: Especially in the movie business.

Caitlin didn’t want to go out for the evening; she was very content to be in this room with a view. So we ordered up room service. As we waited for it to arrive, the phone rang—and I heard a voice I hadn’t heard for over a week.

“How’s it hanging?” Bobby Barra said.

“Well, what a pleasant surprise,” I said. “You still in New York?”

“Yeah—still trying to fight a rearguard action to save this fucking IPO. But it’s like trying to put a Band-Aid on a sliced jugular vein.”

“Nice image, Bobby. And let me guess how you found out I was here.”

“Yeah—Phil’s people told me. But I talked to the man himself. And I’ve got to tell you, guy . . . he loved you.”

“Really?”

“Hey, what’s with the quizzical tone?”

“He kept me waiting a week, Bobby. A week. Then he showed up an hour before I had to leave, and first made like he never knew me, and then made like he wanted to work with me, and then played a variety of other head games. He yanked my chain, and I didn’t like it.”

“Listen, what can I say? Between ourselves, he’s a little weird. Like there are times when I think the guy is plan nine from outer space. But he’s also twenty billion dollars’ worth of weird, and he told me he really wants to make this movie with you . . .”

“His creative ideas are shit, you know,” I said, interrupting. “In fact, he’s actually obsessed with shit.”

“So what? I mean, shit has its own integrity, right? Especially when it comes with a seven-figure price tag. So forget about the guy’s bad manners, enjoy the Mandarin, have a great time with your daughter, and tell that agent of yours to expect a call from Fleck’s people next week.”

But when I got back to LA late Sunday night and told the whole story to Sally, she said that, in her opinion, there was less than no chance I’d hear from him again.

“He toyed with you, as if you were last week’s trinket. But at least you got a suntan out of it. You meet anyone else on the island?”

I decided it was best not to mention my evening with Mrs. Fleck, so I said no and then changed the subject back to the subject Sally wanted to get back to—her triumphant management of the Stu Barker crisis, turning her onetime adversary into her great ally and protector within the course of a week. So much so, in fact, that he was giving her carte blanche with the autumn prime-time lineup and was making it known in top Fox circles that she was the player to watch right now.

Oh, and somewhere in the midst of her heroic account of this latest professional conquest, she did mention that she missed me and loved me madly. I kissed her and told her the exact same things.

“Everyone has their moment,” she said. “This is ours.”

And, in a way, she was right. Because, to my immense surprise, Fleck’s lawyer did call Alison a week later to discuss the terms and conditions of the contract. It was all very straightforward and businesslike. There was no argument about the $2.5 million tab for my services. There was no argument about a clause allowing me to remove my name from the script.

Alison said, “Let’s face it, a two-point-five deal would make anyone sit up and salivate . . . me especially. But if he is going to push ahead with all his excrement fantasies, we’re definitely not going to want your name attached to that sort of insanity . . . which is why I insisted on this take-the-money-and-run clause.”

“Do you think I’m crazy to be getting into this?” I asked her.

“From what you’ve told me, the guy is from the David Koresh school of mental stability. But as long as you know that—and as long as we’ve got you fixed up with a contractual parachute—the price is right. However, you better keep this job down to a couple of months maximum, because I’ve no doubt that you are about to be in even greater professional demand.”

Sure enough, Alison was right. When the second season of Selling You hit the small screen a month later, it was an instant hit.

“If the opening two episodes prove anything,” the New York Times wrote, “it’s that David Armitage isn’t simply a flash in the pan. His brilliantly structured, mordant, corrosive scripts for these first two installments of the new season show that he is one of the great comic writers of our time, with an absurd eye that still manages to grasp the inherent social complexity of the contemporary American workplace.”

Thank you very much indeed. The reviews—coupled with great word of mouth (and a considerable number of fans from the first season)—guaranteed terrific ratings. So terrific that, after episode three, FRT greenlit a third season, and Alison negotiated a $2.5 million writing-producing package for me. Around the same time, Warner Brothers offered me a cool million-five to write a movie of my choosing. Naturally, I accepted.

I mentioned this Warners deal to Bobby Barra during a phone call right after the season premiere of Selling You. He congratulated me—and asked if I would like to be one of the privileged few who would be allowed to invest seriously in a surefire IPO for an Asian search engine that was guaranteed to become the number one player in China and all of Southeast Asia.

“This is like backing Yahoo with slopey eyes,” he told me.

“How politically correct of you, Bobby.”

“Listen—we’re talking about the biggest untapped market in the world. And it’s the chance to get in at ground level. But I’ve got to know fast . . . you interested?”

“You’ve never steered me wrong yet.”

“Smart guy.”

Actually, I really did feel like something of a smart guy—because everything was going my way.

And then there was the little matter of the Emmy Awards, which I attended with both Sally and Caitlin (who everyone thought was charming). When they reached the award for Writing for a Comedy Series, and the envelope was opened, and my name was called, I embraced my two girls and raced to the stage and accepted the award with a short speech in which I thanked “all the far more talented people than myself who brought my scribblings to remarkable televisual life,” while also acknowledging the fact that the only way you ended up winning an award like this was through pure, dumb luck.

“And so, when I look back on the extraordinary professional experience that was Selling You, I know I’ll think that this was one of those rare, peerless moments in professional life when all the planets were in alignment, when the gods of happenstance smiled, when I learned that Providence wasn’t just a town in Rhode Island . . . or when, in plain English, I simply got lucky.”

It was the climactic moment to an astonishing two years. That night, falling into bed with Sally, my brain tingling with far too much champagne, I found myself thinking, You once dreamed of a life like this. Now it’s yours.

Congratulations: you have arrived.

PART Two

EIGHT

THE TROUBLE ALL started with a phone call. A very early morning phone call on the Wednesday after the Emmy Awards. Sally had already left the apartment for a breakfast confab with Stu Barker, and I was still deep in Never-Never Land when the phone suddenly sprang into life. As I jolted awake, one thought filled my clouded brain: a phone call at this hour is never good news.

The phone call was from my producer, Brad Bruce. He sounded tense—producers always do—but from the moment he started talking, I could tell that he wasn’t simply his normal edgy self; something was definitely wrong.

“Sorry to be calling at this time,” Brad said, “but we’ve got a problem.”

I sat up in bed. “What sort of problem, Brad?”

“Are you familiar with a rag called Hollywood Legit?” he asked, mentioning a free, alternative paper that had come on the scene in the last year, in competition with LA Reader—and one that prided itself on its tough investigative reporting and its distaste for all the usual Hollywood overpaid self-importance.

“Has the season made the pages of the Legit?” I asked.

“It’s you who’ve made the pages, David.”

“Me? But I’m just a writer.”

“A very high-profile writer . . . which makes you a target for all sorts of accusations.”

“I’ve been accused of something?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What exactly?”

I could hear him sucking in his breath, then accompanying the exhalation with one word: “Plagiarism.”

My heart missed three beats. “What?”

“You’ve been accused of plagiarism, David.”

“That’s insane.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I don’t plagiarize, Brad.”

“I’m sure you don’t . . .”

“So if I don’t plagiarize, why am I being called a plagiarist?”

“Because this shitbag journalist named Theo McCall wrote something in his this week’s column, which is due to hit the streets tomorrow morning.”

I knew Theo McCall’s column. It was called “The Inside Dirt”—and it certainly dished it. Week in, week out, this guy dug up all sorts of unpleasant, scandalmongering stuff about the entertainment community. It was the sort of column that I took prurient delight in reading. Because we all love gossip . . . until the moment that we ourselves become the subject matter.

“I’m not in that column, am I?” I said.

“The very one. Want me to read you the item? It’s rather long.”

That didn’t sound promising. “Go on,” I said.

“Okay, here it is: ‘Congrats are in order to Selling You writer-and-creator David Armitage. Besides scooping up an Emmy last week for Comedy Writing, he’s now basking in a sensational set of reviews for the new season, which, it must be admitted, is even better than its premiere season . . .’”

I interrupted him.

“‘It must be admitted’: what a begrudging, petty-assed thing to say.”

“It gets worse, I’m afraid. ‘Without question, Armitage must be regarded as one of the great discoveries of the past few years . . . not just for his wickedly skewed comic observations, but also for the brilliant stream of one-liners mouthed by his hyper-anxious characters, week after week. But though no one questions Mr. Armitage’s droll originality, one sharp-eared informant enlightened this column last week with the intriguing news that an entire exchange of dialogue from Armitage’s Emmy Award–winning episode is a near-verbatim lift from Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur’s classic journalism comedy, The Front Page.’”

Once again I interrupted Brad.

“This is complete bullshit,” I said. “I haven’t seen The Front Page in—”

Now Brad interrupted me. “But you have seen it?”

“Sure—both the Billy Wilder film and the Howard Hawks version with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. I even acted in a college production of the play at Dartmouth—”

“Oh, that’s fucking wonderful . . .”

“We’re talking nearly twenty years ago . . .”

“Well, you obviously remember something from it. Because the passage you allegedly lifted—”

“Brad, I lifted nothing—”

“Hear me out. This is what McCall writes: ‘The repartee in question can be found in the Selling You episode ‘Shtick Happens’—for which Armitage won his Emmy. In it, Joey—the fast-and-loose gofer for Armitage’s fictitious PR agency—runs smack into a police van while driving a big-deal client (a mega-egoistic soul diva) across town for a taping of The Oprah Show. He then comes staggering back into the office to inform Jerome—the company’s founder—that their diva is in the hospital, screaming police brutality. In Armitage’s script, there is the following exchange:

JEROME

You actually ran into a cop car?

JOEY

What can I say, boss? It was an accident.

JEROME

Were any of the cops hurt?

JOEY

I didn’t stick around to find out. But you know what happens when you hit a cop car. They all roll out like lemons.

“‘Now compare and contrast this clever banter with the following dialogue from The Front Page, in which Louis—the henchman of wheeling-dealing editor Walter Burns—races into the newsroom to tell his boss that, in the course of whisking the future mother-in-law of ace reporter Hildy Johnson across town, he’s collided with a van filled with Chicago’s finest:

WALTER

You actually ran into a police van?

LOUIE

What can I say, boss? It was an accident.

WALTER

Were any of the cops hurt?

LOUIE

I didn’t stick around to find out. But you know what happens when you hit a cop van. They all roll out like lemons.’”

“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered. “I never . . .”

“You better listen to McCall’s final paragraph: ‘Without question, this virtual reproduction by Armitage is one of those unintentional examples of what the French call an “hommage” . . . better known in plain English as being a copycat. No doubt, this is the only example of plagiarism in the Armitage “oeuvre.” But it’s clear that this clever, talented writer has, in this instance, embraced that famous T. S. Eliot diktat: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”’”

Long pause. I suddenly felt as if I had just walked into an empty elevator shaft.

“I don’t know what to say, Brad.”

“There’s not much to say. I mean, to be blunt about it, he caught you red-handed . . .”

“Now wait a damn minute. Are you saying that I deliberately lifted that dialogue from The Front Page?”

“I’m saying nothing. I’m just looking at the facts. And the fact is the dialogue he quoted from your script and from that play are one and the same . . .”

“Okay, okay, maybe the dialogue is the same. But it’s not as if I sat down and opened the script of The Front Page and copied . . .”

“David, believe me, I’m not accusing you of that. But you have been caught with the smoking gun in your hand . . .”

“This is trivial stuff.”

“No, this is deeply serious stuff.”

“Look, what are we dealing with here? A joke from a seventy-year-old play that somehow ended up, by osmosis, in my script. But we’re not talking about an intentional case of literary theft. We’re talking about my inadvertent use of someone else’s joke, that’s all. Who doesn’t purloin jokes? It’s the nature of the game.”

“True—but there’s a difference between using some guy’s take-my-wife gag, and having four lines of dialogue from a famous play pop up in your script.”

Long pause. My heart was pounding, as the realization hit me: I am in big trouble here.

“Brad, you’ve got to know that this was completely unpremeditated on my part.”

“And David, you’ve got to know that, as your producer, I am going to go to the wall with you on this one. Of course, I know you would never do anything so insane and self-destructive. Of course, I can fully understand how a couple of lines from someone else’s work can be unintentionally absorbed into your own work. And, of course, I know that every writer has, at one time or another, been accidentally guilty of this petty misdemeanor. The problem is—you got caught.”

“But it’s a minor-league offense.”

“And so say all of us. But . . . I’ve got even more bad news. You know Tracy Weiss,” he said, mentioning FRT’s head of public relations.

“Of course I know Tracy.”

“Well, at nine thirty last night, she got a call from this Variety journalist, Craig Clark, who wanted an official comment from FRT. Thank Christ Tracy knows Clark pretty well. Because she convinced the guy to hold on the story until today . . . on the understanding that he’d get an exclusive statement from FRT and from you . . .”

“Great.”

“Listen, we’re into damage control mode. So anything we can do to lessen the shit storm . . .”

“Understood, understood.”

“So when Tracy called me last night . . .”

“If you knew about this last night,” I said, “why did you wait to call me until now?”

“Because Tracy and I knew that, if you’d been told last night, you wouldn’t have slept. And we both decided that, given what you’re about to face today, you definitely needed a good night’s sleep.”

“So what am I facing today, Brad?”

“You need to be at the office by eight, no later. Tracy and I will be there. Ditto Bob Robison . . .”

“Bob knows?” I said, sounding edgier.

“Bob’s the head of series. Of course, he knows. What Tracy’s hoping for is that we can all craft a statement in which you admit that this was an unpremeditated goof, that you regret the mistake, and that you’re simply guilty of telling a good joke twice. Anyway, after we figure out the statement, you’re meeting for ten minutes with the Variety hack . . .”

“I have to go face-to-face with this guy?”

“If you want a sympathetic hearing, there’s no way around it. And what Tracy’s banking on is that, if he gives you the benefit of the doubt, we can get our side of the story out there simultaneously with McCall’s turdy column and cauterize this thing fast.”

“And if the Variety guy doesn’t buy my side of the story, what then?”

Once more, I could hear my producer take a slow, steadying inhalation of breath.

“Let’s not go there yet.”

Long pause. Then he said, “Look, I know this is bad . . .”

“Bad? It’s much ado about nothing.”

“Exactly. And that’s the way we’re going to play it. Which is why I know we’ll get through this. But David, I just need to ask you one thing . . .”

I knew what was coming. “No,” I said, “I have never, ever intentionally plagiarized anything. And no, to the best of my knowledge there are no further unintentional paraphrases or quotes from other people’s work in any of my Selling You scripts.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Now get your ass down here fast. It’s going to be a long day.”

In the car on the way to the office, I called Alison at home.

“That is the slimiest thing I’ve heard in my life,” Alison said after I paraphrased McCall’s column, “and I’ve encountered a lot of slimy stuff.”

“Any way you look at it, it’s bad . . .”

“It’s petty bullshit, dressed up as scandal. Fucking journalists. They all have the morality of a tomcat. They’ll spray anything that moves.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Whatever happens, you’ll live.”

“That’s very reassuring.”

“What I’m saying here is don’t panic. Get yourself safely to the office in that Hun-mobile of yours. I’ll meet you there. And believe me: I won’t let them fry you, David. I won’t even let them sauté you. Hang in there.”

As I edged my way through traffic, my mood vacillated from fear to belligerence. All right, my subconscious had possibly betrayed me . . . but I had done nothing deliberately wrong. More to the point, this creep McCall was taking a few inconsequential lines and transforming them into a burning-at-the-stake offense. As far as I was concerned, the only way to combat such malicious journalistic behavior was to come out of the corner, swinging.

“That’s exactly what we won’t do,” Tracy Weiss said when I proposed this take-no-shit approach at the start of our meeting. We gathered in Brad’s office, sitting around the circular “ideas table” where we usually brainstormed stuff for the series. But this morning, I was greeted by Brad, Tracy, and Bob Robison with supportive words and edgy faces that betrayed their fear—and that also let it be known that, ultimately, this was not going to be a communal we’ll share the guilt together situation. On the contrary, from the moment I faced the three of them around that table, I realized that—though this was, corporately speaking, their problem—I was the defendant here. And if punishment was meted out, I’d take the brunt of it.

“The fact is, David,” Tracy said, “though McCall may be, at the best of times, a vindictive scumbag, he still has you by both cojones. Which means that, like it or not, we’ve got to soft-pedal this thing.”

Alison, seated next to me, lit up a Salem and said, “But McCall is trying to hang David for jaywalking.”

“Cut the melodrama, Alison,” Bob Robison said. “The guy’s got evidence. And—take it from an ex-member of the California bar—evidence is all you need to convict someone. Motives count for shit if you’ve been nabbed in the act.”

“But there’s a difference here,” I said. “The alleged plagiarism was subliminal . . .”

“Big fucking deal,” Bob Robison said. “You didn’t mean to do it, but you still did it.”

“That is a big fucking deal,” Alison said, “because half the time, writers don’t know where their stuff comes from.”

“Unfortunately,” Robison said, “Theo McCall worked that one out for David.”

“I didn’t mean this to happen,” I said.

“My sympathies,” Robison said, “and I mean that. Because you know how highly I rate you. But the fact remains: it happened. You plagiarized. You may not have intended to plagiarize, but you still plagiarized. Do you see the point I’m trying to make here, David?”

I nodded.

“And once again,” Brad said, “I want both you and Alison to know that we are completely behind you on this. We will not abandon you.”

“That’s very touching, Brad,” Alison said dryly, “and I hope I never have to quote that promise back to you.”

“We are going to fight this,” Tracy said, “but in a way that doesn’t seem either aggressive or defensive. The idea is to close down any further lines of argument—or inquiry—by issuing a statement in which David admits accidental culpability . . .”

“Good phrase,” Robison said.

“ . . . but in which he also doesn’t prostrate himself. The tone is going to be very important. So too is the tone you bring to the interview with Craig Clark.”

“Do you think he’ll be sympathetic?” Brad asked her.

“First and foremost, he’s an entertainment journalist. And a story like this . . . well, my hope is that he has enough insight into the business to understand how something like this could unwittingly happen. At the same time, he’s not a malicious creep like McCall. We’ll be giving him exclusive access to David, and he does love the show. So let’s hope that he decides this story is a sidebar, nothing more.”

We spent the next hour working on the FRT statement—in which the company acknowledged that I had inadvertently transposed a few lines from The Front Page into my script, that I greatly regretted this “undevised error” (Tracy’s words, not mine), and had been genuinely appalled when it was pointed out to me. There was a quote from Bob Robison stating that he fully accepted my explanation for the “transposition,” and that they completely supported me—to the extent that, as widely reported in the entertainment press last month, they had just signed me for the next season of Selling You. (It was Alison who insisted that they put this line in the press release—just to remind everyone they weren’t just sticking by me but would continue to “further our relationship.”)

Finally, there was a quote from me, in which I sounded contrite as hell but also genuinely bemused as to how this could have happened in the first place:

“Writers are like sponges—they soak everything up, and then recycle it all again . . . sometimes without even realizing it. Certainly this was the case with the four lines of dialogue from The Front Page that managed to end up in an episode last season of Selling You. I’ll admit it: The Front Page is one of my favorite plays, and one that I acted in during college. But that was in 1980, and I haven’t seen or read it since then. How then did a handful of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s peerless lines find their way into my script? I honestly don’t know. That doesn’t excuse this accidental transposition [Tracy’s words again]—which has caused me acute embarrassment, as it would any writer. I have never intentionally used another writer’s words. This is a onetime error—and all I can plead is mental misadventure, pulling a joke out of the jumbled filing cabinet of my brain, and not remembering where I’d heard it in the first place.”

We talked at length about this confessional statement. Bob Robison wanted it to be a flat-out mea culpa (well, he is a Catholic). Alison wanted me to strike a quasi-apologetic, yet still defiant pose—pointing out that this was small beer . . . and, for God’s sake, don’t other people’s jokes always end up in other people’s material? But it was Tracy who encouraged me to balance contrition with wit.

“This is also the tone you need to strike with Craig Clark,” Tracy said after we finished writing my quote. Sorry, embarrassed, yet also “ironically knowing” . . . whatever that meant.

As it turned out, Craig Clark was decent enough for a journalist. After ushering the others out of Bob’s office, Tracy discreetly sat in a corner while Craig fired questions at me. He was in his early forties—slightly stocky, slightly harassed in demeanor, but wholly professional and (I was relieved to discover) relatively sympathetic.

“Let me say from the outset that I’m a huge fan of Selling You.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I really do think it’s a breakthrough in television comedy, a total original. Which is why this . . . uh . . . disclosure must be so hard for you. Just to kick things off, can I ask you this: do you think most writers at one time or another have accidentally borrowed someone else’s lines?”

Praise the Lord! The guy was in my corner. He didn’t want to eviscerate me or to wreck my career. He asked a couple of tough questions—about whether even an accidental crib was a forgivable offense (to which I replied, “No—it’s not,” in the hope that the I’m making no excuses for myself approach would impress him), and if I deserved severe censuring from my fellow writers (“Probably,” I said, maintaining the I’ll take my punishment like a man tone). I also made him laugh—saying that if I had to accidentally borrow from something, thank God it was The Front Page and not Gilligan’s Island. I also said that, as penance, I was going to write the next Jackie Chan movie. In short, I seemed to strike the okay sorry, but this isn’t a federal offense tone that Tracy wanted from me. At the end of our twenty minutes (Tracy let it overrun, as Clark appeared to be enjoying himself), he shook my hand and said, “Well, I do hope this turns out to be a minor glitch on your career chart.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And I really appreciate the thoughtful interview.”

“You gave good copy.”

I reached into my pocket and took out a little notebook, and wrote my home and cellphone numbers on a page. Then I tore it out and handed it to him.

“If you need to ask me a few more questions, just give me a ring at either of those numbers. And once all this dust has settled, maybe we can have a beer.”

“That would be great,” he said, pocketing the paper. “I . . . uh . . . have written a couple of spec television comedy scripts . . .”

“Let’s talk.”

He shook my hand again. “You’re on,” he said.

Tracy opened the door for him and said, “I’ll walk you to your car.”

As soon as they were gone, Alison came back into the office.

“Tracy gave me the thumbs-up on the way out. You happy with how it played?”

I shrugged. “Right now, I feel numb.”

“You’re about to feel even number. While I was sitting in your office, Jennifer took a call from Sally. She said it was urgent.”

Oh, wonderful. She’d found out . . . before I had a chance to tell her.

I went to my office and called Sally. Her assistant put me straight through. Her first words were, “I’m stunned by this.”

“Darling, can I—”

“And what’s hurt me the most is the fact that I found all this out secondhand.”

“But I only found out myself just before seven.”

“You should have called me immediately.”

“But I knew you were doing breakfast with Stu.”

“I would have taken your call.”

“And the thing was, I had to race straight down here, and I’ve been in crisis meetings ever since, not to mention an interview with some guy from Variety.”

“Variety knows already?” she said, sounding anxious.

“Yeah—but Tracy Weiss, the head of PR here, got a call last night from this journo who writes for Variety and she decided . . .”

“So she knew about this last night . . .”

“Yes, but, believe me, I was only told this morning. And to get our side of the story out, she decided to offer this hack an exclusive with me . . .”

“It’s in tomorrow’s Daily Variety?”

“Absolutely.”

“And has FRT issued a statement?”

“Yeah—with a contrite quote from me.”

“You’ll get them to e-mail it to me?”

“Of course, darling. But please, don’t go all cold and professional on me. I need you right now.”

“If you needed me, you should have called me immediately. I am supposed to be the love of your life.”

“You know you are. It’s just . . . oh Christ, Sally, this is just a little overwhelming.”

“Can you imagine what it was like for me . . . to be shown that Hollywood Legit column by some minor minion from our press office, and to be told, ‘What a shame about your guy,’ and not to know a thing about it?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m . . .”

I broke off, suddenly feeling steamrollered by everything.

“David?”

“Yeah . . .”

“You all right?”

“No. I am definitely not all right.”

“Now I feel terrible . . .”

“You know how much I adore you,” I said.

“And you know how much I adore you. It’s just . . .”

“You’re right, you’re right. I should have called. But everything went chaotic. And . . .”

“You don’t have to explain. I overreacted. But I was just so upset. And, I mean, it does look very bad. It was accidental, wasn’t it?”

“It certainly wasn’t premeditated.”

“Well, that’s something. And you’re certain . . . ?”

Here came that question again—the one everybody needed to ask me.

“Believe me, that’s the only time someone else’s lines have ended up in a script of mine.”

“Of course, I believe you, darling. And because it’s a one-off, it will be forgiven and forgotten.”

“I am not an intentional plagiarist,” I said, sounding vehement.

“I know that. Within a week, it will be old news.”

“I hope to hell you’re right.”

“I’m always right,” she said lightly, and I laughed for the first time since waking up.

“You know what would be great?” I said. “A long boozy lunch with you. I think I need a martini anesthetic fast.”

“Darling, you know I’m back off to Seattle this afternoon.”

“I’d forgotten that.”

“It’s that new series of ours . . .”

“Fine, fine.”

“But I will be back first thing Saturday. And I will call lots.”

“Good.”

“It’s going to be okay, David.”

After the call, I poked my head out of the office. Alison was sitting behind Jennifer’s desk, working the phones. I nodded toward her to come into the office. She finished her call and walked in, closing the door behind her.

“So how did that go?” she asked me.

“She was eventually supportive.”

“That’s something,” she said neutrally.

“Don’t say it.”

“Say what?”

“What you’re thinking about Sally.”

“I’m thinking nothing about Sally.”

“Liar.”

“Guilty as charged. But at least she came around . . . after probably working out that this isn’t going to harm her as well.”

“Now that’s bitchy,” I said.

“But completely accurate.”

“Can we move on?”

“With pleasure. Because I’ve got some good news. I just spoke to Larry Latouche at SATWA,” she said, using the acronym of the Screen and Television Writers’ Association. “He already knew about the McCall piece.”

“He did ?”

“What can I say—it’s a slow week for showbiz gossip. Maybe if we get lucky, in the next forty-eight hours, some hot actor will get caught with an underage illegal Mexican babe, and he’ll deflect some of the heat. For the moment, however, you’re about to become the town’s talking point. And word is spreading fast.”

“Wonderful.”

“But the good news is that Latouche is outraged by McCall’s accusations—especially as he himself can cite at least two dozen other examples of a few lines from someone else’s script ending up being innocently used elsewhere. Anyway, he wanted you to know that the Association is fully behind you on this . . . and he’s planning to issue a press release tomorrow morning, confirming this and also damning McCall for turning a trifle into bullshit news.”

“I’ll call Latouche later to say thanks.”

“Good idea. We need heavy hitters in your corner right now.”

There was a knock on the door. Tracy entered, holding a copy of the press release.

“So here it is. The big suits at Corporate HQ in New York have just approved it.”

“How have they taken the news?” Alison asked.

“They’re not pleased—because, they don’t like tsuris. But they’re completely supportive of David and want this whole situation closed down ASAP.”

Alison then mentioned the Latouche statement. Tracy wasn’t happy.

“That’s nice to have their support, Alison,” she said, “and I appreciate you organizing this, but I wish you’d cleared it with me first.”

Alison lit up another Salem.

“I didn’t realize I worked for you, Tracy,” she said.

“You know what I’m saying,” Tracy said.

“Yeah—you’re a control freak.”

“Alison . . .,” I said.

“You’re right,” Tracy said. “I am a control freak. And I want to control this situation in such a way that your client’s career isn’t damaged. Does that bother you?”

“No—but your tone does,” Alison said.

“And your cigarette’s really bothering control freak me,” Tracy said. “We’re a smoke-free environment.”

“Then I’m just going to have to fuck off out of here,” Alison said.

“Alison, Tracy,” I said, “let’s all calm down a bit.”

“Sure,” Alison said, “and while we’re at it, we can all hug each other and shed a tear, and achieve growth.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Alison,” Tracy said.

“This whole shitty situation upsets me . . . and yeah, that’s my attempt at an apology too.”

“You free for dinner tonight?” I asked Alison.

“Where’s your inamorata?”

“Checking up on a pilot being filmed in Seattle.”

“Then the martinis are on me. We need about six apiece. Come by the office around six.”

After she left, Tracy turned to me and said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, she’s a total piece of work . . . and you’re lucky to have her in your corner. I think she’d just about kill and maim for you.”

“Yeah, she is pretty feral . . . and insanely loyal.”

“Then you’re a lucky guy. They expunged ‘loyalty’ from the LA vocabulary long ago.”

“But I can count on your loyalty, can’t I?”

“Sure,” she said quickly. “That’s all part of the package.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Wait and see how the McCall story plays.”

By noon the following day, there was a sense that we were winning the public relations war. Though the LA Times ran a small sidebar (in the Arts section) about McCall’s column, the story wasn’t picked up by any of the other major national papers—a sure sign that this item was being regarded as Hollywood tittle-tattle, nothing more. Yes, the Hollywood Reporter ran a largeish page-two story on those four damn lines; it was a balanced story, featuring my apologia (from the press release) and Larry Latouche’s justification of my position. Better yet was Craig Clark’s story in Daily Variety, pointing out that (during the course of our “exclusive interview’) I was completely open about this “accidental plagiarism” and “did not try to make excuses for his inadvertent error.” Then he went on to quote around five different leading television and film writers (whom he’d obviously chased down yesterday), all of whom leaped to my defense. But the real coup de grâce was a comment that Clark gleaned from Justin Wanamaker, a man who (along with William Goldman and Robert Towne) was considered one of the truly eminent screenwriters of the past thirty years. In a prepared statement (which—as Clark revealed—Wanamaker e-mailed exclusively to Variety) he didn’t simply put the knife into Theo McCall’s back. He also twisted it several times:

“There are serious entertainment journalists, and then there are morally suspect pugilists like Theo McCall, who think nothing of undermining a writer’s career by making suspect allegations of plagiarism, based on the flimsy premise that a borrowed joke constitutes a mortal sin, worthy of the Inquisition. There is something truly despicable about watching a Grub Street hack attacking one of the truly original comic talents in America today.”

Tracy was thrilled with the Craig Clark story. Ditto Brad and Bob Robison and, of course, Alison.

“Up until five minutes ago, I always thought Justin Wanamaker was a pompous prick,” she said. “Now I’m going to nominate him for the Nobel Prize. What a great fucking quote. I hope it destroys the little shit’s reputation.”

Sally also called me from Seattle, delighted with the Variety story.

“Everyone’s been ringing me all morning, offering solidarity, telling me how horribly you’ve been treated and how elegantly you came across in the Variety interview. I’m so damn proud of you, darling. You’ve handled it brilliantly. We are going to win this one.”

How nice to know that we were once again “we.” But I couldn’t really blame Sally for her anger yesterday. And now, she was right—we were turning a potentially disastrous situation around . . . to the point where my own voice and e-mail (at home and at the office) became flooded with messages of support from friends and professional associates. Better yet, by Saturday, the tide actually started turning against Theo McCall—with three letters on the LA Times’s editorial pages pointing out other incidents of accidental plagiarism and also lambasting McCall’s brand of smear journalism. Then, in the Sunday edition of the same paper, came a truly devastating left hook, in the form of a three-hundred-word piece in the Arts Miscellany column, which disclosed that, before he became a Hollywood Legit hack, McCall had spent five years trying to break into television comedy—without any success whatsoever. One NBC producer even went on the record to say that McCall had been briefly employed by him as a writer during the late nineties but had been fired—and how’s this for a vindictive quote—“when it became clear that his meager talent would always remain meager.” It was also pointed out that, shortly after NBC fired his sorry ass, ICM also dropped him as a client.

“I wish life always worked this way,” Sally said after she read me the LA Times dismembering job on McCall. “They’re really declaring open season on the asshole.”

“With good reason—because the guy’s made a career out of playing the feared Hollywood attack dog. Now he’s been neutered, so everyone feels it’s safe to kick him.”

“He deserves no less. And the brilliant thing is you’ve not only been vindicated, you’re also coming out of the entire incident looking like the wronged party . . . and something of a giant-killer to boot.”

Once again, Sally was spot-on. Over the weekend, I received a call from Jake Dekker, the head of production at Warner’s, to assure me that Breaking and Entering was being fast-tracked toward a green light. Then, around noon on Sunday, Sheldon Fischer—FRT’s chief executive officer—also rang me at home, and told me the following anecdote.

“About a year ago, I was named Entertainment Executive of the Year by the Orange County B’nai B’rith. At the ceremony, I thanked my wife, Babs, saying—and this is a direct quote—‘She’s always been there at three in the morning, when the rest of the world is asleep.’ Everyone afterward complimented me on the turn of phrase, with the exception of Babs, who pointed out that that was the exact sentence used by that late playwright guy, August Wilson, when thanking his wife during his Tony Award acceptance speech back in the early nineties. And I’d been at those awards. And Wilson’s line lodged in my brain . . . and then, all those years later, out it came again, masquerading as an original Sheldon Fischer comment.

“My point, David, is that I really felt for you when that poisonous accusation appeared. And, as I know from experience, what happened to you could happen to anyone.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fischer,” I said. “The support I’ve received from everyone at the network has been extraordinary.”

“Well, family is family, David. And please, call me Shel . . .”

Alison nearly coughed on a lungful of Salem smoke when I repeated this conversation to her the next morning.

“Did you know that your best new friend Shel is so into families that he just decamped from wife number three to take up with—get this—his colonic irrigationist . . . who also happens to be a twenty-eight-year-old Serb with a pair of knockers that would have made the late Jayne Mansfield seem flat-chested?”

“How the hell did you find out all this arcane gossip?”

“From Theo McCall’s column, naturally.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Oh yes it is—since he’s the joke now. This whole business has flattened that sucker. It’s like you’ve kicked the biggest bully on the street right in the crotch . . . and everyone’s delighted.”

“I didn’t do anything special. I just told the truth.”

“Yeah—and you deserve a humanitarian award for character and principle, not to mention being such a swell guy.”

“You’re not being cynical by any chance?”

“Me cynical? How could you say such a thing. But I’ll tell you this, David: I am very fucking relieved. Because I think you might just have won this one.”

“We’re not out of the shit yet,” I said.

But later that morning, Tracy popped into my office, looking confident.

“I’ve just run a check on all the national and state papers: a mention in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today on McCall’s item about you, and the fact that the LA Times exposed him as a failed writer. The San Francisco Chronicle also ran a small item. Ditto local papers in Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Sacramento. But all the coverage is incredibly biased toward you . . . thanks to Justin Wanamaker. By the way, we should probably send Wanamaker a discreet thank-you gift on your behalf.”

“Isn’t he really into guns and stuffed rhino heads and all that retro-Hemingway stuff?”

“Yes, that’s Mr. Wanamaker’s macho shtick. But if you think we’re going to buy him an AK-47 assault rifle . . .”

“How about a case of good single-malt Scotch? He’s still a serious boozer, right?”

“Yep, and he also makes a point of lighting up a Lucky Strike whenever he’s being interviewed, just to get the point across that he hates California health Nazis. So I think a case of Scotch would be most welcomed. Any brand in particular?”

“Just make sure it’s at least fifteen years old.”

“Done. And what do you want on the card?”

I thought about this for a moment and said: “How about . . . Thank you.”

“That just about says it all.”

“And while we’re on the subject, thank you, Tracy. You played this all brilliantly. And you really saved my ass.”

Tracy smiled. “All part of the job,” she said.

“But we’re not totally in the clear yet, are we?”

“Put it this way: from what I hear from my spies at Hollywood Legit, McCall’s been hobbled by that LA Times story—which has made him look like a despicable, talentless little jerk who uses his column as payback time for his own professional failure. None of the other coverage has attacked you or your position—which, quite simply, means that everyone’s bought your side of the story. But the next couple of days are critical . . . just in case somebody does decide to make further noise about all this. My gut feeling is it’s over. But I want to wait until Friday to say that officially.”

And on Friday morning, the official call came from Tracy. I was at home, working on an outline for the opening episode of Selling You’s third season, when the phone rang.

“Have you seen this morning’s edition of Hollywood Legit?” she asked me.

“For some reason, I’ve crossed it off my Must Read list. Is that clown shoveling shit in my direction again?”

“That’s why I’m calling you. His column this week is all about how Jason Wonderly . . .”

She was talking about this year’s teen heartthrob who got caught shooting up in a toilet on the set of his deeply resistible hit show, Jack the Jock, in which he played a mischievous but clean-living high school quarterback who chases skirt but also has a strong community conscience.

“ . . . anyway, according to McCall, it seems that Wonderly’s dealer was nabbed trying to sneak little Jason a nickel bag at Betty Ford . . .”

“But there’s nothing about me or Selling You?”

“Not a word. Better yet, I had my assistant do a complete check through all the major papers. No follow-ups on the story. In fact, nothing anywhere since Monday. Which basically means that the story is yesterday’s news . . . otherwise known as dead. Congratulations.”

Later that day, more good news came my way, when Jake Dekker from Warner Brothers called me up to say that Vince Nagel—the hot young director of the month—had finally read the first draft of Breaking and Entering and he’d flipped about it. Though he was going to be in New York next week, he wanted to meet with me the week after . . . to give me some notes and move the project to the second-draft stage.

“And, by the way,” Jake told me toward the end of the conversation, “I was so happy to see that little creep McCall put in his place over what he tried to do to you. That guy was the journalistic equivalent of the Ebola virus. It’s good to see him snuffed out . . . and, more importantly, to see that you have come through this unnecessary ordeal so well.”

Jake Dekker was right: it had been one long ordeal of a week. And besides the fact that someone had pointed an accusing finger at me in print (never a comfortable experience, believe me), what had unnerved me most was the realization that—had I not won my case in the court of Hollywood public opinion—the outcome might have been . . .

But let’s not go there. Let’s celebrate the fact that I got through the entire nasty business, virtually unscathed. In fact, as Sally was quick to point out, my position had been intriguingly strengthened by this short, sharp tribulation.

“Everyone loves a comeback,” Sally said. “Everyone loves someone who fights back and is vindicated.”

“I still feel like an idiot,” I said, lowering my head onto Sally’s lap.

“That’s not just dumb, it’s also futile. Anyway, we’ve been through this a hundred times over the past week. It was a subliminal mistake . . . and not an uncommon one. So stop beating yourself up. You were found not guilty. You walked.”

Maybe Sally was right. Maybe, like someone in a potentially fatal accident, my entire professional life had passed in front of my eyes and, just a week after the initial impact, I was still reeling. So much so that, for most of the weekend, I simply slept late, and lazed around the loft, and read the new Elmore Leonard novel, and tried to put everything else out of my mind.

In fact, I so enjoyed this indolent weekend that I decided to extend it into the first half of the new week. Though I probably should have been continuing to plan the next season of Selling You, I decided to assume the role of Los Angeles flâneur for a few days: loitering without much intent in West Hollywood cafés, meeting a writing friend for a long schmoozy lunch at a good Mexican joint in Santa Monica, buying far too many CDs, paying an acquisitive visit to my old haunt, Book Soup, ducking in and out of mid-afternoon movies, and generally putting all professional pressures on hold.

Monday melded into Tuesday, which melded into Wednesday. And late that evening, as I cleared the dishes after an order-in sushi dinner at home, I told Sally, “You know, I really could get used to this indolent life.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re not indolent. The counter-life always looks better when you have a round-trip ticket back to your own life. Anyway, you know what writers become when they get too indolent?”

“Happy?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘impossible.’ Or maybe completely impossible.”

“All right, all right. I won’t get too indolent.”

“That’s nice to know,” she said dryly.

“But I tell you, in the future, I am definitely taking a week off every—”

The phone rang. I answered it. It was Brad Bruce. He didn’t say hello, he didn’t greet me with any pleasantries. He simply asked, “Is this a good time to talk?”

“What’s wrong, Brad?” I said, causing Sally to immediately look at me with concern. “You sound bad.”

“I am bad. Bad and very upset.”

“What’s happened?”

Long pause.

“Maybe we should do this face to face,” he said.

“Maybe we should do what face to face?”

Another long pause. Finally he said, “Tracy has just walked into my office with this Friday’s edition of Hollywood Legit. And yes, yet again you feature prominently in Theo McCall’s column. In fact, you’re the entire column.”

“I am?” I said, my unease now edging into fear. “But that’s impossible. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“That’s not what his new evidence shows.”

“His new evidence? For what?”

“For plagiarism.”

It took me a moment or so to speak.

“That’s crazy. I am not—repeat, not—a plagiarist.”

I glanced over at Sally. She was staring at me, wide-eyed.

“You said this last week,” Brad said in a low tone, “and I believed you. But now . . .”

“Now what?”

“Now . . . he’s found three other examples of plagiarism in your scripts for the show. Not only that, he’s found a couple of lifted lines in all those plays you wrote before . . . before . . .”

Before I was famous, perhaps? Before I had it all? Before I was exposed as a literary thief, even though I never, ever intentionally stole anything. So how . . . ? How . . . ?

I sat down slowly on the sofa. The room was spinning. My professional life was, once again, passing before my eyes. Only this time I knew that the plunge wasn’t like one of those falling dreams, which concluded with me landing on my pillow. This time, the plunge was real—and the landing would be anything but soft.

NINE

THANKS TO THE dubious wonders of technology, Tracy was able to scan Theo McCall’s new column and have it dispatched to my home computer screen within minutes. Sally stood over me as I sat down to read it. But she didn’t put a reassuring hand on my shoulder, nor did she utter any words of support. In the time between the end of my phone call with Brad and the arrival of the article, she said nothing. Nothing at all. She simply stared at me with something approaching incredulity. The disbelief that accompanies a betrayal.

But I hadn’t been trying to betray anyone. Not even myself.

I sat down at the computer. I went online. Tracy’s dispatch was waiting for me. I opened it. There, in bold print, was the article in question. I was stunned not just by its length, but also by its headline:

THE INSIDE DIRT

by Theo McCall

Is the “Accidental Plagiarist” Really That Accidental?

New Evidence Uncovers Selling You Creator David Armitage’s Penchant for the Borrowed Line

As we all know, Hollywood is an industry that will overlook any venal or mortal sin committed by one of its own . . . as long as the individual in question is well connected and profitable. Whereas a mere mortal like you or me would find themselves permanently unemployable after being found in sizeable possession of a Class A drug—or caught in flagrante delicto with some jailbait minor—the entertainment industry closes ranks behind their own whenever such pesky little problems besmirch them. And whereas most self-respecting newspapers, magazines, or centers of higher education would immediately dismiss (with extreme prejudice) any writer or academic who perpetrated the offense of plagiarism, in Hollywood they will go to excessive lengths to guard the reputation of a literary shoplifter. Especially if the shoplifter in question is the writer of one of the hottest television series of the past few years.

Two weeks ago, this column pointed out that David Armitage—the abundantly talented, Emmy Award–winning creator of Selling You—had allowed a couple of lines of dialogue from the classic newspaper play The Front Page to end up in one of his scripts. Instead of simply acknowledging the error and moving on, Mr. Armitage and his people at FRT went on the offensive, finding a sympathetic hack at Variety to write his side of the story . . . the same hack, by the way, who was, just last year, romantically involved with FRT’s head of publicity while on sabbatical from his marriage. And before you could say “nepotism,” many of Hollywood’s leading scribes were lining up to sing Mr. Armitage’s praises and to damn the journalist for daring to point out the transposition of four lines from one script to another.

Naturally, the most bellicose of all the writerly voices was the Papa Hemingway of Santa Barbara, Justin Wanamaker—the cutting-edge radical screenwriter of the sixties and seventies who, in his twilight years, is now reduced to turning out lucrative, but generic, action scripts for Jerry Bruckheimer. And his jeremiad not only provided a passionate defense of Mr. Armitage, but also kicked off a character assassination campaign against the journalist in question—a campaign later furthered by the LA Times, who sought to make the Dollar Book Freud point that the journalist had had a brief unhappy career as a television writer and was now simply wreaking vengeance on the first successful television writer he could get in his sights.

But, to quote Sgt. Joe Friday from the first truly post-ironic cop show, Dragnet, this column deals with “Just the facts, ma’am.” And the fact of the matter is that, in the two weeks since Mr. Armitage’s plagiarism was first revealed, his unnecessary fight back has forced “The Inside Dirt” to commission a pair of researchers to trawl through the entire David Armitage oeuvre, just to make certain that the gentleman’s cribbing offense was a mere one-off.

But, surprise, surprise . . . what did our researchers find:

1. In Episode Three of last season’s Selling You, Bert—the skirt-chasing account executive—talks about his ex-wife, who’s moved back to LA after taking him to the cleaners in court. “You know what the real definition of capitalism is?” he tells his associate, Chuck. “The process by which California girls become California women.”

Virtually the same line can be found in Oscar-winning dramatist Christopher Hampton’s play Tales from Hollywood, in which the Austrian dramatist Odon von Horvath, notes that “Capitalism is the process by which American girls become American women.”

2. In Episode One of the new season, Tanya, the gum-snapping receptionist, informs Joey that she doesn’t want to sleep with him anymore, because she’s got a new guy who looks exactly like Ricky Martin. Later, Joey sees the new boyfriend at the office and tells Tanya: “Ricky Martin? Get outta here. The guy looks like Ricky the Zit.”

Ricky the Zit, as it turns out, is the name of a character in Elmore Leonard’s novel Glitz.

3. In the same episode, the company’s founder, Jerome, has a particularly unpleasant run-in with a B-list Hollywood actor shooting a commercial for a client. Afterward, Jerome tells Bert, “The next time we ever do a commercial, no actors . . .”

In Mel Brooks’s classic film The Producers, Zero Mostel turns to Gene Wilder and says, “The next time we do a play, no actors.”

Ah, but there are more examples of Mr. Armitage’s literary shoplifting. Our researchers sifted through some of his early stage plays—most of which never received anything more than staged readings off-off-Broadway—and discovered two intriguing facts:

1. Armitage’s 1995 play Riffs concerns a love triangle between a onetime jazz pianist—now a housewife, married to a doctor—who develops a passion for her husband’s best friend, a jazz saxophonist. They start playing duets together—and, courtesy of the increasingly steamy music, their passion grows. Then, when hubby’s out of town for a weekend, they finally consummate their passion . . . only to have hubby burst in on them. And in a tussle with the saxophonist, the wife intervenes, only to be accidentally stabbed through the heart by hubby.

Intriguingly enough, the plot of Riffs is a virtual facsimile of the plot of Tolstoy’s famous novella The Kreutzer Sonata, in which a bored pianist housewife becomes enamored with her husband’s best friend . . . who happens to be a violinist. When they play Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata together, romantic sparks fly. But when they finally get it on while hubby’s out of town, shazam, hubby shows up and, in a jealous rage, accidentally kills his beloved wife.

2. In Armitage’s new screenplay Breaking and Entering (currently in development at Warner Brothers, in a deal worth $1.5 million, leaked to us from an inside source), the central protagonist opens the film with the following voice-over line: “The first time I robbed Cartier’s, it was raining.”

How strange to discover that a classic John Cheever story opens with the line “The first time I robbed Tiffany’s it was raining.”

As can be gathered, Mr. Armitage isn’t simply a one-off “accidental plagiarist,” as he and his supporters so passionately contend. Rather, he’s a repeat offender. And though he might argue that the offenses in question simply add up to a borrowed joke here, a borrowed plotline there, the fact remains that plagiarism is plagiarism . . . and there’s no way he can refute the obvious conclusion: the guy is guilty as hell.

By the time I finished reading, I felt so angry that I had to stop myself from putting my fist through the computer screen.

“Can you believe this bullshit?” I asked Sally, turning around to speak with her. But she was already seated on the couch, her arms wrapped around herself (seriously negative body language), looking very perturbed. She refused to look at me as I spoke.

“Yes, David—I can believe it. Because it’s there—hard evidence, in black and white, that you are a habitual plagiarist.”

“Oh come on, Sally—what’s the asshole accusing me of? A line here, a line there?”

“And how about the plot line of your play? Borrowed from Tolstoy . . .”

“But what he failed to mention was that, in the program note for the play, I acknowledged the debt to Tolstoy.”

“What program note? The play was only given a staged reading, right?”

“Okay—had it received a proper production, I would have very clearly acknowledged the debt . . .”

“You say that now.”

“It’s the truth. Do you really think I would do something as moronic as steal from Tolstoy . . . ?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Well, I know this—that little shit McCall is doing his best to destroy my career. It’s his way of making me pay for him being exposed by the LA Times as a failed writer.”

“That’s not the point, David. The point is he’s nabbed you again. And this time, you’re not going to get away with it.”

The phone rang. I answered it immediately. It was Brad.

“You’ve read the story?” he asked me.

“Absolutely—and I really feel that he’s just taking a few minuscule examples and—”

Brad cut me off.

“David, we need to talk.”

“Of course,” I said. “We can fight this. Just like—”

“We need to talk tonight.”

I glanced at my watch. It was 9:07 p.m. “Tonight? Isn’t it a bit late?”

“We have a crisis, and we must respond fast.”

I breathed a small sigh of relief. He wanted to talk strategy. He was still in my corner.

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “Where do you want to meet?”

“Here at the office. At ten, if that’s okay. Tracy’s here right now. Bob Robison is on his way over as we speak.”

“I’ll be there ASAP. And I’d like to bring Alison.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, see you at ten,” I said, hanging up. Then I turned back to Sally and said, “Brad’s on my side.”

“Really?”

“He said we need to respond fast and he wants me to come to the office right now.”

Once again, she didn’t look at me.

“So, go then,” she said. I approached her and attempted to put my arms around her. But she shrugged me off.

“Sally, darling,” I said, “everything’s going to be fine.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said, then left.

I stood frozen to the spot, wanting to pursue her, to convince her of my innocence in all this. But instinct told me to leave. So I grabbed my jacket, my phone, and my car keys, then headed out.

On the way over to FRT, I called Alison on her cellphone. But I got her voice mail and a message reminding all callers that she was going to be in New York until Thursday. I glanced again at my watch. It was well after midnight on the East Coast . . . which is why I was listening to her recorded voice. So I left her the following brief message: “Alison, it’s David. And it’s urgent. Call me on my cell as soon as you get this.”

Then I put the pedal to the metal and headed toward the office, rehearsing the arguments I was going to put against McCall’s smear campaign . . . not to mention the broadside I’d send in the direction of Warner Brothers about finding the mole who leaked my script to McCall.

But when I got to FRT, Brad and Bob were looking grim, while Tracy had that red-eyed look that usually accompanies crying.

“I am so sorry about all this,” I said. “But look, this maniac hired a pair of researchers to microscopically inspect all my scripts. And what did they find? Five lines that could be attributed to other writers. That’s it. And as for his ridiculous charge about the Tolstoy story—”

Bob Robison interrupted me.

“David, we all hear what you’re saying. And frankly, when I saw the piece, I pretty much thought the same thing: it’s just a couple of lines here and there. In regards to that old play of yours: fuck Tolstoy. I’m sure anybody with half a brain would realize that you were deliberately reinterpreting the guy’s story—”

“Thank you, Bob,” I said, relief washing over me like a high-intensity shower.

“I’m not through, David.”

“Sorry.”

“As I said, I don’t think that McCall’s case against you is either fair or just. The problem we have now, however, is one of credibility. And like it or not, once McCall’s column hits the streets on Friday, you are going to be tainted merchandise—”

“But Bob—”

“Let me finish,” he said sharply.

“Sorry.”

“This is the situation as we see it. You can explain away one case of unintentional plagiarism. But four additional cases?”

“Four goddamn lines,” I said. “Nothing more.”

“Four goddamn lines that McCall’s pushed into print, following on the four lines from The Front Page . . .”

“But don’t you see that this asshole is trying to be Kenneth Starr . . . taking the flimsiest of evidence and transforming it into Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“You’re right,” Brad said, finally entering the conversation. “He is an asshole. He’s a character assassin. He’s decided to fuck you over. And, I’m afraid, your scripts yielded just enough minor evidence for him to taint you with the plagiarism brush and get away with it.”

Bob came in here. “More to the point, I promise you that his very long article will be picked up by every news organization imaginable. It’s not only going to leave you looking like damaged goods, it will also decimate the credibility of the show.”

“That’s crap, Bob . . .”

“Don’t you fucking dare tell me what’s crap,” he said, the anger now showing. “Do you have any idea of the damage this has done? And I’m not simply talking about to yourself and your show, but also to Tracy? Thanks to that shithead McCall, her credibility has been wrecked too, to the point where we’re having to accept her resignation . . .”

“You’re resigning?” I said looking at Tracy, wide-eyed.

“I have no choice,” she said quietly. “The fact that my onetime ‘adulterous’ involvement with Craig Clark was revealed . . .”

“You’ve done nothing wrong, Tracy,” I said.

“Maybe—but the perception is that I called an ex-boyfriend to write a sympathetic puff piece on your behalf.”

“But he called you.”

“Doesn’t matter—the perception’s otherwise.”

“What does Craig say about all this?” I asked.

“He’s got his own problems,” Tracy said. “Variety’s just fired him too.”

“You have not been fired,” Bob said sharply to her.

“No—I’ve just been given the bottle of whisky and the gun with one bullet and told to do the honorable thing.”

She looked like she was on the verge of crying again. Brad squeezed her arm as an attempted gesture of support, but she shrugged him off.

“I don’t need anyone’s sympathy,” she said. “I made a stupid call, and now I’m paying the price.”

“I’m appalled by all this,” I said.

“You should be,” Tracy said.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am. But as I said before, I didn’t mean—”

“Understood, understood,” Bob said. “But you also have to appreciate our tangled position right now. If we don’t let you go . . .”

Even though I had been expecting it, the news still hit me like a slap across the face.

“You’re firing me?” I asked, my voice hushed.

“Yes. With the deepest regret, I should add, but—”

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“It might not be,” Brad said, “but we have our own credibility to consider.”

“I have a contract with you . . .”

Bob shuffled some papers and pulled out a document.

“Yes, you do—and as I’m certain Alison will explain to you, there is a clause that voids the contract should you be found to have falsely misrepresented your work in any way. Plagiarism would certainly qualify as a major misrepresentation . . .”

“What you’re doing is wrong,” I said.

“What we’re doing is unfortunate but necessary,” Bob said. “For the good of the series, you have to go.”

“And say Alison and I take you to court?”

“Do what you want, David,” Bob said. “But our corporate pockets are far deeper than yours. And you won’t win this one.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said, standing up.

“Do you think this is fun for us?” Brad said. “Do you think anyone in this room is pleased with this situation? I know you’re the creator of this show . . . and, believe me, you’ll still get your creator credit and a cut of budget. But the fact is, there are seventy other people involved in Selling You—and I’m not jeopardizing their positions by fighting your battle. Your current position is indefensible. You didn’t just get caught with the smoking gun, David; this time, it was a smoking bazooka . . .”

“Thank you, Mr. Loyalty.”

Long silence. Brad’s hand twisted tightly around a pen. He took a deep steadying breath, then said, “David, I’m going to put that remark down to the high emotional temperature we’re all running right now, as I have shown you loyalty to the nth degree. And before you start lashing out at any of us again, do remember one thing: this is a fuckup of your own making.”

I was about to say something loud and emotional and incoherent, but instead I simply stormed out of the office, stormed out of the building, fell into my car, and started driving.

I drove for hours, roaming the interstates without plan or logic. I did time on the 10, the 330, the 12, and the 85. My itinerary was a masterpiece of geographic illogicality—Manhattan Beach to Van Nuys to Ventura to Santa Monica to Newport Beach to . . .

And then, finally, my cellphone started ringing. As I grabbed it off the adjoining seat, I glanced at the dashboard and noticed it was three ten. I had been driving aimlessly for five hours.

“David, are you okay?”

It was Alison, sounding half-awake, but worried.

“Hold on,” I said. “Got to pull over.”

I turned the car into a turnout and cut the engine.

“You’re out? Driving?”

“Seems that way.”

“But it’s the middle of the night.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m just up, and I just got your message. Where are you right now?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? What’s the name of the road, the highway?”

“Don’t know.”

“Now you have me worried. What’s going on?”

That’s when I started to sob . . . when the entire horror of what had happened finally hit home, and I suddenly couldn’t deny it. I must have sobbed for an entire minute. When I eventually brought it under control, Alison spoke.

“David, my God, tell me, please . . . what the hell’s happened to you?”

I told her everything—from the extensive plagiarism accusations in McCall’s new column, to Sally’s inimical reaction, to being fired by Bob and Brad.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alison said when I finally finished, “this has gotten completely out of hand.”

“I feel like I’ve opened a door and walked straight off a skyscraper.”

“All right, first things first. Do you know where you are right now?”

“Somewhere in town.”

“You’re sure you’re in LA?”

“Yeah—that I’m pretty sure of.”

“You think you’re okay to drive?”

“I guess so.”

“Right—here’s what I want you to do. Get home. Safely, I should add. If you’re in LA, you should be there within an hour. And as soon as you’re home, e-mail me McCall’s column. I’ll be heading out to Kennedy—because I’m getting on the nine a.m. flight back to LA. I should be able to go online at the airport and read the column, then I can use the Airfone on board after we’ve taken off. All going well, I should land around noon LA time, so why don’t you plan to meet me at the office by two. In the meantime, I want you to do one thing . . . which is sleep. Do you have anything at home to knock you out?”

“I think there’s some Tylenol PM.”

“Take three.”

“Please don’t tell me this is all going to look a lot better after sleep. Because it won’t.”

“I know that. But at least you’ll have had some rest.”

I made it home within forty minutes. I e-mailed the story to Alison. As I sat at the computer, the bedroom door opened and Sally came out. She was just wearing a pajama top. My first thought was: she is so beautiful. My second thought was: will this be the last time I ever see her so intimately?

“You actually had me worried,” she said.

I kept staring at the screen.

“Would you mind explaining where you’ve been for the past seven hours?” she asked.

“I was at the office, and then I was driving.”

“Driving where?”

“Just driving.”

“You could have called me. You should have called me.”

“Sorry.”

“So what happened?”

“If I’ve been driving for half the night, you know what happened.”

“You’ve been fired?”

“Yes, I’ve been fired.”

“I see,” she said, her tone flat.

“Tracy Weiss has also gotten the bullet.”

“For giving the exclusive interview to her ex-guy?”

“That was the crime.”

“This is a tough business.”

“Thank you for that blinding glimpse of the obvious.”

“What do you want me to say, David?”

“I want you to come over here, put your arms around me, and tell me you love me.”

Long silence. Finally she said, “I’m going back to bed.”

“You think they’re right to fire me, don’t you?”

“I suppose they have a point.”

“Really—all for a couple of unintentionally borrowed lines?”

“Did they say anything about your compensation package?”

“That’s Alison’s department—and she’s in New York right now.”

“But she knows?”

“We’ve spoken.”

“And?”

“She wants me to get some sleep.”

“That sounds like a very good idea.”

“You think I’m in the wrong here, don’t you?”

“It’s late, David . . .”

“Answer the question, please,” I said.

“Can we do this tomorrow?”

“No. Now.”

“All right then. I think you’ve blown it. And yes, I’m very disappointed. Happy now?”

I stood up and walked past her into the bedroom. I undressed. I found the Tylenol PM in the bathroom. I popped four tablets. I got into bed. I set my alarm clock for one p.m. I switched the phone to voice mail. I pulled the covers over my head. I passed out within a minute.

Then the alarm went off. I saw a note on the pillow next to mine.

Off to Seattle tonight. Will be gone two days. Sally.

I squinted at the alarm clock. One p.m. I forced myself to sit up in bed. I picked up Sally’s note and read it again. It was the sort of note you leave the maid. I suddenly felt very alone, very scared, very desperate to see my daughter. I picked up the phone. There were none of the usual telltale beeps informing me that I had messages. I dialed my voice messaging system nonetheless. The recorded voice informed me what I already knew: “You have no messages.”

Surely, there must be some mistake. Surely some of my friends and colleagues, having already learned about the McCall column, had then called to show support.

But they had all phoned two weeks ago. Now, in the face of multiple plagiarism charges, I was out on my own. Nobody wanted to know.

I picked up the phone again. I called Lucy’s house in Sausalito. Even though I knew Caitlin was at school, her voice was on the answering machine and I wanted to hear it.

But after two rings, Lucy picked up.

“Oh, hi . . .” I said.

“What are you doing, calling in the afternoon? You know Caitlin’s at school.”

“Just wanted to leave her a message, saying I missed her.”

“Suddenly all homesick for your former family, now that your career is dead?”

“How did you know . . . ?”

“You haven’t seen a newspaper this morning?”

“I’m just up.”

“Well, if I were you, I’d go right back to bed. Because you’re third-page news in the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times. Nice one, David—stealing from other people’s work.”

“I didn’t steal . . .”

“Yeah—you just cheated. Like you cheated on me.”

“Tell Caitlin I’ll call her later.” And I hung up.

I went out into the kitchen. There, on the counter, was our morning’s copy of the LA Times. Sally had thoughtfully opened it to page three, where the top right-hand corner headline read:

SELLING YOU CREATOR ACCUSED OF MORE PLAGIARISM

Beneath this was a five-hundred-word précis of the McCall demolition job . . . evidently rewritten at speed late last night (when the advanced copies of Hollywood Legit must have been leaked to the papers). After recounting all the charges McCall made against me, the paper stated that, contacted late last night, Selling You producer Brad Bruce said, “This news is a tragedy both for David Armitage and for the Selling You family,” and that a formal statement from FRT would be issued later today.

Nice strategy, Brad. First come on touchy-feely about what had befallen me, before issuing the press release that I had been fired off the show.

I raced over to the computer. I went online. I checked out the San Francisco Chronicle website. The article was also a rushed job by their LA correspondent, featuring the same rundown of the accusations and the same quote from Brad. But what truly unnerved me was the discovery that, in my AOL mailbox, there were already half a dozen e-mail requests from assorted journalists, asking for an interview . . . or, at the very least, a comment about my reaction to McCall’s column.

I picked up the phone and called my office. Check that: my former office. Jennifer, my former assistant, answered.

“I’ve been instructed to pack up your office,” she said. “I presume you want everything delivered to your apartment?”

“Jennifer, you could at least say hello.”

“Hello. So is the apartment the place to send everything?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Expect it all tomorrow morning. And what should I do about any calls for you?”

“Have there been any calls?”

“Fifteen this morning. The LA Times, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Times, the Seattle Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury, the Boston Globe . . .”

“I get the idea,” I said.

“Shall I e-mail you the list and all their contact numbers?”

“No.”

“So if anyone from the press wants to contact you . . .”

“Tell them I’m uncontactable.”

“If that’s your decision . . .”

“Jennifer, what’s with the Ice Age routine?”

“How do you expect me to act? Your departure means I’ve been given a week’s notice . . .”

“Oh Jesus . . .”

“Please—no platitudes.”

“I don’t know what to say, except I’m sorry. This is all as much a surprise to me as it is . . .”

“How can it be a surprise when you stole stuff?”

“I never intended . . .”

“What? To get caught? Well, thanks for catching me in your web too.”

And she slammed the phone down.

I hung up. I put my head in my hands. Whatever the huge personal damage I had suffered, it appalled me to think that I had unknowingly inflicted vast collateral damage on two innocent parties. It was appalling to think that fifteen journalists were chasing me for quotes. Because now I was real news—the great television success story who threw it all away. Or, at least, that’s the spin they’d put on it. My side of the story played successfully last week. Now, however, with all this new trivial evidence (but evidence nonetheless), the tide would turn, the spin would change. I’d be held up as an example of a talented man besieged by self-destructive forces, a guy who’d created one of the most original television series of the last ten years but still had to steal lines from other writers. And there would be the usual palaver about me being yet another victim of Tinseltown’s ferocious cult of shallow success, blah, blah, blah.

The bottom line of all this editorial coverage would be a simple one: I’d be permanently unemployable as a writer.

I glanced at my watch. One fourteen. I called Alison’s office. Her assistant, Suzy, answered. She sounded genuinely upset. Before I could ask for my agent, she said, “I just want to tell you this: I think what’s happening to you is totally unfair.”

I gulped and felt my eyes sting.

“Thank you,” I said.

“How are you doing?”

“Not good.”

“You coming over?”

“Yeah—right away.”

“Good—she’s expecting you.”

“Any chance I could talk to her now?”

“She’s on the phone with FRT.”

“See you in a half hour then.”

When I walked in the door of her office, I caught sight of Alison sitting behind her desk, staring silently out the window, looking war-weary and preoccupied. Hearing me enter, she swiveled around and walked out from behind her desk and put her arms around me and simply held me for a minute or so. Then she walked over to a cabinet and opened it.

“Does Scotch work for you?” she asked.

“It’s that bad?”

She said nothing. Instead, she returned to the desk with the bottle of J&B and two glasses. She poured each of us a large one. Then she lit up a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and tossed back half the drink. I followed suit.

“All right,” she said. “Here it goes. I’ve never lied to you as an agent and I’m not going to start now. The situation right now is about as bad as it gets.”

I threw back the rest of my drink. She refilled it immediately.

“Now, when I read the McCall story at the airport, my first reaction was: how could Brad and Bob take this seriously . . . especially when the charges he puts forward are so fucking minor? What he’s accused you of is ridiculous. I mean, we’re into the realm of “If I had a nickel for every writer who’s borrowed a joke.” And the shit about the Tolstoy story is just shit. He knows it too. However, the line from the Cheever story . . .”

“All I can say is this: I realized it was a direct ‘borrow,’ and one which, I also knew, would never make it onto the screen. What he got his hands on was a draft, that’s all.”

“I know that, and you know that. The problem here is that, coupled with The Front Page stuff from last week . . . well, you’re a smart enough guy to figure out that . . .”

“Guilty or not, I’m in deep trouble.”

“That’s the essence of it.”

“And you’ve spoken with FRT, and they can’t be in any way persuaded . . . ?”

“Not a chance. As far as they’re concerned, you’re burnt toast. But that’s not all. As soon as I landed, I spent an hour engaged in a screaming match with one of their lawyers. It seems that they are going to do their best to block any golden parachute for you.”

Worse and worse. “But there’s a clause . . .”

“Oh yes,” Alison said, pulling a file toward her, “there is definitely a fucking clause. Clause forty-three b, to be precise, of your agreement with FRT—and the gist of this clause is that if you have done anything illegal or criminally malfeasant in relation to the show, your future profit participation in its proceeds will be curtailed.”

“They’re trying to say that I’ve done something criminally malfeasant?”

“They’re attempting to cut you off from any future creator fees by arguing that your plagiarism constitutes an illegal act . . .”

“This is such bullshit.”

“Absolutely—but they are determined to make it stick.”

“Can they?”

“I’ve just spent the last half hour on the phone with my lawyer. He’s going to look carefully at the contract tonight. But his gut instinct is . . . yeah, they can make this one stick.”

“So there’ll be no compensation?”

“Worse than that . . . they have also informed me that they plan to sue you for the writing fees for the three episodes in which you allegedly plagiarized.”

“What are they trying to do? Disembowel me?”

“Absolutely. Because, let’s face it, the money involved is serious. If they get rid of your creator fees, they’re saving themselves around three hundred and fifty thousand per season. And if, as expected, the show runs a couple more seasons . . . well, do the math. For each of the three episodes, you are due one hundred and fifty thousand. Add it all up . . .”

“Surely we can fight them on that point.”

“Again, my lawyer guy says they have you on the clause in which the writer guarantees all work in the script is his alone. But the way I figure it, we can probably negotiate a settlement price . . .”

“Which means I have to pay them back?”

“If it comes to it, yes. My hope—and it is a hope—is that, in a few days, when everything cools down, they’ll forget chasing you for the three episodes, if they know they’ve won the creator fees argument.”

“You’re going to let them win that?”

“David, when have I ever let some shithead studio or network win anything against one of my clients? But we have a situation. Legalistically, you are perceived to have broken the terms of your contract. And if my $375-an-hour guy—who knows every damn loophole in the Hollywood legal book—tells me they’ve got you hog-tied, we’re into the realm of trying to minimize the wreckage as much as possible.

“But I will get a second—and maybe even a third—legal opinion before talking to FRT’s shysters again . . . let alone their slimy counterparts at Warners.”

“Can I have another Scotch?”

“I think that’s a good idea,” she said, “because I have some other difficult news.”

I poured myself a double. “Go on,” I said.

“Some legal eagle from Warner Brothers was just on the phone. They’re putting Breaking and Entering into turnaround . . .”

“You mean, the meeting with Nagel is scrapped?”

“I’m afraid so. But it gets worse. They want the entire signature fee back.”

“That’s insane. How can they do that?”

“They’re screwing you on that John Cheever line you borrowed.”

“Come on. I was just trying the line out. In a first draft—”

“Hey, you don’t have to sell me your position. The problem is that, like FRT, they’re using that line to beat you over the head with the ‘writer guarantees all work in the script is his alone’ clause. The other problem is, they’ve got corroboration . . . even though most of those assholes don’t even know who John Cheever is.”

“Well, at least the Fleck script will cover those debts.”

She lit up another cigarette, even though there was one already burning in her ashtray.

“I’m afraid Fleck’s lawyer called me this afternoon.”

“Please don’t tell me . . .”

“‘With regret, Mr. Fleck cannot proceed with any further negotiations, owing to the current state of Mr. Armitage’s professional reputation.’ That’s an exact quote, I’m afraid.”

I stared down at the floor. And said, “Then there’s no way I can pay back the two hundred and fifty grand to Warners.”

“Is it already spent?”

“A lot of it, yeah.”

“But you’re not broke?”

“I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid. I’ve got around half a million invested with my broker. The problem is, half of that is owed to Uncle Sam. And if FRT and Warners want all their money back . . . then I am broke.”

“Let’s not go to the abyss just as yet. I will play hardball with the bastards. I will get them to lower their demands on the payback. Meantime, you better talk to your broker and your accountant about how best to maximize what you still have invested.”

“Because I’m washed up in this town, right?”

“It’s going to be difficult finding you work.”

“And say this thing doesn’t blow over. If I’m permanently tainted by it, what then?”

“Honestly?” Alison asked.

“Absolutely.”

“I don’t know. But, once again, let’s see how the next few weeks play out. More to the point, you need to make a statement, in which you defend yourself, but also regret what’s gone down. I’ve called Mary Morse—a PR gal I know. She’s going to be over here in about ten minutes, to work out the statement with you and to get it out to all concerned, so at least they have your angle on everything. If things don’t improve in a few days’ time, we’re going to have to find a sympathetic journalist who can tell your side of the story.”

“Well, that guy from Variety is definitely out of the frame, now that his career is fucked too. And poor Tracy . . .”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, but if it hadn’t been for this mess of mine . . .”

“Look—they’re both professionals, and they should have known that their past involvement might go public if—”

“She was just trying to protect me.”

“True—but that was her job. You can’t beat yourself up over their problems as well. You’ve got more than enough trouble on your plate.”

“Don’t I know it.”

By the next morning, the entire world knew about it as well. McCall’s accusations hit the streets. So too did FRT’s press release, announcing (with regret, natch) my dismissal from the series. All the major national papers carried it in their arts and entertainment section, though the LA Times put the story on its front page. Worse yet, the tale also merited coverage on NPR’s All Things Considered, Entertainment Tonight, and most of the early morning talk shows. Yes, everyone quoted from my statement—where I apologized for the upset caused to FRT and everyone involved in Selling You, and again said that I really didn’t think I could stand accused of theft because of a mere couple of lines. “The worst thing a writer can be accused of is theft,” I wrote in the statement, “and I certainly don’t consider myself a thief.”

That night, on HBO’s Real Time, the host, Bill Maher, noted during his monologue:

“The big news in Hollywood today is that Selling You creator David Armitage used the famous Richard Nixon I am not a crook defense, after FRT sacked him for plagiarism. When asked whether everything he wrote was one hundred percent original, he said: ‘I did not have sex with that woman . . .’”

Maher got a big laugh with that one-liner. I watched his show alone in the loft. Sally was in Seattle, at an address unknown, as she hadn’t left the name of her hotel, nor had she phoned me all day. I knew that she usually stayed at the Four Seasons when visiting the Seattle set, but I feared that if I phoned her, I’d be appearing far too needy, far too desperate. Right now, my one hope was that, once the initial blitzkrieg of bad publicity died down, she’d remember all the reasons why we fell in love with each other in the first place, and would . . .

What? Come running back to me, telling me she’d stand by me, no matter what? Like Lucy? She’d stood by me . . . begrudgingly sometimes, but she was always there nonetheless. For all those years, when I was nowhere, and she was forced into telemarketing when her acting career failed and we needed to pay the rent. How did I repay her steadfastness? By doing the predictable mid-life, post-big-breakthrough thing. No wonder she so despised me. No wonder I was so scared now. Because I was finally admitting what I had known within months of moving in with Sally: her love for me was predicated on my success, my status within the entertainment community, and (in turn) the way it enhanced her own position within that high school with money called Hollywood.

“Everyone has their moment,” she said just before I won the Emmy Award. “This is ours.”

Not anymore, babe.

Could everything I’d achieved in a few fast years be asset-stripped from me in a matter of days?

Come on people–I’m David Armitage! I felt like shouting from the nearest rooftop. But, then again, once you’re on a rooftop, the only destination is down. Anyway, in Hollywood (as in life) all talent is ephemeral, expendable. Even those at the top of the pile were subject to this law of replication. No one out here was unique. We all played the same game. And the game operated according to one basic rule: your moment lasted for as long as your moment lasted . . . if, that is, you were lucky enough to have a moment at all.

But I still couldn’t believe that my moment was now in the past tense. Surely Sally wouldn’t be so mercenary as to abandon me right now. Just as I had to believe that, somehow, I would be able to convince Brad and Bob, and Jake Dekker at Warners, and any other interested production company in this damn town, that I was worthy of their trust.

Come on people–I’m David Armitage! And I’ve made you all money!

Yet the more I tried to put an optimistic spin on my situation, the more I thought: the worst sort of bullshit is the bullshit with which you bullshit yourself.

So I opened a bottle of Glenlivet single malt and started watching it disappear. Somewhere after the fifth finger trickled down my gullet, I had a supremely moronic interlude, during which I entered a mood of introspective inspiration. I decided to bare my soul to Sally, to put it all on the proverbial table, and hope that she would, in turn, respond tenderly to this cri de coeur. So I staggered over to my computer and wrote:

Darling,

I love you. I need you. Desperately, in fact. This is a bad business, an unfair business. Please, please, please don’t give up on me, on us. I am desperate. Please call me. Please come home. Let’s get through this together. Because we can get through it. Because we are the best thing that ever happened to each other. Because you are the woman with whom I want to spend the rest of my life, with whom I want to have children, whom I will still love when, years from now, we enter that twilight zone of decrepitude. I’ll always be there for you. Please, please, please be here for me now.

Without reading through the thing again, I hit the Send button, and tossed back another two fingers of Glenlivet, and careened into the bedroom, and went down for the count.

Then it was morning, and the phone was ringing. But in those few bleary seconds before I answered it, a sentence floated through my head. Not a sentence, actually . . . a phrase: the twilight zone of decrepitude.

And then the rest of the ludicrous contents of that e-mail came back to me, in all its grisly, beseeching glory. And I thought: You are an idiot.

I reached for the ringing phone.

“David Armitage?” a very awake voice asked me.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Fred Bennett, Los Angeles Times.”

“What the hell time is it?

“Around seven thirty.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Mr. Armitage, if I could just have a moment?”

“How did you get my home number?”

“That’s not the hardest thing in the world to find.”

“I’ve made a statement.”

“But have you heard about the motion proposed to the Screen and Television Writers’ Association last night?”

“What motion?”

“A motion to publicly censure you for plagiarism, to strip you of your Association membership, and to recommend that you be banned from all professional work for a minimum of five years . . . though some committee members were pressing for a lifetime ban . . .”

I put the phone back in its cradle, then I reached down and yanked the plug from the wall. Immediately it began to ring in another room, but I ignored it. Instead, I pulled the covers over my head, willing this day to vanish from view.

But sleep was now impossible, so I eventually staggered to the bathroom and popped three Advil in an attempt to quell the jackhammer currently excavating the inside of my head. Then I went into the living room and faced the computer. My e-mail box had twelve messages, eleven of which were from assorted journalists. I opened none of them. The twelfth was the one I was dreading . . . an e-mail from Sally:

David,

I hate the situation you’ve found yourself in. I too hate the fact that your career has been devastated by these revelations. But this is a situation of your own making; for reasons best known to yourself, you decided to be the architect of your own undoing. This is what I can’t fathom. It makes me wonder if I really even know you . . . a concern exacerbated by your deeply worrying e-mail. I realize that you are distressed by what has happened. But there is nothing so unattractive as someone begging for love—especially when they have undermined the trust needed to sustain love. Though I appreciate the fact that you are under severe emotional strain, that still isn’t an excuse for heart-on-the-sleeve prose. And let’s not even get into that “twilight zone of decrepitude” line.

All this has left me even more confused and baffled and sad. I think a few more days apart might bring some clarity to our situation. I’ve decided to head off to Vancouver Island for the weekend. I’ll be back Monday. We can talk then. In the meantime, let’s agree not to communicate over the weekend, just so matters don’t get further confused. I do hope you will consider, in the meantime, getting some professional support. If your e-mail was anything, it was an enormous cry for help.

Sally

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

The phone started ringing again. I ignored it. Then my cellphone joined the cacophony. I reached for it and glanced at the incoming number on the display. It was Alison. I answered it immediately.

“You sound terrible,” she said. “Were you drinking last night?”

“You’re a very perceptive woman.”

“Have you been up long?”

“Ever since an LA Times hack rang me to let me know that SATWA was planning to ban me for life.”

“What?”

“That’s what he said—a special meeting of the Politburo last night.”

“This thing has gone gaga. And it’s about to get worse.”

“Tell me.”

“Theo McCall’s about to be interviewed live from LA on the Today Show.”

“On the subject of moi?”

“It would seem that way.”

“Jesus Christ, this guy is relentless.”

“He’s like any gossip columnist—completely ruthless. You’re just a commodity to him. A very lucrative commodity right now, in terms of getting his name known nationally and appearing on Today.”

“He won’t be satisfied until I’m drawn and quartered.”

“I’m afraid that’s about right. Which is why I decided to wake you so early and tell you about his Today Show appearance. I think it’s best if you watch it, just in case he says anything so outrageous or slanderous we can nail his vile little ass.”

Actually, there was nothing “little” about Theo McCall. He was in his early forties—a Brit who’d crossed the Atlantic around ten years ago and had one of those accents in which plummy rounded vowels mingled with Southern Californian nasality. He was also fat. His face reminded me of an oozy slab of Camembert that had been left for too long in direct sunlight. But he was shrewd about his size, in that he compensated for it by dressing like a dandy—a dark gray chalk-stripe suit, a spread-collar white shirt, a discreet black polka-dot tie. I sensed that, given the low-rent nature of Hollywood Legit, it was his only suit. But I had to grudgingly admire the way he was selling himself to the world—as an Anglo-American dandy, with the inside dope on Hollywood bad behavior. No doubt, he had dressed carefully for this interview, considering it an audition for the upscale gossip positions he was desperate to inhabit.

But Anne Fletcher—the journalist interviewing him from New York—wasn’t totally buying his T. S. Eliot meets Tom Wolfe journalism act.

“Theo McCall, many people in Hollywood consider you to be the most feared journalist in town,” she said.

A slight gratified smile crossed McCall’s fat lips.

“How flattering,” he said in his best plummy voice.

“But others consider you to be nothing more than a scandalmonger, and someone who doesn’t think twice about destroying careers, marriages, even entire lives.”

He blanched a little but recovered quickly.

“Well, of course, certain people would feel that way. But that’s because, if there’s one great rule about Hollywood, it’s that they protect each other . . . even when serious wrongdoing is involved.”

“And you think that the plagiarism that got David Armitage fired from the FRT show he created was ‘serious wrongdoing’?”

“Absolutely—the man stole from other writers’ work.”

“But what did he really ‘steal’? A gag from one play, and a couple of one-line jokes from others. Do you really think he deserves losing his career for a couple of minor offenses?”

“Well, Anne, to begin with, I didn’t decide on the punishment he received. That was the decision of his bosses at FRT. But, as to your question about whether I think plagiarism is a serious offense—well, theft is theft.”

“But what I asked you, Mr. McCall, is whether such a petty misdemeanor like borrowing jokes . . .”

“He also lifted a plotline from Tolstoy . . .”

“But Mr. Armitage did explain that his unproduced play was a deliberate reinterpretation of the Tolstoy story . . .”

“Of course, Mr. Armitage would say that now. But I have a copy of his original script here . . .”

He held up the dusty playscript of Riffs. The camera zoomed in on the title page.

“As you can see here,” McCall said, “the title page reads ‘Riffs, A Play by David Armitage’ . . . but there’s nothing that says ‘Based on The Kreutzer Sonata by Tolstoy,’ even though the entire plot is completely lifted from the Tolstoy story. And this raises an even bigger question: why did a man of David Armitage’s talent and ability need to steal from other people in the first place? It’s the one question that everyone in Hollywood wants to know: how he could have been so self-destructive and so desperately dishonest. It’s well known, for example, that as soon as Selling You was a hit, he walked out on his wife and child for a highflying television executive. So this pattern of cheating, which sadly ended up engulfing his career—”

I hit the off button and flung the remote control at the wall. Then I grabbed my jacket and raced out the door. I jumped into my car, I revved the motor, I raced off. It took around a half hour to reach the NBC Studios. I was gambling that the slob would loll around the hospitality suite after his interview and spend time getting his face wiped clean of makeup. My gamble was spot-on, as McCall was just coming out the door and heading to a waiting Lincoln Town Car as I pulled up. Check that: as I roared to a halt right by the door, slamming on the brakes so hard that they shrieked, startling McCall in the process. Within seconds, I was out of the car, running toward him, screaming:

“You fat Limey fuck . . .”

McCall stared at me wide-eyed, his corpulent face registering terror. He looked as if he wanted to run but was too paralyzed with fear to do anything. Which meant that I was all over the shithead within seconds, grabbing him by his chalk-striped lapels, shaking him forcibly and screaming an incoherent stream of invective, along the lines of: “Trying to ruin my life . . . calling me a thief . . . shitting on my wife and child . . . going to break every fucking finger on both your hands, you ugly slob . . .”

In the middle of this discordant rant, two things happened, neither of them auspicious for me. The first was that a local freelance photographer—waiting in the NBC lobby—came running out when he heard my uproar and took a bunch of rapid shots of me yanking McCall’s lapels and doing an in-his-face harangue. The second was the arrival of an NBC security man—a tall muscular guy in his late twenties, who immediately waded into the fray, yelling, “Hey, hey, hey . . . enough!” before hauling me off McCall and getting me into a half nelson.

“This guy assault you?” the guard shouted at McCall.

“He tried,” he said, backing off.

“You want me to call the cops?”

McCall stared at me with amused contempt . . . a nasty little “I’ve got you, you sonofabitch” smile crossing his lips.

“He’s in enough trouble as is,” McCall said. “Just throw him off the lot.”

Then he turned and started talking to the photographer, asking his name, asking for his card, saying: “So you managed to get all that?”

Meanwhile, the guard strong-armed me toward my car.

“That’s your Porsche?”

I nodded.

“Nice car. Now, sir, I’m gonna offer you a special onetime deal. You get in your car and get lost, and we’re going to forget this whole damn thing. If you come back . . .”

“I won’t come back.”

“I’ve got your word on that?”

“I promise.”

“Okay, sir,” he said, slowly releasing me from his grip. “Let’s see you act on that promise and leave quietly.”

I opened the car door and slid in behind the wheel and started the engine. Then the security guard tapped on the window. I rolled it down.

“One last thing, sir,” he said. “You might want to think about changing your clothes before going anywhere else today.”

It was only then that I realized I was still in my pajamas.

TEN

THERE IS NO ESCAPING the laws of cause and effect . . . especially when a photographer is present to record you assaulting a journalist while dressed in your pajamas.

So it was that—two days after I made the front page of the LA Times—I found myself back in the news . . . with a photograph on page four of its Saturday edition, showing me berating Theo McCall. My face was contorted into an expression of deranged wrath. I was clearly clawing his suit. Then there was the matter of my nighttime attire. Outside the bedroom, pajamas conjure up images of the loony bin. Worn by a clearly unsettled individual in the parking lot of the NBC Studios during daylight hours, they indicate that the gent in question might have a few psychological issues worth exploring under professional care. Certainly, had I been able to study the photograph with critical detachment, I would have reached the following conclusion: this guy has clearly lost it.

Beneath the photo was a short item, under the headline:

FIRED SELLING YOU WRITER ATTACKS JOURNALIST IN NBC PARKING LOT

The story was straightforward—the facts of the NBC incident, the role of McCall in my downfall, a brief précis of my crimes against humanity, and the fact that NBC security allowed me, after being cautioned, to leave the lot once McCall declined to press charges. There was also a quote from McCall himself: “I was simply trying to tell the truth . . . even though that truth clearly enraged Mr. Armitage. Fortunately, NBC security intervened before he could cause me physical harm. But I do hope, for his own sake, that he seeks serious help. He is obviously a deeply troubled, disturbed man.”

May I kiss the hem of your shmata, Dr. Freud (and yes, that is a borrowed line). But I really didn’t have time to worry about McCall’s mental assessment of me, as I had several far graver problems on my hands. It seems that the freelancer who caught me roughing up the clown managed to get his photo on the wire services. So the story went right around the country (everyone loves a good “once he was famous, now he’s gaga” story). It even found its way north to the vast chilly expanses of Canada . . . more specifically, to Victoria, British Columbia, where Sally saw the story in the local rag. And she was not amused. So not amused that she rang me at nine thirty Saturday morning and, without even a hello, said, “David—I’ve seen the story . . . and I’m afraid that, from this point on, we’re history.”

“Can I try to explain?”

“No.”

“But you should have seen what he was saying about me on Today . . .”

“I did see it. And quite frankly, I agreed with a great deal of it. What you did was positively insane. And I do mean insane.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Sally, I simply lost my temper.”

“No—you lost your mind. How else did you end up in the NBC lot in your pajamas?”

“Things just got a little on top of me.”

“A little on top of you? I don’t think so.”

“Please darling, let’s talk this through before—”

“No chance. I want you out of the apartment by the time I’m back tomorrow night.”

“Hang on a minute, you can’t order me to leave. We’re co-tenants, remember? Two names on the lease.”

“According to my lawyer—”

“You’ve already been talking to your lawyer this morning? It’s a Saturday.”

“He hadn’t gone to shul yet. Anyway, considering that I’m in crisis . . .”

“Oh cut the fucking melodramatics, Sally.”

“And you say you’re not disturbed . . .”

“I’m upset.”

“Well, that makes two of us . . . only you’re the one who, according to California law, can be regarded as a physical danger to the co-lessee, which, in turn, allows the co-lessee to get a court order against the other party, barring them from occupying the same premises.”

Long silence.

“You’re not really going to do that, are you?” I asked.

“No—I won’t get the court order, as long as you promise me to be out of the apartment by six p.m. tomorrow night. If you are still there, I will call Mel Bing and get him to put the legal wheels in motion.”

“Please Sally, can’t we . . . ?”

“This conversation’s closed.”

“It’s not fair . . .”

“You brought it on yourself. Now do yourself a favor and go. Don’t make things any worse for yourself by making me get the courts involved.”

With that, the line went dead. I sat on the sofa, reeling with shock. First my name gets smeared. Then I get fired. Then I make the papers, looking like I’m auditioning for the role of Ezra Pound. Then I get handed my eviction notice—not only from my apartment, but also from the relationship for which I broke up my marriage.

What fresh hell was next?

Of course, it had to come courtesy of my dear ex-wife Lucy, via her own legal eagle, Alexander McHenry. He called me around an hour after the torpedo from Sally.

“Mr. Armitage?” he said in a professional, neutral voice. “It’s Alexander McHenry from the firm of Platt, McHenry and Swabe. As you may remember, we represented . . .”

“I remember exactly who you represented. I also know that if you’re calling me on a Saturday morning, you have unpleasant news to impart.”

“Well . . .”

“Cut to the chase, McHenry. What’s Lucy upset about now?”

I knew the answer to that question, as I figured the San Francisco Chronicle had also run the story about the parking lot incident.

“Well, I’m afraid your ex-wife is most alarmed by your behavior yesterday in front of NBC. She is also particularly distressed at the amount of publicity that the incident received, especially as regards how Caitlin would handle the news.”

“I was planning to talk to my daughter personally this morning.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. Your ex-wife feels that, in the light of your actions yesterday, you could be considered a physical risk to herself and your daughter . . .”

“How can she believe that? I have never, never harmed—”

“Be that as it may, the fact is you did attack Mr. McCall in the NBC parking lot. You have just been released from your contract with FRT after being exposed as a plagiarist—a tragic incident that, as any psychologist would verify, could easily destabilize a man’s mental state. In short, you could be considered a serious risk to your ex-wife and child.”

“What I was trying to say before you interrupted me is that never once have I harmed my wife or child. I lost my temper yesterday, end of story.”

“I’m afraid that’s not the end of the story, Mr. Armitage. Because we have taken out a banning order against you making any physical or verbal contact with Lucy or Caitlin—”

“You cannot keep me from my daughter.”

“It’s done. And I must inform you that, should you attempt to contravene the order—either by trying to see Caitlin or Lucy, or even phoning them—you run the risk of arrest and possible imprisonment. Are you clear about that, Mr. Armitage?”

I slammed down the phone and collapsed on the sofa, my head in my hands. Let them take away whatever the hell they wanted . . . but not Caitlin. They couldn’t do that to me. They just couldn’t.

There was a heavy knocking at the door.

“Come on, David. I know you’re in there, so open the fucking door.”

Alison.

I went to the door and opened it halfway.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her quietly.

“I think the expression might be trying to save you from yourself.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are. And you looked wonderful this morning in the LA Times. Loved the pajamas. Just what an agent wants to see her star client wearing in a parking lot, while trying to beat up—”

“I didn’t try to beat him up.”

“Oh, that makes everything just hunky-dory again. Are you going let me in or what?”

I stopped blocking the door and went inside. She followed. I sat down on the sofa and stared at the floor.

“Fuck it,” I said. “Fuck it all.”

“Is this just a reaction to the NBC thing?”

I told her about the fallout from that picture in the papers—and how Sally had evicted me from both our relationship and the apartment, and how Lucy was cutting me off from my daughter. Alison said nothing for a long time. Then, “I’m getting you out of town.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m hauling you out of Dodge to somewhere quiet and safe, where you can’t do any more damage.”

“I am okay, Alison.”

“No, you are not. And the longer you hang around LA, the better the chance that you are going to turn into a total freak show.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“It’s the truth. Like it or not, you are now out of control. And if you continue to be publicly out of control, it’ll make great copy for the papers and will permanently put you out of commission as regards any future work . . .”

“I’m sunk already, Alison.”

“I’m not going to even get into that argument. When does Sally want you out of here?”

“By six p.m. tomorrow.”

“Okay, first things first. Give me your key to this place.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll be packing up all your stuff tomorrow.”

“I’ll take care of that.”

“No, you won’t. We’re leaving here in thirty minutes.”

“To where?”

“A place I know.”

“You’re not about to Betty Ford me, are you?”

“Hardly. I’m taking you to a place where you can’t get into trouble, and where you’ll have time to recuperate a bit. Believe me, what you really need right now is sleep and time to think.”

I thought: Like it or not, she is right. I felt piano-wire taut and seriously wondered if I could make it through the weekend without giving in to the urge to do something final and messy . . . like jumping out a window.

“All right,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go pack a bag or two. No need to take any books or CDs—there’ll be plenty where you’re going. But you’d better bring your laptop, just so you can stay online. And then take a shower and shave off that damn half beard of yours. You’re starting to look like a member of the Taliban.”

Within half an hour, I was washed, clean shaven, wearing fresh clothes, and lugging two large duffel bags and a computer case down to Alison’s car.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said. “We’re going to be driving up the Pacific Coast Highway for about two hours. I’ll go in my car, you go in yours. But promise me you won’t suddenly do a vanishing act and drive off into oblivion . . .”

“Who do you think I am? Jack Kerouac?”

“I’m just saying . . .”

“I promise you, I won’t go AWOL.”

“Good—but if we get separated, call me on my cell.”

“I’m a good tail,” I said.

As it turned out, I was able to follow her straight up the Pacific Coast Highway, eventually turning off at the small town of Meredith. We passed a narrow street of shops (including, I noticed, a bookstore and a small grocery), then continued down a winding two-lane blacktop until we came to an unpaved driveway, which weaved its way through a dense little wood before dead-ending at a cottage of whitewashed wood, fronting a small pebbly beach, upon which lapped the waters of the Pacific. The cottage itself stood on less than a quarter acre of land . . . but the coastal view was pretty damn sublime, and I liked the sight of a hammock strung up between two trees, allowing the occupant to recline yet simultaneously enjoy the ocean view.

“Not a bad spot,” I said. “Is this your little secret retreat?”

“I wish I owned it. Nah—it belongs to Willard Stevens, the lucky bastard.”

Willard Stevens was a screenwriter client of Alison’s who (like my boozy defender, Justin Wanamaker) had been hot stuff during the movie-brat era of the seventies but now made a tidy living as a rewrite man.

“So where’s Willard?”

“In London for three months, doing a polish on the new Bond film . . .”

“Three months for a polish?”

“I think he’s planning to spend a little time on the Côte d’Azur while he’s at it. Anyway, he gave me the key to this place while he’s away. I’ve only used it once. And since he won’t be coming back for another ten weeks . . .”

“I am not spending ten weeks here.”

“Fine, fine. It’s not a padded cell. You’ve got your car. You’re free to come and go as much as you want. All I ask is that, initially, you spend a week up here. Call it a little holiday—a chance to take stock, to clear your head away from all the bullshit back in town. So will you promise me to hang here for a week?”

“I haven’t seen the inside of this place yet.”

Within two minutes of walking inside, I committed to the week. The cottage had stone walls, a stone floor, comfortable furniture. Lots of books and music and films on DVD.

“This will do just fine,” I said.

“Glad you approve. Anyway, there’s only a phone—and the television deliberately gets no stations, because Willard decided he didn’t want to watch anything here except old movies. But his film library’s pretty damn good. And, as you see, there’s plenty to read and to listen to. And the tuner on the stereo does pull in the local NPR affiliate, if you want to keep up with the news and with Car Talk. And you probably saw the grocery store in the little town. The nearest big supermarket’s about fifteen miles away, but you should find everything you need . . .”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I said.

“Now listen,” she said, planting herself on the sofa and motioning for me to sit down in the armchair. “I need a couple of assurances from you.”

“No, I won’t wreck the place. No, I won’t disappear—”

She interrupted, saying, “And no, you won’t set foot inside the Los Angeles city limits. And no, you won’t call FRT or Warners or anyone else in the business. And no—and this is the biggest no of them all—you won’t make contact with Sally or Lucy or Caitlin.”

“How do you expect me not to talk to my daughter?”

“You will talk to your daughter . . . but only if you let me handle it. What was the name of your divorce lawyer?”

“Forget that loser. He let Lucy’s gal disembowel me.”

“Okay, then I’ll call my legal eagle and ask him to find us a Nazi. But again, I’ve got to emphasize this—”

“I know, if I call Caitlin, I’m going to turn a catastrophic situation into an Armageddon situation.”

“Bingo. Also: I’m going to talk to your accountant guy . . . and get a complete up-to-date position on your tax liability and other fun stuff. And tomorrow, before the six p.m. deadline, I’ll get all your stuff out of the apartment and into storage, and I’ll deal with Sally on little things like your share of the deposit, the furniture you bought together, etc.”

“Let her have everything.”

“No.”

“I blew it with her. I blew it with everybody and everything. And now . . .”

“Now you’re going to spend at least a week doing nothing but taking long walks, reading in the hammock, reducing your daily booze intake to a glass or two of decent Napa wine, and trying to sleep well. Are we clear about all that?”

“Aye, aye, doctor.”

“Speaking of doctors, one final thing, and don’t scream about this: a therapist named Matthew Sims is going to be phoning you around eleven tomorrow morning. I’ve booked him for fifty minutes, and if you like him, he’ll do a daily session with you on the phone. Take it from me: as therapists go, he’s no bullshit—”

“He’s your therapist?”

“Don’t act so surprised.”

“It’s just . . . I didn’t realize . . .”

“Honey, I’m a Hollywood agent. Of course I have a therapist. And this guy gives good phone, and I think you know that you need to be talking to someone right now.”

“All right, I’ll take the call.”

“Good.”

“Alison . . .”

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t have to do all this.”

“Yeah, I think I did. Now I’m afraid I’ve got to turn around and head back to town. I’ve got a heavy date tonight.”

“Anyone exciting?”

“He’s a sixty-three-year-old retired chief financial officer for one of the studios. He’s probably just had a triple bypass and is also in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. But hey, I’m not going to say no to a little action.”

“Jesus, Alison . . .”

“Listen to you, Mr. Prude. I may be fifty-seven years old, but I am not your mother. Which means I am allowed to have sex—”

“I’m saying nothing.”

“Damn right you’re not,” she said, fixing me with a skewed smile. Then she reached out and took each of my hands. “I want you to be all right.”

“I’ll try.”

“And remember—whatever the hell happens professionally—one way or another you will live. Amazingly enough, life does go on. Try to keep that in mind.”

“Sure.”

“Now go get into that hammock.”

As soon as Alison drove off, I did as ordered, grabbing a copy of Hammett’s The Thin Man off Willard Stevens’s shelf and collapsing in the hammock. Although it was one of my favorite crime novels, the jumbled pressure and exhaustion of the past few days suddenly mowed me down, and I passed out after a page. When I woke there was a distinct chill in the air, and the sun was bowing out into the Pacific. I felt cold and disorientated . . . and within seconds, the entire appalling scenario came rushing back to occupy my brain. My initial urge was to run to the phone, call Lucy, tell her she was playing the vilest sort of hardball, then demand to speak to Caitlin. But I talked myself down from that furious position, reminding myself what happened when I decided to confront Theo McCall (and also realizing how the world would come tumbling down upon me if I did violate the court order). So I got out of the hammock and went inside and threw some water on my face and found a sweater. Then, realizing that the cupboard was bare, I jumped in the car and headed to the local grocery shop.

It wasn’t just a grocery—it was also a general store-cum-delicatessen. Like everything I spied on the main street in Meredith (the bookstore, the shops that sold scented candles and upscale bath salts, the clothing store with Ralph Lauren shirts in the window) it suggested that this was a well-heeled weekend retreat for well-heeled Angelinos . . . albeit, I sensed, one of those places where everyone maintained a certain polite detachment from each other.

Certainly this was the case in Fuller’s Grocery. After I’d bought basic supplies for the house—as well as some fancy-assed pasta and pesto for dinner—the fiftysomething woman behind the counter (handsome, gray-haired, blue denim shirt—the archetypal upscale owner of an upscale grocery like this) didn’t ask me if I was new in town, or just up for the weekend, or any of that other nosy neighbor stuff. Instead she quietly checked me out, and said, “The pesto’s a good choice. I made it myself.”

The pesto was a good choice. So too was the bottle of Oregon pinot noir. I restricted myself to two glasses. I was in bed by ten, but I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and watched a video of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (one of my all-time favorite films). Even though I’d seen it a half-dozen times before, I still cried shamelessly when Shirley MacLaine ran through the Manhattan streets to profess her love for Jack Lemmon at the end. And when I couldn’t sleep after that, I sat up some more and gawked at a great forgotten Cagney comedy of the thirties, Jimmy the Gent. By the time that was finished, it was nearly three. I staggered into bed and passed out.

I woke to a phone call—from Matthew Sims, the therapist with whom Alison had set me up. His voice sounded reasonable, calm: the standard-issue therapeutic voice. He asked me if he’d woken me. When I confirmed this, he said that, given it was a Sunday, he wasn’t exactly block booked and would be happy to call back in twenty minutes. I thanked him and headed out to the kitchen to make a quick pot of coffee and to get two cups into me before the phone rang again.

Alison was right: Matthew Sims was good news. No touchy-feely crap. No inner child nonsense. He got me talking about the last week, about how I felt like I was in free fall and feared never being able to recover from all this professional calamity, and still felt appalling guilt for breaking up my family, and now wondered whether or not I had somehow set myself up for this disaster. Naturally enough, Sims immediately fastened onto this comment, asking me, “Are you saying that you believe you consciously or subconsciously willed yourself all this trouble?”

“Subconsciously, yeah.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Why else did all those borrowed lines appear in my scripts?”

“Maybe you just accidentally borrowed them, David. That kind of assimilation of other people’s jokes does happen sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“Or maybe I wanted to be found out.”

“What is it that you wanted found out about yourself?”

“The fact . . .”

“Yes.”

“The fact . . . that I’m a fraud.”

“Do you really think that, especially given all the success you’ve had up until recently?”

“I think that now.”

And then our time was up, and we agreed to talk again at eleven the next day.

I spent much of the day in the hammock or walking the beach, thinking, thinking. And having all those silent mental arguments, in which I said all the things I wanted to say to Lucy; in which I convinced Sally to give me—us—another chance; and in which I was interviewed by Charlie Rose on PBS and gave such an intelligent, searing rebuttal to McCall’s charges that Brad Bruce called me the next day and said: “Dave, we made a big mistake. Get on down here and let’s start working on the third season.”

Sure. In my dreams. Because there was no way that anything would be restored to me. I’d blown it . . . allowing an unintentional mistake to blossom into a personal conflagration. And so I started playing the If only . . . game. As in if only I hadn’t responded so vehemently to McCall’s initial disclosure. If only I’d eaten humble pie and written McCall a letter thanking him for pointing out my little error. But I was both frightened and arrogant—just as I was around the time I started my affair with Sally Birmingham: frightened that all would be revealed and I’d lose my family, yet flush enough with my newfound success to believe that I deserved this “prize.” And, of course, if only I’d stayed with Lucy, then I mightn’t have reacted in such an extreme way when McCall appeared on Today. Because he would never have made that comment about me leaving my wife and child—the comment that sent me hurtling toward that ignominious scene in the NBC parking lot . . .

Enough, enough. To quote that famous needlepoint motto: you can’t undo what’s been done. Which, in turn, brings one to the blunt realization: when you’re fucked, you’re fucked.

But what was even more unnerving was the thought: was this the situation I really wanted? Did I so distrust my success that I somehow needed to fail? Was I—as Sally had said—the architect of my own ruinous denouement?

I brought this matter up with Matthew Sims when we spoke again on Monday morning.

“Are you saying you can’t trust yourself?” he asked.

“Can anybody ever really trust themselves?”

“By which you mean . . . ?”

“Don’t we all have our fingers on the self-destruct button?”

“Possibly—but most of us don’t push it.”

“I did.”

“You keep coming back to that, David. Do you really think that everything that has happened to you was self-inflicted?”

“I don’t know.”

Over the next few days, this became our central topic of conversation: had I set myself up for this spectacular fall? Matthew Sims kept encouraging me to believe that, sometimes, bad shit simply happened.

“And remember,” Sims said, “we all do out-of-character stuff when we’re under severe strain. I mean, you didn’t physically harm the man . . .”

“But I did do enormous harm to my situation.”

“Okay,” he said. “You made a bad mistake. What now?”

“I don’t know.”

Sims’s phone calls were the central point of my day. I spent the rest of the time walking and reading, watching old movies, and resisting the temptation to make certain phone calls or to go online. I didn’t even bother buying a newspaper. When Alison called every night at six, I didn’t ask her if my name was still in the papers. Instead, I let her fill me in on the day’s events. On Monday, she told me that all my belongings had been packed up and shipped to storage. On Tuesday, she said that she’d hired a well-considered divorce lawyer named Walter Dickerson to act on my behalf, and that the $5,000 she squeezed out of Sally for my portion of the deposit and the furniture we’d bought together would cover his work on the case.

“What did Sally say?”

“There was a lot of invective at first. A lot of ‘How dare you?’ To which I replied, ‘How dare you break up a guy’s marriage and then dump him when he hits hard times?’”

“Jesus Christ, you actually said that to her?”

“You bet.”

“How did she react?”

“More of the ‘how dare you’ shit. So I pointed out that it wasn’t just me who thought that but all of Hollywood. Of course, I was simply talking out of my ass, but it made her sit up and write the check. We had to argue the price a bit—especially as I asked for seventy-five hundred to begin with—but eventually she came around.”

“Well . . . thanks, I guess.”

“Hey, it’s all part of the service. Anyway, now that she’s given you the bullet, I’m going to speak the truth: I always thought she was Little Miss Ruthless. To her, you were just one rung on the ladder.”

“Now you tell me.”

“You knew that all along, David.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I guess I did.”

On Wednesday, Alison told me that my accountant, Sandy Meyer, was preparing a complete statement of my financial wherewithal but had been unable to get in contact with Bobby Barra, who, according to his assistant, was on business in China. No doubt selling them their own Great Wall.

On Thursday, Alison told me that Walter Dickerson was in serious negotiation with Alexander McHenry and should have some sort of news by the start of next week.

“Why the hell hasn’t Dickerson called me?”

“Because I told him not to. I briefed him thoroughly on the situation and said you wanted to have proper access to your daughter again. Then I gave him McHenry’s number and told him to rough him up. Would you have said anything more to him?”

“I guess not. It’s just . . .”

“How are you sleeping?”

“Not badly, actually.”

“That’s an improvement. And you’re talking things through with Sims every day.”

“Oh yes.”

“Making progress?”

“You know what therapy’s like: you keep saying the same old crap over and over again until you’re so sick of it yourself, you think: I’m cured.”

“Are you feeling cured?”

“Hardly. Humpty Dumpty has not been put back together again.”

“But at least you’re better than you were last week.”

“Yeah.”

“Then why not spend another week up there?”

“Why not? I have nowhere else to go.”

Nor did I have much to do during my second weekend, except continue working my way through Willard’s extensive film library, read, listen to music, hike along the shoreline, eat light meals, stick to two glasses of wine a day, and try to keep all the demons at bay.

Then Monday came. Shortly after I finished my telephonic confessional session with Matthew Sims, the phone rang. It was my lawyer, Walter Dickerson. He spoke smoothly.

“I’m going to give it to you straight, David,” he said. “For reasons best known to herself, your ex-wife has decided to really go to town on this one. Her own lawyer admitted to me that he felt she was way overstepping the mark on the barring order, considering that there’s no previous history of domestic violence, and also that, with the exception of one missed weekend, you’ve been very conscientious about your access to Caitlin. But though McHale explained all this to your ex, she is really determined to punish you, which means we have what’s known in the trade as ‘a situation.’ And it comes down to this: in my experience, when someone is that angry, they will go even more ballistic if you try to throw a writ back in their face. In other words, we could go to court and do an entire song and dance about how you simply lost it with the guy who was trying to destroy your career, but didn’t do the clown any harm, so how in the hell could you be of any danger to your ex-wife and child? But I promise you: once we do this, she’ll just up the ante and start throwing all sorts of accusations at you—from Satanic abuse to keeping a voodoo doll under your bed . . .”

“She’s not that crazy . . .”

“Maybe not—but she’s awfully damn angry at you. If we fuel her anger, it’s going to cost you—both financially and emotionally. So here’s what I’ve discussed with McHenry—and though it may not be ideal, it’s better than nothing. He thinks he can convince your ex-wife to initially allow you a daily phone call with Caitlin.”

“That’s it?”

“Look, considering that she wants to deny you contact completely, getting her to agree to a phone call would be a step forward.”

“But will I ever see my daughter again?”

“Of that I have no doubt, but it might take a couple of months . . .”

“A couple of months. Come on, Mr. Dickerson . . .”

“I’m not a miracle worker, David. And I have to listen to what my opposite number is saying about his client’s intentions. And what he’s saying to me is that, right now, a daily phone call with your daughter should be considered a gift. As I said, there is the litigation option, but it’s going to cost you a cool twenty-five grand minimum. It’ll also generate some publicity. From what Alison was telling me—and also from what I’ve been reading in the papers recently—the last thing you need is publicity.”

“Okay, okay, get me the daily phone call.”

“Smart guy,” Dickerson said, adding: “I’ll be back to you as soon as I have an answer from the other side. And by the way, I’m a big fan of Selling You.”

“Thanks,” I said weakly.

Sandy Meyer also called me on Monday, to tell me that the $250k owed to the IRS was due in three weeks and that he was rather worried about my cash flow position.

“Now I checked with BankAmerica, and you’ve got about twenty-eight thousand in your checking account, which should cover the next two months’ alimony and child support payments. After that . . .”

“All my other money is tied up with Bobby Barra.”

“I looked at his most recent account statement, which is for the last quarter. He’s done pretty well by you, as your total balance as of two months ago was $533, 245. The problem is, David—you have no other cash bar this investment portfolio.”

“I was supposed to be earning nearly two million this year, before this curveball took off my head. Now . . . now, there’s nothing else coming in. And you know what happened to most of my big first-year earnings . . .”

“I know: your ex-wife and the IRS.”

“God bless them both.”

“So it looks like you’re going to have to liquidate half your portfolio to meet that IRS demand. But Alison also said that FRT and Warners want around half a million back in writer’s fees. If that demand becomes reality . . .”

“I know: the math doesn’t work. But my hope is that Alison will be able to negotiate them down to about half of that.”

“Which means that your investment portfolio will essentially be wiped out. Is there any other money coming in?”

“Nope.”

“Then how are you going to find the eleven grand per month for Lucy and Caitlin?”

“Shine shoes?”

“Surely Alison can find you some work.”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m supposed to be a plagiarist. And nobody hires plagiarists.”

“You have no other assets I don’t know about?”

“Just my car.”

I could hear him shuffling more papers. “It’s a Porsche, right? Worth probably around forty k right now.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Sell it.”

“What am I going to drive?”

“Something a lot cheaper than a Porsche. Meanwhile, let’s hope that Alison can get FRT and Warners to be reasonable. Because if they decide to press for the full sum, you know you’re looking at Chapter eleven . . .”

“Oh yes.”

“But let’s hope we never have to end up in that snakepit. First things first: according to his assistant, Bobby Barra is due back at the end of the week. I’ve left him an urgent message to contact me. I suggest you do the same. By the time he’s back, we’ve only got seventeen days to pay Uncle Sam . . . and it does take some time to sell half a portfolio. So . . .”

“I’ll chase Barra.”

I talked about my financial worries with Matthew Sims the next morning. Naturally he asked me how I felt about it.

“Scared to death,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s take the absolute worst-case scenario. You lose everything. You’re declared bankrupt. Your bank account is zip. Then what? Do you think you’ll never work again?”

“Sure I’ll work—in a job where I say stuff like ‘You want fries with the shake?’”

“Come on, David, you’re a clever guy . . .”

“Who’s persona non grata in Hollywood . . .”

“Maybe for a little while.”

“Maybe forever. And that’s what’s scaring me so badly. I might not be able to write again . . .”

“Of course you’ll be able to write.”

“Yeah—but no one’s going to buy the stuff. And writers live for an audience: readers, viewers, whatever. Writing’s the one thing I’m good at. I was a crap husband, I’m a middling father, but when it comes to words I’m clever as hell. I spent fourteen long years trying to convince the world that I was a proper writer. And you know what? I finally won the argument. In fact, I won it beyond my wildest damn dreams. And now it’s all going to be taken away from me.”

“You mean, the way you feel your ex-wife is going to permanently take Caitlin away from you?”

“She’s trying her best.”

“But do you really think she’ll succeed?”

And for the fifth (or maybe sixth) time running, our session ended with me saying: “I don’t know.”

I slept badly that night. I woke early the next morning, my sense of dread back to full operating speed. Then Alison called me, sounding just a little tense.

“Have you read the papers this morning?”

“I stopped reading newspapers when I came up here. What is it now?”

“All right, this is a good news/bad news call. What do you want to hear first?”

“The bad news, of course. But how bad is bad?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“How attached you are to your Emmy.”

“The bastards want it back?”

“That’s what’s happened. As reported in this morning’s LA Times, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences passed a motion last night to strip you of your Emmy on the grounds of—”

“I know what the grounds are.”

“I’m really sorry, David.”

“Don’t be. It’s an ugly piece of tin. You collected the Emmy from the apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“Then ship it on back. Good riddance. So what’s the good news?”

“Well, this was in the same LA Times report. It seems SATWA did pass a motion at their monthly meeting last night to censure you—”

“That’s your idea of good news?”

“Hear me out. They did censure you, but, by a two-to-one majority, they defeated a motion to recommend you being banned from work for any given amount of time.”

“Big deal. The studios and every damn producer in town will do that for them, with or without a SATWA resolution.”

“Look, I know I’m going to sound like some spin doctor, but the thing is, a censure is a slap on the wrist, nothing more. So we should take this as a good sign that, in professional writing circles, people are seeing this for what this really is: bullshit.”

“Unlike the Emmy people.”

“They’re just playing a public relations game. When you come back . . .”

“I don’t believe in reincarnation. Anyway, don’t you remember what Scott Fitzgerald said, in one of his few sober moments toward the end? There are no second acts in American lives.”

“I operate according to a different theory: life is short, but writing careers are curiously long. Try to get some sleep tonight. You sound like shit.”

“I am shit.”

Of course, I didn’t sleep . . . but instead watched all three parts of The Apu Trilogy (six hours of Hindi domestic life from the 1950s—brilliant, but only a manic insomniac would actually sit straight through it all). Eventually I staggered into bed, waking again to the sound of a ringing phone. What day was it? Wednesday? Thursday? Time had lost all value for me. In the recent past, my life had been one long workaday sprint—during which I crammed in so much: a couple hours of writing, a few production meetings, a few brainstorming sessions, endless phone calls, a business lunch, a business dinner, a screening here, a must-be-seen-at party there. Then there were the alternate weekends with Caitlin. On the weekends I was without her, I’d spend nine hours a day in front of the computer, grinding out part of a new episode or a section of my script, pushing, pushing, pushing. Because, as I knew so damn well, I was on a roll. And when you’re on a roll, you can’t afford to stop. For if you do . . .

The phone kept ringing. I reached for it.

“David, it’s Walter Dickerson. Did I wake you?”

“What time is it?”

“Around noon. Listen, I can call back.”

“No, no, tell me—do you have news?”

“Yes I do.”

“And?”

“It’s pretty reasonable news.”

“By which you mean . . .”

“Your ex-wife has agreed that you can have phone contact with Caitlin.”

“That’s a step forward, I guess.”

“Without question. However, she has insisted on a couple of conditions. You can only call every other day, with a maximum time limit of fifteen minutes.”

“She actually set those terms?”

“Absolutely. And according to her lawyer, it took some convincing to get her to agree to that limited amount of telephone access.”

“When can I make my first phone call?”

“Tonight. Your ex-wife suggested seven p.m. as the standard time for the call. Does that work for you?”

“Sure,” I said, thinking: My schedule isn’t exactly full. “But Mr. Dickerson . . . Walter . . . how long do you think it’ll be before I’ll be able to actually see my daughter?”

“The honest answer to that is: it depends upon your ex-wife. If she wants to keep busting your balls—excuse my French—this could drag on for months and months. If that happened—and if your pockets were deep enough—we could take her to court. But let’s hope that, once her temper cools down, she’ll be willing to negotiate some proper physical access. But like I said, it’s going to be a gradual process. I wish I had better news, but . . . as you’ve probably figured out by now, there is no such thing as an amicable divorce. And when there’s a child involved, the disagreements are endless. So, at least we’ve got you talking with Caitlin again. It’s a start.”

As scheduled, I made that first call at seven p.m. that night. Lucy must have had Caitlin positioned by the phone, as she picked up immediately.

“Daddy!” she said, sounding genuinely pleased to hear my voice. “Why have you disappeared?”

“I had to go away to do some work,” I said.

“Don’t you want to see me anymore?” she asked.

I swallowed hard.

“I’m desperate to see you,” I said. “It’s just . . . I can’t right now.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because . . . because . . . I’m far away, working.”

“Mommy said you got into some trouble.”

“That’s right, there was some trouble . . . but it’s better now.”

“So you will be coming to see me?”

“As soon as I can.” I took a deep breath and bit hard on my lower lip. “And meantime, we will talk all the time on the phone.”

My composure cracked.

“Daddy, what’s the matter?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, pulling myself back from the precipice. “Tell me what you’ve been doing at school.”

For the next fourteen minutes, we talked about a wide variety of issues . . . from her role as an angel in her school’s upcoming Easter pageant to why she thought Big Bird was boring but Cookie Monster was cool, to her desire for a sleepover Barbie doll.

I timed the call with my watch. Precisely fifteen minutes after Caitlin picked up, I heard Lucy’s voice in the background, saying: “Tell Daddy it’s time to stop.”

“Daddy, it’s time to stop.”

“Okay, my darling. I miss you terribly.”

“I miss you too.”

“And I’ll call you on Friday. Can I talk to your mother now?”

“Mommy,” Caitlin said, “Daddy wants to speak with you. Bye, Daddy.”

“Bye, darling.” Then I heard the phone being handed over to Lucy. But without uttering a word, she hung up on me.

Naturally, this phone call took up my entire session with Matthew Sims the next day.

“Lucy so despises me, she’ll never let me see Caitlin again.”

“But she did let you talk to her . . . which is an improvement over where we were last week.”

“I still brought this all on myself.”

“David, when did you leave Lucy?”

“Two years ago.”

“From what you told me during our first session, you were incredibly generous as regards the division of property.”

“She got the house—which I’d completely paid off.”

“Since then, you’ve made all your support payments on time, you’ve been a good dad to Caitlin, and you haven’t done anything hostile or adverse toward your ex-wife.”

“No.”

“Well then, if she’s still harboring enmity toward you a full two years after the divorce, that is her problem, not yours. And if she’s using Caitlin as a weapon against you, she will soon be forced to confront the fact that she is acting selfishly. Because your daughter will tell her so.”

“I hope you’re right. But I’m still haunted by something . . .”

“What?”

“The fact that I should have never left them, that I made a terrible mistake.”

“Would you really want to go back now?”

“That would never happen. There’s too much crap under the bridge, too much bad blood. But . . . I still made a mistake. A terrible mistake.”

“Have you ever told Lucy that?”

When I called back on Friday, however, Lucy still wouldn’t speak to me—and instead instructed Caitlin to hang up the phone at the end of our allotted fifteen minutes. The same thing happened on Sunday—but, at least, I was able to give Caitlin my phone number at the cottage and asked her to tell Lucy that I would be staying at this number for the next few weeks.

The decision to remain at Willard’s cottage had been an easy one to reach. I had few options—and as luck would have it, my need for longer-term accommodation coincided with Willard’s decision to stay on in London for an additional six months.

“He’s got another big rewrite job, and he seems to like the gray gloom of that town, so it looks like you can stay up there until Christmas,” Alison said when she called me with the news. “More to the point, he’s happy to have you installed as caretaker . . . and he’s not going to charge you anything, except the utilities.”

“Sounds fair to me.”

“He also wanted me to tell you that he feels what’s happened to you has been totally over the top and wrong. He’s even written to the Emmy people to tell them that they’ve acted like a bunch of shitbirds.”

“He actually used those words?”

“An approximation.”

“When you’re talking to him again, please tell him how grateful I am. It’s the first lucky break I’ve had in a while.”

But my run of good luck was short-lived. The next day, a megaton bomb landed in my lap after I finally made contact with Bobby Barra.

I rang him on his cellphone. He sounded more than a little hesitant when he heard my voice.

“Hey guy, how’s it going?” he asked me.

“I’ve had better months.”

“Yeah, I heard things had been rough. Where you calling from right now?”

I explained about Sally kicking me out and Alison finding me this coastal refuge.

“Man, you have hit Shit City,” Bobby said.

“Understatement of the year.”

“Well listen, guy—sorry I haven’t been in touch, but you know I was over in Shanghai for this search engine startup. And I know you’re calling me to find out about how the IPO has shaken down.”

An alarm bell went off between my ears.

“What does that IPO have to do with me, Bobby?”

“What does it have to do with you, guy? C’mon . . . you’re the one who told me to move your entire portfolio into this IPO.”

“I never said that.”

“The hell you didn’t. Remember that conversation we had when I called you a couple of months ago to tell you about your portfolio dividend for the last quarter?”

“Yeah, I remember it . . .”

“And what did I ask you?”

He had asked me if I would like to be one of the privileged few who would be allowed to invest seriously in a surefire IPO for an Asian search engine . . . a search engine that was guaranteed to become the number one player in China and all of Southeast Asia. And—with my detailed memory for all grisly details—I remembered our entire conversation at the time.

“This is like backing Yahoo with slopey eyes,” he said.

“How politically correct of you, Bobby.”

“Listen—we’re talking about the biggest untapped market in the world. And it’s the chance to get in at ground level. But I’ve got to know fast . . . you interested?”

“You’ve never steered me wrong yet.”

“Smart guy.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. The guy thought that was a directive to sell.

“Well, wasn’t it?” Bobby asked me. “I mean, I did ask you if you were interested. You did answer in the affirmative. So I took that to mean you wanted in.”

“But I didn’t tell you to transfer my entire fucking portfolio . . .”

“You didn’t say otherwise either. To me, ‘in’ means in.”

“You had no right to transfer any shares of mine without my explicit written approval.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. How the hell do you think the brokerage business works? By a polite exchange of paper? This is a game that alters every thirty seconds, so if someone tells me to sell—”

“I didn’t tell you to sell.”

“I made an offer to get you into the IPO, you accepted. And if you read the agreement you signed with my company when you became a client, you’ll see that there’s a clause authorizing us to buy or sell shares on your behalf with your verbal consent. But hey, if you want to take this to the SEC, go right ahead. They’ll laugh you out of court.”

“I don’t believe this . . .”

“Hey, it’s not the end of the world. Nine months from now, the share price is going to quadruple, which means that not only will you make up the initial fifty percent loss in share value . . .”

Three alarm bells started going off between my ears.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

He remained calm. “I said: given the momentary downturn in technology stocks, the initial IPO didn’t go as well as expected . . . and about half the value of your shares was wiped out.”

“That can’t be true.”

“What can I say, except it happens. Anyway, all this stuff is a gamble, right? I try to minimize your risk . . . but sometimes the market turns weird for a spell. The thing is: this is not a disaster. Far from it. Because by this time next year, I’m certain you’ll be seeing—”

“Bobby, by this time next year, I’ll be in debtor’s jail. I owe the IRS around a quarter million, and FRT and Warners are about to start chasing me for, at best, the same amount of cash. Do you understand what’s happened to me? All my contracts have been canceled. I am a Hollywood untouchable. The only money I have in the world is the money I’ve invested with you. And now you tell me . . .”

“What I’m telling you is to keep your nerve.”

“And what I’m telling you is that I have seventeen days to pay that IRS bill. The Internal Revenue Service doesn’t adopt a grandfatherly approach to anyone who’s late with a big bill. They’re the biggest bastards on the planet.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Get me all my money back.”

“You’re going to have to be patient for that.”

“I can’t be fucking patient.”

“Well, I can’t get you what you want. Not immediately anyway.”

“So what can you get me immediately?”

“Just the current value of your portfolio—which is around the quarter-mil mark.”

“You’ve bankrupted me . . .”

“I think it’s you who’ve bankrupted yourself. And as I have been trying to tell you, if you keep the money where it is for nine months—”

“I don’t have nine fucking months. I have seventeen days. And once I pay off the feds, I’ll have nothing. You got that? Less than zero . . .”

“What can I say? A gamble’s a gamble.”

“If you had only been straight with me . . .”

“I was straight with you, jerkoff,” he said, suddenly angry. “I mean, let’s face facts here. If you hadn’t gotten your ass thrown off your show for stealing people’s lines—”

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—”

“That’s it. We are done here. Literally and figuratively. I don’t want your business. I don’t want to deal with you.”

“Of course you don’t now that you’ve screwed me . . .”

“I am not continuing this dialogue. And I only have one final question for you: do you want me to liquidate the stock?”

“I have no choice.”

“That’s an affirmative then?”

“Yes—sell it all.”

“Fine. Done. Expect the money in your account tomorrow. End of story.”

“Never call me again,” I said.

“Why would I do that?” Bobby said. “I don’t deal with losers.”

Naturally, my session the next morning with Matthew Sims kicked off with a discussion of that last line.

“Well, do you consider yourself a loser?” he asked me.

“What do you think?”

“You tell me, David.”

“I’m not just a loser. I’m a disaster zone. Everything, everything, has been taken from me. And it’s all due to my own stupidity, my own self-absorption.”

“There you go again, down the self-hatred track.”

“What do you expect? I am now also heading toward financial collapse.”

“And you don’t think you’re clever enough to get yourself out of this?”

“How? Through suicide?”

“That’s not the sort of joke you tell your therapist.”

Nor, for that matter, was my accountant in jocular form when I explained the Bobby Barra debacle.

“I don’t want to say ‘I told you so,’” Sandy Meyer said, “but I did warn you about centralizing your portfolio in the hands of one broker.”

“The guy did so well for me up until now. And I was expecting to make such big bucks this year . . .”

“I know, David. It’s a tough situation. But okay, here’s how I think we should play it. The two hundred fifty k in liquidated stock goes to pay off Uncle Sam. Your credit cards are maxed out right now at twenty-eight k . . . so the thirty k in your account goes to pay off that debt, leaving you two grand in cash. But Alison told me you’re living rent-free right now.”

“Rent-free and cheap. If I spend two hundred a week, it’s an event.”

“Then that two grand will buy you ten weeks. But there’s the problem of the eleven grand a month for Lucy and Caitlin. I spoke with Alison about this. She says you’ve got a tough new lawyer working your corner. I’m sure, given your considerably reduced circumstances, a court would agree to lower your monthly payment.”

“I don’t want to do that. It’s not fair.”

“But David, Lucy is earning very good money now . . . and the initial alimony and child support payment was, in my opinion, sky high. I know you were pulling down a million a year. But even so, the level of payment struck me as so excessive as to be—if you don’t mind me saying so—guilt money.”

“It was guilt money. It still is guilt money.”

“Well, now you can no longer afford to feel guilty. Eleven grand a month is out of your league.”

“I’ll sell the car . . . as you suggested. I should get forty grand for it.”

“What are you going to drive?”

“Something cheap and well under seven thousand bucks. With the remaining thirty-three grand, I can afford the next three months’ payments.”

“And after that?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“You better talk to Alison about finding you some work.”

“Alison is the best agent in town . . . but she won’t be finding me any work.”

“With your permission, I’m going to give her a call,” Sandy said.

“Why bother? I’m a lost cause.”

A few days after Sandy’s call, Alison rang me and said, “Hello, Lost Cause.”

“I see you’ve been talking to my esteemed accountant.”

“Oh, I’ve been talking to lots of people,” she said. “Including FRT and Warner Brothers.”

“And?”

“Well, it’s another good news/bad news call. First I’m going to give you the bad news: both FRT and Warners are adamant that you pay back the fees.”

“That’s me finished.”

“Not so fast. The good news is that both companies have agreed to halve their demand—which means one hundred and twenty-five thousand each.”

“I’m still ruined.”

“Yeah—Sandy explained everything to me. But the other good news is that I have convinced them to let you pay it off on the installment plan, with no payment due for the first six months.”

“Big deal. The fact is, I have no money to make these payments. And I’m out of work.”

“No, you’re not.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I found you some work.”

“Writing work?”

“Absolutely. It’s not particularly glamorous work, but it is work. And for the amount of time it’ll take you to do it, it’s well paid.”

“So cut to the chase.”

“Now I don’t want you to groan when I tell you . . .”

“Just tell me, please.”

“It’s a novelization.”

I tried not to groan. A novelization was hack work—in which you took a screenplay of a forthcoming movie and turned it into a short, easy-to-read novel, which was generally sold at supermarket checkouts and all outlets of Kmart. Professionally speaking, it was the lowest of the lows—the sort of job you took because you either had low self-esteem or had hit the bottom of the barrel and were desperate for cash. I qualified on all fronts, so I swallowed my protestations and asked:

“What’s the movie?”

“Try not to groan again.”

“I didn’t groan the first time.”

“Well, you might now. It’s a new teen movie that New Line is releasing.”

“Called?” I asked.

“Losing It.”

This time I did groan. “Let me guess . . . it’s about two pimply sixteen-year-olds who want to lose their virginity?”

“My, my, you are clever,” Alison said. “Except that the kids are seventeen.”

“Late starters.”

“Hey, virginity is ‘in’ these days.”

“What’s the name of our two protagonists?”

“You’re going to love this: Chip and Chuck.”

“Sounds like a pair of cartoon beavers. And the setting is somewhere deeply banal and suburban, like Van Nuys?”

“Close: Orange County.”

“And does one of the kids turn out to be a slasher?”

“No—it’s not Scream. But there is a dazzling twist in the tail: it turns out that the gal whom Chip finally shtups is Chuck’s half sister . . .”

“But Chuck doesn’t know of her existence?”

“Bingo. It turns out that January . . .”

“Her name is January?”

“Hey, it’s that kind of movie.”

“Clearly. And it sounds like total shit.”

“That it is. But they are also offering twenty-five thousand for the novelization, on the condition that it’s delivered in two weeks.”

“I’m in,” I said.

The script arrived by FedEx the next morning. It was godawful: smug, full of smutty jokes about erections and clitorises and flatulence, with one-dimensional characters, the usual routine teen situations (including the requisite backseat blow job), the requisite slugfest between the two boys after Chuck discovers that he’s related to the girl Chip’s been sleeping with, and the requisite “growth” finale, in which Chip and Chuck reconcile, Chuck and his estranged father reconcile, and January reveals to Chip that he was her first lover too . . . and though she doesn’t want a “hot-and-heavy romance,” they’ll always be friends.

I called Alison after I finished reading it.

“Well?” she asked.

“Garbage,” I said.

“So can you make the two-week deadline?”

“No problem.”

“Good. Now here are some ground rules that the publisher, Max Newton, asked me to give you. The length should be seventy-five thousand words maximum. And remember this is for the moron market, so keep it fast, keep it simple, keep it basic . . . but also make certain the sex scenes are—how did he put this?—‘hot, but not scorching.’ Does that make sense to you?”

“I suppose so.”

“One final thing: the publisher knows that it’s you who’s writing the novelization.”

“He didn’t object?”

“He’s in New York. And he thinks what goes on out here is, at the best of times, stupid. But we both agreed that—to protect him and yourself—it was best if you used a pseudonym. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Are you kidding me? I don’t want my name attached to such crap.”

“Then think up an assumed one.”

“How about John Ford?”

“Why the hell not? And David . . . one last thing: though you know it’s shit, and I know it’s shit, and even the publisher knows it’s shit—”

“I know: be a pro.”

“That’s my boy.”

Starting tomorrow, I would have exactly thirteen working days to get the job done. So, before I even started mapping out a chapter-by-chapter outline for the book (today’s job), I did some simple arithmetic, dividing 75,000 by thirteen. This yielded a total of 5,770—which, in turn, became the daily quota of words I would have to write, if I was to make the deadline on time. Given that there are around 250 words per double-spaced typed page, this meant I would have to be churning out about twenty-three pages per day. An insane number of pages, save for the fact that the stuff I was dealing with deserved to be churned out fast, and without much in the way of deep thought.

But a job is a job—especially when you find all other work possibilities in your chosen field closed off to you. So I took the work seriously, determined to do the best I could with this low-grade material, to give the novelization the appropriate professional sheen, and to make the deadline without fail.

I devised a rigid schedule for myself and stuck to it. The two outside interruptions I’d allow myself would be my thrice-weekly phone call with Caitlin and my daily session with Matthew Sims.

“You sound in better spirits,” Sims said about halfway through my work on the novel.

“It’s work. Trashy work, but . . .”

“You’re still doing it diligently, which is admirable.”

“I need the money, and I also need to be filling the time with something constructive.”

“In other words, you’re being responsible, and you’re also demonstrating to yourself that you can go out and find work again.”

“This is not exactly the sort of stuff I want to be doing.”

“But it’s a start. And it’s reasonably well paid, isn’t it? So, why not be pleased about the fact that this could be considered a positive new beginning?”

“Because writing a novelization is never a positive experience.”

Still, I kept at it. I met my quota of words every day. I stuck to my schedule. I didn’t dumb down to deal with this dumb-down material. I did a good job. And I made the deadline . . . even getting it to the nearest FedEx depot a full hour before the last pickup of the day.

I made three copies of the text, dispatching one each to the publisher in New York and to Alison, and keeping one for myself. Then I went out to an Italian joint in Santa Barbara (around forty minutes up the road) and treated myself to my first restaurant meal since decamping up here. But I felt I deserved a small indulgence after such a slog. And it did feel wonderful to be eating out—something I’d taken for granted over the past two years, but that now seemed like a rarefied pleasure. Afterward, I took a long moonlit walk on the beach, delighting in the simple fact that I’d gotten a job done on time and reasonably well.

Or, as it turned out, more than reasonably well . . . as Alison called me three days later to tell me that the publisher in New York was enthusiastic about the end result.

“Do you know what Max Newton told me? ‘This guy has taken bad shit and turned it into quality shit.’ He really was very impressed . . . not just with the smoothness of the writing, but also that you made the deadline without hassle. Believe me, that makes you the rarest damn writer on the planet. But the really good news is that Max publishes one of these novelizations a month. In the past, he’s assigned them as a one-off to a variety of writers—but that wasn’t a particularly satisfactory arrangement. So he’d like to offer you a six-novelization contract. The same money—twenty-five grand per novelization. The same timetable—a book a month . . .”

“And I can keep using my pseudonym?”

“Yes, John Ford—no problems with that name. More to the point, this book contract alone means you can just about kill one of the debts to either FRT or Warners.”

“You’re forgetting about my alimony.”

“Yeah—Sandy talked to me about that. You must get that monthly burden reduced. It’s crazy money. And Lucy can afford—”

“Let’s not discuss this, please.”

“Your call, David.”

“But this is good news, Alison. Great news, in fact. I never thought I’d say that about a novelization, but . . .”

“It’s a lot better than nothing,” Alison said.

I slept well that night. I woke the next morning, feeling curiously rested and curiously sanguine about things. If Max Newton was pleased with the first six adaptations, maybe Alison could convince him to keep me on as his resident screenplay-into-novel hack. At the current rate of pay—taking into account Alison’s commission and tax—I could maintain my payments to Lucy and also manage to pay off the two debts to FRT and Warners in just over two years.

“It’s great to hear you sounding so optimistic,” Matthew Sims said during our next session.

“It’s great to be off my knees.”

A week went by. The check from Max Newton arrived via Alison. I put it in the bank and immediately transferred the lot into Lucy’s account, sending her an e-mail that simply said:

Two months’ maintenance payments should have reached your account today. It would be nice to talk with you sometime.

The next night, when I was signing off on my conversation with Caitlin, I asked my daughter if I could speak with her mommy.

“Sorry Daddy, she says she’s busy.”

I didn’t press the matter further.

Another few days went by without sign of the new screenplay from Max Newton. So I e-mailed Alison, wondering what was going on. She e-mailed me back, saying she’d spoken with Max yesterday and all was well. In fact, he told her that his legal department would FedEx the contract to her tomorrow.

But when tomorrow arrived, there was a phone call from Alison, her voice brimming with “bad news” tremors.

“I don’t know how to tell you this . . . ,” she said.

I couldn’t bring myself to yet again ask: “What now?” So I stayed silent.

“Max canceled the contract.”

“He what?”

“He canceled the contract.”

“On what grounds?”

“Our old friend, Theo McCall . . .”

“Not again . . .”

“I’ll read you the item. It’s just a few lines:

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Selling You creator David Armitage—sacked by FRT for stealing other writers’ lines (exposed first in this column), then publicly shamed for attacking a certain journalist (i.e., moi) in the NBC parking lot—has been reduced to the lowliest form of so-called ‘creative writing’: better known as ‘novelizations.’ According to an inside mole at Lionel Publishing in Nueva York, the onetime Emmy winner (recently stripped of his award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) has been reduced to churning out instant book adaptations of forthcoming movies. And guess what film the onetime golden boy of television has just novelized: a grisly forthcoming New Line teen-flick, Losing It . . . which, rumor has it, makes American Pie look like late-period Bergman. Better yet is the pseudonym Armitage chose beneath which to hide: John Ford. Does he mean the great director of westerns . . . or the Jacobean playwright, who wrote ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore . . . though in Armitage’s case, the title could be: ’Tis Pity He’s a Plagiarist.”

Long silence. I didn’t feel sick or shell-shocked or devastated . . . because I’d been through those assorted phases before. Now I simply felt numb—like a boxer who’d taken one blow to the head too many and could no longer feel anything.

Alison finally spoke. “David, I cannot begin to tell you . . .”

“So Max Newton read this and canceled the contract?” I said, my voice strangely calm.

“Yes, that’s about it.”

“Okay,” I said flatly.

“Do understand, I am talking with a high-powered attorney I know about a possible defamation of character suit against McCall.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Please don’t say that, David.”

“Look, I know when I’m defeated.”

“We can easily fight this.”

“No need. But listen, before I hang up, I just want to say this: you haven’t just been an agent extraordinaire . . . you’ve also been the best friend imaginable.”

“David, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing except . . .”

“You’re not going to do something stupid, are you?”

“You mean, like twist my Porsche around a tree? No—I wouldn’t give McCall the satisfaction. But I am giving up the fight.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I am saying it.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Whatever.”

I put down the phone. I packed up my laptop and found all the ownership papers for my car, then made a call to a Porsche dealer in Santa Barbara I’d spoken with a week or so earlier. He said that he’d expect me within the hour.

I drove north. At the dealership, the salesman came out to meet me. He offered me coffee. I declined. He said he’d have a full service report and a purchase price within two hours. I asked him to call me a cab. When it arrived, I told the driver to take me to the nearest pawnbrokers. He eyed me warily in the rearview mirror but did as I asked. When we reached the shop, I told him to wait. There was heavy-duty wiring on the window and a surveillance camera at the barred steel door. I was buzzed in and entered a tiny vestibule with scuffed linoleum, fluorescent lights, a window with bulletproof glass. This was a very nervous pawnbroker. An overweight guy around forty appeared at the window. He was eating a sandwich while he talked to me.

“So whatcha got?” he asked.

“A top-of-the-line Toshiba Tecra Notebook. Bought new for forty-five hundred.”

“Pass it through,” he said, lifting up the lower part of the window. He inspected it briefly, lifting it up, plugging it in, turning it on, gazing at the software application on the Windows desktop. Then he turned it off, shut it, and shrugged.

“The thing about these things is this: six months after they’re released on the market, they’re outdated. And their retail value ain’t much. Four hundred bucks.”

“A thousand.”

“Six hundred.”

“Sold.”

When I got back to the Porsche dealership, the salesman had the full report ready and an offer price of $39,280.

“I really was expecting forty-two, forty-three thousand,” I said.

“Forty is the absolute tops I could go.”

“Sold.”

I asked him for a cashier’s check. Then I got him to call me another cab and had it bring me to the nearest branch of BankAmerica. I flashed a lot of ID. There was an extended phone call to my BankAmerica branch in West Hollywood. There were several forms to sign. But eventually they agreed to cash the $40,000 check and to forward the sum of $33,000 to Lucy’s account in Sausalito. I left the bank with $7,000 cash and took another cab to a used-car lot not far from the Porsche dealership. This operation only dealt with lower-end vehicles. Still, for $5,000 cash, I managed to buy a 1994 navy blue VW Golf with “only 98,000 miles on the clock” and a six-month service warranty. I used the dealer’s phone to call my insurer. He sounded a little shocked when I told him I had switched the Porsche for a seven-year-old Golf, value $5,000.

“Well, you’ve still got another nine months to run on the Porsche insurance. But the Golf will only cost about a third of the price . . . which means there’s about five hundred left over.”

“Send me a check, please.” And I gave him my address in Meredith.

I drove my new old car to a cyber café. I bought a coffee and logged on to my server. I sent an e-mail to Lucy:

The next three months’ maintenance payments have been transferred to your account. I am now paid up for five months. I still hope that, one day, we will be able to talk again. In the meantime, I do want you to know one thing: I was very wrong to do what I did. I realize that now . . . and I am sorry.

After I sent the e-mail, I used the telephone in the café, and called American Express, Visa, and MasterCard. Each of the three companies confirmed that I had a zero balance on each of the cards (having taken Sandy’s advice several weeks earlier and used the last of my checking account to clear all credit debts). Each of the three companies tried to convince me otherwise when I said that I wished to close my accounts down (“But there’s no need, Mr. Armitage,” the woman at American Express told me. “We so hate to lose such a wonderful customer like you”). But I didn’t budge from my position: cancel all accounts effective immediately . . . and send me the necessary forms to sign at my new address in Meredith.

Before leaving the café, I stopped by the main counter and asked if they had a pair of scissors. They did. I borrowed them, and cut all three of my Gold credit cards into quarter pieces. The guy behind the till watched me:

“Been upgraded to Platinum or something?” he asked me.

I laughed and dumped the dismembered cards in his hands. Then I headed out.

On my way back south to Meredith, I did some quick addition in my head. Seventeen hundred bucks in my bank account. Three thousand six hundred bucks cash in my pocket. A five-hundred-dollar check en route from the insurance guy. Five months’ maintenance paid off. Five more months of free rent at Willard’s cottage . . . and if I got lucky, he might decide to stay on even longer in London (but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead). I had no debts. I had no bills outstanding—especially as Alison (bless her) insisted on using her commission from the novelization to cover Matthew Sims’s tab (she said that she’d made so damn much from me during my two lucrative years, the least she could do was cover my shrink bill). My medical insurance was paid up for nine more months. I needed no clothes, no books, no fancy fountain pens, no compact discs, no videos, no personal trainers, no $75 haircuts, no teeth-bleaching sessions at the dentist (cost: $2,000 per annum), no $8,000 holidays in a charming little beachfront boutique hotel at the tip of Baja . . . in short, none of the costly paraphernalia that once crowded my life. My net worth was $5,800. Utilities in the cottage were no more than $30 a week, and I hardly used the phone. Between food, a couple of bottles of modest wine, a few six-packs of beer, and the occasional trip to the local multiplex cinema, I could easily keep to my $200 per week budget. Which, in turn, meant that the next twenty-six weeks were paid for.

It was a curious feeling, having reduced everything down to this level. Not exactly liberating in that bullshit zen way . . . but definitely far less complex. The numbness that hit me the day Alison told me about McCall’s last column continued to hold sway over me. I often felt as if I was just going through the motions and making decisions on autopilot. Like cutting up all my credit cards. Or selling my laptop. Or walking into Books and Company on Meredith Main Street and asking for a job.

Books and Company was that rare thing: a small independent bookshop, still managing to function in a world of big monocultural chain stores. It was the sort of shop that reeked of polished wood and had exposed timber beams and a parquet floor, and that stocked the usual mix of upmarket literary fiction, popular blockbusters, cookery books, and a nice-size children’s section. There had been a note in the window for the past weeks, informing the good citizens of Meredith that the shop needed a full-time salesperson—and all interested parties should apply to the owner.

Les Pearson was a man in his late fifties: bearded, bespectacled, wearing a blue denim shirt and blue Levis. I imagined him haunting the City Lights bookshop in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, or once having been the proud owner of a pair of bongo drums. Now, however, he exuded settled middle-agedness . . . as befitted the owner of a small bookstore in a small exclusive beachfront town.

He was standing behind the counter when I entered the shop. I’d been in before, so his first question was:

“Can I find you anything?”

“In fact, I’ve come about the job.”

“Oh, really?” he said, now looking me over with care. “You ever work in a bookshop before?”

“Do you know Book Soup in Los Angeles?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Well, I was there for thirteen years.”

“But you live here now. Because I’ve seen you around.”

“Yeah, I’m staying at Willard Stevens’s place.”

“Oh right—heard that someone was down at his cottage. How do you know Willard?”

“We used to share the same agent.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Used to be.”

“Well, I’m Les.”

“And I’m David Armitage.”

“How do I know that name?”

I shrugged.

“And you’re really interested in the job here?”

“I like bookshops. I know my stuff.”

“It’s a forty-hour week: Wednesday through Sunday, eleven to seven, with an hour off for lunch. And being a small independent bookshop, I can’t really afford to pay more than seven dollars an hour—around two eighty a week. There are no medical benefits, I’m afraid, or any perks like that . . . except bottomless free coffee and fifty percent off anything you want to buy. Does two eighty a week sound okay to you?”

“Yeah. No problem.”

“And if I wanted a couple of references . . . ?”

I took a notepad and pen out of my jacket pocket and wrote the name of Andy Barron, the Book Soup manager (who I knew would be discreet enough not to blab to the world that I was trying to find work in a bookstore). I also gave him Alison’s number.

“Andy used to employ me, Alison used to represent me,” I said. “And if you want to get in touch with me . . .”

“I’ve got Willard’s number in my address book.” He proffered his hand. “I’ll be in touch, okay?”

Later that afternoon, the phone rang at the cottage.

“What the hell are you doing, getting a job in a fucking bookshop?” Alison asked me.

“Hello, Alison. And how’s life in Los Angeles?”

“Smoggy. Please answer the question. Because this Les Pearson guy rang me, saying he was considering you for a job in his shop.”

“Did you give me a good reference?”

“What do you think? But why the hell are you doing this?”

“I need to work, Alison.”

“And why the hell haven’t you answered any of my e-mails of the past couple of days?”

“Because I got rid of my computer.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, David, why?”

“Because I’m not in the writing game anymore, that’s why.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true.”

“Look, I’m sure that, with a little looking around, we could find you . . .”

“What? A rewrite job on a Serbian soap opera? A quick polish on a Mexican vampire film? Face it, if I can’t keep a novelization gig—because the publisher is too ashamed to be associated with me, even when I’m working under a pseudonym—then who the hell is going to hire me? The answer is no one.”

“Not immediately, perhaps. But . . .”

“When? Remember that Washington Post reporter who had the Pulitzer stripped from her after it turned out she made up an entire story? You know what she’s doing, ten years after her little transgression? Selling cosmetics in some department store. That’s what happens when you’re exposed as a literary cheat: you end up in retail.”

“But compared to that journalist, you didn’t do anything that serious.”

“Theo McCall managed to convince the world otherwise . . . and now my writing career is over.”

“David, I don’t like the fact that you sound so damn calm.”

“But I am calm. And very content.”

“You’re not on Prozac, are you?”

“Not even St. John’s Wort.”

“Look, why don’t I come visit you?”

“Give it a few weeks, please. To quote Ms. Garbo: I vant to be alone right now.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Never been better.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” she said.

Around an hour later, the phone rang again. This time it was Les Pearson.

“Well, you certainly got a glowing reference from Andy Barron and from your agent. When do you want to start?”

“Tomorrow’s fine by me.”

“See you at ten then. Oh . . . one small thing: I really was sorry to learn about all the stuff you’ve been through.”

“Thanks.”

So, as agreed, I started work the next day. It was a straightforward job—between Wednesday and Sunday, I single-handedly ran the show at the bookshop. I was the guy behind the counter, helping customers. I was the guy in the back office, dealing with orders and inventory. I was the guy who swept the place and ran a duster across the shelves and cleaned the toilet, and counted the cash and made a deposit every night in the local bank and even had time every day to spend an hour or two behind the cash register, reading.

It was easy stuff—especially during the weekdays, when only the occasional local wandered in. The weekends were a bit busier—especially with all the Angelinos who flocked to town. But the work wasn’t exactly taxing. I never knew if any of the Meredith regulars had found out who I was. I never inquired. Nor, to their credit, did anyone ever make a comment or shoot me a knowing look. In Meredith, there was an unspoken rule that you maintained a polite distance from everyone else. Which suited me just fine. And when the Angelinos came to town on Friday night, I never saw anyone from “the industry” because, with the absentee exception of Willard Stevens, Meredith attracted a weekend crowd of lawyers, doctors, dentists. To them, I was just the guy in the bookshop . . . and one who, in a matter of weeks, began to change in appearance.

To begin with, I dropped around 15 pounds, bringing me down to a super-thin weight of 162. Stress initially had something to do with this. So too did reducing all alcohol intake to a beer or a glass of wine a day. And my diet was simple and low in crap. I also started jogging on the beach every day. At the same time, I decided to dispense with my morning shave. My hair also started to grow in. By the end of my second month in the bookshop, I looked like some emaciated holdover from the sixties. But neither Les nor anyone in Meredith commented on this new Haight-Ashbury look. I did my job. I did it well. I was diligent and straightforward and always polite. And things ticked over nicely.

Les, in turn, was an easy employer. He only worked Mondays and Tuesdays (the two days I had off). Otherwise, he spent his time sailing and playing the stock market on the Internet, hinting (in our occasional conversations) that a bit of family money came his way around ten years earlier, allowing him to open this bookshop (an old dream of his, during the many years that he was an ad man in Seattle) and to maintain a pleasant lifestyle on this corner of the Pacific Coast Highway. He once said that he was divorced and that his two children were grown and living in the Bay Area. And when I mentioned on the day I started work that I needed to call my daughter every other night at seven, Les insisted that I use the bookshop phone. When I offered to pay for this regular fifteen-minute call, he wouldn’t hear of it.

“Call it a perk of the job,” he said.

Lucy still wouldn’t speak with me. After two months, I finally called Walter Dickerson and asked if there was any way he could try to negotiate some sort of proper face-to-face access with Caitlin.

“If Lucy wants it supervised, I’m agreeable to that,” I said. “I’m just desperate to see my daughter.”

But after a few days, Dickerson called me back.

“It’s a no-change situation, David. According to her legal guy, your ex-wife is still ‘uncertain’ about the idea of physical access. The good news, however, is that (according to the lawyer) Caitlin is really pushing her mother on this issue—demanding to know why she can’t see her daddy. And the other good news is that, after some to-ing and fro-ing, I have managed to increase your phone access to one phone call a day.”

“That is good news.”

“Give it a little more time, David. Be on your best behavior. Sooner or later, Lucy will have to give way on this one.”

“Thanks for getting me the extra phone calls. You know where to send the bill?”

“Let’s call this one on the house.”

By my third month at Books and Company, life had settled into a pleasant, compartmentalized routine. I jogged. I went to work. I closed up the shop at seven. I had my daily phone call with Caitlin. I went home. I read or watched a movie. On my days off, I often drove up the coast. Or I’d spend the evening at the local multiplex and maybe eat in a modest Mexican joint in Santa Barbara. I tried not to think what would happen eight weeks from now when I had to pay another $11,000 in alimony. I tried not to think about how I would deal with the FRT and Warner Brothers’ paybacks—both of which were pending. And I also tried not to think about what would happen to me when Willard Stevens returned from London . . . which, according to Alison, would happen in three months’ time.

For the moment, I decided to deal with things on a day-to-day basis. Because I knew that if I started really pondering the future, I’d slip into hyper-anxiety again.

Alison continued to call me weekly. She had no news to report, no pending prospects for work, no flurry of royalty payments or new syndication rights . . . because, of course, I lost all that when I lost my contract with FRT. But she still phoned me every Saturday morning, just to see how I was dealing with the world. I would tell her I was fine.

“You know, I’d really be much happier if you would tell me that things are genuinely shitty,” she said.

“But they’re not shitty.”

“And I think you’re having a world-class case of denial,” she said, “which, one day, will come crashing down on top of you like King Kong.”

“So far, so good,” I said.

“And another thing, David—one of these days you might just surprise the shit out of me by dropping a dime and giving me a call.”

Two weeks later, I did just that. It was ten in the morning. I had just opened the shop. There were no customers, so after making myself a coffee and sorting through the mail, I decided to give the LA Times a quick glance (I had finally started to read newspapers again). And there, in a sidebar within the Arts and Entertainment section, was the following item:

Reclusive multibillionaire Philip Fleck has decided to return to the director’s chair, a full five years after his first, self-financed feature film—the $40 million turkey The Last Chance—was laughed off the few screens upon which it was released. Now Fleck announces that he’s going relatively mainstream with a quirky new action-comedy, We Three Grunts. The plot concerns a pair of ageing Chicago Vietnam vets who, having hit bad times, develop a lucrative sideline by robbing banks. Once again, Fleck will be self-financing the film—which he also wrote himself—and that he says contains much of the same skewed humor which so characterized the great Robert Altman films of the 1970s. Fleck also promises some real surprises in the casting—to be announced shortly. Let’s hope that Fleck—whose current net worth hovers around the $20 billion mark—won’t try to turn this alleged comedy into some arty Swedish essay on angst. Existential angst never plays well against the Chicago skyline.

I put the paper down. I picked it up again, brimming with disbelief. My eyes singled out one specific sentence: Once again, Fleck will be self-financing the film—which he also wrote himself.

The bastard. The slimy, talentless bastard. Not only had he stolen my script again. This time, he had the audacity to keep the original title.

I picked up the phone. I dialed Los Angeles.

“Alison?” I said.

“I was about to call you.”

“You saw it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I saw it.”

“He can’t be serious.”

“He’s worth twenty billion. He can be as serious as he fucking likes.”

ELEVEN

DON’T WORRY ABOUT this,” Alison said.

“How can I not worry about this?” I said. “He’s stolen my script. I mean, it’s the greatest dumb irony on earth. I lose everything because of a couple of misappropriated lines . . . and Mr. Billionaire then puts his name to an entire one-hundred-eight-page script that I wrote.”

“He won’t get away with it.”

“Damn right he won’t,” I said.

“And I’ll tell you why. Because you registered it with SATWA when you wrote it back in the mid-nineties. One quick call to them will confirm you are the legal author of We Three Grunts. Then another quick call to my lawyer will send a tomahawk of a writ in the direction of Mr. Fleck. Remember how he offered you two-point-five million for the script all those months ago? That’s the price he’s going to pay now . . . if he doesn’t want his theft plastered over every front page from here to Tierra del Fuego.”

“I want you to stick it to this asshole. I mean, his pockets are virtually bottomless, so two-point-five million will be like a pack of Juicy Fruit to this guy. More to the point is the moral bankruptcy involved in trying to fuck me over when I’m down and out.”

Alison let out one of her tobacco-cured laughs.

“Nice to hear you in such good form,” she said.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The last couple of months, you went all zen and centered on me. I put it down to you reliving the Book of Job and finally succumbing to shock. But it’s good to hear you back in tough-guy mode.”

“Well, what do you expect? This is so beyond everything I’ve been subjected to . . .”

“Fear not,” Alison said. “The shit will pay.”

She didn’t call me the next day. She didn’t call me the day after. I rang her on the third day, but her assistant said that she was out but would definitely be getting back to me tomorrow. But the call never came. Then it was the weekend. I must have left her three messages on her home phone, but she failed to return my calls. Monday came and went. Finally, on Tuesday morning, she rang me at the cottage.

“What are you doing today?” she asked me.

“Thanks for returning my calls.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Do you have news?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding constrained. “But it would be better if we could discuss it face to face.”

“Can’t you tell me . . . ?”

“You free for lunch?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, I’ll see you around one p.m. at the office.”

I showered, dressed, and climbed into the VW and headed south. I made the city in less than two hours. I hadn’t been in Los Angeles in nearly four months—and cruising down Wilshire, heading toward Alison’s office, it struck me how much I missed the dump. Though the rest of the world derides the place for its alleged shallowness and its visual deformities (“New Jersey with better clothes,” as one of my wiseass Manhattan friends called it), I’ve always loved its hallucinatory sprawl; its intermingling of the industrial and the opulent; its aching gimcrack glamour; the sense that you were in a Paradise Trashed . . . yet still brimming with possibility.

Alison’s assistant, Suzy, didn’t recognize me at first.

“Can I help you?” she asked, squinting suspiciously at me when I came through the door. Then the penny dropped. “Oh my God, David . . . uh, hello.”

Alison then came out from her inner office and did a double-take when she saw me. My beard was now well below my chin, and I had my hair tied in a ponytail. She gave me a fast peck on the cheek, then sized me up once more and said, “If I ever hear of a Charles Manson look-alike competition, I’m signing you up. You’ll be a shoo-in.”

“And it’s very nice to see you too, Alison,” I said.

“What sort of diet have you been on? Macro-neurotic?”

I ignored the comment and stared at the bulging file under her arm.

“What’ve you got there?”

“Evidence.”

“Of what?”

“Come on inside.”

I did as ordered, sitting down in the seat opposite her desk.

“We could go out to somewhere fancy,” she said. “But . . .”

“You’d rather talk here?”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s that bad?”

“It’s that bad. So shall we order in?”

I nodded and Alison picked up the phone and asked Suzy to call Barney Greengrass and get them to send over a platter of their best Nova, with the usual bagel and schmear accompaniments.

“And a couple of celery sodas, just so we can pretend we’re in New York,” Alison said.

She put down the phone. “I take it you’re not drinking?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’re radiating anorexic good health.”

“Do I need a drink for what you’re about to tell me?”

“Possibly.”

“I’ll pass.”

“I am impressed.”

“Enough of the buildup, Alison. Tell me.”

She opened the file. “I want you to think back to when you originally finished We Three Grunts. According to my files, it was sometime during the autumn of ’97.”

“November, ’97, to be exact.”

“And you’re certain you registered it with SATWA?”

“Of course. I’ve always registered all my scripts with the Association.”

“And they always gave you a standard form letter saying it’s been registered, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you have the letter for We Three Grunts?”

“I doubt it.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Well, I’ve always been pretty ruthless with my papers, throwing out nonessential stuff.”

“Isn’t a SATWA letter of registration important?”

“Not when I know that, having registered the script with them, it is registered. What the hell are you getting at, Alison?”

“The Screen and Television Writers’ Association does have a script entitled We Three Grunts listed in their books. But they only registered it last month, under the name of its author, one Philip Fleck.”

“But, hang on, they surely have a record of my script registration in November ’97?”

“No, they do not.”

“But that can’t be. I did register it.”

“Hey, I believe you. Not only that, I managed to dig out the original 1997 draft of the screenplay.”

She reached into the file and pulled out a battered, slightly yellowing copy of the script. The title page read:

WE THREE GRUNTS

A Screenplay

by

David Armitage

(First Draft: November 1997)

“There’s the proof you need,” I said, pointing to the date on the title page.

“But David, who’s to say that you didn’t concoct this title page yourself recently? Who’s to say you didn’t decide to steal Philip Fleck’s script and put your own name on the title page . . .”

“What are you accusing me of, Alison?”

“You’re not listening to what I’m saying here. I know you wrote this movie. I know you’re not a plagiarist. And I also know that you’re not any more deranged than any other writer I represent. But I also know that SATWA has no record of your authorship of We Three Grunts . . .”

“How do you know that?”

“Because when the Association told me last week that the script was only registered under the name of Philip Fleck, I contacted my lawyer who, in turn, put me in touch with a private investigator . . .”

“You hired a PI?” I asked, sounding shocked.

“Hell yes. I mean, we’re talking about a serious theft here, and one that could be worth two-point-five million. So of course I got me a gumshoe. You should have seen this guy. Thirty-five years old, worst case of acne I’ve ever laid eyes on, and his suit looked like he’d stolen it off the back of some Mormon missionary. Believe me, he was no Sam Spade. But despite the looks, the guy was as thorough as a tax inspector. And what he turned up with . . .”

She dug deeper into the file, first bringing out the recent official SATWA registration of We Three Grunts, clearly under the name of Philip Fleck. Then she brought out the official SATWA registration of all my scripts. Every Selling You episode was listed. So too was Breaking and Entering. But none of my unproduced screenplays from the nineties was cited.

“Name one of those screenplays,” Alison said.

“At Sea,” I said, mentioning the generic (“but darkly comic”) action script in which Islamic terrorists seized the yacht containing the US president’s three children.

Alison flipped a piece of paper in front of me.

“Registered under the name of Philip Fleck last month. Name another of your unproduced screenplays.”

“A Time of Gifts,” I said, mentioning the woman-dying-of-cancer film I wrote in ’96.

“Registered under the name of Philip Fleck last month,” she said, handing me another official SATWA letter. “And let’s go for the hat trick. Name a third unproduced screenplay of yours.”

“The Right Place, the Wrong Time.”

“That was the honeymoon mix-up thing, right? Registered under the name of Philip Fleck last month.”

I stared down at the new document that Alison handed me.

“He’s stolen every script of mine that’s been unproduced?”

“That’s the situation.”

“And there’s no record of the scripts being registered under my name?”

“None whatsoever.”

“How the hell did Fleck engineer this?”

“Ah,” Alison said, digging even deeper into the file. “Here’s his real masterstroke.”

She handed me a Xerox copy of a small Hollywood Reporter article, dated four months ago:

FLECK FOUNDATION MAKES $8 MILLION DONATION TO SATWA BENEVOLENT FUND

The Philip Fleck Foundation today announced that it would be making an $8 million donation to the Screen and Television Writers’ Association Benevolent Fund. Fleck Foundation spokesperson Cybill Harrison said that the gift was in recognition of the Association’s sterling work in promoting and protecting the work of screenwriters, while also hopefully assisting those writers facing financial crises or serious illness. SATWA’s executive director, James LeRoy, noted, “This magnificent gift points up a simple fact: when it comes to supporting the arts in America, Philip Fleck is the closest thing the country has to a Medici. Every writer should have a friend like Philip Fleck.”

“Great last line, isn’t it?” Alison said.

“I don’t believe this. He bought the Association.”

“Effectively, yes. More to the point, he bought the ability to have the Association lose the registrations of your unproduced screenplays and to register them in his own name.”

“But, Jesus, with the exception of We Three Grunts, none of the others is particularly distinguished.”

“But they’re still pretty smart and clever, right?”

“Of course they’re smart and clever. I wrote them.”

“There you go. Fleck now has four solid professional scripts to his name—one of which is so good that, according to this morning’s Daily Variety, he’s managed to get Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper to play the two Vietnam vets, with Jack Nicholson in a cameo as—”

“Richardson, their lawyer?”

“You got it.”

“That’s fantastic casting,” I said, suddenly excited. “And the entire Easy Rider generation will definitely turn out to see it.”

“Without question. And Columbia has agreed to distribute the thing.”

“This really is a go then?”

“Hey, it’s Fleck’s money, so it’s also his green light. The problem is, your name isn’t going to be on the credits.”

“Surely there’s a legal avenue we can take.”

“I’ve been round and round this thing with my lawyer. He says that Fleck has pulled off the perfect sting. Your old registrations have been expunged. Fleck has now become the official author of all your old work. And were we to go public—especially on the issue of We Three Grunts—Fleck’s people would play the ‘He’s a deranged plagiarist’ card. They’d also let it be known that, when you were still ‘a legitimate writer,’ Fleck had you out to his island, to talk about writing a movie for him. But he got whiff of the fact that you were trouble and turned you down. So, naturally, you got up to your old psychotic tricks and convinced yourself that you were the real author of We Three Grunts . . . even though there’s no record to show you as the actual writer, whereas there is official SATWA accreditation of Fleck’s authorship.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It’s amazing what money can buy you.”

“But . . . hang on . . . couldn’t we get Fleck on registering all four screenplays in the last month?”

“Who’s to say that he didn’t get around to submitting them to the Association until now? He could argue, for example, that he’d been writing these scripts privately for the last couple of years. The fact that he was going into production with We Three Grunts meant that he probably decided it was time to officially register everything with SATWA.”

“But how about the studio executive and development people who read my script . . . ?”

“You mean, all those years ago? Oh come on, David. Rule number one of development is: you always forget the script you’ve just passed on, three minutes after you’ve passed on it. More to the point, even if some damn D gal or guy does remember reading your script, do you actually think they’re going to take your side against the mighty Mr. Fleck? Especially given your current position in this town. Trust me, the lawyer, the PI, and I have tried to run all sorts of scenarios on how to fight this. We can’t find any. Fleck has closed every damn loophole imaginable. Even the lawyer had to admire the elegance of the scam he’s pulled. In pool parlance, you’re snookered.”

I stared down at the pile of papers covering Alison’s desk. I was still trying to fathom the hall of mirrors in which I currently found myself and the realization that there was no way out of this situation—that my work was now Fleck’s work. Nothing I could do or say would change that.

“There’s something else you need to know,” Alison said. “When I told the PI about the way that Theo McCall undid your career, he was immediately interested and went off and did a little additional research.”

Again, she dug into the file and pulled out another couple of Xeroxes. Then she handed them to me and said: “Get a load of these.”

I looked down and saw that I was holding a statement from Bank of California for the money management account of one Theodore McCall of 1158 Kings Road, West Hollywood, California.

“How the hell did he get these?”

“I didn’t ask. Because I didn’t want to know. But put it this way: where there’s a will, there’s a relative. Anyway, check out the credit column for the fourteenth of every month. As you’ll notice, there’s a deposit for ten grand from a company called Lubitsch Holdings. Now my PI ran a check on this outfit, and it turns out it’s some shell company registered in the Cayman Islands, traceable to no one. What’s more, he found out that McCall makes a shitty thirty-four grand a year at Hollywood Legit but also manages to pull in another fifty grand as the Hollywood stringer for some British rag. He’s got no family money, no trust fund, no nothing. But for the last six months, he’s been on this ten-grand-a-month retainer from a mysterious company named Lubitsch.”

Pause.

“When did you visit Fleck’s island?” she asked me.

“Seven months ago.”

“Didn’t you tell me he’s something of a film buff?”

“The ultimate film collector.”

“Who is the only person you know named Lubitsch?”

“Ernst Lubitsch—the great film comedy director of the thirties.”

“And only a real film buff would find it amusing to name a Cayman Island holding company after a legendary Hollywood director.”

Long silence. I said, “Fleck paid McCall to find something with which to destroy me?”

Alison shrugged. “We don’t have hard-and-fast evidence, because Fleck has covered his tracks so damn well. But the PI and I both agree: that seems to be the story.”

I sat back in the chair, thinking, thinking, thinking. The pieces of this skewed jigsaw were suddenly assembling in my head. For the past six months, I had believed that the entire appalling scenario I’d been living could be put down to the random workings of fate, the domino theory of disaster, in which one calamity triggered the next calamity, which, in turn . . .

But now the realization hit: it had all been completely orchestrated, completely manipulated, completely instigated. To Fleck I was nothing more than a cheap-assed marionette, to be toyed with at will. He’d decided to ruin me. Like some spurious supreme being, he felt he could pull all the strings.

“Do you know what baffles me about this whole thing?” Alison said. “It’s the fact that he needed to flatten you. Like if he just wanted to buy the script with his name only on it, hell, I’m sure we could have come to an accommodation. Especially if the price was right. But instead, he went for your jugular, your aorta, and every other major artery. Did you really make him hate you or something?”

I shrugged, thinking: No, but his wife and I got awfully friendly. And yet, what the hell really happened between Martha and me? A boozy embrace, nothing more . . . and one that took place far out of view of the staff. I mean, unless there were nighttime surveillance cameras hidden in the palms . . .

Stop! That’s a completely paranoid fantasy. Anyway, Fleck and Martha were virtually separated, weren’t they? So why would he even care if we got a little too affectionate down by the beach?

But he obviously did care—because why else do this to me?

Unless . . . unless . . .

Remember the movie he insisted on showing you? Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom. Remember how you kept wondering, long afterward, why he subjected you to this gruesome little experience? Remember as well his defense of the film:

“ . . . what Pasolini was showing was fascism in its purest pretechnological form: the belief that you have the right, the privilege, to exert complete control over another being to the point of completely denying them their dignity and essential human rights; to strip them of all individuality and treat them like functional objects, to be discarded when they have outserved their capability . . .”

Was that the point of this entire malevolent exercise? Did he want to act out his belief that he had “the right, the privilege, to exert complete control over another being?” Did Martha factor into this equation as well—convincing him that her passing affection for me made me the obvious target for his manipulations? Or was it envy—a need to destroy someone else’s career in order to assuage his own evident lack of talent? He had such deranged amounts of money, such deranged amounts of totality. Surely, boredom must set in after a while. The boredom of one Rothko too many, of always drinking Cristal and always knowing that the Gulfstream or the 767 was awaiting your next move. Did he feel it was time to see if he could transcend all those billions by doing something truly original, audacious, existentially pure? By assuming a role that only a man who had more than everything could assume? The ultimate creative act: playing God.

I didn’t know the answer to this question. I didn’t care. His motivation was his motivation. All I did know was: Fleck was behind all this. He strategized my downfall like a general laying siege to a castle: attack the basic foundation, then watch the entire edifice crumble. His hand controlled all . . . and, in turn, me.

Alison spoke, snapping me out of my reverie.

“David, are you all right?”

“Just thinking.”

“I know this is a lot to take in. It is pretty damn shocking.”

“Can I ask a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Could you get Suzy to make Xeroxes of all the documents the PI dug up?”

“What are you planning to do?”

“I just need the documents . . . and that original copy of my script.”

“This is making me nervous.”

“You have to trust me.”

“Give me a clue . . .”

“No.”

“David, if you fuck this up . . .”

“Then I’ll be even more fucked than I am now. Which simply means I have nothing to lose.”

She reached for the phone and buzzed Suzy.

“Honey, I want you to copy everything in this file, please.”

Half an hour later, I collected the file and the script. I also made a fast smoked salmon and schmear sandwich and shoved it in my jacket pocket. Then I gave Alison a peck on the cheek and thanked her for everything.

“Please don’t do anything stupid,” she said.

“If I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

I left the office. I got into my car, putting the bulging file on the seat next to me. Then I slapped the pockets of my jacket to make certain that I had my address book. I drove into West Hollywood, stopped by a bookshop, found the volume I was looking for, and continued on to a cyber café I knew from driving down Doheny too many times. I parked out front. I went inside. I sat down at a terminal and went online. I opened my address book and typed out Martha Fleck’s e-mail address. In the space marked From, I typed the bookstore’s address but deliberately failed to include my own name. Then I copied out the following lines from the book I’d just bought:

My life closed twice before its close—

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me.

So huge, so hopeless to conceive

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven

And all we need of hell.

. . . and, by the way, it would be wonderful to hear from you.

Your friend,

Emily D.

I hit the Send button, hoping that it was her own private e-mail address. If it wasn’t—if Fleck was watching her every move—then I was banking on the possibility that he might consider this an innocent missive from a bookshop . . . or, at the very worst, that she’d get in touch with me before he intercepted it.

I lingered for a little while in West Hollywood, drinking a latte at an outdoor café, cruising by the apartment house where Sally and I had lived, thinking how quickly I had stopped longing for her . . . if, that is, I had ever longed for her at all. Since our split, she’d never once made contact. No doubt she had put a message on our voice mail, stating: “David Armitage doesn’t live here anymore.” But passing by our building, once again that fresh scab was torn away. Once again, I silently repeated that oft-heard rumination of many a middle-aged man: What was I thinking?

And once again, I had no answers.

I accelerated out of West Hollywood, out of the city limits, and back up the coast. I reached Meredith by six. Les was behind the till. He seemed surprised to see me.

“Don’t you like days off?” he asked me.

“I’m just expecting an e-mail. You didn’t notice if . . . ?”

“Haven’t checked the damn thing all day. Go ahead.”

So I went into the little office and powered up the Apple Mac and held my breath, and . . .

There it was.

An Epistle for Emily D . . .

I opened it. The message read:

To wait an hour—is long—

If Love be just beyond

To wait Eternity—is short—

If Love reward the end—

. . . and I think you know the poet. Just as I think you also know that this correspondent would be delighted to make your acquaintance again. But what’s with the bookshop address? I’m most intrigued. Call me on my cellphone: (917) 555-3739. Only I answer it, which makes it the best channel of communication, if you catch my drift.

Call soon.

Bestest,

The Belle of Amherst

I shouted out to Les: “Mind if I use the phone?”

“Work away,” he said.

I shut the door and dialed the cellphone number. Martha answered. And curiously, my pulse jumped a beat or two at the sound of her voice.

“Hi there,” I said.

“David? Where are you?”

“At Books and Company in Meredith. You know Meredith?”

“Up along the Pacific Coast Highway?”

“The very place.”

“You’ve bought a bookshop?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I can imagine. Listen, I should have called you a couple of months ago, when all that crap was breaking around you. But let me say this now: what you did . . . what you were accused of . . . was such small beer. As I told Philip myself, if I had a dime for every script I’d read with a line borrowed from somewhere else—”

“You’d be as rich as he is?”

“Nobody’s that rich—bar five other people on the planet. Anyway, all I wanted to say was I am so sorry for what you went through . . . especially all the vilification from that shit McCall. But, at least, Philip was able to give you a nice cushion with the price he paid for the script.”

“Right,” I said tonelessly.

“By the way, I love the script. It’s so smart, so street, and so truly subversive. But when we meet, I want to try to talk you out of giving Philip sole writing credit . . .”

“Well, you know how it is,” I said.

“I know. Philip explained your fear about the bad publicity that the film would attract if your name was attached to it. But I do want to convince him to leak the fact that you were the original author after the film’s release . . .”

“Only as long as the reviews are terrific.”

“They will be—because, this time, Philip’s starting from a fantastically strong script. And you heard about Fonda and Hopper and Nicholson.”

“It’s my dream cast.”

“And it is so nice to hear from you, Mr. Armitage. Especially as I wondered afterward . . .”

“We did nothing particularly illegal.”

“Sadly,” she said. “How’s your lady friend?”

“I have no idea. It was one of the many big things that went south when . . .”

“I’m sorry. And your daughter?”

“Great,” I said, “except that, since my photographed run-in with McCall, her mother has had me legally barred from seeing her . . . on the grounds that I am an unstable misfit.”

“Oh Jesus, David, that is horrible.”

“That it is.”

“Well, it sounds like you need a good lunch.”

“That would be nice. Anytime you’re ever in the Meredith area . . .”

“Well, I’m at our place in Malibu for a week or so.”

“Where’s Philip?”

“Scouting locations in Chicago. The first day of principal photography is just eight weeks away.”

“Everything okay with you guys?” I asked, trying to maintain the same casual, nonchalant tone.

“For a little while, there was a pleasant interlude. But that ended rather recently. And now . . . same as it ever was, I guess.”

“Sorry.”

“Comme d’habitude . . .”

“As they say in Chicago.”

She laughed. “Listen, if you happened to be free for lunch tomorrow . . . ?”

And we agreed to meet at the bookshop at one.

As soon as I got off the phone, I came out of the office and asked Les if I could find someone to cover for me for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon.

“Hell, it’s a Wednesday, and the town’s dead. Take the afternoon off.”

“Thank you,” I said.

It took three Tylenol PM to knock me out that night. Before I finally succumbed to sleep, I kept hearing her say: “I want to try to talk you out of giving Philip sole writing credit . . . Philip explained your fear about the bad publicity that the film would attract if your name was attached to it.”

I now understood the ruthless logic Fleck applied to making his billions. When it came to war, he was a true artist. It was his one great talent.

She showed up promptly at one. And I have to say that she looked radiant. She was dressed simply in black jeans and a black T-shirt and a blue denim jacket. Yet despite the Lou Reed clothes, there was something so resolutely East Coast patrician about her. Maybe it was her long brown hair tied up in a bun—and the long slender neck and high cheekbones—that put me in mind of one of those John Singer Sargent portraits of a Boston society woman, circa 1870. Or maybe it was the traditional horn-rimmed glasses she insisted on wearing. They were an ironic counterpoint to the biker chick clothes, not to mention all the money she now represented. Especially as they were the sort of frames that probably cost less than fifty bucks and currently had a small piece of Scotch tape holding their left side together. I understood what that wad of Scotch tape exemplified: an insistence on her own personal autonomy, and a wily intelligence that, all these months later, I still found so deeply attractive.

As she entered the shop, she looked right through me—as if I was the Dead Head clerk whom the owner employed.

“Hi there,” she said. “Is David Arm . . .”

Then, in mid-sentence, the penny dropped.

“David?” she said, sounding genuinely shocked.

“Hello, Martha.”

I was about to kiss her on the cheek, but I thought better of it and simply proffered my hand. She took it, staring at me with a mixture of bemusement and amusement.

“That’s really you behind all that . . . ?”

“The beard has gotten a bit shaggy.”

“Ditto the hair. I mean, I’ve heard of the ‘going back to nature’ look. But ‘going back to the bookshop’?”

I laughed. “Well, you look wonderful.”

“I’m not saying you look bad, David. Just . . . I don’t know . . . you haven’t simply changed; you’ve transformed. Like one of those kids’ toys . . .”

“Where, with a few fast adjustments, GI Joe turns into a dinosaur?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s the new me,” I said. “A dinosaur.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “And one with a bookshop to boot,” she said, glancing around the stacks and the assorted displays, running one hand along the polished wood shelves. “I’m impressed. It’s charming. And bookish.”

“Well, the fact that it’s not in a strip mall and doesn’t have a Starbucks makes it something of a nineteenth-century curiosity these days.”

“How on earth did you find it?”

“That’s a bit of a story.”

“Well, I’m going to expect you to tell me all over lunch.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

“I was surprised when you e-mailed me. I thought . . .”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t know . . . that you’d written me off as a fool after that night . . .”

“It was the best sort of foolishness.”

“You mean that?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Because . . .” A nervous shrug. “Because I felt pretty damn foolish afterward.”

“Join the club,” I said.

“So,” she said, changing the subject quickly, “where am I taking you for lunch?”

“I thought we’d go down to the cottage I’m staying in.”

“You’re renting a place up here?”

“It actually belongs to one of my agent’s clients. Willard Stevens.”

“The screenwriter?”

“That’s right.”

She looked at me quizzically, trying to piece this little fragment together. “So when you found this town and this bookshop, you also found a place to live that just happened to belong to Willard Stevens . . . who also just happens to be represented by your agent?”

“That’s right. Well, shall we . . . ?”

I spent a few minutes closing the bookshop down, explaining to Martha that, in honor of her appearance in Meredith, I’d decided to take the afternoon off.

“I’m touched,” she said, “but I don’t want you to lose any business on my behalf.”

“Don’t worry about it. Wednesday’s a slow day. Anyway, Les wasn’t bothered about me—”

“Who’s Les?” she asked, interrupting.

“Les is the owner of the bookshop.”

Now she really looked confused. “But I thought you said you were the owner?”

“I never said that. I just said—”

“I know. ‘That’s a bit of a story.’”

Martha’s car was parked outside: a big black shiny Range Rover.

“Shall we take my monster?” she asked.

“We’ll jump into mine,” I said, motioning toward my geriatric VW Golf. Once again, she did a little double-take at the life-in-the-slow-lane style of the vehicle but said nothing.

We climbed inside. As always, the starter motor was acting faulty (one of the many little bugs I had discovered since buying the heap). But it finally fired on the fourth try.

“Quite a car,” she said as we pulled away from the curb.

“It gets me from A to B,” I said.

“And I suppose it all goes with the ageing undergraduate look you’re trying to foster.”

I said nothing. I simply shrugged.

We reached the cottage in five minutes. She was smitten with the ocean view. She was smitten with the cottage’s designer simplicity, its white-on-white color scheme, its overstuffed armchairs and bookshelves.

“I can see why you’re happy here,” she said. “It’s the ultimate writer’s hideaway. Where do you work, by the way?”

“At the bookshop.”

“Very funny. I’m talking about the ‘real work.’”

“You mean, ‘writing’?”

“David, don’t tell me that ponytail of yours has dragged down your cognitive powers. You do happen to be a writer . . .”

“No. I was a writer.”

“Don’t refer to your career in the past tense.”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“But the thing is: Philip is about to film your script . . . with an amazing cast and guaranteed worldwide distribution by Columbia. Like I said on the phone yesterday, as soon as word gets around that it was your screenplay, you’ll be flooded with offers. Because Hollywood loves nothing more than a great comeback. Before you can say ‘seven figures,’ you’ll be slaving over a laptop.”

“No, I won’t.”

“How can you know that?”

“I sold my laptop.”

“You did what?”

“I sold my computer. Hocked it actually—at a pawnshop in Santa Barbara.”

“David, this is a joke, right?”

“No, it’s the truth. I knew I’d never be writing again for a living. And I also needed the extra bucks . . .”

“All right, all right,” she said, her voice suddenly agitated. “What are you playing at, David?”

“I’m playing at nothing.”

“Then why all the stuff about working in a bookshop?”

“Because I do work in a bookshop—for two hundred eighty dollars a week.”

“There you go again, talking crap. Two eighty a week? David, Philip paid you two-point-five million for the script.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“He told me—”

“He lied.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I walked over to the desk. I picked up the file containing all the xeroxed documents that Alison’s PI assembled, as well as the original 1997 first-draft copy of We Three Grunts. I handed her the lot.

“You want evidence? Here’s all the evidence you need.”

And then I took her through the entire story. Her eyes grew wide as I talked. I showed her all the documentation from SATWA—and explained how the registration of all my unproduced work had vanished, only to then be suddenly listed under the name of Philip Fleck. I went through McCall’s bank accounts and pointed out his large monthly retainer from Lubitsch Holdings.

“Does your husband have a thing for Ernst Lubistch’s movies?”

“Well, he owns a print of all his films.”

“Bingo.”

I explained how I lost my investment portfolio, courtesy of Bobby Barra—and how I had reason to believe that my broker was acting under Fleck’s instructions to hurt me financially.

“The one thing I can’t figure out is this: whether he decided to do this because he somehow found out about us—”

“But what’s to find out?” she said. “I mean what we did was pretty junior high. Anyway, around that time, Philip hadn’t touched me for months . . .”

“Well, if it wasn’t that, maybe, I don’t know . . . maybe he was envious of my little success . . .”

“Philip’s envious of anyone with real creative talent. Because he has absolutely none himself. But, knowing him as damn well as I do, he could have decided to do this for a dozen different reasons . . . all cryptic and hard to fathom to everyone but himself. Then again, he might just have done this for the sake of doing this. Because he can do this.”

She stood up, pacing the cottage, shaking her head.

“I’m so . . . I can’t imagine how he . . . he plays the mind-fuck games all the . . . the whole thing . . . it’s so fucking, unbelievably Philip.”

“Well, you know him better than I do.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Me too. Which is why I need your help.”

“You’ve got it.”

“But what I’m going to propose might be . . . well . . . kind of risky.”

“Let me worry about that. So go on—what do you want me to do?”

“Confront your husband with hard evidence that he has stolen my scripts and paid McCall to annihilate my career.”

“And I suppose you want me to wear a wire when I play this J’accuse scene?” she asked.

“One of those little pocket microrecorders will do. I just need one single admission from him that he was behind all this. Once it’s on tape, my agent—and her lawyers—will have the leverage they need. And when he realizes that we have him confessing to the script theft and the McCall setup, I’m certain he’ll want to deal with us . . . especially when he understands just what kind of publicity this will generate for him. He does have a little phobia about negative publicity, doesn’t he?”

“Oh yes.”

“All I want is my reputation put back together again. I don’t really care about the money . . .”

“Care about the money. Because money is the one language that Philip ultimately understands. There is a problem, however.”

“He’ll deny everything?”

“That’s right. But . . .”

“What?”

“If I provoke him enough, he just might blurt out the admission you’re after.”

“You don’t sound hopeful.”

“I know the man all too well. Still, it’s worth a shot.”

“Thank you.”

She scooped up all the documents. “I’m going to need all this evidence,” she said.

“It’s yours.”

“Now would you drive me back to my car, please?”

She said nothing during the few minutes we headed back to the bookshop. I glanced at her once. She was holding the file tightly to her chest, looking completely preoccupied and silently furious. When we pulled up out front, she simply leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. And said, “You’ll be hearing from me.”

Then she climbed out of my car, got into her own vehicle, and drove off. As I returned to the cottage, I thought: That was exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

But days went by without even a word from her. Alison, however, was in regular contact, wondering how I had deployed that batch of xeroxed evidence. I lied and said that I was still perusing it, still trying to figure out a way that we could use it against him.

“You are such a shitty fibster,” she said.

“Think what you like, Alison.”

“I just hope you’re being smart for a change.”

“I’m working on it. Meanwhile, do you or your legal eagle have any further thoughts on how we might be able to sue the asshole for literary theft in the first degree?”

“We’ve looked at every aspect, and . . . no, nothing. The guy’s got every angle covered.”

“We’ll see about that.”

By the time an entire week had passed without contact from Martha, I too started to wonder if he did have every angle covered . . . to the point where she couldn’t get a single confessional word out of him. And I found myself fighting off a wave of despondency. Because three weeks from now, an alimony payment would be due—and there was no way I’d be able to even meet half of it. Which meant that Lucy would probably retaliate by attempting to end my phone access with Caitlin. As I also wouldn’t be in a position to afford Walter Dickerson’s services in court (or elsewhere), she’d legally steamroller me in a nanosecond. Then there was the matter of Willard Stevens. He’d called me personally from London a few days ago for a quick getting-to-know-you hello and to ask if all was fine in the cottage and to inform me that he’d probably be returning to the States within two months, so . . .

But how would I find anything to rent in Meredith on $280 a week? Hell, the cheapest unit around town was around eight hundred a month, which meant that, once I dealt with the roof over my head, I’d end up with eighty bucks a week to pay for everything, from gas to electricity to food. In other words, Mission Preposterous.

By the time I’d played out this catastrophic scenario, I was homeless on Wilshire Boulevard, sprawled on the sidewalk, with a hand-painted sign that read: They Used to Return My Calls.

And then, finally, Martha phoned. It was Friday night . . . a full ten days after I’d seen her. She called the shop around six p.m. Her tone was succinct, businesslike.

“Sorry I haven’t been in touch,” she said. “I’ve been away.”

“Do you have any news?”

“When are your days off?”

“Monday and Tuesday.”

“Can you keep Monday completely free?”

“Sure.”

“Fine. I’ll pick you up at the cottage around two.”

And she hung up before I could ask her anything.

I wanted to ring her straight back and demand to know what was going on. But I knew that, at best, that would be counterproductive. So I could do nothing except count the hours until Monday.

She showed up on time, parking her Range Rover right by my front door. Once again, she looked bewitching: a short red skirt, a tight black halter, the same jean jacket as last week, the same broken horn-rimmed glasses, and an old-style cameo around her neck. Isabel Archer meets Downtown Hip. I came out to greet her. She favored me with a big smile—a smile that made me wonder if she had good news for me. When she gave me a light kiss on the lips—squeezing my arm simultaneously—I thought: This is promising . . . and just a little confusing.

“Hello there,” she said.

“And hello to you. Do I detect an air of good humor?”

“You never know. Is that what you’re planning to wear today?”

I was dressed in a pair of old Levis, a T-shirt, and a zip-up gray sweatshirt.

“As I didn’t know what we were planning to do today . . .”

“Can I put a proposition to you?”

“I’m all ears.”

“I want you to let me take charge of everything today.”

“By which you mean . . . ?”

“By which I mean, I want you to agree that you won’t question a single thing I do . . . and at the same time, you’ll do everything I ask of you.”

“Everything?”

“Yes,” she said with a grin. “Everything. But don’t worry: nothing I suggest will be illegal. Or dangerous.”

“Well, that’s a relief . . .”

“So, do we have a deal?”

She proffered her hand. I took it.

“I guess so . . . as long as you don’t want me to bury a body.”

“That would be far too banal,” she said. “Come on, let’s get you out of those slacker clothes.”

She walked past me into the cottage and straight into the bedroom. Then she opened my closet and rifled through my clothes. Eventually, she pulled out a pair of black jeans, a white T-shirt, a lightweight leather jacket, and a pair of black Converse hi-tops.

“That should work,” she said, handing me the lot. “Go on, get changed.”

She walked back into the living room. I undressed and put on what she had chosen. When I came out, she was standing over the desk, looking at an old photograph of me and Caitlin. She looked me up and down.

“A big improvement,” she said. Then she held up the photograph. “Mind if I take this with us?”

“Uh . . . no. But could I ask why?”

“What did you agree not to do?”

“Not to ask questions.”

She came over and gave me another light kiss on the lips. “Then don’t ask questions.”

She linked her arm in mine. “Come on,” she said. “We’re out of here.”

We headed off in her Range Rover. Once we left Meredith behind us and turned north up the Pacific Coast Highway, she said, “I’m very impressed, David.”

“With what?”

“That you haven’t asked me what happened over the last ten days. That’s very disciplined of you.”

“Well, you did say: no questions.”

“I will give you an answer . . . but on another proviso: that after I tell you, we don’t discuss it again.”

“Because it’s bad news?”

“Yes, because it is less-than-satisfactory news. And because I don’t want it spoiling our day together.”

“All right.”

Looking straight ahead through the windshield—her eyes occasionally flickering upward toward the rearview mirror—she started to speak.

“After I saw you, I went back to LA and arranged for the Gulfstream to fly me directly to Chicago. Before getting on the flight, I ducked into a little electronics shop at LAX and bought a tiny voice-activated microrecorder. Then, once we were airborne, I called Philip and said that I had to see him immediately. When I got to his suite at the Four Seasons and threw the entire file at him, do you know what he did? He shrugged and said he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I took him through the entire scam, piece by piece, backing everything up with all the evidence you gave me. He denied any knowledge of anything. He didn’t even ask me where I got the evidence from. He ignored the whole damn thing. Even when I lost it and started screaming at him for an explanation, he clammed up and switched right into zombie introvert mode. I must have spent the better part of an hour playing the actress, trying every trick imaginable to get him to make just one admission. But he completely ignored me. And so, eventually, I gathered up all the papers and stormed out and took the Gulfstream right back to LA.

“I spent the next couple of days doing a little research of my own. Lubitsch Holdings is definitely one of Philip’s shell companies . . . though it’s so carefully ‘disguised’ in that Cayman Island way that nobody could ever trace it back to him. And though I don’t have proof, I’m pretty damn sure that, in addition to the big benevolent fund payoff, Philip also put a big bonus payment right into the pocket of SATWA’s executive director.”

“How did you find that out?” I asked.

“What’s our rule today?”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, that’s about it. Everything you told me the other day turned out to be absolutely on the money. Philip decided to demolish you. I don’t know why he did it. But he did it. He’ll never admit it—he’ll never explain his reasons. But I know he’s guilty. And he’s going pay a price for this. And the price is I’m leaving him. Not, of course, that that will faze him in the least.”

“You’ve told him you’re leaving him,” I asked, hoping that it didn’t sound like a question.

“No, I haven’t told him yet. Because I haven’t spoken to him since. And yes, well done for trying to make a question sound like a statement.”

“Thank you.”

“For nothing. I only wish I’d been able to get an admission out of him. Then, at least, I might have been able to force him to put things right. Instead . . .”

She shrugged.

“It’s all right,” I said.

“No. It’s not.”

“For today, it’s all right.”

She let go of the wheel with one hand and intertwined her fingers with mine. And she kept them intertwined until we turned off at Santa Barbara and she had to downshift into third gear.

We passed through the gasoline alley where I sold my Porsche and hocked my computer. We headed down the main drag of designer shops and the sort of upscale eateries where arugula and shaved parmesan were de rigueur. When we reached the beach, we turned and followed the coast road until we reached the gates of the Four Seasons Hotel.

“Uh . . .,” I started to say, remembering my illicit week here with Sally when I was still married and oh-so-risibly arrogant. Before I had a chance to raise a question, Martha said, “Don’t even ask.”

The valet parking guy relieved us of the car. Martha led me through the main door. But instead of heading in the direction of the reception desk, she brought me down a side corridor to a pair of large oak doors, above which were the words The Wellness Center.

“I decided you needed a little wellness,” Martha said with a grin as she opened one of the doors and pushed me ahead of her. She took complete charge of everything, telling the receptionist that I was David Armitage and that I had been booked in for an all-afternoon special, including “a stint with the coiffeur.” And speaking of the coiffeur, could she have a word with him, please? The receptionist picked up the phone. After a few moments, a tall sinewy gentleman emerged from the rear doors. He spoke in a near-whisper and introduced himself as Martin.

“Well, Martin,” Martha said. “Here’s the victim.” She reached inside her shoulder bag and pulled out the photograph of Caitlin and myself, handing it to Martin. “And here’s how he looked before he moved into a cave. Do you think you can bring him back to his pre-Neanderthal state?”

A thin smile from Martin. “No problem,” he said, handing the photo back to Martha.

“Okay, handsome,” she said to me. “You’re in for four hours of fun. See you on the veranda for drinks at seven.”

“What are you going to do?”

Another light kiss on the lips. “No questions,” she said. Then she turned and headed out the door. Martin tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to follow him into his inner sanctum.

First I was relieved of all my clothes. Then two women attendants escorted me to a large marble shower stall where I was hosed down with pressurized jets of very hot water and scrubbed with seaweed soap and a hard-bristle brush. Then I was dried off and robed and sent to Martin’s chair. He used a pair of clippers to remove the vast majority of my beard. Hot towels followed, lather was applied, and a straight-edged razor appeared from a surgical sterilizer. He scraped my face clean, swathed it again in a hot towel, then removed the towel and swirled the chair around and dunked my head backward into a sink and shampooed my long, tangled hair. Then he sliced it all off, bringing it back to the short-back-and-sides style I favored until everything started going wrong.

When he was finished, he tapped me on the shoulder again and pointed me toward another door, saying: “I’ll see you at the end.”

For the next three hours I was pounded and kneaded and mummified and covered in clay and massaged with oil and eventually sent back to Martin’s chair, where he did a little blow-dry-and-brush action and then pointed to the mirror and said:

“Back to where you once were.”

I stared at myself in the mirror and found it a little hard to adjust to this new old image. My face was thinner, my eyes deeply tired. Though I looked appropriately buffed and burnished after four hours of intensive wellness, a significant part of me didn’t believe this act of tonsorial and cosmetic magic. I didn’t want to see this face because I didn’t trust this face anymore. And I vowed to start growing my beard again tomorrow morning.

When I walked onto the veranda, I found Martha seated at a table with a perfect view of the Pacific. She had changed into a short black dress and had her hair loose around her shoulders. She looked up at me. She graced me with a smile and said, “Now that’s better.”

I sat down beside her. “Come here, please,” she said. I leaned forward. She put her hand against my face. She inclined her head toward mine and kissed me fully.

“In fact, that’s a lot better,” she said.

“I’m glad you approve,” I said, my head swimming from the kiss.

“The fact is, Mr. Armitage—there is a shortage of attractive, smart men in the world. You can find plenty of attractive/stupid, and plenty of smart/ugly . . . but attractive/smart are about as rare as sightings of the Hale–Bopp comet. And so, when an attractive/smart guy decides to turn himself into something resembling Tab Hunter in King of Kings . . . well, steps have to be taken to bring the boy back to his senses. Especially as I would never sleep with anyone who looks like he’s just stepped out of some Woolworth’s painting of the Sermon on the Mount.”

Long, long pause. Martha took my hand and asked, “You did hear what I just said?”

“Oh yes.”

“And?”

Now it was my turn to lean over and kiss her.

“That was the response I was hoping for,” she said.

“Do you know how hard I fell for you that first night?” I suddenly said.

“You’re asking a question again.”

“So what? I want you to know that.”

She took hold of my jacket and pulled me so close we were tête-à-tête.

“I do know that,” she whispered. “Because I felt that too. But now, say no more.”

And then she gave me another kiss. And said: “Want to try something really different?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let’s keep it to a glass of wine each tonight. Two tops. Because something tells me it would be nice to be relatively sober later on.”

So we stuck to a glass each of Chablis. Then we moved on to the restaurant. We ate oysters and soft-shelled crabs, and I drank one more glass of wine, and we spent the next hour talking a lot of very amusing rubbish that made us both laugh like idiots. And then, when the final dishes were whisked away, and we turned down coffee, she took me by the hand and led me back into the main hotel building and up an elevator and into a large, plush suite. When she shut the door behind us, she took me in her arms and said, “Do you know that standard-issue scene in every Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn movie, where Cary whisks off Kate’s glasses and kisses her madly? I want us to reenact that scene right now.”

We did just that. Only the scene got carried away, as we stumbled backward onto the bed.

And then . . .

Then it was morning. And—surprise, surprise—I woke to discover that I’d slept wonderfully. So wonderfully that, for the first minute or two of quasi-consciousness, I simply lay in bed, replaying the entire extraordinary evening over again in my head. But as I reached over for Martha, my hand touched a wooden object: the framed photo of Caitlin and myself, positioned on the adjoining pillow. I sat up and realized that I was alone in the room. I glanced at my watch. Ten twelve a.m. Then I noticed a black case on the table, with an envelope on top of it. I got up. The envelope said David on the front. Inside:

Dearest David,

I have to go. I will be in touch very soon . . . but, please, let it be me who makes contact.

The object in the case is a little gift for you. If you decide to get rid of it, I will never talk to you again. And as I do want to talk with you again . . . well, I think you can take it from here.

With love,

Martha

I unzipped the case and stared down at a brand-new Toshiba laptop computer.

A few minutes later, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, rubbing my now lightly bristled face. There was a phone to the left of the sink. I picked it up and called the front desk. When the guy on duty answered, I said, “Morning. Is there any chance I might be able to get some shaving stuff sent up to me?”

“No problem, Mr. Armitage. And would you like some breakfast?”

“Just some orange juice and coffee, please.”

“Coming right up, sir. And one final thing: your friend has arranged one of our drivers to take you home.”

“Really?”

“Yes—it’s all taken care of. But checkout time is not until one, so . . .”

At five past one, I found myself in the back of a chauffeured Mercedes, heading toward Meredith, the computer in its case and on the seat beside me.

I showed up for work at Books & Company the next day. Les stopped by the shop in mid-afternoon and spent a stunned moment or two trying to work out that it was actually me behind the counter. Then he looked at me with mock solemnity and said, “Now in my experience, you have to be seriously in love to have cut off all that hair.”

He was right: I was seriously, wildly in love. Martha consumed my thoughts constantly. I kept running and rerunning the tape of that night in my head. I kept hearing her voice, her laugh, her fiercely whispered articulations of love as we made love. I was desperate to speak with her. Desperate to touch her. Desperate to be with her. And desperate that she had yet to phone me.

By day four I’d reached breaking point. I decided that if I didn’t hear from her by noon tomorrow, I’d disobey her directive and call her cellphone and tell her that we had to run off with each other immediately.

At eight the next morning, there was a loud knocking on the door. I jumped out of bed, thinking: She’s here. But when I flung open the front door, I found a guy in a blue uniform, holding a large padded manila envelope.

“David Armitage?”

I nodded.

“Courier service. I’ve got a package here for you.”

“From whom?”

“Haven’t a clue, sir.” He handed me a clipboard. I signed for the delivery, then thanked him.

I went back inside. I opened the package. It was a DVD. I slid it out of its cardboard box. The front of the disc was adorned with a white label, upon which was a crudely drawn heart, with an arrow bisecting it. On one side of the arrow were the initials D.A. On the other side, M.F.

I felt a deep chill run through me. But I still forced myself to feed the DVD into the player.

On the screen, there was a static camera shot of a hotel suite. Then the door opened, and Martha and I stumbled into the room. She took me in her arms. Though the sound was harsh and tinny, I could still hear her saying:

“Do you know that standard-issue scene in every Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn movie, where Cary whisks off Kate’s glasses and kisses her madly? I want us to reenact that scene right now.”

We began to kiss. We lurched backward onto the bed. We were all over each other, pulling off our clothes, the hidden camera perfectly positioned to show maximum detail.

After five minutes, I hit the off button. I didn’t need to see any more.

Fleck. The all-knowing, all-seeing, ever-omnipotent Philip Fleck. He’d set us up. He’d tapped her phone calls. Discovered she was arranging this liaison at the Four Seasons, Santa Barbara. Then, once again, he had his people spread some money around, find out the number of the suite she’d reserved, and had it rigged out with the necessary covert camera and microphone.

And now . . . now he had us. Naked and in digital color. His first hard-core production . . . which would be used to destroy his wife and to make certain that the dead zone in which I currently resided would always be my permanent address.

The phone rang. I dived for it.

“David?”

It was Martha. Her voice sounded preternaturally calm, the sort of calm that usually accompanies a deep concussion.

“Oh thank Christ, Martha . . .”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen it. He’s just had it delivered here.”

“Quite something, isn’t it?”

“I can’t believe . . .”

“We need to meet,” she said.

“Now,” I said.

TWELVE

I WAS DRESSED AND on the road in five minutes. All the way south to Los Angeles, I kept the pedal flush against the floor, cranking the VW up to a thermodynamic seventy-eight miles per hour (its absolute top speed). It was like forcing a geriatric with emphysema to do a hundred-yard dash—but I didn’t care. I had to see Martha immediately—before Fleck did whatever he was planning to do with that dire DVD.

She told me to meet her at a café in Santa Monica. I arrived there shortly after ten. She was already seated at a table, facing the beach. The sun was at full wattage; a light breeze wafted off the Pacific, tempering the morning heat.

“Hi there,” she said as I bounded up to the table. She was wearing dark glasses, so I couldn’t properly gauge just how anxious she was. But what was immediately evident to me was her strange composure, a sangfroid which, once again, I put down to shock.

I came over and took her in my arms. But she remained seated and gave me her cheek to kiss—a gesture that immediately made me anxious.

“Easy there,” she said, gently putting her hand against my chest and pushing me toward the adjoining chair. “You never know who’s watching.”

“Of course, of course,” I said, sitting down and taking her hand under the table. “But listen . . . I’ve been thinking things through all the way down here. And I now know what we have to do. We have to go together to your husband, tell him we’re in love, and ask him to stay out of our—”

“David,” she said sharply, cutting me off. “Before we do anything, there’s an important question you need to answer.”

“Tell me.”

“Do you want an espresso, a cappuccino, or a latte?”

I looked up and saw a waitress hovering by our table, trying to control the amused expression on her face. She’d obviously heard everything I’d just said.

“A double espresso,” I said.

As soon as the waitress had gone, I took Martha’s hand and kissed it.

“It has been a very long four days,” I said.

“Has it?” she said, her tone amused.

“And I can’t tell you how touched I was by the gift.”

“I hope you use it.”

“I will. I will.”

“Writing is what you do well.”

“I have to tell you something . . .”

“I’m all ears.”

“From the moment I woke up alone in the hotel room, you have not left my mind once.”

She calmly disengaged her hand from mine. And asked, “Do you always act this way after sleeping with someone for the first time?”

“I’m sorry. I know I’m sounding like a lovesick adolescent.”

“It’s very sweet.”

“It’s what I feel.”

“David . . . there’s a larger matter to discuss right now.”

“You’re right, you’re right. Because I’m also just a little terrorized about what he might do with the DVD.”

“Well, that depends on how he reacts to it.”

“What do you mean?” I said, suddenly confused.

“I mean he had nothing to do with the DVD.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. If he didn’t set us up, who did?”

“I did.”

I looked at her carefully, trying to discern some mischief in her eyes. But she met my stare and held it.

“I don’t understand this.”

“It’s all very straightforward, really. When Philip refused to acknowledge that he’d stage-managed all your problems, I decided that it was time to go drastic. That’s when I hatched my little plan. And the way I figured it—if I couldn’t get him on tape, then I’d have to get us on tape. The hotel management were only too willing to help—especially after I greased the palms of the appropriate people. And I had an audiovisual guy I knew in LA rig the whole thing up.”

“Was he there while we . . . ?”

“Do you really think I wanted anyone watching us in bed? Remember when I went to the ladies’ just before we left the restaurant? I actually went back to our room and turned on the DVD recorder, which was hidden in one of the closets. Then . . . it was showtime.

“And the next morning, while you were sleeping, I took the DVD out of the machine and left. Two days later, I showed up again in Chicago—and forced Philip to sit down in his hotel suite and watch the first couple of minutes of our film.”

“How did he react?”

“In a typical Philip way: he said nothing. He just stared at the screen. But I knew the reaction he’d have to it. Though he’d never openly show it, he’s fanatically jealous. I also know that his greatest fear in life is being exposed, found out, shown up. Which is why I decided on this course of action. Because I knew that a filmed record of me in bed with you would hit every panic button in his shrouded brain. But just to make certain he got the message, I told him that a copy of this DVD was with my lawyer in New York. And if he didn’t put your career back together again in the next seven days, my lawyer had been instructed to release copies of the DVD to the Post, the News, the Enquirer, Inside Edition, and every other purveyor of sleazy journalism imaginable. The clock is running. As of today, he’s got six more days to go . . .”

“But if he calls your bluff . . . if it gets released . . .”

“Then the two of us are going to be front-page news. But I don’t care. If he takes it over the edge, then I’m going to give a very frank interview to Oprah or Diane Sawyer, in which I tell all about ‘the joys’ of living with a man worth all that money but who still has all the sensitivity of a paper cup.

“Anyway, the only thing that matters right now is that he makes amends for what he did to you. As for me, my mind’s made up: I’m leaving him.”

“You are?” I said, sounding a little too hopeful.

“That’s what I told him. And according to my lawyer, if I do release the DVD to the press, it will have absolutely no effect whatsoever on my prenuptial agreement. It’s a complete no-fault contract. If I walk away, if he decides he wants out—the result is still the same: I get a hundred and twenty million dollars.”

“Good God.”

“As far as Mr. Fleck is concerned, it’s a bargain. If we were full-time California residents, I could sue him for half of everything. Not that I’d want to. A hundred and twenty million will be more than enough for me and the child . . .”

“What did you just say?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Oh,” I said, sounding even more shell-shocked. “That’s . . . uh . . . wonderful news.”

“Thanks.”

“When did you find out?”

“Three months ago.”

And I suddenly realized why she had craftily dodged all but a glass of wine the other night.

“What does Philip . . . ?”

“Well,” she said, cutting me off, “he only found out yesterday. It was one of several little bombshells I detonated in front of him.”

“But I thought the two of you hadn’t been . . .”

“There was a brief interlude—shortly after I met you on the island—when Philip decided to start sharing our life again and actually seemed to have fallen back in love with me . . . as I did with him. But that only lasted three months. Then he got all withdrawn again. And so, when I found out I was pregnant, I simply didn’t tell him. Until yesterday, that is. And do you know what he said? Nothing. Complete silence.”

I took her hand again.

“Martha . . .” Before I could speak another word, she cut me right off.

“Don’t even say what you’re thinking.”

“But didn’t you . . . don’t you . . .”

“What? Love you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve known you exactly three days.”

“But you can know after five minutes.”

“True. But I’m not even going there right now.”

“I simply can’t believe you’ve risked everything you have for me.”

“Cut the Harlequin Romance prose, please. The man treated you like dirt—primarily, I sense, because he got a full report of our night on the island. It didn’t matter that we didn’t do the deed. What mattered was that you were talented and I sort of fell for you. So when I found out how he pulled your career apart, I felt responsible. And when he wouldn’t listen to moral arguments, I decided to play dirty pool. So that’s what this is all about. Settling the score. Balancing the books. Righting the wrong. Or any other cliché you care to mention.”

“He can’t just pay me off. I’m going to need some sort of professional restitution as well. A statement from him clearing up the mess. And also . . .”

“Yes?”

An idea popped into my head—an absurd, devious idea . . . but worth a gamble. Especially as I had absolutely nothing else to lose.

“I want you to insist on a joint television interview with Philip and myself. Something high profile and national. No doubt your husband’s people can set it up.”

“And what’s going to happen during the interview?”

“That’s my business.”

“I’ll see what I can do. If, that is, I can do anything.”

“You’ve been wonderful. More than wonderful.”

“David, stop.”

She stood up. “And now, I’ve got to go.”

I got out of my chair and kissed her. This time she let it fall on her lips. There was a torrent of romantic stupidity that I wanted to blurt out, but I held myself in check.

“I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything,” she said. Then she turned and walked off toward her car.

All the way back to Meredith, I kept replaying our conversation again in my head, homing in (like any lovesick jerk) on the few optimistic signals she had thrown me. She was leaving Fleck. Though she didn’t admit outright love for me, she didn’t deny it either. And she did confess that she had sort of fallen for me. And she also knew the way I felt about her before I even learned of the sum coming her way when she left Fleck. Surely, that had to count for something, didn’t it?

Being the ultimate fatalist, I also envisaged a worst-case scenario: Fleck decided to play hardball. The DVDs were released. I was now publicly vilified all over again—not only for being a psychotic plagiarist, but also for wrecking a marriage . . . and sleeping with a woman who was already three months pregnant. Martha would leave Fleck but decide to fly solo, without me. And I’d be in even deeper nowheresville than before.

When I got back to Meredith, there were two urgent messages for me on the answering machine at the bookshop. The first was from my boss, asking me why I’d failed to open the damn shop this morning . . . and that he hoped this would be a onetime lapse. The second was from Alison, telling me to phone her pronto.

Which I did.

“Well,” she said after taking the call, “the Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“Meaning?”

“Listen to this: I just received a phone call from a certain Mitchell van Parks of this big fuck-you law firm in New York. He explained he was acting on behalf of Fleck Films, and he wanted to apologize for the confusion that existed over the registration of your—yes, he actually used that pronoun—your screenplay, We Three Grunts. ‘Terrible system failure at SATWA,’ he said, ‘which, of course, Fleck Films wants to put right.’ To which I said: ‘So what are we talking about here?’ And he said: ‘One million dollars . . . and shared writing credit.’ And I said: ‘Seven months ago, your client, Mr. Fleck, offered my client, Mr. Armitage, a fee of two-point-five, pay or play. Surely, given the fact that certain public questions could be raised about how Mr. Fleck’s name ended up on the title page . . .’

“And that’s when he cut me off and said: ‘All right, one-point-four it is.”

“But I said: ‘No dice.’”

“You didn’t . . .”

“Of course I did. Because I naturally countered, saying that, given the ‘intriguing’ circumstances surrounding the authorship of this script, surely Fleck Films would like to make a further gesture to settle the matter once and for all . . . and to ensure that the unfortunate confusion that arose remained a private matter between my client and Mr. Fleck.”

“To which the lawyer said?”

“Three.”

“To which you said?”

“Sold.”

I put down the phone for a moment. I put my face in my hands. I didn’t feel triumphant. Or vindicated. Or exonerated. I didn’t know what to feel . . . except an acute, strange sense of loss. And an overwhelming desire to take Martha in my arms. Her crazy wager had paid off. And now—if she was willing to roll the dice with me again—our life together could . . .

“David?” Alison shouted into the phone. “You still there?”

I picked up the receiver. “Sorry about that. I got a little . . .”

“No need to explain. It’s been a long couple of months.”

“Bless you, Alison. Bless you.”

“Now don’t start going religious on me, Armitage. We’re going to have to do a lot of non-Christian dirty work on the subject of shared or sole credit. I’ve asked van Parks to FedEx me the shooting script. I’ll get it up to you tomorrow. We can take it all from there. Meantime, I’m going to go buy myself a bottle of French fizz . . . and I suggest you do the same. Because, hey . . . I just made three hundred thousand big ones this afternoon.”

“Congratulations.”

“Ditto, ditto. And someday, you’re going to tell me how you managed this reversal of fortune.”

“I’m saying nothing. Except it’s good to be back in business with you.”

“We were never out of business, David.”

As soon as Alison ended the call, I dialed Martha’s cellphone. But I was connected with her voice mail. So I left the following message:

“Martha, darling, it’s me. And it’s worked, your amazing gamble’s worked. Please call me. Anytime. Day or night. Just do call. I love you . . .”

But she didn’t call that night. Or the next day. Or the day after. Instead, Alison rang me with more intriguing news.

“Can you get hold of a copy of today’s New York Times?” she asked.

“We actually sell it in the shop.”

“Go to the Arts and Leisure section. There’s an exclusive interview with our favorite auteur, Philip Fleck. You should read what he says about you. According to him, you’re the most persecuted writer since Voltaire, and your alleged crimes were nothing but trumped-up charges by a journalistic Joe McCarthy. But what’s really beautiful—what really appeals to my low opinion of all human nature—is the fact that, according to Fleck, you had been so systematically vilified by McCall and ruthlessly abandoned by the entire industry, both you and Fleck felt it was in the best interest of the film if you remained off the credits . . .”

By this time I had grabbed a copy of the paper from the shelf in front of the register and was reading along.

“Listen to what comes next,” Alison said.

But according to Fleck, the idea of a writer’s name being kept off the credits reminded him so much of the dreadful days of the 1950s blacklist that he felt compelled to break his silence on this issue—not to mention his long-standing antipathy for any sort of interviews with the press—and come to the defense of his writer.

“Without question,” Fleck said, “David Armitage is one of the most original voices in American film and television. And it is shameful that his career has been virtually ruined by an individual who—due to his own lack of professional success—decided to lead a vendetta against him. If anything, David’s brilliant script for We Three Grunts will vindicate him completely, and remind Hollywood what they’ve lost.”

“Fucking hell,” I said.

“Too bad they’re not doing a remake of The Life of Emile Zola. After that performance, Fleck would be a shoo-in for the part. Nice to see that he’s calling you by your first name as well. So, are you now going to finally tell me what happened on that island of his all those months ago?”

“My lips are sealed.”

“You’re no fun at all. But at least you’re lucrative again. And I tell you, this article’s going to reopen a lot of doors for you in this town.”

Certainly, the phone at the cottage kept ringing that night—as I gave quotes to Daily Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the LA Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. And what did I tell them? What was my official line on Philip Fleck’s spirited defense of me? I played the game, of course. And said, “Every writer needs a director like Philip Fleck . . . for his generosity of spirit, his loyalty, and his rare and wondrous faith in the written word.” (This last comment was, of course, a message to Fleck and his creative team: don’t think you’re going to be rewriting this one.)

And when the journalists asked me if I had any ill will toward Theo McCall, I simply replied: “I’m just glad I’m not his conscience.”

That evening, I tried to ring Martha again. But again I was connected straight to her voice mail. I left a simple message, saying how thrilled I was with the Times piece, how I was still hoping that Fleck would consent to the joint television interview, and how I needed to speak with her.

She didn’t ring back. And I resisted the temptation to e-mail or drive down to Malibu and knock on her door. Because, of course, I realized what Fleck was doing: besides ensuring that that DVD would never see the light of day, he was also telling his wife that he didn’t want to lose her.

The following day, the entire Fleck interview was reprinted in the LA Times. And early that same morning, I received a call from a producer on NBC’s Today program, informing me that a reservation had been made for me on the 2 p.m. flight that afternoon for New York. A limo would pick me up at Kennedy. A room was arranged for the night at the Pierre. And I’d be interviewed with Mr. Fleck sometime during the final hour of the program tomorrow morning.

I glanced at my watch. It was nine fifteen. To make it to LAX in time, I’d have to leave within the hour. So, after confirming that I could collect my ticket at the airport, I hung up and called Les at home.

“I know this is very last-minute,” I said, “but I really need two days off.”

“Yeah, I saw the piece in the LA Times this morning. I guess you’re not going to be working with us much longer, David.”

“I guess not.”

“Well, it’s fine by me about the next two days. But would you mind if you worked out a two-week notice, until I find someone new?”

“No problem, Les.”

Then I packed a suit bag, made heavy by the four scripts I threw in with my change of clothes. It took just over two hours to get to the airport and six hours to be flushed across the continent. I was in my hotel room at midnight. But I couldn’t sleep. So I got dressed and wandered the streets of Manhattan until dawn cleaved the night sky. Then I walked back to the hotel, and got into my suit, and awaited the arrival of the NBC limousine. It arrived just after seven. Fifteen minutes later, I was having pancake base and flesh-toned powder applied to my face. The door opened, and Philip Fleck came in, accompanied by two large gentlemen in stiff black suits. Bodyguards. Fleck sat down in the chair next to mine. I glanced over at him and noticed the big puffy bags beneath his eyes—a hint that I wasn’t the only person who’d slept badly last night. His disquiet was manifest. So too his refusal to look at me. The makeup woman tried to put him at ease by chatting incessantly as she daubed pancake on his fleshy face—but he just shut his eyes and blanked her out. Then the door swung open again, and a hyper-efficient woman in her late twenties walked in. She informed us that her name was Melissa (“your assistant producer this morning”), and then briefed us on our five minutes of screen time. Fleck said nothing while she ran through a list of potential questions that the co-host—Matt Lauer—might toss our way.

“Anything else you need to know, gentlemen?” she asked. We both shook our heads. Then she wished us luck and left the room. I turned to Fleck and said, “I wanted to thank you for such fulsome praise in that Times interview. I was very touched.”

He said nothing. He just stared straight ahead, his face tense with unease.

And then, suddenly, we were being escorted across a backstage area and onto the Today set. Matt Lauer was already there, sitting cross-legged in an armchair. He rose to pump our hands but didn’t have a chance to say anything more than a basic greeting as a pair of sound technicians swooped down on us to pin microphones to our lapels, while two makeup women dabbed touch-up pancake on our foreheads. I placed a pile of scripts on the coffee table in front of us. Fleck glanced down at them but continued to say nothing. I looked over at him. His forehead was mottled with sweat, and his stage fright was now seriously evident. I’d read so much about his pathological hatred of interviews. Now I was seeing—in extreme close-up—just what a trial it was for him to face the cameras like this. And again I realized: he’s only putting himself through this because he’s desperate to keep Martha.

“You okay, Philip?” Matt Lauer asked his sweating guest.

“I’ll be fine.”

The stage manager announced: “Fifteen seconds.” We all tensed in readiness. Then the stage manager gave the five-second countdown and pointed to Lauer, who was immediately off-and-running.

“Welcome back . . . and for those of you who love a good Hollywood scandal, well here’s one that’s been making the papers for the past few days. Only unlike most scandals, this one has had a happy ending for David Armitage, the Emmy award–winning creator of the hit series Selling You, who was fired off his own show after accusations of plagiarism. But now, his reputation has been completely rehabilitated, thanks to the intervention of one of America’s most prominent entrepreneurs, Philip Fleck.”

And then he gave a quick précis of the charges against me, the smear campaign waged by Theo McCall, and the way that Fleck stepped in to restore my good name.

“Now I know that you generally shun publicity, Philip,” Matt Lauer said, “so why did you decide to go public and help David Armitage?”

Fleck began to speak in a hesitant voice, his head slightly lowered, unable to meet Matt Lauer’s gaze.

“Well . . . uh . . . David Armitage is, without question, one of the most important screenwriters around right now. He also happens to be writing my next movie . . . and when his career was pulled apart by a vindictive journalist—a man who is nothing more than a paid assassin—well . . . uh . . . I just felt like I had to intervene.”

“And his intervention must have the great turning point for you, David—especially after having been so vilified over the past few months, to the point where you were essentially shut out of Hollywood.”

I smiled broadly and said, “You’re absolutely right, Matt. I owe my professional resurrection to one man—the gentleman sitting on your left, my great friend Philip Fleck. And I want to show you just what a remarkable friend he’s been to me . . .”

I reached over to the coffee table and picked up one of the four scripts I’d left there, opening it to the title page.

“When my reputation was in tatters—and no one would hire me—do you know what Philip did? He acted as a front for me—putting his name on four of my old scripts. Because he knew that, if my name was on them, no studio would be interested. See—here’s one of my first scripts, We Three Grunts . . . but as you’ll notice, Matt, the writer’s name on the title page is Philip Fleck.”

The camera moved in on a close-up of the title page. Over this, Lauer asked Fleck:

“So you actually acted as David Armitage’s front, Philip?”

For the first time ever, Fleck met my gaze—and his eyes radiated chilly incredulity. He knew I had him now, and there was nothing he could do about it but play along. So when the camera switched back to him, he reluctantly said:

“What, uh, David said is right. His name had been dragged through such mud that he was considered an untouchable by all the Hollywood studios. And, uh, as I wanted to have the films I’m making from his scripts distributed by a major motion picture company, I had, uh, no choice but, uh, to put my own name to the scripts . . . with David’s consent, of course.”

“So, besides We Three Grunts,” Matt Lauer said, “which is going into production next month with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson, you’re also planning to film three other David Armitage scripts?”

Fleck looked like he wanted to crawl under the chair. But he still said, “That’s the plan, Matt.”

I quickly came in here: “And Matt, I know Philip’s going to be embarrassed about what I’m going to say next—because he’s someone who really doesn’t like to have a big deal made about his generosity—but when I was completely out of work, not only did he buy these four scripts, but he also insisted on paying me three million dollars per script.”

Even Matt Lauer seemed dazzled by this sum of money.

“Is that true, Mr. Fleck?”

He pursed his lips, as if he was about to contradict my statement. But then he nodded slowly.

“Now that’s what I call a real act of professional faith,” Matt Lauer said.

“You can say that again,” I said, all smiles. “And what was even more remarkable about this deal was the fact that Philip insisted that the twelve-million-dollar package for the four scripts would be on a pay-or-play basis . . . which is a legalistic way of saying that, whether or not they get made, that twelve million is still paid to me. I kept telling him he was being way too generous. But he was so emphatic about helping me out—and, more to the point, putting his faith in me—that I had to say yes. Not, of course, that I took much convincing.”

That last comment elicited a laugh from Matt Lauer. Then he turned to Fleck and said, “Sounds like you’re a screenwriter’s dream come true, Mr. Fleck.”

Fleck fixed me in his sights.

“David’s worth every penny.”

I met Fleck’s stare.

“Thank you, Philip.”

Thirty seconds later, the interview was over. Fleck immediately left the set. I shook Matt Lauer’s hand and was escorted back into the makeup room. I’d left my cellphone on one of the countertops. It started ringing as I reached to retrieve it.

“You crazy, dangerous sonofabitch,” Alison said, her voice downright giddy. “I’ve never seen a sting like it.”

“Glad you approve.”

“Approve? You’ve just made me one-point-two million bucks. So of course I fucking approve. Congratulations.”

“And congratulations to you. You’re actually worth the ten percent.”

A hoarse tobacco-cured laugh from Alison. “Get your ass back here. Because, after this, the phone’s going to start jumping—and you’re about to become the Man in Demand.”

“Fine by me—but I can’t do anything for the next two weeks.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m working out my notice at the bookshop.”

“David, stop talking like a goof.”

“Hey, I promised the guy . . .”

Suddenly the door opened and Philip Fleck walked in. “Got to go, Alison,” I said. “Catch you later.” And I hung up.

Fleck sat down in the chair next to mine. A makeup woman approached him, jar of cold cream at the ready, but Fleck stopped her by saying, “Could you give us a moment, please?”

She left the room, closing the door behind her. We were alone now. Fleck said nothing for several moments. Then:

“You know, I’m never making any of those scripts of yours. Never.”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“I’m even pulling the plug on We Three Grunts.”

“That’s your prerogative too . . . though you might end up pissing off Mr. Fonda, Mr. Hopper, and Mr. Nicholson.”

“As long as they get their money, they won’t give a damn. It’s the movie business, after all. No one cares about anything as long as the contract is honored and the check ends up in the bank. So, fear not, you will get your twelve million. It is a pay-or-play deal, after all. And twelve million . . . to me it’s pocket money.”

“I don’t care if you pay me or not.”

“Yes, you do. You care very much. Because, thanks to this twelve-million-dollar deal, you’re back to Hollywood golden boy status. So you have much to thank me for. Just as, in the process, you’ve done wonders for my public image. Made me seem like a great humanitarian . . . not to mention a writer’s best friend. In other words, this has been a mutually beneficial experience.”

“You really need to control everything, don’t you?”

“I don’t follow your line of thought here . . .”

“Yes, you do. Because it was you who set out to shatter everything in my life, to demolish . . .”

He cut me off.

“I what?” he said.

“You decided to stage-manage my downfall . . .”

“Really?” he said, sounding amused. “You actually think that?”

“I know it.”

“How very flattering. But let me ask you this, David. Did I tell you to leave your wife and child? Did I force you to come to my island? Did I put a gun to your head to sell me your script . . . even though you hated every idea I had about it? And when that odious McCall fellow pointed out that you had inadvertently lifted a few lines from some old play, did I tell you to go on the offensive against him?”

“That’s not the point here. You put the whole plot against me in motion . . .”

“No, David . . . you did that yourself. You ran off with Ms. Birmingham. You accepted my hospitality. You were willing to pocket the two-point-five million I offered you for the movie. You came out swinging against that ghastly journalist. And you also fell in love with my wife. I didn’t have a hand in any of that, David. You made all those decisions yourself. I played no games with you, David. You simply became a victim of your own choices. Life’s like that, you know. We make choices, and our circumstances alter because of those choices. It’s called cause and effect. And when bad things happen in the wake of the bad decisions we make, we like to blame outside forces, and the malevolent hand of others. Whereas, ultimately, we have no one but ourselves to blame.”

“I admire your amorality, Mr. Fleck. It is truly breathtaking.”

“Just as I admire your refusal to acknowledge the truth of the situation.”

“Which is what?”

“You set yourself up. You walked right into . . .”

“The trap you laid?”

“No, David . . . the trap you laid for yourself. Which, of course, makes you most human. Because we’re always laying traps for ourselves. I think it’s called doubt. And the thing we most doubt in life is the person we are.”

“What do you know about doubt?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. Money doesn’t end doubt. In fact, it often heightens it.”

He stood up. “And now, I must—”

I interrupted him.

“I love your wife.”

“Congratulations. I love her too.”

Then he turned and walked toward the door. As he opened it, he turned back to me and said, “See you at the movies, David.”

And he was gone.

On my way to JFK that afternoon, I left two messages on Martha’s cellphone, asking her to call me. When I reached Los Angeles seven hours later, there were a dozen or so messages from assorted onetime colleagues and friends, congratulating me on my television appearance. But the one message I craved—her message—wasn’t there.

I picked up my car and drove up the coast. The next morning, I opened the LA Times and discovered an extended piece in their Arts section, entitled “Theo McCall and the Art of Vendetta Journalism.” The story was very well researched, very well sourced, and essentially amounted to a complete exposé of McCall’s Stalinist methods: his love affair with character assassination, his need to destroy careers. There were also some interesting personal details, like the fact that he went around telling everyone that he was a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, whereas he barely finished high school. Or the way he walked out on two different women after getting both of them pregnant—and then refused to pay a penny of child support. All the stuff about him being fired from his one proper writing job at NBC got dredged up again—as did a little-known fact: a year or so before Selling You hit the screens, he actually pitched an idea (which went nowhere) about a sitcom set in an advertising agency. The conclusion: no wonder he had a thing against David Armitage and his wildly successful show.

Within a day of this story appearing, Theo McCall went to ground. Hollywood Legit announced that his column would no longer appear—and though many a fellow journalist tried to unearth him (in an attempt to get his response to the LA Times story), he was nowhere to be found.

“Rumor has it that the guy has vanished back to England,” Alison told me on the phone. “Or at least that’s what my PI tells me. You know what else he told me? According to McCall’s bank statements, he got paid a cool million last week from Lubitsch Holdings. And you can guess exactly what kind of deal Fleck cut with him: you take the fall, you get your reputation trashed, you leave town in a hurry and don’t show up again, you collect one million dollars.”

“How does your guy find all this stuff out?”

“I don’t ask. And he’s not my guy anymore. As of today, he’s off the case. Because the case is closed. Oh, and by the way, the contracts for all four scripts arrived today from Fleck Films. Twelve mil. Pay or play . . .”

“Even though he’ll never make any of them.”

“With the exception of We Three Grunts.”

“But he told me he was killing it.”

“Yeah, but he said that right after you trumped him on Today. I think his wife has convinced him otherwise.”

“By which you mean . . . ?”

“There’s a story on page three of this morning’s Daily Variety, announcing that We Three Grunts will start shooting in six weeks’ time and that Fleck’s wife Martha is now the movie’s producer. So obviously, you’ve got a real fan in Martha Fleck.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Hey, who cares if the dame likes you or not? They’re making the movie. It’s good news.”

And the good news kept rolling in. A week later, I got a call from Brad Bruce.

“I hope you’re still willing to talk with me?” he asked.

“I don’t blame you for anything, Brad.”

“That’s more generous than I’d be under the circumstances. But thank you. How’s it going, David?”

“Compared to the last six months, somewhat better.”

“And you’re still up the coast in that little place Alison said you were living?”

“Yep. Working out my notice in the local bookshop.”

“You’ve been working in a bookshop?”

“Hey, I had to eat.”

“I hear you. But now that you’ve scored that twelve-million-dollar deal with Phil Fleck . . .”

“I’m still working in the bookshop for the next five days.”

“Fine, fine. Very admirable, in fact . . . but you are planning to come back to LA, aren’t you?”

“It’s where the money is, right?”

He laughed.

“How’s the new season shaping up?” I asked.

“Well . . . that’s what I’m calling you about. After you left, we put Dick Delaney in charge as overall script editor. And we’ve got six of next season’s episodes in. But I have to tell you: the powers that be are less than pleased. They lack all the sharpness, the edge, the manic wit that you brought to the series.”

I said nothing.

“And so, we were wondering . . .”

A week later, I signed a deal with FRT to return to Selling You. I would write four of the last eight episodes. I was back in charge of overall script supervision (and agreed that my first order of business was to sharpen up the first six scripts for the new season). And the debt I allegedly owed for the disputed episode in the previous season was instantly canceled. I was given back my “created by” bonus, not to mention my office, my parking space, my medical insurance, and—most of all—my street cred. Because as soon as the new FRT deal—worth just over $2 million—was announced in the trades, everyone really wanted to be my friend again. Warners rang Alison to say that they planned to get Breaking and Entering back on the development track (and—naturally—that silly business about the first half of the first draft fee . . . please tell Mr. Armitage to keep the change). Old business acquaintances phoned me up. A couple of industry pals asked me out to lunch. And no, I didn’t think to myself: Where were they when I needed them? Because that’s not how it works out here. You’re in, you’re out. You’re up, you’re down. You’re hot, you’re not. In this sense, Hollywood was a purely Darwinian construct. Unlike other towns—which veiled the same merciless streak under elaborate layers of politesse and intellectual affectation—this place operated on a simple premise: I’m interested as long as you can do something for me. To a lot of people, that was LA superficiality writ large. But I admired the ruthless practicality of this worldview. You understood exactly what you were dealing with. You knew the rules of the game.

The same week I signed the FRT contract, I moved back into town. Though I could have easily started house hunting, a new elemental caution kicked in. No snap decisions. No grabbing the first glossy thing on offer. No more belief in the red-hot incandescence of success. So—instead of the big minimalist loft or some hyper-nouveau-riche Brentwood pile—I rented a pleasant, modern town house in a pleasant, modern development in Santa Monica, $3,000 a month. Two bedrooms. Nice and airy. Well within my means. Sensible.

And when it came time to choose that essential LA symbol—a car—I decided to keep my battered VW Golf. The first day I showed up back at FRT for work, I arrived just behind Brad Bruce in his Mercedes SR convertible. He eyed my jalopy with amusement.

“Let me guess,” he said. “It’s a retro college thing . . . and you’ve got a glove compartment full of Crosby, Stills and Nash tapes.”

“Hey, it got me from A to B up in Meredith. So I figure it can get me from A to B around here for a while.”

Brad Bruce smiled knowingly, as if to say: “Okay, do the sackcloth and ashes routine for a while . . . but you’ll upgrade soon enough. Because that’s what will be expected of you.”

I knew he was right. I would get rid of the jalopy eventually. But only when it didn’t start one morning.

“Ready for the big welcome back?” Brad asked me.

“Yeah, right,” I said. But when I entered the Selling You production office, the entire staff stood up and applauded me. I gulped and felt my eyes sting. But when this little ovation died down, I did what was anticipated of me. I made a quip:

“I should get fired more often. Thank you for that extraordinarily nice greeting. None of you belong in this business, you know. You’re all too damn decent.”

Then I retreated to my old office. My desk was still there. So too my Herman Miller chair. I pulled it out. I sat down. I adjusted the height. I leaned back. I thought: this is a place I never expected to see again.

After a moment, my old assistant Jennifer knocked on the door.

“Well, hello there,” I said pleasantly.

“May I come in?” she said, all anxiety.

“You work here. Of course, you can come in.”

“David . . . Mr. Armitage . . . ?”

“Stick with David. And I’m glad to see they didn’t fire you, after all.”

“I got a last-minute reprieve when one of the other assistants decided to leave. But David, will you ever forgive me for the way I—?”

“That was then. This is now. And I’d love a double espresso, please.”

“No problem,” she said, the relief showing. “And I’ll also be back with your call sheet in a moment.”

Same as it ever was. Prominent on that call sheet were two names: Sally Birmingham and Bobby Barra. Sally had called once late last week. Bobby, on the other hand, had phoned twice every day for the past four days. According to Jennifer, he’d all but pleaded for my home number. And he kept giving her the same message: “Tell him I’ve got good news.”

And when she told me that, I knew that Fleck’s hand was behind whatever good news Bobby was going to give me.

But I still refused to take his calls for a week—just to let it be known that I wasn’t going to be won over that easily.

Finally I capitulated. “All right,” I said to Jennifer when she told me that Bobby was on line one for the third time that day. “Put him through.”

As soon as I said hello, Bobby was off and running.

“You really know how to make a guy suffer,” he said.

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Hey, you were the putz who went ballistic . . .”

“And you told me you never wanted to deal with me again. So why don’t we simply tell each other to fuck off and leave it at that?”

“Ooh, listen to the cool customer. Back on top of the world, and back treating the little people like caca.”

“I am not at all size-ist, Bobby. Even though you are a nasty, duplicitous, short little shit.”

“And here I was, about to give you some great news.”

“Go on,” I said, sounding bored.

“Remember that ten grand you left on account with me?”

“I never left any money with you, Bobby. When I closed the account—”

“You forgot about ten thousand dollars.”

“Bullshit.”

“David, I’m going to say it again: you forgot about ten thousand dollars. Got that?”

“Uh-huh. And what, pray tell, happened to this ‘forgotten’ ten grand?”

“I bought you a small but significant position in a Venezuelan dot-com IPO, and hey presto—the stock increased fiftyfold, and—”

“Why are you telling me this absurd story?”

“It’s not absurd. You’ve now got five hundred grand back on account with Barra & Company. In fact, I was about to get my people to send you and your account guy a statement today.”

“Do you really expect me to believe this?”

“The fucking money is there, David. In your name.”

“That I believe. But this Venezuelan IPO yarn? Couldn’t you do better than that?”

A pause. Then:

“Does it matter how the money found its way into your account?”

“I just want you to admit . . .”

“What?”

“That he told you to set me up.”

“Who’s he?”

“You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

“I don’t talk about other clients.”

“He’s not a client. He’s fucking God.”

“And sometimes God is good. So stop with the sanctimonious shit . . . especially when God’s also paid you twelve mil for four old scripts that were picking up athlete’s foot in your sock drawer. And while you’re at it, congratulate me on leaving you two hundred fifty k better off than where you were when it all went down.”

I sighed. “What can I say? You’re a genius, Bobby.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. So, what do you want me to do with the dough?”

“As in, how do I think you should invest it for me?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“What makes you think I still want you as my broker?”

“Because you know I’ve always made you money.”

I considered this for a moment.

“You know, after Alison’s commission and the IRS, I’m also going to have about six million of the Fleck deal to play with.”

“I had done the math, yes.”

“Say I wanted to take that six million—along with the half million you just made for me—and put it all in a trust fund—?”

“We certainly do trusts. They’re not the sexiest kind of investment . . .”

“But the funds can’t somehow get switched into an Indonesian IPO, can they?”

Now it was his turn to sigh loudly. Instead of making a retort, however, he said: “If you want safe, blue-chip investments—with ironclad permanence—that’s easily doable.”

“That’s exactly what I want. Ultra-safe. Rock solid. And to be put in the name of Caitlin Armitage.”

“Nice one,” Bobby said. “I approve.”

“Why, thank you. And while you’re at it, thank Fleck for me too.”

“I didn’t hear that.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going deaf?”

“Hadn’t you noticed? We’re all falling apart. I think it’s called life. Which is why, my friend, it’s best to maintain an amused attitude at all times—especially during the bad ones.”

“And you’re a philosopher to boot. How I’ve missed you, Bobby.”

“Ditto, David . . . with bells on. Lunch next week?”

“I suppose there’s no avoiding it.”

But I did keep avoiding Sally’s phone calls. Not that she was as persistent as Bobby. But her name kept appearing on my call sheet once a week for my first three weeks back on the job. Eventually, a letter arrived for me on Fox stationery:

Dear David,

I simply wanted to write and say how pleased I am to see you back in business after that dreadful campaign of vilification by Theo McCall. You are one of this industry’s major talents—and what happened to you was nothing short of appalling. On behalf of everyone at Fox Television, congratulations on overcoming the worst possible adversity and triumphing again. Sometimes the good guys do win.

I also wanted to let you know that Fox Television is extremely interested in moving forward with the comedy series idea Talk It Over, which we discussed some time ago. Your schedule permitting, it would be nice to meet up for lunch and chat things over.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Best,

Sally

PS You were brilliant on Today.

I didn’t know if this was Sally’s way of sending me an apology. Or if this was some carefully veiled hint that (as I was now bankable again) she’d like to chat things over. Or if she was simply playing the canny television executive and chasing the so-called talent. I didn’t care to find out. But I wasn’t going to be rude or triumphalist either . . . because, quite frankly, there was nothing to be triumphalist about. So I sat down and—using official FRT stationery—wrote the following businesslike reply:

Dear Sally,

Many thanks for your letter. Pressing work on the new series of Selling You means that I won’t be available for lunch. And my writing commitments are such that I am not interested in pursuing any work with you for the foreseeable future.

Sincerely,

And I signed my entire name.

Later that week, there was one final piece of good news—delivered to me by Walter Dickerson, who after months of negotiating with the other side, finally got what I’d been longing for.

“Okay,” he said when he called me at the office. “Here it is: you’ve got your physical access back.”

“Lucy actually relented?”

“Yes—she finally decided that Caitlin needed to see her father. I’m just sorry it took so damn long. But the good news is not only can you have your regular access back, she’s not insisting that it be supervised . . . which is often the case in a situation where access has been suspended for a while.”

“Did her lawyer give any reason why she changed her mind?”

“Put it this way: I’m certain Caitlin played a role in changing her mother’s mind.”

But there was another reason—and one that I only discovered when I flew north for my first weekend in eight months with my daughter.

I drove a rental car from the airport to Lucy’s house in Sausalito. And rang the bell. Within a nanosecond, the door flew open and Caitlin fell into my arms. I held her for a very long time. Then she nudged me with her elbow and said, “Did you bring a present?”

I laughed—both at the splendid impertinence of the comment and at her extraordinary resilience. Eight freakish months had gone by—yet here we were again, father and daughter. As far as she was concerned, nothing had changed.

“The present’s in the car. I’ll give it to you later.”

“At the hotel?”

“Yes—at the hotel.”

“The same hotel we stayed in once—up in the sky?”

“No—not that hotel, Caitlin.”

“Doesn’t your friend like you anymore?”

I stared at her, bedazzled. She remembered everything. Every detail of every weekend we spent together.

“It’s a very long story, Caitlin.”

“Will you tell it to me?”

But before I could find a way of answering that little question, I heard Lucy’s voice.

“Hello, David.”

I stood up, still holding Caitlin’s hand. “Hi.”

An awkward silence. How can you exchange pleasantries after all that enmity, all that horrible legal stupidity, all that useless damage?

But I decided I should make an effort, so I said, “You look well.”

“So do you.”

Another awkward silence.

A man emerged from the rear of the house and came into the doorframe where Lucy was standing. He was tall, lanky, in his early forties, dressed conservatively in that standard-issue WASP weekend uniform: a button-down blue shirt, tan Shetland sweater, khakis, boat shoes. He put his arm around Lucy’s shoulder. I tried not to flinch.

“David, this is my friend, Peter Harrington.”

“Nice to finally meet you, David,” he said, extending his hand. I took it, thinking: at least he didn’t say, “and I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” I said.

“Can we go, Daddy?” Caitlin asked.

“Fine by me.” I turned back to Lucy. “Six o’clock on Sunday.”

She nodded, and we left.

On the drive back into San Francisco, Caitlin said:

“Mommy’s going to marry Peter.”

“Ah,” I said. “And what do you think about that?”

“I want to be the bridesmaid.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged. Do you know what Peter does?”

“He runs a church.”

“Really?” I said, mildly alarmed. “What kind of church?”

“A nice church.”

“Do you remember the name of it?”

“Uni . . . uni . . .”

“Unitarian, maybe?”

“That’s it. Unitarian. Funny word.”

Well, at least, as religions go, it was civilized.

“Peter’s very nice,” Caitlin added.

“I’m glad.”

“And he told Mommy that you should be allowed to see me again.”

“And how did you know that?”

“Because I was in the next room, playing, when he said it. Did Mommy stop you from seeing me?”

I stared out at the lights of the bay.

“No,” I said.

“That’s the truth?”

Caitlin, you don’t need to hear the truth.

“Yes, sweetheart. That’s the absolute truth. I was away, working.”

“But you’ll never be away that long again, will you?”

“Never.”

She extended her tiny hand. “Deal?” she asked.

I grinned. “Since when did you start working in Hollywood?”

She ignored the wisecrack and extended the hand further.

“Deal, Daddy?”

I took her hand and shook it.

“Deal.”

The weekend passed in a delightful blur. And then we were back in front of Lucy’s house at six p.m., Sunday. When the door opened, Caitlin ran to hug her mother, then turned back to me and gave me a big wet kiss on the cheek and said, “See you in two weeks, Daddy.” Then she charged inside, clutching the assorted Barbies and other useless plastic objects I’d bought her over the weekend. Lucy and I suddenly found ourselves alone on the doorstep, facing into another awkward silence.

“Good time?” Lucy asked me.

“Wonderful.”

“I’m glad.”

Silence.

“Well then . . .,” I said, backing off.

“Okay,” Lucy said. “Bye, now.”

“See you in two weeks.”

“Fine.”

Then I nodded and turned to leave.

“David,” she said, making me turn around.

“Yeah?”

“I just wanted to say . . . I’m glad things seem to have worked out for you, professionally speaking.”

“Thank you.”

“It must have been awful.”

“It was.”

Silence. Then she said, “I also want you to know something. My lawyer told me that, when everything went wrong, you lost all your money . . .”

“That’s true. I kind of got wiped out for a while.”

“But you still managed to meet our maintenance every month.”

“Had to be done.”

“But you were broke.”

“Had to be done.”

Silence.

“I was impressed, David.”

“Thanks,” I said. Then, once again, we fell into constrained silence. So I said good night and walked back to my car and drove to the airport, and took the flight back to Los Angeles, and got up the next morning, and went to work, and made lots of “creative decisions,” and took lots of phone calls, and had lunch with Brad, and found three hours in the afternoon to stare into a computer screen, and manipulated my characters into something approaching life, and actually ended up working on until eight, and closed up the empty office myself, and picked up some takeout sushi on the way home, and ate the sushi and drank a beer while watching the last two quarters of a Lakers game, and got into bed with the new Walter Mosley novel, and slept a reasonably sound seven hours, and got up, and began the entire process all over again.

Somewhere in the middle of all that routine, the reflection did dawn: Everything you wanted restored has been restored. But with that knowledge came another realization:

You’re alone now.

Yes, there were the collegial pleasures of work. And yes, there were the two weekends a month that I was granted access to my daughter. But beyond that . . .

What? There was no family expecting me at home come night. Another man was already playing day-to-day Daddy for my daughter. And though my professional standing had been resurrected, I now knew that success only carried you as far as the next success. Which, in turn, only transported you to . . .

Where exactly? What was the ultimate destination? That was the most puzzling thing about all this. You could spend years struggling to get somewhere. But when you finally did—when everything fell into your lap and you procured what you’d so craved—you were suddenly confronted with a strange truth: had you really arrived anywhere? Or were you simply at a way station, en route to an illusory destination? A place that vanished from view the moment you were no longer considered touched by success.

How can you ever reach a terminus that doesn’t exist?

And if there was a scrap of insight I had picked up along the way, it was this: what we’re all pursuing is some sort of desperate self-validation. But that’s only found through those who’ve been dumb enough to love you . . . or whom you’ve managed to love.

Like Martha.

For the first month, I left her a phone message every other day. I tried a daily e-mail. Eventually I took the hint and dropped all further attempts at contact. Even though I thought about her constantly—like a dull, but persistent ache that simply wouldn’t go away.

Until, one Friday, around two months after our last meeting, a small package arrived in the mail. When I opened it, I found a rectangular object, wrapped in gift paper. There was also a letter-size envelope. I opened it. I read:

Dearest David,

Of course I should have answered all your calls, and all your e-mails. But . . . I’m here, in Chicago, with Philip. I’m here with him because, in the first instance, he did as I asked—and, from what I’ve read in the papers, your career seems more than somewhat back together again. And I’m here because, as I think you know, I’m now producing the movie you wrote. But I’m also here because, quite simply, he begged me to stay. I’m certain that sounds absurd: Philip Fleck—Mr. $20 Billion—begging anyone for anything. But it’s true. He pleaded with me to give him another chance. He said he couldn’t bear the idea of losing me and his child. And he uttered that time-honored entreaty: “I’ll change.”

Why did he do this? I’m not sure. Has he changed? Well, at least we’re talking again and sharing a bed . . . which is an improvement. And he seems reasonably excited about the prospect of fatherhood . . . though the movie is naturally in the forefront of his mind right now. Anyway, for the moment, we’re in a relatively decent place. I can’t predict if this will last or if he’ll revert to his introverted ways, and I’ll finally reach the point of no return.

What I do know is this: you have taken up residence inside my head and won’t go away. Which is wonderful and sad . . . but there you go. Then again, I am a desperate romantic . . . married to a desperate unromantic. But say I had run off with you? A desperate romantic involved with an even more desperate romantic? No way. Especially since desperate romantics always pine for what they don’t have. But once they have it . . . ?

And maybe that’s why I couldn’t call you back, couldn’t answer your letters. Because it would have been such high drama. But when the high drama ended . . . then what? Would we have stared at each other (as you said you sometimes stared at Sally) and wondered: what was the point? Or, perhaps, we would have lived happily ever after. That’s the gamble—and we’re always itching to take it . . . because we need the crisis, the drama, the sense of danger. Just as we always fear the crisis, the drama, the sense of danger. I think it’s called never knowing what we want.

So there’s a part of me that wants you. Just as there’s a part of me that fears you. And meanwhile, I’ve made my decision: I’m staying put with Mr. Fleck, and hoping for the best. Because the bump in my belly is now quite a significant one, and I don’t want to be on my own in the world when he-or-she arrives, and because I did/maybe still do love his-or-her very strange father, and I wish this was your child, but it isn’t, and life is all about timing, and ours didn’t work out, and . . .

Well, you get my rambling point.

Here’s a little ditty by our favorite poet, on the same topic (only in a far more succinct style than yours truly):

This is the Hour of Lead

Remembered, if outlived,

As freezing persons, recollect the snow

First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

I hope you’re letting go, David.

And as soon as you’ve finished reading this letter, do me a favor. Don’t brood about it. Don’t imagine what could have been. Just go back to work.

With love,

Martha

I didn’t immediately follow her last directive. Because first I opened the wrapped present—and found myself staring down at an 1891 First Edition of Poems of Emily Dickinson, published by the Robert Brothers of Boston. I held the book in my hands, marveling at its compact elegance, its venerable heft, its aura of permanence—even though, like everything, it too would eventually crumble. Then I glanced upward and caught sight of myself in the flat black screen of my laptop: a middle-aged man who, unlike the book he was now holding, would definitely not be here in one hundred and eleven years’ time.

And then something else crossed my mind—a request made to me by Caitlin when I was visiting her last week. As I tucked her into bed in our hotel room, she asked me for a bedtime story. Specifically, The Three Little Pigs. But with a proviso:

“Daddy,” she asked, “can you tell the story without the Big Bad Wolf?”

I considered this for a moment, wondering how I could make it work:

“Let’s see now . . . there’s a house made of straw. There’s a house made of sticks. There’s a house made of bricks. What happens next? Do they form a residents’ association? Sorry, sweetheart, the story doesn’t really work without the Big Bad Wolf.”

Why doesn’t it work? Because all stories are about crisis. Yours. Mine. The guy sitting opposite you on the train as you read this. Everything’s narrative, after all. And all narrative—all storytelling—confronts a basic truth. We need crisis: the anguish, the longing, the sense of possibility, the fear of failure, the pining for the life we imagine ourselves wanting, the despair for the life we have. Crisis somehow lets us believe that we are important; that everything isn’t just of the moment; that, somehow, we can transcend insignificance. More than that, crisis makes us realize that, like it or not, we are always shadowed by the Big Bad Wolf. The danger that lurks behind everything. The danger we do to ourselves.

But who, ultimately, is the mastermind of our crisis? Who is the controlling hand? To some, it’s God. To others, the state. Then again, it might be the person you want to blame for all your griefs: your husband, your mother, your boss. Or maybe—just maybe—it’s yourself.

That’s what I still couldn’t figure out about everything that had recently happened to me. Yes, there was a bad guy in the story—someone who set me up, smashed me down, and then put me all back together again. And yes, I knew the name of this man. But . . . and it’s a big but . . . might he have been me?

I glanced again at the blackened screen. Within it, the outline of my face was framed against the inky darkness. What a phantom-like silhouette. What a spectral portrait. And it struck me that, from the moment man could see his own reflected image, he was wracked with all the usual cavernous ruminations that creep up on us daily: Who am I in all this . . . and does it even matter?

And then, as now, he could find no answers. Except perhaps the one I was currently telling myself:

Forget about pondering all such impossible questions. Forget about the futility of everything. And don’t imagine what might have been. Just get on with it. Because what else can you do? There is only one remedy. Go back to work.

INTRODUCTION

After eleven years of failure, would-be screenwriter David Armitage lands a big break: his script is bought for television production. The show is a runaway hit and he is an instant success. In a whirlwind of events he finds himself at the top of the Hollywood heap, being lauded as the creator of the hit series Selling You. This newfound success brings about major lifestyle changes; David walks out on his wife and daughter for a young producer who worships only at the altar of ambition, yet he believes that nothing could ruin such a successful time in his life.

Enter Philip Fleck, billionaire film buff. Fleck whisks David away to his private island and makes him a bizarre offer to transform one of David’s original movie scripts into a Caligula-like remake that highlights the power of control. David balks at the proposition but, with some goading, changes his mind and agrees.

Upon David’s return to Los Angeles, his life takes a bizarre turn. Accused of plagiarism by a Hollywood gossip reporter, David quickly finds himself with no job, money, or girlfriend. Even worse, his ex-wife deprives him of the ability to see his daughter. David finds an unlikely ally, however, in Fleck’s wife, Martha, and begins to climb back out of the hole that his temptation dug for him.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. David’s first words to the reader are: “I always wanted to be rich. I know that probably sounds crass, but it’s the truth. A true confession.” What were your initial impressions of David after reading this statement? Does this confession make him a shallow person? How did he change throughout the course of the book? Does “new” David still want to be rich?

2. David and Lucy make amends after their big fight, but David comments that “once things are said, they are said.” Do you think David could have salvaged his marriage with Lucy, or were they destined to split? Why does David long for Lucy once bad times befall him?

3. Lucy confronts David about his infidelities and David realizes that it is the perfect way out so he can be with Sally. Yet, he comments, “I was getting exactly what I wanted . . . and it scared the hell out of me.” Why do you think he was so scared? What other troubles does David’s newfound success bring?

4. Alison Ellroy establishes herself as David Armitage’s voice of reason. Can we count her as a “true” friend to David? Why or why not? Do you think she sticks with him during his tough times for financial sake or because she cares for him?

5. David finds himself stuck in the same day-to-day ennui with Sally that plagued his time with Lucy. Is David destined to live his romantic life like this? Do you think this is why Martha Fleck chose not to pursue a permanent romance with him?

6. Sally comments that Bobby Barra is a “people collector.” What do you think she means by this? Who else in Temptation is a “people collector”?

7. David comments that Bobby “filled the time with his own turbocharged ambitions and worries, in an attempt to believe that, somehow, what we do during that momentary spasm called life actually counts for something.” Discuss this quote in relation to David, Alison, Sally, and Martha. What do they do that counts for something?

8. David refuses the initial offer to fly to Saffron Island but is persuaded by Bobby, Alison, and Sally. Do they believe this could advance David’s career or are they just seeing dollar signs? What would you have told David to do?

9. Bobby Barra “didn’t mind letting the world see how—when it came to his obsessions—he was positively naked in his stupidity.” What does the author mean by this? Who else is naked in their stupidity?

10. Temptation focuses on the highs and lows that success brings. Discuss this in the context of the following quotes: “there’s something deeply skewed about having everything you want” and “Success is supposed to simplify your life. Inevitably, it complicates it further.”

11. Discuss Philip Fleck. What does his love for Salo say about his character? Is he someone who desires total control at all times? Will he always have control over David?

12. Does David have a meaningful relationship with anyone or are his relationships all based on his success?

13. David concludes that Philip Fleck is using him to do the ultimate creative act: play God. Why do you think Philip chose David? How has Fleck’s success been his ultimate downfall?

14. Were you surprised to learn that Martha Fleck had an ulterior motive for helping David? What was her motivation? Did her plan work? How does David feel about the end result?

15. Philip Fleck tells David “you simply became a victim of your own choices.” Do you agree with Philip? What choices could David have made differently throughout Temptation? Would he have found himself in such tough times if Philip Fleck had never entered his life?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

1. Each character in Temptation has a talent: David’s is writing, Bobby’s is finance, etc. Do you have a unique talent or skill? Share with your book club.

2. Philip Fleck is a film buff. What is your favorite classic movie? Invite your book club over for a screening.

3. David creates the hit TV series Selling You. Did you ever have a great idea for a TV show? Draw up a script, cast the characters, and share with your book club.

A CONVERSATION WITH DOUGLAS KENNEDY

What was the inspiration for Temptation?

In 1996 I wrote a novel called The Big Picture, which received a huge publishing advance, phenomenal prepublication hype, and was the subject of great commercial expectations. The novel got wonderful reviews, received a W. H. Smith Prize in the United Kingdom, and was translated into over twenty-two languages, selling over three million copies since its first publication. It’s also been turned into a superb French film that will be seen in the US in 2011. Despite all this accumulative success, when the novel was first published, the sales figures, though good, were not anything near to the mega-hit hope for the novel. And when my subsequent novel, The Job, was a lesser commercial success, I found myself shut out of New York publishing for over a decade . . . until Atria happily decided to relaunch me in my own country. During those ten years I went on to have great success in Europe and the rest of the world. But the fact that I had been once celebrated as the hot new American writer, and then quickly discarded like a faulty tire, was, shall we say, an interesting lesson in the transient nature of success. And so I decided to write Temptation: a dark, funny riff on the fragility of writerly fame.

Alison Ellroy advises David that “if you want to scratch a living writing . . . remember that you have to write generic.” Do you find that authors need to do the same? Can they only meet with success if they “write generic” for the masses?

I have just published my tenth novel. And—hand on heart—I have never written anything with the marketplace in mind. Having said that, I am that strange duck—a serious popular writer (or a writer of popular serious fiction), which means I rather like the reader to turn the page. Yet I also believe in talking up to the reader at the same time. So I suppose what I am saying here is that, if a novelist thinks simply about the marketplace, he is selling himself short. But he also needs to remember that he has an obligation to engage his readers in his narrative. Or, to put it another way, you can be popular and intelligent and nongeneric simultaneously.

Philip Fleck claims to have seen over ten thousand movies. Are you a movie buff as well? How many do you think you have seen? Can you tell us your top five favorite movies and why they make the list?

I spent much of a rather difficult adolescence in a movie (the virtues of a Manhattan childhood—there were so many cinemas nearby) and must still watch at least five films a week. One of the reasons I maintain an apartment in Paris is that there are two dozen cinemas within ten minutes’ walk of my place. There is a great line in Walker Percy’s great novel The Moviegoer: “I am happiest in a movie, even a bad movie.” And though I hate lists, here are five of my favorite films: Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, John Ford’s The Searchers, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane—five films that all deal with isolated men who are the architects of their own despair . . . as we all are.

During his revision of We Three Grunts David notes that screenwriters “let the pictures do the talking . . . when you have pictures, who needs a lot of words?” Do you think screenwriters have it easier than authors do? How do you create such vivid visual imagery when you do not have the advantage of pictures?

I have a very visual imagination—but I work in words, not pictures. So many people tell me that my novels are very filmic, but I always think myself a literary storyteller first and foremost. I suppose the fact that, prior to my novels, I wrote three narrative travel books has meant that I have always had a strong imaginative sense of time and place and life on the street (so to speak). I am endlessly interested in life’s manifold nuances. The devil is, verily, in the details.

David is very critical of himself while he edits his first screenplay, We Three Grunts. Temptation is your ninth book; do you ever find yourself going back to your first or second novel and being critical of how you wrote it? What is your writing process like?

I rarely reread my previous novels. Of course, writing is a learning curve without end. I will (I hope!) keep perfecting and improving my craft until the end of my life. As such I’m certain that, twenty years from now, I will (all going well) still be telling myself: you must up your game. Because writing is a craft that you never totally master. Nor should you. You always have to keep learning as a writer and, for that matter, as a sentient being. Life, for me, is about maintaining an active curiosity and never resting on your laurels. I always want to do better.

Your novel is a commentary on both the opportunities and the dangers that success brings. Do you feel that people need to keep a level head as they achieve success in their professional and personal lives? What do you think is the danger in getting everything that we want?

To paraphrase a great quote from Aesop (which I used as an epigraph in The Big Picture): beware lest you overlook the substance by grasping at the shadow. Or, in plainer American English: never fall in love with the aroma of your own perfume. One of the great ongoing dilemmas of modern life is the fact that we are endlessly told we can master ourselves. The fact is, the moment we think we have arrived is the moment that life sends us a reminder that the proverbial goalposts have been moved. Or that the success we thought was a now-permanent state of being is but a fragile veneer. What’s most interesting about success—and this is a central idea running through Temptation—is whether you can hold on to it. If you begin with the basic premise that the biggest argument we have in life is with ourselves, then the question arises: once we achieve that professional breakthrough we’ve always craved, how do we sustain it? This is a particularly tricky question in creative life, where you really are only as good as your last play/book/screenplay, etc. This is why, as I have discovered over a writing career of nearly thirty years (the first eight of which comprised a period when I was a produced, but rather so-so, playwright), you must retain a certain fragility, a belief that it all can be taken away from you, in order to keeping growing as a novelist. Writing is a confidence trick you endlessly play on yourself.

Martha Fleck makes the offhanded comment: “the one thing I know about writers is that they’re normally a mixture of doubt and arrogance.” Are these just Martha’s feelings or do you tend to share her view?

Well, arrogance always hides doubt, doesn’t it?

Philip Fleck makes very poignant comments about the world we live in and the human impulse to dominate another individual. Do you believe this to be true? Do you think everyone tries to impose their own worldview on everyone else?

Look at every desperate, dysfunctional dystopia of the past century, from Stalinism to Nazism to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge to the insane cult of personality that is North Korea to the theocratic nightmare that is Iran. All of these systems are about the imposition of a worldview on the masses. I am desperately unsettled by anyone who tells me they have answers to life’s larger questions. No one has answers—just disparate points of view. The thing is, there is a great human need to impose order and control on life’s more unruly, happenstantial forces. Just as there is a fearful need to control other people as a way of masking one’s own fears and insecurities. Bullies are always scared people who have learned that intimidation is a modus vivendi that masks their own self-loathing and cowardice.

Gossip columnist Theo McCall sets out to destroy David’s star status. Do gossips like McCall ruin celebrity lives? Or just keep the public informed of their transgressions? Do you agree with McCall that “Hollywood is an industry that will overlook any venal or mortal sin committed by one of its own.” (p. 169)?

In Hollywood, the comeback, the resurrection, the rehabilitation are all treasured events, especially if the individual in question has just spent six months in the Betty Ford Clinic or has regained control of their destiny after marrying an eighteen-year-old croupier from Vegas while on a crack cocaine binge (I’m riffing here!). Hollywood is a profoundly Darwinian place. Only the fittest survive, and failure is considered the ultimate mortal sin. But I have always admired the fact that Hollywood is so nakedly, unapologetically ruthless. You know exactly the game they are playing—and which you yourself must also play to make it there. You know what the table stakes are—and the fact that (to borrow a line my grandfather was fond of using), “only the winner goes to dinner.”

You provide detailed descriptions of the California coast, Antigua, and Saffron Island. What research, if any, did you do for this book?

I’ve been to California at least a dozen times—and am always seduced by it . . . even if the easterner in me still finds it somewhat foreign in temperament. And I have made around three journeys to the Caribbean, which has always struck me as an unsettling combination of Third World realities crossed with five-star glitz. I live to travel, and, as such, foreign places always inform my fiction. To travel is to always test yourself in a world outside your own comfort zone.

Nine books later, what advice would you give to a budding writer?

In two words: keep writing. And learn how to cope with disappointment, as there will be plenty of it. But a real writer always keeps going. As David says at the end of Temptation: there is only one solution—go back to work.

What’s next for you? Will we be hearing from David Armitage again?

When a novel is finished, I tend to move on and not return to past characters. But, yes, a new novel—my eleventh—is under way. And as I never talk much about what I’m working on at any given moment, all I can say is: watch this space.

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Douglas Kennedy

Originally published in Great Britain in 2006 by Hutchinson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Paperback edition April 2012

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Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennedy, Douglas, date.

Temptation / Douglas Kennedy. —1st Atria paperback ed.

p. cm.

1. Americans—France—Paris—Fiction. 2. Paris (France)—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6061.E5956W66 2011

813'.54—dc22

2011015333

ISBN 978-1-4516-0210-4

ISBN 978-1-4516-0213-5 (ebook)

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

A Readers Club Guide

Introduction

Questions and Topics for Discussion

Enhance Your Book Club

A Conversation with Douglas Kennedy

About Douglas Kennedy

For Frank Kelcz

“Everything she had told the Superintendent was true, but sometimes nothing is less true than the truth.”

—GEORGES SIMENON, LA FUITE DE MONSIEUR MONDE

ONE

THAT WAS THE year my life fell apart, and that was the year I moved to Paris.

I arrived in the city a few days after Christmas. It was a wet, gray morning—the sky the color of dirty chalk; the rain a pervasive mist. My flight landed just after sunrise. I hadn’t slept during all those hours above the Atlantic—another insomniac jag to add to all the other broken nights I’d been suffering recently. As I left the plane, my equilibrium went sideways—a moment of complete manic disorientation—and I stumbled badly when the cop in the passport booth asked me how long I’d be staying in France.

“Not sure exactly,” I said, my mouth reacting before my brain.

This made him look at me with care—as I had also spoken in French.

“Not sure?” he asked.

“Two weeks,” I said quickly.

“You have a ticket back to America?”

I nodded.

“Show it to me, please,” he said.

I handed over the ticket. He studied it, noting the return date was January 10.

“How can you be ‘not sure,’ ” he asked, “when you have proof?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” I said, sounding sheepish.

“Évidemment,” he said. His stamp landed on my passport. He pushed my documents back to me, saying nothing. Then he nodded for the next passenger in line to step forward. He was done with me.

I headed off to baggage claim, cursing myself for raising official questions about my intentions in France. But I had been telling the truth. I didn’t know how long I’d be staying here. And the airplane ticket—a last-minute buy on an Internet travel site, which offered cheap fares if you purchased a two-week round-trip deal—would be thrown out as soon as January 10 had passed me by. I wasn’t planning to head back to the States for a very long time.

How can you be “not sure” when you have proof?

Since when does proof ever provide certainty?

I collected my suitcase and resisted the temptation to splurge on a cab into Paris. My budget was too tight to justify the indulgence. So I took the train. Seven euros one-way. The train was dirty—the carriage floor dappled in trash, the seats sticky and smelling of last night’s spilled beer. And the ride into town passed through a series of grim industrial suburbs, all silhouetted by shoddy high-rise apartment buildings. I shut my eyes and nodded off, waking with a start when the train arrived at the Gare du Nord. Following the instructions emailed to me from the hotel, I changed platforms and entered the metro for a long journey to a station with the aromatic name of Jasmin.

I emerged from the metro into the dank morning. I wheeled my suitcase down a long narrow street. The rain turned emphatic. I kept my head down as I walked, veering left into the rue La Fontaine, then right into the rue François Millet. The hotel—Le Sélect—was on the opposite corner. The place had been recommended to me by a colleague at the small college where I used to teach—the only colleague at that college who would still speak to me. He said that the Sélect was clean, simple, and cheap—and in a quiet residential area. What he didn’t tell me was that the desk clerk on the morning of my arrival would be such an asshole.

“Good morning,” I said. “My name is Harry Ricks. I have a reservation for—”

“Sept jours,” he said, glancing up from behind the computer on his desk. “La chambre ne sera pas prête avant quinze heures.”

He spoke this sentence quickly, and I didn’t catch much of what he said.

“Désolé, mais . . . euh . . . je n’ai pas compris . . .”

“You come back at three PM for the check-in,” he said, still speaking French, but adopting a plodding, deliberate, loud voice, as if I were deaf.

“But that’s hours from now.”

“Check-in is at three PM,” he said, pointing to a sign next to a mailbox mounted on the wall. All but two of the twenty-eight numbered slots in the box had keys in them.

“Come on, you must have a room available now,” I said.

He pointed to the sign again and said nothing.

“Are you telling me there isn’t one room ready at this moment?”

“I am telling you that check-in is at three PM.”

“And I am telling you that I am exhausted, and would really appreciate it if—”

“I do not make the rules. You leave your bag, you come back at three.”

“Please. Be reasonable.”

He just shrugged, the faintest flicker of a smile wandering across his lips. Then the phone rang. He answered it and used the opportunity to show me his back.

“I think I’ll find another hotel,” I said.

He interrupted his call, turning over his shoulder to say, “Then you forfeit tonight’s room charge. We need twenty-four hours’ notice for cancellation.”

Another faint smirk—and one that I wanted to rub off with my fist.

“Where can I put my suitcase?” I asked.

“Over there,” he said, pointing to a door by the reception desk.

I wheeled over my suitcase and also took off the computer knapsack slung over my shoulder.

“My laptop is in this bag,” I said. “So please—”

“It will be fine,” he said. “À quinze heures, monsieur.”

“Where am I supposed to go now?” I asked.

“Aucune idée,” he said. Then he turned back to his call.

At a few minutes past eight on a Sunday morning in late December, there was nowhere to go. I walked up and down the rue François Millet, looking for a café that was open. All were shuttered, many with signs:

Fermeture pour Noël.

The area was residential—old apartment buildings interspersed with some newer ones from the ugly school of seventies brutalism. Even the modern blocks looked expensive; the few cars parked on the street hinting that this corner of town was upscale and—at this time of the day—lifeless.

The rain had quieted down to an insidious drizzle. I didn’t have an umbrella, so I marched back up to the Jasmin metro station and bought a ticket. I got on the first train that arrived, not sure where I was heading. This was only my second trip to Paris. The last time I had been here was in the mideighties, the summer before I entered graduate school. I spent a week in a cheap hotel off the boulevard Saint-Michel, haunting the cinemas in that part of town. At the time, there was a little café called Le Reflet opposite a couple of backstreet movie houses on the rue . . . what the hell was its name? Never mind. The place was cheap and I seemed to remember that they were open for breakfast, so . . .

A quick study of the metro map on the carriage wall, a change of trains at Michel-Ange Molitor, and twenty minutes later I emerged at Cluny–La Sorbonne. Though it had been more than twenty years since I’d last stepped out of this metro station, I never forget my way to a cinema—so I instinctually turned up the boulevard Saint-Michel and into the rue des Écoles. The sight of the marquee of Le Champo—advertising a De Sica and a Douglas Sirk festival on their two screens—provoked a small smile. When I reached its shuttered doors and peered up the rue Champollion—the name of the street I had forgotten—and saw two other cinemas lining its narrow wet pavement, I thought, Fear not, the old haunts still exist.

But at nine in the morning, none of them were yet open, and Café Le Reflet was also shuttered. Fermeture pour Noël.

I returned to the boulevard Saint-Michel and started walking toward the river. Paris after Christmas was truly dead. The only working places nearby were all the fast-food joints that now dotted the streets, their neon fronts blotting the architectural line of the boulevard. Though I was desperate for shelter from the rain, I still couldn’t bring myself to spend my first hours in Paris huddled in a McDonald’s. So I kept walking until I came to the first proper café that was open. It was called Le Départ, located on a quay fronting the Seine. Before reaching it, I passed a nearby newspaper stand and scored a copy of Pariscope—the “what’s on” guide for the city and my cinephile bible back in 1985.

The café was empty. I took a table by a window and ordered a pot of tea against the internal chill I felt coming on. Then I opened Pariscope and began combing the cinema listings, planning my viewing for the week ahead. As I noted the John Ford retrospective at the Action Écoles and all the Ealing comedies at Le Reflet Médicis I felt something that had been absent from my life for months: pleasure. A small, fleeting reminder of what it was like not to think about . . . well, everything that had so preoccupied me since . . .

No, let’s not go there. Not today, anyway.

I pulled out a little notebook and my fountain pen. It was a lovely old red Parker, circa 1925: a fortieth-birthday gift, two years ago, from my ex-wife when she was still my wife. I uncapped the pen and started scribbling down a schedule. It was a blueprint for the next six days that would give me space in the mornings to set up my life here, and spend all other available waking time in darkened rooms, staring up at projected shadows. “What is it that people love most about a cinema?” I used to ask my students in the introductory course I taught every autumn. “Could it be that, paradoxically, it is a place outside of life in which imitations of life take place? As such, maybe it’s a hiding place in which you cannot really hide because you’re looking at the world you’ve sought to escape.”

But even if we know we cannot really hide from things, we still try, which is why some of us jump planes to Paris on forty-eight hours’ notice, fleeing all the detritus we’ve left behind.

I nursed the pot of tea for an hour, shaking my head when the waiter dropped by to ask if I wanted anything else. I poured out a final cup. The tea had gone cold. I knew I could have sat in the café for the rest of the morning without being hassled. But if I just continued to loiter without intent there, I would have felt like a deadbeat for hogging a table all that time . . . even though there was only one other customer in the café.

I glanced out the window. The rain was still falling. I glanced at my watch. Five hours to go until check-in. There was only one solution. I reopened Pariscope and found that there was a big cinema complex over at Les Halles that started showing movies at nine every morning. I put away my notebook and pen. I grabbed my coat. I tossed four euros down on the table and headed out, making a quick dash for the metro. It was two stops to Les Halles. I followed the signs to something called Le Forum, a bleak concrete shopping center, sunk deep into the Paris earth. The cinema had fifteen screens and was like any American multiplex in some nowhere suburban mall. All the big U.S. Christmas blockbusters were on show, so I chose a film by a French director whose work I didn’t know. There was a screening in twenty minutes, which meant first sitting through a series of inane advertisements.

Then the film started. It was long and talky—but I followed most of it. It was largely set in some slightly run-down but hip corner of Paris. There was a thirtysomething guy called Mathieu who taught philosophy at a lycée but (surprise, surprise) was trying to write a novel. There was his ex-wife, Mathilde—a semisuccessful painter who lived in the shadow of her father, Gérard. He was a famous sculptor, now cohabiting with his acolyte Sandrine. Mathilde hated Sandrine because she was ten years her junior. Mathieu certainly didn’t like Philippe, the info-tech business executive that Mathilde had been sleeping with. Mathilde, however, liked the lavish way Philippe treated her but found him intellectually exasperating (“The man has never even read Montaigne . . .”).

The film began with Mathieu and Mathilde sitting in her kitchen, drinking coffee and smoking and talking. Then it cut to Sandrine, who was posing naked for Gérard in his country atelier while Bach played on his stereo. They took a break from this modeling session. She put on some clothes. They went into his big country kitchen and drank coffee and smoked and talked. Then there was a scene in some expensive hotel bar. Mathilde was meeting Philippe. They sat at a banquette and drank champagne and smoked and talked . . .

On and on it went. Talk. Talk. More talk. My problems. His problems. Your problems. And, by the way, la vie est inutile. After around an hour, I lost the battle I was fighting against jet lag and lack of sleep. I passed out. When I came to, Mathilde and Philippe were sitting in a hotel bar, drinking champagne and smoking and . . . Hang on, hadn’t they done this scene already? I tried to keep my eyes open. I didn’t succeed. And then . . .

What the fuck?

The opening credits were rolling again—and Mathieu and Mathilde were sitting in her kitchen, drinking coffee and smoking and talking. And . . .

I rubbed my eyes. I lifted my arm. I tried to focus on my watch, but my vision was blurred. Eventually the digital numbers came into view: 4 . . . 4 . . . 3.

Four forty-three?

Oh, Jesus, I’d been asleep since . . .

My mouth was parched, toxic. I swallowed and tasted bile. My neck was rigid, nearly immobile. I touched my shirt. It was soaked through with sweat. Ditto my face. I put my fingers to my forehead. Intense heat radiated from my brow. I put my feet on the floor and tried to stand up. I didn’t succeed. Every corner of my body now ached. My body temperature plunged—the tropical fever turning into a near-Arctic chill. My knees caved a bit as I attempted to stand up again, but I managed some sort of forward propulsion that moved me out of the aisle toward the door.

Everything got a little blurry once I hit the lobby. I remember negotiating my way out past the box office, then moving into a maze of walkways, then finding the elevator, then getting disgorged onto the street. But I didn’t want to be on the street. I wanted to be in the metro. So why had I gone up when I should have gone down?

A smell hit my nose: fast-food grease. Check that: fast-food grease goes Middle East. I had emerged near a collection of cheap cafés. Opposite me was a tubby guy, deep-frying falafels at an outdoor stand. Next to him, on a rotating spit, was a blackened, half-carved leg of lamb. It was flecked with varicose veins (do lambs get varicose veins?). Beneath the lamb were slices of pizzas that looked like penicillin cultures. They provoked nausea at first glance. Aided by the falafel fumes, I felt as if I was about to be very sick. A moment later, I was very sick. I doubled over and heaved, the vomit hitting my shoes. Somewhere during my retch, a waiter in a café opposite me started shouting—something about being a pig and driving away his customers. I offered no reply, no explanation. I just lurched away, my vision fogged in, but somehow focused on the plastic ventilation shafts of the Pompidou Center in the immediate distance. Halfway there, I got lucky—a cab pulled up in front of a little hotel that was in the line of my stagger. As the passengers got out, I got in. I managed to give the driver the address of the Sélect. Then I slumped across the seat, the fever reasserting itself again.

The ride back was a series of blackouts. One moment, I was in a dark netherworld; the next, the driver was engaged in an extended rant about how my vomit-splattered shoes were stinking up his cab. Blackout. More hectoring from the driver. Blackout. A traffic jam—all spectral yellow automotive lights prismed through rain-streaked windows. Blackout. More yellow light and the driver continuing his rant—now something about people who block the taxi lanes, how he never picked up North Africans if he could help it, and how he would certainly steer clear of me if he ever saw me again on the street. Blackout. A door was opening. A hand was helping me out of the car. A voice whispered gently into my ear, telling me to hand over twelve euros. I did as ordered, reaching into my pocket for my money clip. There was some dialogue in the background. I stood up, leaning against the cab for ballast. I looked up at the sky and felt rain. My knees buckled. I began to fall.

Blackout.

And then I was in a bed. And my eyes were being pierced by a beam of light. With a click, the light snapped off. As my vision regained focus I saw that there was a man seated in a chair beside me, a stethoscope suspended around his neck. Behind him stood another figure—but he seemed lost in the encroaching shadows. My sleeve was being rolled up and daubed with something moist. There was a sharp telltale stab as a needle plunged into my arm.

Blackout.

TWO

THERE WAS A light shining in my eyes again. But it wasn’t a piercing beam like the last time. No, this was morning light; a stark, single shaft landing on my face and bringing me back to . . .

Where am I exactly?

It took a moment or two for the room to come into definition. Four walls. A ceiling. Well, that was a start. The walls were papered blue. A plastic lamp was suspended from the ceiling. It was colored blue. I glanced downward. The carpet on the floor was blue. I forced myself to sit up. I was in a double bed. The sheets—soaked with my sweat—were blue. The candlewick bedspread—flecked with two cigarette burns—was blue. The headboard of the bed was upholstered in a matching baby blue. This is one of those LSD flashbacks, right? A payback for my one and only experiment with hallucinogenics in 1982 . . .

There was a table next to the bed. It was not blue. (All right, I’m not totally flipping here.) On it was a bottle of water and assorted packets of pills. Nearby was a small desk. A laptop was on top of it. My laptop. There was a narrow metal chair by the desk. It had a blue seat. (Oh no, it’s starting again.) My blue jeans and blue sweater were draped across it. There was a small wardrobe—laminated in the same fake wood as the bedside table and the desk. It was open—and suspended from its hangers were the few pairs of trousers and shirts and the one jacket I’d shoved into a suitcase two days ago when . . .

Was it two days ago? Or, more to the point, what day was it now? And how had I been unpacked into this blue room? And if there’s one color I hate, it’s azure. And . . .

There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for a reply from me, a man walked in, carrying a tray. His face was familiar.

“Bonjour,” he said crisply. “Voici le petit déjeuner.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled back in French.

“They told me you have been sick.”

“Have I?”

He put the tray down on the bed. His face registered with me. He was the desk clerk who sent me packing when I arrived at that hotel . . .

No, this hotel. Le Sélect. Where you told the cabbie to bring you last night after you . . .

It was all starting to make sense.

“That is what Adnan said in his note.”

“Who is Adnan?” I asked.

“The night clerk.”

“I don’t remember meeting him.”

“He obviously met you.”

“How sick was I?”

“Sick enough to not remember how sick you were. But that is just an assumption, as I wasn’t here. The doctor who treated you is returning this afternoon at five. All will be revealed then. But that depends on whether you will still be here this afternoon. I put through payment for tomorrow, monsieur, thinking that, in your ‘condition,’ you would want to keep the room. But your credit card was not accepted. Insufficient funds.”

This didn’t surprise me. My Visa card was all but maxed out, and I’d checked in knowing that I had just enough credit remaining to squeeze out, at most, two nights here, and that there were no funds to clear the long-overdue bill. But the news still spooked me. Because it brought me back to the depressing realpolitik of my situation: everything has gone awry, and I now find myself shipwrecked in a shitty hotel far away from home . . .

But how can you talk about “home” when it no longer exists, when, like everything else, it has been taken away from you?

“Insufficient funds?” I said, trying to sound bemused. “How can that be?”

“How can that be?” he asked coolly. “It just is.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

He shrugged. “There is nothing to say, except: Do you have another credit card?”

I shook my head.

“Then how do you propose paying for the room?”

“Traveler’s checks.”

“That will be acceptable—provided they are valid ones. Are they American Express?”

I nodded.

“Fine. I will call American Express. If they say that the checks are valid, you may stay. If not . . .”

“Maybe it would be better if I left now,” I said, knowing that my budget couldn’t really afford multiple nights in this hotel.

“That is your decision. Checkout time is eleven. You have just over two hours to vacate the room.”

As he turned to go, I leaned forward, trying to reach for a croissant on the breakfast tray. Immediately, I fell back against the headboard, exhausted. I touched my brow. The fever was still there. So too was the pervasive sense of enervation. Getting out of this bed would be a major military maneuver. I could do nothing but sit here and accept the fact that I could do nothing but sit here.

“Monsieur . . .” I said.

The desk clerk turned around.

“Yes?”

“The traveler’s checks should be in my shoulder bag.”

A small smile formed on his lips. He walked over and retrieved the bag and handed it to me. He reminded me that the room cost sixty euros a night. I opened the bag and found my wad of traveler’s checks. I pulled out two checks: a fifty-dollar and a twenty-dollar. I signed them both.

“I need another twenty,” he said. “The cost in dollars is ninety.”

“But that’s way above the regular exchange rate,” I said.

Another dismissive shrug. “It is the rate we post behind the desk downstairs. If you would like to come downstairs and see . . .”

I could hardly sit up, let alone go downstairs.

I pulled out another twenty-dollar traveler’s check. I signed it. I tossed it on the bed.

“There you go.”

“Très bien, monsieur,” he said, picking up it. “I will get all the details I need from your passport. We have it downstairs.”

But I don’t remember handing it over to you. I don’t remember anything.

“And I will call you once American Express has confirmed that the traveler’s checks are legitimate.”

“They are legitimate.”

Another of his smarmy smiles.

“On verra.” We’ll see.

He left. I slumped back against the pillows, feeling drained. I stared up blankly at the ceiling—hypnotized by its blue void, willing myself into it. I needed to pee. I tried to right myself and place my feet on the floor. No energy, no will. There was a vase on the bedside table. It contained a plastic floral arrangement: blue gardenias. I picked up the vase, pulled out the flowers, tossed them on the floor, pulled down my boxer shorts, placed my penis inside the vase, and let go. The relief was enormous. So too was the thought: This is all so seedy.

The phone rang. It was the desk clerk.

“The checks have been approved. You can stay.”

How kind of you.

“I have had a call from Adnan. He wanted to see how you were.”

Why would he care?

“He also wanted you to know that you need to take a pill from each of the boxes on the bedside table. Doctor’s orders.”

“What are the pills?”

“I am not the doctor who prescribed them, monsieur.”

I picked up the assorted boxes and vials, trying to make out the names of the drugs. I recognized none of them. But I still did as ordered: I took a pill from each of the six boxes and downed them with a long slug of water.

Within moments, I was gone again—vanished into that vast dreamless void from which there are no recollections: no sense of time past or present, let alone a day after today. A small foretaste of the death that will one day seize me—and deny me all future wake-up calls.

Bringggggggg . . .

The phone. I was back in the blue room, staring at the vase full of urine. The bedside clock read 17:12. There was streetlamp light creeping in behind the drapes. The day had gone. The phone kept ringing. I answered it.

“The doctor is here,” Mr. Desk Clerk said.

The doctor had bad dandruff and chewed-up nails. He wore a suit that needed pressing. He was around fifty, with thinning hair, a sad mustache and the sort of sunken eyes that, to a fellow insomniac like me, were a telltale giveaway of the malaise within. He pulled up a chair by the bed and asked me if I spoke French. I nodded. He motioned for me to remove my T-shirt. As I did so, I caught a whiff of myself. Sleeping in sweat for twenty-four hours had left me ripe.

The doctor didn’t seem to react to my body odor—perhaps because his attention was focused on the vase by the bed.

“There was no need to provide a urine sample,” he said, taking my pulse. Then he checked my heartbeat, stuck a thermometer under my tongue, wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my left bicep, peered down my throat, and shined a penlight into the whites of my eyes. Finally he spoke.

“You have come down with a ruthless form of the flu. The sort of flu that often kills the elderly—and that is often indicative of larger problems.”

“Such as?”

“May I ask, have you been going through a difficult personal passage of late?”

I paused.

“Yes,” I finally said.

“Are you married?”

“I’m not sure.”

“By which you mean . . .?”

“I am legally still married . . .”

“But you left your wife?”

“No—it was the other way around.”

“And did she leave you recently?”

“Yes—she threw me out a few weeks ago.”

“So you were reluctant to leave?”

“Very reluctant.”

“Was there another man?”

I nodded.

“And your profession is . . .?”

“I taught at a college.”

“You taught?” he said, picking up on the use of the past tense.

“I lost my job.”

“Also recently?”

“Yes.”

“Children?”

“A daughter, age fifteen. She lives with her mother.”

“Are you in contact with her?”

“I wish . . .”

“She won’t talk with you?”

I hesitated. Then: “She told me she never wanted to speak with me again—but I do sense that her mother has convinced her to say this.”

He put his fingertips together, taking this in. Then:

“Do you smoke?”

“Not for five years.”

“Do you drink heavily?”

“I have been . . . recently.”

“Drugs?”

“I take sleeping pills. Non-prescription ones. But they haven’t been working for the past few weeks. So . . .”

“Chronic insomnia?”

“Yes.”

He favored me with a small nod—a hint that he too knew the hell of unremitting sleeplessness. Then: “It is evident what has happened to you: a general breakdown. The body can only take so much . . . tristesse. Eventually, it reacts against such traumatisme by shutting down or giving in to an intense viral attack. The flu you are suffering is more severe than normal because you are in such a troubled state.”

“What’s the cure?”

“I can only treat the physiological disorders. And flu is one of those viruses that largely dictates its own narrative. I have prescribed several comprimés to deal with your aches, your fever, your dehydration, your nausea, your lack of sleep. But the virus will not leave your system until it is—shall we say—bored with you and wants to move on.”

“How long could that take?”

“Four, five days . . . at minimum.”

I shut my eyes. I couldn’t afford four or five more days at this hotel.

“Even once it has gone, you will remain desperately weak for another few days. I would say you will be confined here for at least a week.”

He stood up.

“I will return in seventy-two hours to see what improvement you have made and if you have commenced a recovery.”

Do we ever really recover from the worst that life can throw us?

“One last thing. A personal question, if I may be permitted. What brought you to Paris, alone, just after Christmas?”

“I ran away.”

He thought about this for a moment, then said, “It often takes courage to run away.”

“No, you’re wrong there,” I said. “It takes no courage at all.”

THREE

FIVE MINUTES AFTER the doctor left, the desk clerk came into the room. He was holding a piece of paper in one hand. With a flourish, he presented it to me—as if it were a legal writ.

“La facture du médecin.” The doctor’s bill.

“I’ll settle it later.”

“He wants to be paid now.”

“He’s coming back in three days. Can’t he wait . . .?”

“He should have been paid last night. But you were so ill, he decided to hold off until today.”

I looked at the bill. It was on hotel letterhead. It was also for an astonishing amount of money: two hundred and sixty-four euros.

“You are joking,” I said.

His face remained impassive.

“It is the cost of his services—and of the medicine.”

“The cost of his services? The bill’s been written up on your stationery.”

“All medical bills are processed by us.”

“And the doctor charges one hundred euros per house call?”

“The figure includes our administrative fee.”

“Which is what?”

He looked right at me.

“Fifty euros per visit.”

“That’s robbery.”

“All hotels have administrative charges.”

“But not one hundred percent of the price.”

“It is our policy.”

“And you charged me one hundred percent markup on the prescriptions?”

“Tout à fait. I had to send Adnan to the pharmacy to get them. This took an hour. Naturally, as he was not dealing with hotel business, his time must be compensated for . . .”

“Not dealing with hotel business? I am a guest here. And don’t tell me you’re paying your night guy thirty-two euros an hour.”

He tried to conceal an amused smile. He failed.

“The wages of our employees are not divulged to . . .”

I crumpled up the bill and threw it on the floor.

“Well, I’m not paying it.”

“Then you can leave the hotel now.”

“You can’t make me leave.”

“Au contraire, I can have you on the street in five minutes. There are two men in the basement—notre homme à tout faire and the chef—who would physically eject you from the hotel if I ordered them to do so.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“Is that supposed to frighten me?” he asked. “The fact is, the police would side with the hotel, once I told them that the reason we were evicting you is because you made sexual advances to the chef. And the chef would confirm this to the police—because he is ignorant and because he is a strict Muslim whom I caught dans une situation embarrassante with notre homme à tout faire two months ago. So now he will do anything I say, as he fears exposure.”

“You wouldn’t dare . . .”

“Yes, I would. And the police wouldn’t just arrest you for lewd conduct, they’d also check into your background, and find out why you left your country in such a hurry.”

“You know nothing about me,” I said, sounding nervous.

“Perhaps—but it is also clear that you are not in Paris for a mere holiday . . . that you ran away from something. The doctor told me you confessed that to him.”

“I did nothing illegal.”

“So you say.”

“You are a shit,” I said.

“That is an interpretation,” he said.

I shut my eyes. He held all the cards—and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Give me my bag,” I said.

He did as requested. I pulled out the wad of traveler’s checks.

“It’s two hundred and sixty-four euros, right?” I asked.

“In dollars, the total is three hundred and forty-five.”

I grabbed a pen and signed the necessary number of checks, and threw them on the floor.

“There,” I said. “Get them yourself.”

“Avec plaisir, monsieur.”

He picked up the checks and said, “I will return tomorrow to collect the payment for the room—that is, if you still want to stay.”

“As soon as I can stagger out of here, I will.”

“Très bien, monsieur. And by the way, thank you for pissing in the vase. Très classe.”

And he left.

I fell back against the pillows, exhausted, enraged. The latter emotion was something with which I’d had extensive personal contact over the past few weeks—an ominous sense that I was about to detonate at any moment. But rage turned inward transforms itself into something even more corrosive: self-loathing . . . and one that edges into depression. The doctor was right: I had broken down.

And when the flu finally moved on, what then? I would still be wiped out, beaten.

I reached back into my shoulder bag and pulled out the traveler’s checks. I counted them. Four thousand six hundred and fifty dollars. My entire net worth. Everything I had or owned in the world—as I was pretty damn sure that, thanks to the demonizing I’d been subjected to in the press, Susan’s lawyers would convince the divorce judge that my wife should get it all: the house, the pension plans, the life insurance policies, the small stock portfolio we purchased together. We weren’t rich—academics rarely are. And with a daughter to raise and an ex-husband permanently barred from teaching again, the court would rightfully feel that she deserved the few assets we once shared. I certainly wasn’t going to fight that. Because I had no fight left in me—except when it came to somehow getting my daughter to talk to me again.

Four thousand six hundred and fifty dollars. On the flight over here, stuffed into a narrow seat, I had done some quick calculations on the back of a cocktail napkin. At the time I had just over five thousand bucks. At the current, legal rate of exchange, it would net me just over four thousand euros. If I lived very carefully, I estimated I could eke out three or four months in Paris—on the basis that I could find a cheap place to live as soon as I got there. But forty-eight hours after landing in Paris, I had already spent over four hundred dollars. As it looked as though I wouldn’t be able to move from here for another few days, I could count on paying out another extortionate hundred bucks a night until I was fit enough to leave this dump.

My rage was dampened by fatigue. I wanted to go into the bathroom and strip off my sweat-sodden T-shirt and undershorts and stand under a shower. But I still couldn’t make it off the bed. So I just lay there, staring blankly upward, until the world went blank again and I was back in the void.

Two soft knocks on the door. I stirred awake, everything blurred, vague. Another soft knock, followed by the door opening a crack, and a voice quietly saying, “Monsieur . . .?”

“Go away,” I said. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

The door opened further. Behind it emerged a man in his early forties—with rust-colored skin and cropped black hair. He was dressed in a black suit and a white shirt.

“Monsieur, I just want to see if you needed anything.”

His French, though fluent, was marked with a strong accent.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “I thought you were . . .”

“Monsieur Brasseur?”

“Who’s Monsieur Brasseur?”

“The morning desk clerk.”

“So that’s the bastard’s name: Brasseur.”

A small smile from the man in the doorway.

“Nobody likes Monsieur Brasseur, except the hotel manager—because Brasseur is very talented at la provocation.”

“Are you the guy who helped me out of the cab yesterday?”

“Yes, I’m Adnan.”

“Thanks for that—and for getting me settled here.”

“You were very ill.”

“But you still didn’t have to get me undressed and into bed, or call a doctor, or unpack everything. It was far too kind of you.”

He looked away, shyly.

“It’s my job,” he said. “How are you feeling tonight?”

“Very weak. Very grubby.”

He stepped fully into the room. As he approached me, I could see that his face had grooved lines around the eyes—the sort of creases that belonged on the face of a man twenty years his senior. His suit was tight, ill-fitting, badly worn—and there was a serious tobacco stain on both his right index and middle fingers.

“Do you think you can get out of bed?” he asked.

“Not without help.”

“Then I will help you. But first I will run you a bath. A long soak will do you good.”

I nodded weakly. He took charge of things. Without flinching at its contents, he picked up the vase and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard him flush the toilet and turn on the bath taps. He emerged back into the bedroom, took off his suit jacket, and hung it up in the armoire. Then he picked up my jeans and the shirt and socks that had been placed on the desk chair and stuffed them in the pillowcase.

“Any other dirty laundry?” he asked.

“Just what I am wearing.”

He returned to the bathroom. The water stopped running. Steam leaked out through the doorway. He emerged, his face glistening from the vapors, his right arm wet.

“It is hot, but not too hot.”

He came over to the bed and sat me upright and placed my feet on the floor and then lifted my left arm and pulled it around his shoulder and hoisted me up. My legs felt as sturdy as matchsticks. But Adnan kept me vertical and walked me slowly into the bathroom.

“Do you need help with your clothes?” he asked.

“No, I can handle it.”

But when I took one of my hands off the sink, I immediately lost balance and felt my knees warping. Adnan straightened me up and quietly asked me to keep one hand on the sink while raising the other above me. I was able to keep my arm aloft long enough for him to pull my T-shirt off my arm and over my head. Then he asked me to switch arms and inched the rest of it off. With a quick yank, he pulled my boxer shorts to the floor. I stepped out of them and allowed Adnan to walk me the two steps to the bath. The water was seriously hot. So hot that I recoiled when my foot first touched its surface. But Adnan ignored my protestations and gently forced me into the tub. The initial shock of the water gave way to a strange sense of scalded calm.

“Do you need help washing yourself?”

“I’ll try doing it myself.”

I managed to soap up my crotch, my chest, and underarms, but couldn’t find the energy to reach down to my feet. So Adnan took the soap and dealt with them. He also brought over the shower hose and doused my hair and lathered it up with shampoo. Then he found a can of shaving cream and a razor among the toiletries he’d earlier unpacked, and knelt down by the bathtub and started covering my face in foam.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said, embarrassed by all the personal attention.

“You will feel better for it.”

He took great care when it came to dragging a razor across my face. After he finished, he brought over the shower hose and rinsed off all the foam and the shampoo from my hair. Then he filled the sink with hot water, submerged a cloth in it, retrieved it, and, without squeezing out its excess water, placed it over my face.

“Now you will lie here, please, for a quarter of an hour,” Adnan said.

He left the bathroom. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but the textured white of the cloth. I closed them and tried to empty my head, to concentrate on nothing. I failed. But the bathwater was balming, and it was good to be clean again. I heard occasional noises from the other room, but Adnan let me be for a long time. Then there was a soft knock at the bathroom door.

“Ready to get out?” he asked.

Once again, he had to help me up and wrapped me in one of the thin hotel bath towels before handing me two folded items of clothing.

“I found these in your things. A pajama bottom and a T-shirt.”

He helped dry me down, then got me dressed and led me back to a bed that had been remade with fresh sheets. They felt wonderfully cool as I slid between them. Adnan positioned the pillows so I could sit up against the headboard. He retrieved a tray that had been left on the desk. He carried it over with care. On it was a tureen, a bowl, and a small baguette.

“This is a very mild bouillon,” he said, pouring some into the bowl. “You must eat.”

He handed me the spoon.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

I was able to feed myself—and the thin bouillon was restorative. I even managed to eat most of the baguette—my hunger overcoming the general lie-there-and-die listlessness I felt.

“You are being far too nice to me,” I said.

A small shy nod.

“My job,” he said and excused himself. When he returned some minutes later, he was carrying another tray—with a teapot and a cup.

“I have made you an infusion of verveine,” he said. “It will help you sleep. But you must first take all your medicines.”

He gathered up the necessary pills and a glass of water. I swallowed them, one by one. Then I drank some of the herbal tea.

“Are you on duty tomorrow night?” I asked.

“I start at five,” he said.

“That’s good news. No one has been this nice to me since . . .”

I put my hand over my face, hating myself for that self-pitying remark—and trying to suppress the sob that was wailing up. I caught it just before it reached my larynx—and took a deep steadying breath. When I removed my hand from my eyes, I saw Adnan watching me.

“Sorry . . .” I muttered.

“For what?” he asked.

“I don’t know . . . Everything, I guess.”

“You are alone here in Paris?”

I nodded.

“It is hard,” he said. “I know.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Turkey. A small village around a hundred kilometers from Ankara.”

“How many years in Paris?”

“Four.”

“Do you like it here?” I asked.

“No.”

Silence.

“You must rest,” he said.

He reached over to the desk and picked up a remote control, which he pointed at the small television that had been bracketed to the wall.

“If you are lonely or bored, there is always this,” he said, placing the remote in my hand.

I stared up at the television. Four pretty people were sitting around a table, laughing and talking. Behind them a studio audience was seated on bleachers, laughing whenever one of the guests made a funny comment—or breaking into loud applause when the fast-talking presenter encouraged them to cheer.

“I will come back and check on you later,” Adnan said.

I clicked off the television, suddenly drowsy. I looked at the boxes of medicine again. One of them read, “Zopiclone.” The name rang some sort of distant bell . . . something my doctor back in the States might have once recommended when I was going through one of my insomnia jags. Whatever the drug was, it was certainly creeping up on me quickly, blurring the edges of things, damping down all anxieties, diminishing the fluorescent glow of the room’s blue chandelier, sending me into . . .

Morning. Or perhaps a moment just before morning. Gray dawn light was seeping into the room. As I stirred, I could sense that I was marginally better. I was able to put my feet on the floor and take slow, old-man steps into the bathroom. I peed. I splashed a little water on my face. I fell back into the blue room. I crawled into bed.

Monsieur Brasseur arrived with breakfast at nine. He knocked twice sharply on the door, then waltzed in without warning, placing the tray on the bed. No hello, no comment allez-vous, monsieur? Just one question: “Will you be staying another night?”

“Yes.”

He retrieved my bag. I signed another hundred dollars’ worth of traveler’s checks. He picked them up and left. I didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

I managed to eat the stale croissant and the milky coffee. I turned on the television. The hotel only had the five French channels. Morning television here was as banal and inane as in the States. Game shows—in which housewives tried to spell out scrambled words and win dry-cleaning for a year. Reality shows—in which faded actors coped with working on a real-life farm. Talk shows—in which glossy celebrities talked to glossy celebrities, and every so often girls in skimpy clothes would come out and sit on some aging rock star’s lap . . .

I clicked off the television. I picked up Pariscope and studied the cinema listings, thinking about all the movies I could be sitting through right now. I dozed. A knock on the door, followed by a quiet voice saying, “Monsieur?”

Adnan already? I glanced at my watch. 5:15 PM. How had the day disappeared like that?

He came into the room, carrying a tray.

“You are feeling better today, monsieur?”

“A little, yes.”

“I have your clean laundry downstairs. And if you are able to try something a little more substantial than soup and a baguette . . . I could make you an omelet, perhaps?”

“That would be very kind of you.”

“Your French—it is very good.”

“It’s passable.”

“You are being modest,” he said.

“No—I am being accurate. It needs improvement.”

“It will get it here. Have you lived in Paris before?”

“Just spent a week here some years ago.”

“You picked up such fluent French in just a week?”

“Hardly,” I said, with a small laugh. “I’ve been taking classes for the past five years back home in the States.”

“Then you must have known you would be coming here.”

“I think it was more of a dream . . . a life in Paris . . .”

“A life in Paris is not a dream,” he said quietly.

But it had been my dream for years, that absurd dream which so many of my compatriots embrace: being a writer in Paris. Escaping the day-to-day routine of teaching at a nowhere college to live in some small but pleasant atelier near the Seine . . . within walking distance of a dozen cinemas. Working on my novel in the mornings, then ducking out to a 2:00 PM screening of Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud before picking up Megan at the bilingual school in which we’d enrolled her.

Yes, Susan and Megan always played a part in this Paris fantasia. And for years—as we took language classes together at the college and even devoted an hour a day to speaking to each other in French—my wife encouraged this dream. But—and there was always a but—we first had to get a new kitchen for our slightly tumbledown house. Then the house required rewiring. Then Susan wanted to wait until we both received tenured positions at the college. But once my tenure came through, she felt we had to find the “right time” to take a sabbatical, and the “appropriate moment” to take Megan out of her local school without damaging her “educational and social development.” Susan was always obsessive about “getting the timing just right” on “major life decisions.” The problem was, things never went exactly according to Susan’s plan. There was always something holding her back from making the jump. After five years of “maybe in eighteen months’ time,” she stopped auditing the language classes and also ended our nightly conversations in French—two events that dovetailed with her withdrawal from me. I kept taking the classes, kept telling myself that, one day, I would get to live and write in Paris. Just as I also kept reassuring myself that Susan’s distancing act was just a temporary thing—especially as she would never acknowledge that she had pulled away from me, and kept insisting that nothing was wrong.

But everything was wrong. And everything went from bad to catastrophic. And Paris didn’t turn into a fantasia, but . . .

“Coming here was a way out for me,” I told Adnan.

“From what?”

“Problems.”

“Bad problems?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he excused himself. He arrived back with the omelet and a basket of bread fifteen minutes later. As I ate, he said, “I will ring the doctor tonight to confirm that he will be seeing you tomorrow.”

“I can’t afford the doctor. I can’t afford this hotel.”

“But you are still very sick.”

“I’m on something of a budget. A tight budget.”

I was waiting for him to reply with something like, “I thought all Americans are rich.” But Adnan said nothing, except, “I will see what I can do.”

The sleeping pills did their chemical magic and sent me through the night. Brasseur arrived with the breakfast tray at eight and relieved me of another hundred-dollar traveler’s check. I managed to make it to the bathroom again without aid—but only just. I spent the day reading and flipping mindlessly through the television channels. Adnan arrived at five.

“I called the doctor before I came to work. He said that he didn’t need to see you as long as your condition hadn’t deteriorated . . .”

Well, that was one bit of decent news.

“But he was also very adamant that you do not move for at least another forty-eight hours, even if you are feeling better. He said that there is a high incidence of relapse with this flu, so you must be prudent—otherwise you could end up in the hospital.”

Where the damages would be a lot more than one hundred bucks a night.

“I guess I have no choice but to sit still,” I said.

“Where will you go after here?”

“I need to find somewhere to live.”

“An apartment?”

“A very cheap apartment.”

A small nod of acknowledgment, then he asked, “Are you ready for your bath now, monsieur?”

I told him I could take care of it myself.

“So you are on the mend?” he asked.

“I’m determined to check out of here in two days. Any thoughts on a cheaper place to live?”

“My arrondissement still has lots of inexpensive places, even though people with money are starting to buy them up.”

“Where are you?”

“Do you know the Tenth? Near the Gare de l’Est?”

I shook my head.

“Many Turks still live around there.”

“How long have you lived there?”

“Ever since I came to Paris.”

“Always in the same place?”

“Yes.”

“Do you miss home?”

He looked away from me.

“All the time.”

“Can you afford to get back there occasionally?”

“I cannot leave France.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . .” He halted for a moment and studied my face, seeing if he could trust me. “. . . if I leave France, I will probably have difficulties returning. I do not have the appropriate papers.”

“You’re illegal here?”

A nod.

“Does Brasseur know that?”

“Of course. That’s why he can get away with paying me nothing.”

“How much is nothing?”

“Six euros an hour.”

“And you work how many hours?”

“Five until one, six days a week.”

“Can you live on that?”

“If I didn’t have to send money back to my wife . . .”

“You’re married?”

He avoided my eyes again.

“Yes.”

“Children?”

“A son.”

“How old?”

“Six.”

“And you haven’t seen him . . .?”

“In four years.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yes, it is. Being unable to see your children—”

He broke off without finishing the sentence.

“Believe me, I know,” I said. “Because I have no idea if I will ever be allowed to see my daughter again.”

“How old is she?”

I told him.

“She must miss her father.”

“It’s a very difficult situation . . . and I find myself thinking of her all the time.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“As I am for you.”

He acknowledged this with a small, hesitant nod, then turned and stared out the window.

“Can’t your wife and son somehow visit you here?” I asked.

“The money doesn’t exist for that. Even if I could somehow find a way for them to come, they would be denied entry. Or they would be asked to give an address at which they were staying. If the address didn’t check out, they’d be deported immediately. And if it did check out, it would lead the police directly to me.”

“Surely the cops have other things on their minds these days than busting one illegal immigrant.”

“We’re now all potential terrorists in their eyes—especially if you look like you come from that part of the world. Do you know about the system of being controlled here? The police are legally allowed to stop anyone and demand to see their papers. No papers, and they can lock you up, or if you have papers and no residency permit—la carte de séjour—it’s the beginning of the end.”

“You mean, if I stay on after my initial six-month visa and the cops stop me in the street . . .”

“You won’t get stopped. You’re American, white . . .”

“Have you ever been controlled?”

“Not yet—but that’s because I avoid certain places, like the Strasbourg Saint-Denis or Châtelet metro stations, where the police often check papers. In wealthy areas I also try to stay away from the intersections of big thoroughfares. After four years, you get very adept at looking around corners, knowing just how far to walk down a certain street.”

“How can you live like that?” I heard myself saying (and immediately regretted that I spoke without thinking). Adnan didn’t flinch or bridle at such a direct question.

“I have no choice. I can’t go back.”

“Because . . .”

“Trouble,” he said.

“Bad trouble?”

“Yes,” he said. “Bad trouble.”

“I know what that’s all about.”

“You can’t return home either?”

“I suppose there’s nothing legally stopping me,” I said. “But there’s also nothing for me to go back to. So . . .”

Another silence. This time he broke it.

“You know, monsieur, if you need somewhere cheap in a hurry . . .”

“Yes?”

“Sorry,” he said, suddenly shy. “I shouldn’t be interfering in this way.”

“You know somewhere?”

“It isn’t very nice, but . . .”

“Define ‘not very nice.’ ”

“Do you know what a ‘chambre de bonne’ is?”

“A maid’s room?” I said, using a literal translation.

“What used to be a maid’s room, but is now a tiny studio apartment. Maybe eleven meters square in size. A bed, a chair, a sink, a hotplate, a shower.”

“But in bad condition?”

“Not good.”

“Clean?”

“I could help you clean it. It is down the hall from my own chambre de bonne.”

“I see,” I said.

“As I said, I don’t want to intrude into your . . .”

“How much is it a month?”

“Four hundred euros. But I know the man who manages the building, and I might be able to get him to drop the price by thirty or forty euros.”

“I’d like to see it.”

Adnan smiled a shy smile.

“Good. I will arrange it.”

The next morning, when Brasseur came in with breakfast, I announced that I would be checking out tomorrow. While arranging the tray on the bed, he casually asked, “So Adnan is taking you home with him?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just what I heard from the chef, who lives down the corridor in the same building as Adnan: ‘He has a new boyfriend—the American who has been so sick.’ ”

“You can think what you like.”

“It is not my affair.”

“That’s right, it’s not your affair—as there is no affair here.”

“Monsieur, there is no need to reassure me. I am not your priest—or your wife.”

That’s when I threw the orange juice at him: without a pause for reflection, I made a grab for the glass and hurled the contents at him. It scored a direct hit on his face. There was a moment of stunned silence—as the juice dripped down his cheeks and pulpish bits lodged in his eyebrows. But then his shock turned into cold rage.

“Get out,” he said.

“Fine,” I said, jumping out of the bed.

“I’m calling the police,” he said.

“For what? Baptism by fruit juice?”

“Believe me, I’ll think of something unpleasant and damaging.”

“You do that, I’ll tell them about all the illegal workers you have here—and how you’re paying them slave wages.”

That stopped him cold. He pulled out a handkerchief and started mopping his face.

“Maybe I’ll just fire Adnan.”

“Then I’ll make an anonymous call to the cops and tell them how you use illegal—”

“This conversation is finished. I’ll call your ‘petit ami’ Adnan, and tell him to take you off to his place.”

“You are a sick little bastard.”

But he didn’t hear the final three words of the sentence, as he was already out the door. When it slammed behind him, I slumped against a wall, stunned by what had just taken place and the crazed fury of it all.

But he started it, right?

I got dressed. I started packing. I fell into a guilty fugue, thinking how unnecessarily kind Adnan had been to me, and how I’d now put him in a difficult situation with his asshole boss. I wanted to leave him one hundred euros as a thank-you, but sensed that Brasseur would pocket it. Once I found another hotel, I’d come back here one evening and give it to him.

The phone rang. I answered it. It was Brasseur.

“I have spoken with Adnan at his other job. He will be here in half an hour.”

Click.

I dialed reception right back. Brasseur answered.

“Please tell Adnan that I’ll find a place on my own, that—”

“Too late,” Brasseur said. “He’s already en route.”

“Then call him on his portable.”

“He doesn’t have one.”

Click.

I thought, Grab your bag and leave now. Adnan might have been all nice and attentive while you were infirm (a little too attentive, if truth be told), but who knows what ulterior motive underscores his offer of a chambre de bonne down the corridor from his own. As soon as he gets you there, probably four of his friends will jump you, grab all your traveler’s checks and what few valuables you have (your computer, your fountain pen, your dad’s old Rolex), then cut your throat and dump your body in some large poubelle, where it will end up being incinerated along with half of Paris’s rubbish. And yeah, this scenario might just sound a little paranoid. But why believe that this guy has any decent motives at all? If the last few months had taught me anything, it was that hardly anyone does anything out of sheer, simple decency.

I finished packing. I hoisted my bag and went downstairs. As I approached the reception desk, I noticed that Brasseur had changed into a fresh shirt, but that his tie was still dappled with juice stains. He said, “I’ve decided I’m keeping the twenty euros to cover my dry-cleaning costs.”

I said nothing. I just headed to the door.

“Aren’t you waiting for Adnan?” he asked.

“Tell him I’ll be in touch.”

“Lovers’ tiff?”

That stopped me in my tracks. I wheeled around, my right hand raised. Brasseur took a step backward. But then, like any bully who realized that his provocation wouldn’t result in instant retaliation, he looked at me with contempt.

“With any luck, I will never see you again,” I said.

“Et moi non plus,” he replied. The same to you.

I showed him my back and hit the street, where I ran straight into Adnan. It was hard to hide my surprise—and discomfort—in meeting him.

“Didn’t Brasseur tell you I was coming?” he asked.

“I just decided to wait outside,” I lied. “I couldn’t stand being in there anymore.”

Then I told him what had transpired in the room—after Brasseur had made his charming insinuations.

“He thinks all Turks are pédés,” he said, using French slang for homosexuals.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said, also mentioning what he’d said about catching the homme à tout faire with the chef.

“I know the chef—Omar. He lives in the same building as me. He is bad.”

And he quickly changed the subject, saying that Sezer—the manager of the building where he lived—would be expecting us within the hour. Then, taking the handle of my roll-bag (and refusing my protestations that I could wheel it along myself), he guided us a sharp right up the rue Ribera.

“Brasseur said he called you at your other job,” I said as we headed toward the metro.

“Yes, I do a six-hour shift every day at a clothes importer near to where I live.”

“Six hours on top of the eight at the hotel? That’s insane.”

“And necessary. All the money from the hotel job goes home to Turkey. The morning job . . .”

“What time does it start?”

“Seven thirty.”

“But you only get off work here at one AM. By the time you get home . . .”

“It’s about a half hour by bicycle. All the metros stop just before one. Anyway, I don’t need much sleep, so . . .”

He let the sentence die, hinting he didn’t want to keep talking about all this. Rue Ribera had a slight incline—and though it was one lane wide and lined with apartment buildings, the morning sun still found a way of beaming down on this narrow thoroughfare. In the near distance, a father—fortyish, well dressed, well heeled—walked out of some venerable building with his teenage daughter. Unlike most adolescent girls she wasn’t in the midst of a vast, perpetual sulk. Rather, she laughed at something her dad said to her, and then made a comment that caused him to smile. The rapport between them was evident—and I could not help but feel a crippling sadness.

I stopped momentarily. Adnan glanced at the family scene, then back at me.

“Are you all right?”

I shook my head.

We moved on to the avenue Mozart and the Jasmin metro station. We took the line headed toward Boulogne. When the train arrived, I saw Adnan quickly scanning the carriage—making certain it was free of officialdom—before guiding us onto it.

“We change at Michel-Ange Molitor,” Adnan said, “then again at Odéon. Our stop is Château d’Eau.”

It was just two stops to our first change point. We left the metro and followed the signs for Line 10, heading toward Gare d’Austerlitz. As we walked down a flight of stairs, I insisted on taking my bag from Adnan. We reached the bottom of the stairs, then followed a long corridor. At the end of it were two flics, checking papers. Adnan froze for a moment, then hissed, “Turn around.”

We executed a fast about-face. But as we headed back along the corridor, another two flics appeared. They couldn’t have been more than thirty yards in front of us. We both froze again. Did they see that?

“Walk ahead of me,” Adnan whispered. “And when they stop me, keep walking. You go to Château d’Eau, then to 38 rue de Paradis—that’s the address. You ask for Sezer . . .”

“Stay alongside me,” I whispered back, “and they probably won’t stop you.”

“Go,” he hissed. “Thirty-eight rue de Paradis.”

He slowed down his gait. But when I tried to stay by him, he hissed again, “Allez rue de Paradis!”

I started walking toward the flics, feeling the same sort of disquiet that comes over me on those rare instances when I have encountered the police or customs officers: an immediate sense that I must be guilty of something.

As I came into their direct line of vision, I could see the flics looking me over, their faces impassive while their eyes took in everything about my appearance. Five feet away from them, I expected the words, “Vos papiers, monsieur.” But they remained silent as I passed by. I remounted the stairs, then stopped, loitering with intent as I waited in the futile hope that Adnan would follow right behind me. Five minutes passed, then ten. No Adnan. I decided to risk walking downstairs again. If the flics were there, I could plead that I was just a dumb American tourist who had lost his way. But when I reached the corridor again, it was empty.

There was a moment of awful realization: They’ve nabbed him . . . and it’s all your fault.

This was followed by another awful thought: What do I do now?

Allez rue de Paradis.

Go to Paradise.

FOUR

PARADISE.

But before I got there, I had to first pass through Africa.

When I emerged from the Château d’Eau metro, I was in another Paris. Gone were the big apartment buildings and their well-heeled residents in their expensive casual clothes, loading well-groomed children into their shiny SUVs. Château d’Eau was dirty. There was rubbish everywhere. And grubby cafés. And shops that sold cheap synthetic wigs in garish colors like purple. And storefront telephone exchanges, advertising cheap long-distance rates to Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroun, Sénégal, and the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso and . . .

I was the only white face in sight. Though the mercury was hovering just above the freezing mark, the boulevard was crowded, with a lot of café conversations spilling out onto the street, and people greeting passersby as if they were in a small village, and merchants selling vegetables or exotic candy from carts. No one eyed me suspiciously. No one gave me a telltale look, saying I had wandered into the wrong corner of town. I was ignored. Even the elderly black man I stopped to ask for directions to the rue de Paradis seemed to look right through me—though he did point up a side street and uttered one phrase, “Vous tournez à droite au fond de la rue,” before moving on.

The side street brought me out of Africa and into India. A row of curry houses, and video shops with Bollywood posters in their windows, and more telephone exchanges—only this time the rates were for Mumbai and Delhi and they were also advertised in Hindi. There were also a lot of cheap hotels, giving me a fast, grim alternative for a few nights if the chambre de bonne turned out to be beyond bad, or if this guy Sezer was a trickster and I had walked into some class of setup.

I had to cross the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis—a scruffy food market with more cheap shops, brimming with huddled people, their heads down against the cold wind that had started to blow through the streets. I turned right, then took a sharp left into rue de Paradis. At first sight, it looked bland. It was long and narrow—a hodgepodge of characterless nineteenth-century architecture and the occasional modern block. At street level, it seemed dead on arrival—no visible signs of life; just some large wholesale outlets for china and kitchen equipment. Then I began to pass by a place marked kahve. It was a large, faceless café—all fluorescent tubes and gray linoleum and the Istanbul Top Forty blaring on the loudspeaker systems. I peered inside. Men were huddled over tea and talking conspiratorially. A couple of late-morning drunks were asleep at the bar, and a low cloud of cigarette smoke hung over everything. The young, tough-guy bartender turned away from some soccer match on the television to look long and hard at me, wondering why I was loitering with intent outside this establishment. His hostile stare hinted that I should move on.

Which I did.

There were two more kahves on rue de Paradis. There were also a handful of Turkish restaurants and a couple of bars whose shutters were still pulled down at midday. I picked up my pace and stopped examining the street in detail. Instead, I started looking up to check numbers, noting the chipped paintwork on many of the buildings. Number 38 was particularly mangy—its façade blistered with chipped masonry and large yellow blotches, like the ingrained stains on a chain-smoker’s teeth. The front door—a huge, towering object—was also in need of several coats of black gloss. I looked around for some sort of entry phone, but just saw a button marked PORTE. I pressed it and heard a telltale click. I had to put my entire weight against it to push it open. I pulled my bag in after me and found myself in a narrow corridor of battered mailboxes and brimming trash cans and a couple of fuse boxes from which loose wires dangled. Up ahead was a courtyard. I walked into it. Off it were three stairways—marked with the letters A, B, and C. The courtyard was a small dark rectangle, above which loomed four blocks of apartments. The walls here were as ragged as their exterior counterparts, only now adorned with laundry that draped from windows and makeshift clotheslines. The aroma of greasy cooking and rotting vegetables was omnipresent. So too was a sign that dominated the far side of the courtyard: SEZER CONFECTION (Sezer Ready-to-Wear). There was a separate stairway below this sign. I had to ring a bell to gain admittance. No one answered, so I rang it again. When there was still no answer, I leaned on the bell for a good fifteen seconds. Finally I heard footsteps on the stairs. The door opened and a young tough—dressed in a faded denim jacket with an imitation fur collar—opened the door. His upper lip boasted a meager mustache and he had a cigarette plugged between his teeth. His face radiated annoyance.

“What you want?” he asked in bad French.

“I’m here to see Sezer.”

“He knows you?”

“Adnan told me—”

“Where is Adnan?” he asked, cutting me off.

“I’ll explain that to Sezer.”

“You tell me.”

“I’d rather tell—”

“You tell me,” he said, his tone demonstrative.

“He was controlled by the flics,” I said.

He tensed.

“When was this?”

“Less than an hour ago.”

Silence. He looked over my shoulder, scanning the distant corridor. Did he think this was a setup—and that I had brought “company” with me?

“You wait here,” he said and slammed the door in my face.

I stood in the courtyard for the next five minutes, wondering if I should do the sensible thing and make a break for the street before he came back. But what kept me rooted to the spot was the realization that I owed it to Adnan to explain what happened—and to see if Sezer was the sort of connected guy who could pull strings and—

Oh sure. Just look at this backstreet setup. Do you really think the boss here is chummy with the sort of high-up people who will spring an illegal immigrant for him?

All right, what really kept me rooted to the spot was the realization, Right now, I have nowhere else to go . . . and I needed a cheap place to live.

The door was reopened by Mr. Tough Guy. Again, he glanced over my shoulder to make certain the coast was clear before saying, “Okay, you come upstairs to the office.”

We mounted a narrow staircase. I pulled my suitcase behind me, its wheels landing with an ominous thud on each stair. I’d seen enough film noir to imagine what I was walking into—a dirty smoke-filled office, with a fat slob in a dirty T-shirt behind a cheap metal desk, a drool-sodden cigar in a corner of his mouth, a half-eaten sandwich (with visible teeth marks) in front of him, girlie calendars on the walls, and three lugs in cheap pinstripe suits propping up the background.

But the office that I entered bore no relation to any office I’d ever seen before. It was just a room with dirty white walls, scuffed linoleum, a table, and chair. There was no other adornment, not even a telephone—bar the little Nokia positioned on the table at which a man sat. He wasn’t the Mr. Big that this clandestine buildup led me to expect. Rather, he was a rail-thin man in his fifties, wearing a plain black suit, a white shirt (buttoned at the collar), and small wire-rimmed glasses. His skin was Mediterranean olive and his head was virtually shaved. He looked like one of those secular Iranians who worked as a right-hand man to the Ayatollah, acted as the enforcing brain of the theocracy, and knew where all the infidel body parts had been buried.

As I was studying him, he was also assessing me—with a long cool stare that he held for a very long time. Finally: “So you are the American?” he asked in French.

“Are you Sezer?”

“Monsieur Sezer,” he said, correcting me.

“Mes excuses, Monsieur Sezer.”

My tone was polite, deferential. He noted this with a small nod, then said, “Adnan left his job to rescue you today.”

“I am aware of that. But I didn’t ask him to come to the hotel. It was the desk clerk, a total creep, who—”

Monsieur Sezer put up his hand, signaling me to stop this guilty-conscience rant.

“I am just attempting to assemble the facts,” he said. “Adnan left his morning job to come to the hotel to bring you here because you were in some sort of trouble with the management. Or, at least, that is what he told me before he left. Adnan was very fond of you—and was looking forward to having you down the corridor from him. Were you fond of him?”

A pause. The question was asked in a perfectly level, unthreatening way—even though its subtext was glaringly obvious.

“I was very sick in the hotel—and he was very kind to me.”

“By ‘very kind’ do you mean . . .?”

“I mean, he showed me remarkable kindness when I could hardly stand up.”

“What sort of ‘remarkable kindness’?”

“I didn’t fuck him, OK?” I said.

Monsieur Sezer let that angry outburst reverberate in the room for a moment or two. Then a small smile flashed across his thin lips before disappearing again. He continued as if he hadn’t heard that comment.

“And when you left the hotel today with Adnan . . .”

I took him through the entire story, including Adnan telling me to walk ahead of him when we got caught between the two pairs of flics. He listened in silence, then asked, “You are married?”

“Separated.”

“And the reason you are in Paris . . .?”

“I am on sabbatical from the college where I teach. A sabbatical is kind of a leave of absence—”

“I know what it is,” he said. “They mustn’t pay much at the college where you teach, if you are interested in renting a chambre.”

I could feel my cheeks flush. Was I such an obvious liar?

“My circumstances are a little tight at the moment.”

“Evidently,” he said.

“What I’m most worried about right now is Adnan,” I said.

A wave of his hand.

“Adnan is finished. He will be on a plane back to Turkey in three days maximum. C’est foutu.”

“Can’t you do anything to help him?”

“No.”

Another silence.

“So, do you want his chambre?” he asked. “It is nicer than the one I was going to show you.”

“Is the rent high?”

“It’s four hundred and thirty a month.”

Thirty euros more than I had been quoted.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a little steep for me.”

“You really are in a bad place,” he said.

I gave him a guilty nod. He turned to the heavy who met me at the door and said something in Turkish. Mr. Tough Guy gave him an equivocal shrug, then murmured a comment that made Monsieur Sezer’s lips part into the thinnest and briefest of smiles.

“I have just asked Mahmoud here if he thinks you are on the run from the law. He said that you seemed too nervous to be a criminal. But I know that this ‘sabbatical’ story is a fabrication—that you are talking rubbish—not that I really care.”

Another fast exchange in Turkish. Then: “Mahmoud will take you to see the two chambres. I promise you that you will want Adnan’s.”

Mahmoud nudged me and said, “You leave bags here. We come back.”

I let go of the suitcase with wheels, but decided to keep the bag with my computer with me. Mahmoud muttered something in Turkish to Monsieur Sezer. He said, “My associate wonders if you think all Turks are thieves?”

“I trust nobody,” I said.

I followed Mr. Tough Guy down the stairs and across the courtyard to a door marked ESCALIER B. He punched in a code on a panel of buttons outside the door. There was the telltale click, he pushed the door open, then we headed up the stairs. They were narrow and wooden and spiral. The walls in the stairwell had been painted shit brown and were in an urgent need of a washing-down. But it was the smells that really got me: a noxious combination of bad cooking and blocked drains. The stairs were badly worn down. We kept heading upward, the climb steep. At the fourth floor, we stopped. There were two metal doors there. Mahmoud dug out a large bunch of keys and opened the door directly in front of us. We walked into a room that gave new meaning to the word dismal. It was tiny—with yellowing linoleum, a single bed. There was stained floral wallpaper, peeling and blistered. The length of the place was ten feet maximum. It was a cell, suitable for the suicidal.

Mr. Tough Guy was impassive during the minute or so I looked around. When I said, “Can I see Adnan’s place, please?” he just nodded for me to follow him. We walked up a flight of stairs. There were another two metal doors on this landing and a small wooden one. Mr. Tough Guy opened the door directly in front of us. Size-wise, Adnan’s chambre was no bigger than the dump downstairs. But he’d tried to make it habitable. There was the same grim linoleum, but covered by a worn Turkish carpet. The floral wallpaper had been painted over in a neutral beige—a crude job, as hints of the previous leafy design still poked through the cheap emulsion. The bed was also narrow, but had been covered with a colored blanket. There was a cheap generic boom box and a tiny television. There was a hotplate and a sink and a tiny fridge—all old. There was a baby-blue shower curtain. I pulled it aside to discover a raised platform with a drain (clogged with hairs) and a rubber hose with a plastic showerhead.

“Where’s the toilet?” I asked.

“Hallway,” he said.

There was a clothes rail in one corner, on which hung a black suit, three shirts, and three pairs of pants. The only decoration on the walls were three snapshots: a young woman in a headscarf, her face serious, drawn; an elderly man and woman in a formal pose, serious and drawn; and Adnan holding a child with curly black hair, around two years old, on his knee. Though Adnan also looked grave in this photograph, his face seemed around two decades younger than it did now . . . even though this snapshot must have been taken only four years ago. The last time he saw his son.

Staring at these photos provoked another sharp stab of guilt. It was such a sad, small room—and his only refuge from a city in which he was always living undercover and in fear. Mr. Tough Guy must have been reading my mind, as he said, “Adnan goes back to Turkey now—and he goes to prison for a long time.”

“What did he do that made him flee the country?”

He shrugged and said nothing except, “You take the room?”

“Let me talk to your boss,” I said.

Back in his office, Monsieur Sezer was still sitting at his bare desk, staring out the window. Mr. Tough Guy stayed by the door, and lit a cigarette.

“You take Adnan’s room?” Monsieur Sezer asked me.

“For three hundred and seventy-five euros a month.”

He shook his head.

“That’s all I can afford.”

He shook his head again.

“The other room is a dump,” I said.

“That is why Adnan’s room costs more.”

“It’s not much better.”

“But it is still better.”

“Three eighty.”

“No.”

“It’s the best I can—”

“Four hundred,” he said, cutting me off. “And if you pay three months in advance, I won’t charge you four weeks’ deposit.”

Three months in that room? One part of me thought, This is further proof that you’ve hit bottom. The other part thought, You deserve no better. And then there was a more realistic voice that said, It’s cheap, it’s habitable, you have no choice, take it.

“OK—four hundred,” I said.

“When can you give me the money?”

“I’ll go to a bank now.”

“OK, go to the bank.”

I found one on the boulevard Strasbourg. Twelve hundred euros cost me fifteen hundred dollars. My net worth was now down to two thousand bucks.

I returned to Sezer Confection. My bag was no longer by the desk. Monsieur Sezer registered my silent concern.

“The suitcase is in Adnan’s room,” he said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“You think we would be interested in your shabby clothes?”

“So you searched the bag?”

A shrug.

“You have the money?” he asked.

I handed it over. He counted it slowly.

“Can I have a receipt?”

“No.”

“But how do I prove that I have paid the rent?”

“Do not worry.”

“I do worry . . .”

“Évidemment. You can go to the room now. Here is the key,” he said, pushing it toward me. “The door code is A542. You write that down. You need my associate to show you the way back to the room?”

“No thanks.”

“You have problems, you know where to find me. And we know where to find you.”

I left. I walked down the steps. I crossed the courtyard. I entered ESCALIER B. I remounted the stairs. I came to the fourth landing. I opened the door facing me. The chambre de bonne had been stripped bare. Along with all of Adnan’s personal effects, they had also taken the sheets, the blankets, the shower curtain, the rug, the cheap electronic goods. I felt my fists tighten. I wanted to run down the stairs and back into Monsieur Sezer’s office and demand at least three hundred euros back to cover the cost of everything I would now have to buy to make the place habitable. But I knew he would just shrug and say, Tant pis. Tough shit.

Anyway, I knew that if I went back and made a scene, I’d be considered trouble. And right now, what I needed to do was vanish from view.

So I slammed the door behind me. Within five minutes I had unpacked. I sat down on the dirty mattress, the fever creeping back up on me again. I looked around. I thought, Welcome to the end of the road.

FIVE

LATE THAT NIGHT, Omar took a shit.

How did I know this intimate detail—and the identity of the gentleman moving his bowels? It didn’t take much in the way of deductive reasoning. My bed faced the wall adjoining the crapper. Omar was my neighbor—something I knew already from Adnan, but which I rediscovered when he banged on my door just after midnight. I’d not met him before—but had already been briefed on his job as the chef at the Sélect, and how (according to Brasseur) he’d been caught in flagrante delicto with the hotel’s handyman. I asked who was at the door before unlocking it.

“Votre voisin,” he said in very basic French.

I opened the door a few inches. A behemoth stood before me, his face seeping sweat, his breath a toxic cocktail of stale cigarettes and burped alcohol. Omar was big in every way—well over six feet tall and around three hundred pounds. He had a walrus mustache and thin strands of black hair dangling around an otherwise bald head. He was drunk and just a little scary.

“It’s kind of late,” I said.

“I want television,” he said.

“I don’t have a television.”

“Adnan has television.”

“Adnan is gone.”

“I know, I know. Your fault.”

“They took his television,” I said.

“Who took?”

“Monsieur Sezer.”

“He can’t take. My television. Adnan borrow it.”

“You’ll have to talk with Monsieur Sezer.”

“You let me in,” he said.

I immediately wedged my foot against the door.

“The television isn’t here.”

“You lie to me.”

He started to put his weight against the door. I got my knee up against it.

“I am not lying.”

“You let me in.”

He gave the door a push. I had never come up against a three-hundred-pound guy before. I pulled my knee out of the way just in time. He came spilling into the room. For a moment he seemed disorientated—in that way that a drunk suddenly can’t remember where he is and why he has just slammed up against a hotplate. Then the penny dropped. He scanned the room for the television, but his disorientation quickly returned.

“This not same room,” he said.

“It is.”

“You change everything.”

That wasn’t exactly the truth—though I had made a few necessary design modifications since moving in that afternoon. The stained mattress, which sagged in five places, had been thrown out and replaced by a new one, bought in a shop on the Faubourg Saint-Denis. The shop owner was a Cameroonian. His place specialized in bargain-priced household stuff, so when he heard that I needed some basics for my chambre, he took charge of me. I came away with the mattress (cheap, but sturdy), a pillow, a set of light blue no-iron sheets, a duvet, a dark blue shower curtain, two lampshades, a neutral cream window blind (to replace the left-behind drape), some basic kitchen stuff, and (the best find of all) a small plain pine desk and a cane chair. The total price for all this was three hundred euros. It was a major dent in my remaining funds, but the guy even threw in a can of wood stain for the desk and got his assistant to load up everything in the shop’s battered old white van and deliver it to my place on the rue de Paradis.

After everything arrived, I spent the rest of the afternoon putting my room together. The outside toilet was another matter. It was an old crapper—with a fractured black plastic seat—located in a tiny closet, with unpainted walls and a bare lightbulb strung overhead. The bowl was caked with fecal matter, the seat crisscrossed with dried urine stains. It was impossible to stay more than a minute inside this cell without wanting to retch. So I hit the street, finding a hardware shop further down the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. Within five minutes I had bought a toilet seat, a toilet brush, and an industrial bleach super fort that the guy in the shop assured me would not just burn away all the residue stains, but would also remove two layers of epidermis if it came in contact with any exposed skin. So he insisted that I spend an extra two euros on a pair of rubber gloves as well.

Half an hour later, not only was a new seat installed, but the nuclear-powered bleach had also done its chemical magic. The bowl was virtually white again. Then I scoured down the toilet floor. After that was finished, I dashed out again to the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière and found an electronics shop. After a bit of haggling, the owner agreed to part with an old-model Sony boom box for fifty euros. I also picked up a baguette, some ham and cheese, and a liter of cheap red wine, and returned home. I hung the lampshades in my room and the toilet. Then, for the rest of the evening, I cleaned every inch of the chambre de bonne, while blaring the local jazz station on my newly acquired stereo. Halfway through my purge of every bit of grime from the room, I wondered, Aren’t you just being a little manic? But I pushed aside such self-reflection and kept cleaning. By midnight the place was spotless, my laptop was set up on the desk, and I was making lists of things I still needed to buy. I felt my forehead. The fever was still there, but seemed low-lying. I took a shower—the hot water sputtering out in weak bursts. I dried off. I climbed into the narrow bed. I passed out.

Until Omar started taking a shit, then banged on my door and came spilling into the room.

“You change everything,” he said, looking around.

“You know, it’s kind of late.”

“This nice now,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You sell my television to buy all this?”

“Like I told you, Omar, Monsieur Sezer has the television.”

“How you know my name?” he demanded, suddenly fixing me with a drunk/paranoid stare.

“Adnan told me—”

“You turn Adnan over to the police—”

“That’s not what happened,” I said, trying to stay calm.

“You want his room, you call the police, they catch him in the metro. And then you sell my television.”

He shouted this last line, then looked bemused—as if he were a spectator at this event, suddenly surprised to hear himself yelling.

“Look,” I said, trying to sound even-tempered, reasonable. “I was a hotel guest just until this morning. As you must have heard, I was sick for the past week. I didn’t even know where Adnan lived until he told me about a chambre de bonne down the corridor from his own—”

“So that’s when you decide to take it from him.”

“My name’s Harry, by the way,” I said, hoping this change of conversational tack might throw him. He ignored my extended hand.

“Sezer has television?” he asked.

“That’s what I said.”

“I kill Sezer.”

He burped. Loudly. He fished out a cigarette and lit it. I silently groaned. I hate cigarette smoke. But it didn’t strike me as the right moment to ask him not to light up in my little room. He took a half-drag on his cigarette, the smoke leaking out of his nostrils.

“You American?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“So fuck you.”

He smiled as he said this—a crapulous smile, his eyes gauging my reaction. I remained impassive.

“Adnan a dead man. When they send him back to Turkey, he dies . . . in prison. Four years ago, he kills a man. A man who fucks his wife. Then he finds out the man does not fuck his wife. But the man still dead. Bad. Very bad. That’s why he come to Paris.”

Adnan—a killer on the run? It didn’t seem possible. But, then again, nothing about this setup seemed possible . . . and yet, it was the reality into which I had slipped.

The cigarette fell from Omar’s lips onto my just-cleaned floor. He ground it out with his shoe. Then, with another loud, aromatic burp, he abruptly left, reeling into his adjoining room. Immediately, my housekeeping instincts took over. I opened the window to air out the smoke. I picked up the cigarette butt and used kitchen paper to clean up the flattened ash on the linoleum. Then I went outside to use the toilet and found Omar’s large unflushed turd greeting me in the bowl.

I pulled the chain—and felt myself tensing up into a serious rage. But I forced myself to pee and get back into my room before the rage transformed into something dangerous. When I was inside, I turned on the stereo and boomed jazz—in the angry hope that it might disturb Omar. But there were no bangs on the wall, no shouts of “Turn that crap down.” There were just the edgy dissonances of Ornette Coleman, penetrating the Parisian night. Eventually, his grating riffs became too much for me, and I snapped off the radio and sat in the half-darkness of my room. I stared out at all the minor scenic adjustments I had made . . . and considered the energy I’d expended to try to set up house in a place that could never be anything more than a grungy cell. That’s when I started to cry. I had wept here and there over the past few weeks. But this was different. This was pure grief . . . for what I had lost, for what I had been reduced to. For a good fifteen minutes, I couldn’t stop the deluge. I lay prostrate on the bed, clutching on to a pillow, as all the accumulated anger and anguish came flooding out. When I finally subsided, I felt drained and wrung out . . . but not purged. This kind of grief doesn’t go away after a good cry . . . as much as I wished it would.

Still, the cessation of my sobs did force me to pull off my T-shirt and jockey shorts and stand under the sputtering showerhead for a few minutes, towel myself down, then drop a Zopiclone and finally surrender to chemical sleep.

I didn’t wake up until noon, my head fogged in, my mouth dry. When I went outside to use the toilet, I found the seat crisscrossed with urine. Omar, in true dog style, had marked his territory.

After brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink, I dressed, scooped up several invoices from yesterday, and went downstairs and rang the bell for Sezer Confection. Mr. Tough Guy answered the door, the usual scowl on his face.

“I want to speak with your boss,” I said.

The door shut. Two minutes later it opened again. He motioned for me to follow him. Comme d’habitude, Sezer was sitting at the table, the cell phone on the desk, his gaze never leaving the window as I walked in.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I replaced the seat and hung up a lampshade in the toilet on my floor.”

“Congratulations.”

“The seat, the brush, and the lampshade cost me nineteen euros.”

“You expect reimbursement?”

“Yes,” I said, putting the receipts on his desk. He looked at them, gathered them together, then crumpled them up into a ball and tossed it onto the floor.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“The toilet seat was broken, there was a bare lightbulb—”

“No other tenants complained.”

“Omar, that pig, would happily eat out of the toilet . . .”

“You do not like your neighbor?”

“I don’t like the fact that he woke me in the middle of last night, demanding his television, which you took away.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“All right, Joe Smoothie here took it away.”

Sezer said something in Turkish to Mr. Tough Guy. He shrugged his shoulders in bemusement, then hissed something back.

“My colleague informs me that he didn’t touch the television,” Sezer said.

“He’s lying,” I suddenly said in English.

Sezer looked at me and smiled.

“Out of respect for your safety I won’t translate that,” he said back in perfect English. “And don’t expect me to speak your language again, American.”

“You’re a crook,” I said, sticking to my native tongue.

“Tant pis,” he said, then continued on in French. “But now Omar is upset. Because I told him that you sold the television to buy the new toilet seat. And he is such an ignorant peasant that he believed such stupidity. My advice to you is: buy him a new television.”

“No way,” I said, returning to French.

“Then don’t be surprised if he comes home drunk again tonight and tries to break down your door. He is a complete sauvage.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Ah, a tough character. But not so tough that you couldn’t stop crying last night.”

I tried not to look embarrassed. I failed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “Omar heard you. He said you cried for almost a half hour. The only reason he didn’t come looking for you this morning to demand his television money is because the idiot felt sorry for you. But, trust me, by tonight he will be in a rage again. Omar lives in a perpetual rage. Just like you.”

With that last line, Sezer trained his gaze on me. It was like having a white-hot light shined in your eyes. I blinked and turned away.

“So why were you crying, American?” he asked.

I said nothing.

“Homesick?” he asked.

After a moment, I nodded. He took his gaze off me and returned it to the window. And said, “We are all homesick here.”

SIX

LA VIE PARISIENNE.

Or, to be more specific about it: ma vie parisienne.

For my first weeks on the rue de Paradis, it generally went like this:

I would get up most mornings around eight. While making coffee I would turn on France Musique (or France Bavarde, as I referred to it, since the announcers seemed less interested in playing music than in endlessly discussing the music they were about to broadcast). Then I’d throw on some clothes and go downstairs to the boulangerie on the nearby rue des Petites Écuries and buy a baguette for sixty centimes before heading down to the market on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. While there, I’d shop carefully. Six slices of jambon, six slices of Emmenthal, four tomatoes, a half-dozen eggs, 200 grams of haricots verts (I quickly learned how to calculate metrically), 400 grams of some sort of cheap white fish, 200 grams of the cheapest cut of steak that didn’t look overtly rancid, three liters of vin rouge, a half-liter of milk, three liters of some generic bottled water, and I’d have enough food to live on for three days. And the cost of this shopping expedition would never be more than thirty euros . . . which meant that I could feed myself for around sixty euros a week.

On the days that I bought food, I’d be back in the apartment by twelve thirty. Then I would open my laptop and let it warm up while making another coffee and telling myself that it was just a matter of five hundred words. As in: two typed pages. As in: the daily quota I had set myself for writing my novel.

Two pages, six days a week, would equal twelve pages. As long as I kept up this output without fail, I’d have a book within twelve months. And no, I didn’t want to consider the fact that I only had enough money to cover a pretty basic existence for the three months of rent I had paid. I just wanted to think about achieving the daily quota. Five hundred words . . . the length of many an email I used to bang out in less than twenty minutes . . .

Five hundred words. It was nothing, really.

Until you started trying to turn that five hundred words into fiction, day in, day out.

My novel . . . my first novel . . . the novel I told myself twenty years ago that I would write. It was going to be an Augie March for our times; a large, sprawling, picaresque bildungsroman about growing up awkward in New Jersey, and surviving the domestic warfare of my parents and the dismal conformism of sixties suburbia.

For months—during the worst of the nightmare into which I had been landed—I kept myself alive with the idea that, once I negotiated an escape route out of hell, I’d find a quiet place in which to get it all down on paper, and finally demonstrate to the world that I was the serious writer I always knew myself to be. I’ll show the bastards is a statement uttered by someone who has suffered a setback . . . or, more typically, has hit bottom. But as a resident of the latter category, I also knew that, rather than being some EST-style rallying cry, it was a howl from the last-chance saloon.

Five hundred words. That was the quotidian task, and one that I knew I could fulfill . . . because I had nothing else to do with my time.

Nothing except go to the cinema. The majority of my free time outside my chambre was spent haunting all those darkened rooms around town that cater to film junkies like myself. The geography of Paris was, for me, defined by its cinemas. Every Monday I’d spend sixteen euros on a carte orange hebdomadaire—a weekly travel card, which gave me access to all metros and buses within the Paris city limits. The card let me whizz around town at will—all the travels outside my quartier largely pertaining to my cinema habit. Once the five hundred words were down on the computer, I’d be free to leave the room and begin the movie-going day. The Fifth was my preferred terrain, as there were more than fifteen cinemas in a square mile. Most of them specialized in old stuff. At the Action Écoles, there was always a director’s festival in progress: Hitchcock this week, Kurosawa the next, alternating with a season of Anthony Mann Westerns. Down the road at Le Reflet Médicis, I spent a very happy three days watching every Ealing Comedy ever made, finding myself in floods of tears at the end of Whisky Galore . . . more an indication of my fragile state than of the film’s emotional headiness. A few streets away, at the Accattone, they were always showing one of Pasolini’s stranger explorations of the out-there frontiers of human behavior. I could make it from the Accattone to Le Quartier Latin in about three minutes for a Buñuel season. I could stroll over into the Sixth to nose around the film noir rarities at the Action Christine. Or, best of all, I could jump the metro to Bercy and hide out at the Cinémathèque until midnight.

Every day, I’d spend at least six hours at the movies. But before heading out on this daily movie marathon, I’d check my email.

The Internet café was located on the rue des Petites Écuries. It was a small storefront operation. There were a dozen computers positioned on unvarnished wooden cubicles, fronted by grubby orange plastic chairs. Behind this was a small bar that served coffee and booze. It cost one euro fifty an hour to check email and surf the Net. There was always a bearded guy in his thirties behind the bar. He looked Turkish, but spoke good French—though our conversations were always limited to a few basic pleasantries and the exchange of money for an Internet password or a coffee. Whenever I showed up, he was always on his cell phone, deep in some rapid-fire conversation—a conversation that turned into a low whisper as I bought my password and settled down in front of a computer. I could always see him studying me as I logged on—and wondered if he could gauge my disappointment as I opened my AOL mailbox and found no news from my daughter.

I’d been writing Megan twice a week since arriving in Paris. In my emails I asked her to please try to understand that I never meant to hurt her; that she remained the most important person in my life. Even if she now hated me for what had happened, I would never cease to love her and hoped that communication could be somehow reestablished. At first, my emails all followed a similar line of argument. After three weeks, I switched tactics—writing to her about my life in Paris, about the room in which I was living, the way I passed my day, the movies I saw—and always ending with a simple statement:

I will write again next week. Always know that you are in my thoughts every hour of the day—and that I miss you terribly. Love . . . Dad

When no answer was forthcoming, I wondered if she was being blocked from writing to me by her mother—as I also knew that, by telling Megan details of my life in Paris, I was probably passing them on to my ex-wife as well. But I didn’t care if she learned about my diminished circumstances. What further harm could she do to someone who’d lost everything?

But then, at the start of my sixth week in Paris, I opened my AOL account and saw—amid the usual detritus sent to me from loan sharks and penis-extension hucksters—an email marked: meganricks@aol.com.

I hit the READ button nervously, preparing myself for a “Never write to me again” letter . . . given that, the one time I called her after everything blew up, she told me that, as far as she was concerned, I was dead. But now I read:

Dear Dad

Thanks for all your emails. Paris sounds cool. School is still hard—and I’m still getting a lot of crap from people in my class about what you did. And I still find it hard to understand how you could have done that with one of your students. Mom told me I was to tell her if you made contact with me—but I’ve been reading all your emails at school. Keep writing me—and I’ll make sure Mom doesn’t know we’re in contact.

Your daughter

Megan

PS I’m still angry at you . . . but I miss you too.

I put my face in my hands after reading this—and found myself sobbing. Your daughter. That said it all. After nearly three months of thinking that I had lost Megan forever, here was the response I had been hoping for. I’m still angry at you . . . but I miss you too.

Hitting the REPLY button, I wrote:

Dear Megan

It was wonderful hearing from you. You’re right to be angry with me. I’m angry with me. I did something stupid—but by the time I realized I had made a terrible mistake, things started to spin out of my control and I found myself unable to stop bad things from happening. However, you do need to know that people took my mistake and used it for their own aims. I am not trying to make excuses for what I did. I accept responsibility—and will always feel terrible for hurting you. I am simply so pleased that we are now back in contact with each other—and promise to keep writing you every day.

I’m sure that, very soon, things will get easier at school . . . and that you will be able to put so much of this behind you. I appreciate how difficult it is not telling your mother that we’re in touch. In time, I hope that your mom and I will be able to be on friendly terms with each other—because I’m sure that’s what you want too. Always know that I think the world of you and am here for you whenever you need me. Meanwhile I promise to write you every day.

Love

Dad

I read through the email several times before sending it, wanting to double-check that it was devoid of self-pity, that it didn’t come across as a self-justification, and that—most of all—it communicated to my daughter how much I loved and missed her.

As I stood up to leave, the man behind the desk looked up from his newspaper and said, “Bad news?”

This threw me—and made me realize he’d been studying me while I was reading Megan’s email.

“Not at all.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“Because it’s good news.”

“I hope there will be some more for you tomorrow.”

There was no further word from Megan for the next few days—even though I emailed her every afternoon, keeping the tone anecdotal, filling her in on life in my quartier. After three days, I received the following:

Dear Dad

Thanks for the last couple of emails. I was on a school trip to Cleveland . . . b-o-r-i-n-g . . . and only got back yesterday. I went into your office at home last night, and found an old map of Paris, and looked up where you are. Rue de Paradis—I like the name. I had to be very careful about going into your office, as Mom told me it was off-limits, and Gardner hasn’t taken it over yet . . .

Gardner. As in: Gardner Robson. The man who helped engineer my catastrophe and had also taken my wife away from me. The very sight of his name on the computer screen made me grip the sides of the plastic chair and try to control the rage that I still felt.

Gardner hasn’t taken it over yet . . .

Why not take over my office when he’s taken over everything else?

I read on:

I find Gardner very hard to live with. You know he used to be in the Air Force and he keeps telling me that he likes things “ship shape.” If I leave a jacket on the staircase when I come home from school, or if I’ve forgotten to make my bed, that’s not “ship shape.” He can be all right as long as you do things his way, and Mom seems totally in lurve with him . . . but I’m still not totally sold on him as a stepdad. I keep thinking it would be cool to visit you in Paris, but I know that Mom would never let me . . . and, anyway, I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about what you’ve done. Mom said you wanted to end the marriage . . .

She said what? Given that she had taken up with Robson well before my scandal hit the front pages—and given that I begged her repeatedly for a second chance—how dare she twist the truth and then feed our daughter this lie . . . a lie that Megan understandably interpreted as, in part, a rejection of herself.

I read on:

. . . and that’s why you cheated on Mom with that student and then fled overseas when everything got too hot. Is this true? I hope not.

Your daughter

Megan

I slammed my fist so hard on the desk that the guy behind the counter looked up in surprise.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said.

“Bad news today?” he asked.

“Yeah. Very bad.”

I turned back to the computer, hit the REPLY button, and wrote:

Dearest Megan

I have made many mistakes in my life, and have been guilty of all sorts of wrong calls. But I never—repeat: never —wanted to end the marriage to your mom. That was her decision—and one which I tried to talk her out of. If I had my way, I’d still be living at home with you and your mom. Please understand that your mom ended the marriage because she was angry with me for what I had done . . . but she wasn’t exactly blameless for the way things turned out. But, once again, let me reemphasize the fact that being away from you—and being unable to see you on a daily basis—is so terribly hard. And my one great hope is that I’ll be seeing you very soon indeed.

Love

Dad

PS It’s very important that you don’t raise any of this with your mother. If you start asking her questions about whether she wanted to divorce me, she might get suspicious and wonder if we’re in touch. The last thing I want is to lose contact with you.

After hitting the SEND button, I turned to the guy behind the counter and said, “Apologies again for punching the desk.”

“You’re not the first. A lot of bad news gets read here every day. But maybe there’ll be good news for you tomorrow.”

The guy was right. When I returned the next afternoon, there was a reply from Megan.

Hi Dad

Thanks for writing what you did. I’m still confused by it all. Like who’s telling the truth here? But it’s good to know that you didn’t want to leave us. That means a lot. And don’t worry about Mom. She’ll never know we’ve been writing each other. But do keep the emails coming. I really like them.

Love

Megan

The fact that she signed the email with “Love” . . . that was not simply “good news.” That was the best news I had received since this whole nightmare started. And I immediately wrote back:

Dearest Megan

It really doesn’t matter who is telling the truth here. What does matter is that we stay close. And as I said yesterday, I’m sure that we will be seeing each other again very soon.

Love

Dad

It was a Friday when I sent that email—so it didn’t surprise me that I didn’t hear from her over the weekend. As she had a computer in her room at home, I knew it might be dangerous if I emailed her on Saturday or Sunday . . . just on the off chance that her mother or Robson might walk into her room when she was opening her mailbox (yes, this was overly cautious on my part—but I wanted nothing to jeopardize our correspondence, let alone land Megan in trouble at home). So I resisted the temptation to write her—and just continued on with my usual routine. Wake up at eight, the morning shop, the morning write, lunch, out the door by 1:30 PM at the latest, movies, home by midnight, a Zopiclone sleeping tablet chased with herbal tea, sleep . . . and the inevitable 2:00 AM wake-up call when Omar came rolling in drunk (he did this nightly without fail) and proceeded to pee loudly. Though his loud bodily functions would always snap me into consciousness, the Zopiclone ensured that I’d pass out a few minutes after this wake-up call. As such, I gave daily thanks to that hotel doctor who had overprescribed me one hundred and twenty tabs of this knockout drug.

But every morning I awoke to the charming discovery that Omar had left the toilet a mess. After weeks of having to clean up after him, I finally hit the wall. It was the day after I had received my last email from Megan—and the large pool of urine on the floor sent me to his door. I banged on it loudly. He answered after a minute, dressed in stained boxer shorts and an AC Milan T-shirt that strained to make it over his vast gut.

“What?” he asked, looking half asleep.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“You talk to me? Why?”

“It’s about how you leave the toilet.”

“How I leave toilet?” he said, getting a certain edge to his voice. I tried to adopt a reasonable tone.

“Look, we both have to share the toilet—”

“We share toilet?” he said, sounding outraged.

“We both use the same toilet at different times.”

“You want we use it together?”

“I want you to lift up the seat when you pee, please. And I always want you to flush the toilet and use the scrubbing brush when—”

“Fuck you,” he said and slammed the door.

So much for my attempts at diplomacy. The next morning I found Omar had pissed everywhere . . . not just on the toilet seat and its adjoining walls, but on my front door as well. For the first time since moving in, I ventured back to the offices of Sezer Confection. Mr. Tough Guy let me in with a scowl. Monsieur looked away as I spoke. In other words, business as usual.

“There is a problem?” Sezer asked.

I explained what had happened.

“Maybe it was a cat,” he said.

“Yeah—and he happened to arrive on a magic carpet with a full bladder. It was Omar.”

“You have proof?”

“Who else would piss on my door?”

“I am not Sherlock Holmes.”

“You need to talk to Omar,” I said.

“If I do not have proof that it was his piss on your door . . .”

“Can you at least get someone to clean it off?”

“No.”

“Surely as the building manager—”

“We clean the corridors. We make certain that the éboueurs pick up the rubbish every day. But if you piss on a door—”

“I didn’t piss on the door.”

“That’s your story. But as I said: since you have no proof, I must assume—”

“Forget it,” I said and started walking out.

“One small thing,” Sezer said. “I have had word about Adnan.”

I stopped and turned around.

“And?” I asked.

“As predicted, he was arrested as soon as he stepped off the plane in Istanbul last month. They brought him to Ankara for formal sentencing—as he had been found guilty in his absence. He got fifteen years.”

I heard myself say, “That’s not my fault.” I regretted the comment immediately. Sezer put his fingertips together and smiled.

“Who said it was your fault?” he asked.

I washed down the door myself that day. And the toilet walls. And scrubbed the bowl clean yet again. That night, after Omar had had his late-night piss, I found I couldn’t get back to sleep. Though I did my best to rationalize what had happened—to tell myself that Adnan had been on the run for years and had simply been lucky to escape being controlled until that morning when he came to fetch me—I couldn’t pardon myself. Another ruined life, courtesy of yours truly.

There is only one cure for a sleepless night: work. I wrote like a maniac: five pages before dawn. It was early days yet—page thirty-five of what would be a very big book—but already, my protagonist, Bill, was nine years old and listening to his parents tear each other apart while drinking highballs in their New Jersey kitchen.

I was writing this scene—and feeling very pleased with it—when I noticed the leak. It was coming from the little cabinet below the sink. A small pool of water had gathered on the scuffed linoleum. I stood up from the desk, went over, and opened the cabinet. The cause of the leak was immediately evident. A piece of tape, fastened to the waste pipe, had come loose. There were a few loose tiles at the bottom of the cabinet. An old roll of black duct tape was positioned on one of them. I picked it up. In doing so, the tile beneath it came away. There was a small piece of plastic protruding. I pulled at it—and discovered a little carrier bag hidden in a hole that had been dug crudely into the floor. Inside were tightly rolled wads of banknotes, around twenty of them—each individually secured with a rubber band. I undid the first wad. The currency contained within was a mishmash of five-, ten-, and twenty-euro notes. I counted out the twenty notes contained in the bundle. It came to a total of two hundred euros exactly. I unrolled a second wad. Another thirty notes totaling almost exactly one thousand euros. Another roll. The same setup. By the time all the wads were open and spread flat on the linoleum, I saw that I was staring at four thousand euros.

Outside, light was smudging the night sky. I carefully re-rolled all the banknotes and put them back into the bag. Then I pushed it back down into the hole and covered it with the loose tile before tearing off a piece of duct tape to plug up the leaking pipe. That done, I stood up and made coffee and sat at my desk, staring out at the dirty window and realizing that I had a major moral dilemma on my hands. Four thousand euros. At my current rate of expenditure, it would buy me almost another four months in Paris. And I knew how easy it would be to say nothing about my find. Especially with Adnan locked away in Ankara.

But if I said nothing—and I got my additional four months—then what?

Guilt, guilt, and more guilt. Though I’d probably get away with it, I wouldn’t let myself get away with it.

I finished the coffee. I grabbed my notepad and scribbled the following note:

Dear M. Sezer

I would like to make contact with Adnan’s wife to inquire directly about his situation. Might you please have a postal or email address for her?

Amicalement

And I signed my name.

I went out and placed the note in the mailbox for SEZER CONFECTION. Then I returned to my room and rolled down the blind and set my alarm clock and pulled off my clothes and finally fell into bed. I slept straight through until 1:00 PM. When I awoke, I noticed a scrap of paper that had been slipped under my door. The writing was spindly, small:

Her name is Mme Z. Pafnuk. Her email is: z.pafnuk@atta.tky. She knows who you are and what happened.

The note was unsigned. Leave it to Monsieur Sezer to twist the knife at any given opportunity.

I went off to a movie. When I returned to my quartier after dusk, I stopped at the Internet café. There was one email awaiting me online:

Harry:

The librarian at Megan’s school noticed that she was spending excessive amounts of time on the computer. When challenged as to what she was doing, she said that she was merely surfing the Net—but appeared very nervous. The librarian informed the school principal, who called me, stating that he was worried she might be having an inappropriate correspondence with a stranger. When she got home, I insisted she tell me the truth. She refused, so I then demanded she open her AOL mailbox for me. That’s when I discovered all your emails to her—which she had dutifully saved. Your attempts to wriggle your way back into her life—and play the caring father—are nothing short of disgusting. Just as your pathetic attempts to demonize me are contemptuous. You only have one person to blame for your disaster—and that is yourself.

I had a long talk with Megan last night and informed her, in graphic detail, why that student of yours killed herself. She knew most of it already—because her classmates in school haven’t been able to stop hounding her about it. But what she didn’t know was just how horribly you had behaved toward that unfortunate girl. And now Megan wants nothing to do with you. So don’t write her again. I promise you she won’t respond. And know this: if you make any other attempts to make personal contact with her, legal steps will be taken to make certain you are permanently barred from setting foot within a mile from where we live.

Don’t bother to reply to this letter. It will be deleted upon receipt.

Susan

I found myself shaking so badly as I finished reading this email that I had to hold on to the cheap wooden table on which the computer rested . . . what she didn’t know was just how horribly you had behaved toward that unfortunate girl. Another lie—and one perpetrated by Robson in his campaign to ruin me. And now Megan wants nothing to do with you. Pressing my fingertips against my eyes, I tried very hard to stop myself from crying. When I brought myself under control, I pulled away my hands—and saw that the young bearded guy behind the café counter was studying me. When our eyes met, he turned away—embarrassed that I caught him looking at me in such distress. I wiped my eyes and came over to the counter.

“A drink?” he asked me.

“An espresso, please,” I said.

“More bad news?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Maybe things will change.”

“Not this time.”

He finished making the coffee and placed it in front of me. Then he reached for a bottle of Scotch and poured out a small shot for me.

“Here—drink,” he said.

“Thank you.”

I threw back the whisky. It stung going down, but I could also feel its immediate balming effect. After gulping the refill that he poured me, I asked him, “Do you speak Turkish?”

“Why do you want to know this?” he asked.

“Because I need to write somebody an email in Turkish.”

“What sort of email?”

“A personal email.”

“I am not a translator.”

“It’s only three lines long.”

A pause. I could see he was sizing me up, wondering why I needed to write something in Turkish.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

I told him and proffered my hand.

“I’m Kamal,” he said. “And this translation—it is just three lines?”

“That’s right.”

He pushed a pad toward me.

“OK,” he said. “Write.”

I picked up the stub of a pencil that he placed on top of the pad and wrote, in French, the veiled communiqué I had been hatching in my head since waking up this afternoon:

Dear Mrs. Pafnuk

I am the new resident of the room which Adnan used to live in. I was just wondering if there was anything he left behind that he needs to be sent on to him. Please send him my best wishes, and tell him I remain grateful to him for his kindnesses shown to me. I think of him often and would like to offer my assistance if his family is in need of any help.

Yours sincerely

And I signed it with my email address.

I pushed the pad toward the guy. He looked down at the message.

“It’s eight lines, not three,” he said, then flashed me the smallest of smiles.

“You have the email address?” he asked.

I handed over the scrap of paper slipped under my door.

“OK,” he said. “I take care of it.”

He disappeared over to a terminal. A few minutes went by. He finished typing and said, “It’s sent.”

“What do I owe you?”

“One euro for the coffee, the whisky is on the house.”

“And for the translation?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“I knew Adnan.”

That threw me.

“Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

But so much is my fault.

I was tempted to send Megan one more email—but figured she would now report it immediately to her mother, and Susan would then make good on her threat to get a restraining order, and I wouldn’t have the money to fight it, and any hope of ever seeing Megan again . . .

Abandon all hope of that. Your ex-wife has ensured that she’ll despise you forever.

I spent the next few days in a depressed fog—going through the motions of my routine, but almost catatonic with grief as the realization hit home: my contact with Megan is over. Every day I checked my email, trying to convince myself that she mightn’t have listened to her mother and decided to risk contact with me. But the mailbox remained empty . . . until, around a week later, when there was a reply waiting for me from Mrs. Pafnuk. It was written in Turkish and Kamal translated it for me.

Dear Mr. Ricks

I was very pleased to hear from you. So too was Adnan, whom I visited yesterday. He said that the conditions are dreadful, but he can do nothing except try to stay sane and see the time out. He sends you his best wishes—and asks me to convey to you his feelings of friendship, and hopes that you will look around his room carefully and see if you can find a storage area where he kept something very special. He senses that you have already found it—and know its contents—but are being understandably cautious. Please contact me again by email to let me know if you have found what he hopes you have found. Once again, my husband thanks you greatly for your assistance and sends you fraternal greetings.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Z. Pafnuk

When Kamal finished reading the email out to me in French, he pursed his lips and said, “She obviously hired the local scribe in her village to write this for her.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“Adnan told me she could hardly read or write. He would come here twice a week to write her—and he would dictate to me what to write, because he also couldn’t read or write that much either.”

“So you’re the local scribe here as well?”

“You run an Internet café in a quartier like this, you end up writing many emails for people. But by this time next year, this café will be no more. Our lease is up in nine months—and I know that the landlord will double the rent. Because the quartier is changing. The French are moving back.”

“The wealthy French?” I asked.

“Bien sûr. The bobos. They’re buying up all the loft spaces in the Tenth and pushing property prices way up. I promise you, eighteen months from now this café will be a chic restaurant or a boutique that sells expensive soaps. Within two years, the only Turks you will find around here will be the waiters.”

“And what will you do?” I asked.

“Survive, comme d’habitude. Do you want to reply to this email?”

“Yes,” I said and reached for a pad by the computer and scribbled:

Dear Mrs. Pafnuk

I have found what Adnan left behind. How would you like me to transfer it to you?

Yours sincerely

I handed the note to Kamal.

“How much money did you find?” he asked.

“How do you know it was money?” I asked.

“Do not worry. I will not come to your room tonight and beat you over the head with a hammer and take it.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“So it was a large sum?”

“A good sum, yes.”

He looked at me with care.

“You are an honorable man,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

Two days later, there was a return email from Mrs. Pafnuk. She asked me to send the “item” by Western Union telegraphic exchange to their office in Ankara. “I will be visiting Adnan on Sunday and can collect it then.”

After translating her email, Kamal said, “There is a Western Union on the boulevard de la Villette, near the Belleville metro.”

“I’ll head there right after this.”

“Come on, tell me. How much money did you find?”

I hesitated.

“OK, don’t tell me. I was just curious.”

“Four grand,” I said.

He whistled through his teeth.

“You must be very rich to have decided to inform Adnan’s wife about all that cash—”

“If I was rich,” I said, cutting him off, “I would hardly be living in a chambre de bonne on the rue de Paradis.”

“That is true,” Kamal said. “Then you are evidently a fool.”

I smiled.

“A complete fool,” I said.

I returned to my room and crouched down by the sink and removed the tile and pulled out the plastic bag. Then I stuffed every pocket of my jeans and my leather jacket with the rolled-up money. I felt like a drug dealer. It was around 5:00 PM. Night was falling, and I moved quickly through the streets, terrified that irony might strike me at any moment, in the form of the first mugger I’d encounter in Paris—a thug who would have hit the jackpot had he decided I was a suitable target this evening. But my luck held all the way to the boulevard de la Villette. At the little Western Union branch, the clerk behind the grille—an African woman with an impassive face and eyes that showed her suspicion—said nothing as I dug out roll after roll of banknotes. When she had counted them all, she informed me that the cost of sending four thousand euros to Ankara would be one hundred and ten euros—and did I want this sum deducted from the four grand?

I did want it deducted, but . . .

“No,” I said. “I’ll pay for that on top of the four thousand.”

After finishing the Western Union transfer, I returned to Kamal’s café and had him email Mrs. Pafnuk with the reference number she required for collecting the money. When he finished sending this communiqué, he got up and went behind the bar and produced a bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch, and said, “Come on, we drink to your honesty and your stupidity.”

Over the next hour, we drained most of the bottle of Scotch. It had been a very long time since I had downed so much alcohol in one go—and it felt pretty damn good. Kamal told me he was born in Istanbul, but arrived in Paris three decades ago as a five-year-old. “My parents were legal immigrants, so there was no problem with the authorities. But being sent straight into a French school in Saint-Denis was a nightmare. I didn’t speak a word of the language. Happily, nor did half the other children at the school. Still, I caught on to French quickly—because I had no choice. And now . . . now I have a French passport.”

“But are you French?”

“I see myself as French. But the French still see me as an immigré. You are always an outsider here unless you are French. It’s not like London, where everyone is an outsider—the English included—so the city is a big stew. Here the French keep to the French, the North Africans to the North Africans, the Turks to the Turks. Tant pis. It doesn’t bother me. It is just how things are.”

He didn’t reveal too much information about himself. There was a wife, there were two young children, but he mentioned them in a passing sort of way, and when I asked their names, he steered off that subject immediately, turning it back to me, finding out what I did in the States, and discovering that my marriage had recently ended.

“Who was the other woman?” he asked.

“That’s a long story.”

“And where is she now?”

“That’s another long story.”

“You are being reticent.”

“Like yourself.”

A small smile from Kamal. Then: “So what do you do now?”

“I’m trying to be a writer.”

“That pays?”

“No way.”

“So how do you live?”

“With great care. Six weeks from now, my money will run out.”

“And then?”

“I have no idea.”

“Are you looking for work?”

“I have no carte de séjour—and it’s very difficult for Americans to get work permits here.”

“You could ask around at the various universities and colleges.”

No, I couldn’t—because that would mean them checking up on my background, and demanding references from the college where I taught for ten years. And once they found out what happened . . .

“That would be difficult,” I said.

“I see,” he said quietly, then reached for his cigarettes. “So you are in a bad place, yes?”

“That’s one way of saying it.”

“So . . . might you be interested in a job?”

“Like I said, I’m illegal . . .”

“That wouldn’t matter.”

“Why?”

“Because the job I’m proposing wouldn’t be legal, that’s why.”

SEVEN

THE “JOB” WAS an easy one.

“It is a night watchman’s job,” Kamal said. “You come into an office, you sit there, you read, you write, you can even bring a radio or television if you like. You show up at midnight, you leave at six. That’s it.”

“That can’t just be ‘it,’ ” I said. “There must be more to it than that . . .”

“There is nothing more to it except what I said.”

“So what kind of a business is it?”

“That is of no concern of yours.”

“So it’s a completely illegal business then?”

“As I said, that is no concern of yours.”

“Is it drugs?”

“No.”

“Guns?”

“No.”

“Sex slaves?”

“No.”

“Weapons of mass destruction?”

“The business in question is nothing more than a business. But in order to keep you free of questions about this business, it is far simpler that you know nothing about it.”

“And if the cops bust it?”

“That will not happen. Because they are unaware of its existence.”

“Then why do you—they—need a night watchman?”

“Because they do. End of story. But listen, my friend, if you have any doubts, then you do not have to accept the offer—even though it does pay three hundred euros for a six-night week.”

“Fifty euros a night?”

“Your math skills are impressive. It works out at a little more than eight euros an hour—and there’s nothing to the work except sitting at a desk and picking up a telephone on the rare occasion that someone shows up, and then clearing them for entry. That’s it.”

Of course that wasn’t it. I knew that there was something completely sinister about his proposition. I was certain that I might be landing myself in a situation which could be potentially dangerous, or could jeopardize my future freedom. But I found myself being won over by a bleak but consoling thought: Nothing matters. When everything that once mattered to you has been taken away, what’s the point in worrying about a further descent into shit?

Nothing matters. What a liberating idea. Nothing matters, so everything can be risked. Especially when you need the money.

“I’d prefer sixty-five euros a night,” I said.

A small smile from Kamal. He had me.

“I’m certain you would,” he said.

“I really couldn’t do it for less.”

“You’ll take the job no matter what,” he said.

“Don’t be too sure about that.”

“You’ll take it—because you’re desperate.”

There was no hostility in his voice, no smug triumphalism. Just a cool assertion of the truth. I said nothing. Kamal refilled my glass. The whisky went down without burning me—my throat having already been anesthetized by the half bottle of Johnnie Walker that had preceded it.

“Do not fret so much,” Kamal said, lighting up a cigarette.

“I didn’t realize I was fretting.”

“You are always fretting. Go home, sleep off the whisky, then be back here at six tomorrow evening. I will have news by then.”

I returned as requested the following night. When I arrived, Kamal was on the phone, but he motioned me toward a computer. There was one email awaiting me. It was from Adnan’s wife. After hanging up, Kamal translated it for me.

Dear Mr. Ricks

The money arrived this morning. I was stunned by the sum involved—and once again send you manifold thanks for sending it to me. It has, literally, saved our lives. May God bless you and those close to you.

I have no one close to me.

“You have done a good thing,” Kamal said. “And a good deed is always rewarded.”

“Not always.”

“You are a very cynical man. But, in this instance, it is the truth. You have gotten your sixty-five euros a night. The boss was reluctant at first.”

“Who’s the boss?”

“That information is of no interest to you.”

“OK,” I said. “When do I start?”

“Tonight, if that works for you.”

“Fine.”

“Be here at eleven thirty PM and I’ll bring you over to the place.”

“Is it far from here?”

“No.”

“How will I get paid?”

“There will be an envelope waiting for you here every day after one PM. You’ll get off work at six AM, so you can pick up your wages when you wake up. By the way, the boss said that you only need work six days, but if you want the seventh day—”

“I want the seventh day.”

“Done.”

“Can I bring my laptop and books to work?”

“And a radio and anything else to keep you occupied. Trust me, there won’t be much to do.”

When I left Kamal, I walked down to the Faubourg Saint-Martin and dropped thirty euros on a small transistor radio. I returned to my room. I opened a can of soup and cut up some cheese and a few slices of bread, and ate a simple dinner while listening to a concert of Berg and Beethoven on France Musique. Then I made myself a pot of coffee and drank it all. It was going to be a long night.

When I arrived back at the Internet café, I was carrying a small day pack containing my laptop, my radio, a pad and a pen, and a copy of a Simenon novel, Trois chambres à Manhattan, which I was reading in French. Kamal was closing up the place as I entered. He reached behind the bar and dug out two large bottles of Evian.

“You’ll need these for the night ahead,” he said.

He walked among the computers, making certain they were all shut down. Then he turned off all the lights. We stepped outside. He rolled down the large steel shutter, dug out his keys, sealed them with a formidable padlock, and motioned for me to follow him down the rue des Petites Écuries.

“We don’t have far to walk,” he said.

At the end of the street, we turned into the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. We crossed it and passed a showroom for some line of men’s fashions. I knew this small stretch of street well, as it was right around the corner from where I lived. I’d bought a sandwich once from the local greasy souvlaki bar (and lived to eat again). I’d even treated myself to the set seven-euro dinner at the little traiteur asiatique next door. But I hadn’t noticed the tiny doorway just beyond this four-table joint—a doorway that was set back off the street by around ten feet. The alley leading to the door was so narrow that a man with a forty-inch waistline would have had trouble negotiating it. There was a steel door at the end of it. There was a small camera above the door and a spotlight trained on the area below the doorway. There was a keypad with a speakerphone beside it. Kamal punched in six numbers. As he did so, he told me, “The code is one six three two two six. Memorize it, but don’t write it down.”

“Why don’t you want me to write it down?”

“Because I don’t want you to write it down. 1–6–3–2–2–6. You got that?”

I repeated it out loud, then said it a second time, just to make certain that it had adhered to my brain.

“Good,” he said as the door clicked open. We entered a hallway lit by a single naked lightbulb. The walls were unpainted concrete. Ditto the floor. There was a stairway in front of us. Around twelve feet away there was another steel door. Behind it I could hear the low hum of . . . was it something mechanical? . . . machinery, perhaps? . . . and the occasional raised voice? But the sound was muffled. As I strained to hear it, Kamal put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Up the stairs.”

The staircase led to another steel door. This was opened by two keys. Kamal had to put his weight on the door to finish the job and gain us access to a small room. Like the hallway, it had unpainted concrete walls. It was ten by ten, furnished with a beat-up metal desk, a straight-back chair, and nothing else. A closed-circuit television monitor sat on one corner of the desk. It was broadcasting a grainy image of the doorway outside. By the monitor was a speaker and a keypad. There were two doorways off this room. One was opened, showing the interior of an old-fashioned stand-up French toilet. You had to face front and squat as you took a dump. The toilet was also unpainted and seemed to lack a light. The other door was wooden and locked with a sliding bolt. There were no windows in the room—and the one radiator wasn’t throwing off much in the way of heat.

“You expect me to work here?” I asked.

“That is up to you.”

“This place is a shit hole—a cold shit hole with no light.”

“The radiator can be turned up higher.”

“I’ll need some sort of other heat.”

“OK, you can buy an electrical heater for the room—”

“And a desk lamp.”

“Fine. Will you start tonight?”

I looked around, thinking, He’s looking for a deadbeat to do a deadbeat’s job—and he’s sized you up as the perfect candidate.

“All right, I’ll start tonight—but I want some cash to buy paint and stuff tomorrow.”

“If you want to paint the place, you will have to do it during your work hours.”

“Fine by me. But doesn’t anyone use the room by day? Don’t you have a sentry for the morning hours?”

“That is no concern of yours,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a substantial wad of cash. He peeled off three fifty-euro notes and handed them to me.

“This should be sufficient for the paint, the brushes, the heater, the lamp. But provide receipts, please. The boss is finicky about expenses.”

Kamal lit up a cigarette, then said, “So here is how the job works. You arrive here every night at midnight. You let yourself in. Once inside this room, you bolt the door behind you and padlock it shut. Then you sit down and do whatever you want to do for the next six hours, always keeping an eye on the monitor. If you see anyone in the alley who is loitering, you press the number 2–2 on the keypad. This will send a signal to someone that there is an unwanted stranger outside. They will take care of the problem. If a visitor approaches the doorway, he will ring a button which will sound up here on the desk speaker. You press 1–1 on the keypad and say one word, “Oui?” If he is legitimate, he will answer, “I am here to see Monsieur Monde.” Once you have received this answer, you press the ENTER button on the keypad, which will activate the door. You then press 2–3 on the keypad, which will inform the people downstairs that a legitimate visitor is on his way to them.”

“And what will ‘the people downstairs’ do?”

“They will ‘greet’ this legitimate visitor. Now if the person who rings the door doesn’t say, ‘I am here to see Monsieur Monde,’ you press 2–4 on the keypad. This will send a signal that there is an unwanted presence in the alley. Once again, the people downstairs will take care of the problem.”

“It sounds like the people downstairs worry about unwanted guests.”

“I will say this once more. What goes on downstairs does not concern you—and it will never concern you. Believe me, my friend, it is better that way.”

“And say the cops just happen to show up in the alley . . .”

“No problem,” he said, walking over to the door next to the toilet and unbolting it. “This is never locked. If you see the cops on the screen, you exit here. There is a bolt—very strong—on the other side. It will buy you a few minutes’ time, as the cops will have to break the door down. By the time they do that, you will be out of the building. The passage behind here leads down to a basement. There is another door there which leads to a passage into the adjoining building. When you come out of that building, you will be on the rue Martel. The cops will have no idea.”

“This is insane,” I heard myself say out loud.

“Then don’t take the job.”

“Promise me that whatever is going on downstairs isn’t so morally reprehensible . . .” I said.

“No one is being involuntarily harmed,” he said.

I paused, knowing I had to make a decision immediately.

“I will never have to directly meet anyone?” I asked.

“You come at midnight, you go at six. You sit in this room. You don’t leave. You see the people who come here on the monitor. They don’t see you. It is all very elegant.”

“OK,” I said, “we have a deal.”

“Good,” Kamal said.

After taking me again through all the various numbers I had to press, and handing me the assorted keys, he said, “There is just one thing. You must never come here before midnight, you must leave promptly at six. Unless you see the police on the monitor, you must never leave the room until six.”

“Otherwise I’ll turn into a pumpkin?”

“Something like that, yes. D’accord?”

“D’ac.”

“So you are clear about everything?”

“Yes,” I lied. “Everything is perfectly clear.”

EIGHT

NOTHING HAPPENED THAT first night. I set up my laptop. I forced myself to work—my eyes straining under the single naked lightbulb. I pushed myself into writing five hundred words. I turned up the radiator and discovered that it gave off no more heat. I drank the two liters of Evian. I peed several times in the toilet and was grateful that I didn’t need a bowel movement, as I couldn’t have handled standing up to do it. I read some of the Simenon novel—a dark, sparely written tale about a French actor getting over the breakup of his marriage by wandering through the night world of 1950s New York. Around four in the morning, I started to fade—and fell asleep sitting up at the desk. I jolted awake, terrified that I had missed something on the monitor. But the screen showed nothing save the glare of a spotlight on a doorway—an image so grainy it almost seemed as if it was from another era, as if I was looking at the past tense just downstairs.

I read some more. I fought fatigue. I fought boredom. I drew up a list of what I’d buy this afternoon to fix the place up. I kept glancing at my watch, willing 6:00 AM to arrive. When it finally did, I unlocked the door. I turned off the light in the room. I closed the door behind me and locked it. I hit the light for the stairs. At the bottom of them, I stood for a moment, trying to hear any noises from the big steel door at the end of the ground-floor corridor. Nothing. I unlocked the front door. Outside it was still night—a touch of damp in the air, augmenting the chill that had crawled under my skin during those six hours in a badly heated concrete box. I locked the door, my head constantly turning sideways to scan the alleyway and see if anyone was waiting to hit me over the head with a club. But the alley was clear. I finished locking the door. I walked quickly into the street. No cops, no heavies in parkas and balaclava helmets, waiting to have a few words with me. The rue du Faubourg Poissonnière was empty. I turned left and kept moving until I came to a little boulangerie that was on the rue Montholon. This took me a few minutes past my own street, but I didn’t care. I was hungry. I bought two pains au chocolat and a baguette at the boulangerie. I ate one of the croissants on the way back to my chambre. Once inside I took a very hot shower, trying to get some warmth back into my bones. Then I changed into a T-shirt and pajama bottom, and made myself a bowl of hot chocolate. It tasted wonderful. So too did the second pain au chocolat. I pulled the blinds closed. I set the alarm for 2:00 PM I was asleep within moments of crawling into bed.

I slept straight through. It was strange waking up in the early afternoon—and knowing that I wouldn’t see bed again until after six the next morning. Still, I had things to do—so I was up and out the door in ten minutes. Much to my relief—because the paranoid part of me wondered if, indeed, I would get paid at all—an envelope was waiting for me at the Internet café. As agreed there were sixty-five euros inside it.

“Where’s Kamal?” I asked the guy behind the counter—a quiet, sullen-looking man in his late twenties, with a big beard and the telltale bruise on his forehead of a devout Muslim who prostrated himself several times a day in the direction of Mecca.

“No idea,” he said.

“Please tell him I picked this up, and say thanks for me.”

I headed off to a paint shop on the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, and bought two large cans of off-white emulsion and a set of rollers and a paint pan and a tin of white gloss and a brush and a large bottle of white spirit. I would have preferred bringing all the decorating gear to “my office,” but I had to obey the “No Arrival Before Midnight” rule. So I made two trips back to my room with the gear, then headed out back to the Cameroonian dude who had sold me all the bedding and kitchen stuff. Yes, he did have an electric radiator in stock—all mine for a knockdown price of thirty euros.

Getting all the paint stuff to my office that evening proved tricky. Before setting out, I made a pit stop by the alley at around eleven and discovered that, at the start of this laneway, there was a large crevice in a wall: currently filled with rubbish and animal droppings. Never mind—it was perfect for my needs. I returned with two cans of paint and some old newspapers. As I bent down to place the newspapers on the ground inside the crevice—I wanted to avoid getting rat shit on my stuff—the fecal smell became overwhelming. I shoved the two cans of paint in, and returned to my room to bring the next load of stuff over. It took a further run after that to have everything in place.

Then I sat in a bar on the rue de Paradis, nursing a beer and waiting for midnight to arrive. The bar was a dingy joint—all Formica tables and a battered zinc counter, and a French-Turkish barmaid dressed in tight jeans, and a dude with serious tattoos also working the bar, and the jukebox playing crap French rock, and three morose guys hunched over a table, and some behemoth splayed on a barstool, drinking a milky substance that was obviously alcoholic (Pastis? Raki? Bailey’s Irish Cream?) as he was smashed. He looked up when I approached the bar to order my beer—and that’s when I saw it was Omar. It took him a moment or two for his eyes to register it was me. Then his rant started. First in English: “Fucking American, fucking American, fucking American.” Then in French: “Il n’apprécie pas comment je chie.” (“He doesn’t like the way I take a shit.”) Then he pulled out a French passport and started waving it at me, yelling, “Can’t get me deported, asshole.” After that he started muttering to himself in Turkish, at which point I didn’t know what the hell he was saying. Just as I was about to finish my beer and bolt from the place before Omar got more explosive, he put his head down on the bar—in mid-sentence—and passed out.

Without my asking for it, the barmaid brought over another beer.

“If he hates you, you must be all right. C’est un gros lard.”

I thanked her for the beer. I checked my watch—11:53. I downed the pression in three gulps. I headed off.

At midnight precisely, I walked up the alleyway and unlocked the door. Then, in less than a minute, I made three fast trips to retrieve my hidden gear and bring it into the hallway. I bolted the door behind me. There was the same mechanical hum I’d heard yesterday emanating from the door at the end of the corridor. I ignored it and headed upstairs. A minute later, all the gear was in my office and the door locked. I was “in” for the night. I plugged in the electric radiator. I turned on my radio to Paris Jazz. I checked the monitor. All clear in the alley. I opened the first can of paint. I went to work.

That night, nothing happened again—except that I managed to give the office two coats of paint. I did my “job” as well—checking the monitor every few minutes to see if there was anyone lurking in the hallway. There wasn’t. Before I knew it, my watch was reading 5:45 AM—and though it was clear that the second coat wouldn’t sufficiently cover the chalky gray concrete walls, at least I knew that another night had passed.

I packed away all the gear. I washed the brushes in the sink. I left at 6:00 AM exactly. I took several deep gulps of Paris air as I walked down the still-dark street toward the boulangerie. My usual two pains. One eaten on the way home, the second with hot chocolate after a shower. Then—with the aid of Zopiclone—seven hours of void until the alarm woke me at two and a new day started.

That night, I finished painting the walls. I sanded down the woodwork. I left at six. The next night, I finished glossing all the woodwork. Again, there was no activity whatsoever on the monitor. At six that morning, I moved all the empty cans and paint gear out of the office and dumped the lot in the rubbish bins at the end of the alley. When I awoke that afternoon, I went straight over to the café to collect my wages. For the third day running, Mr. Beard with the Prayer Bruise was behind the counter.

“Still no Kamal?” I asked.

“He goes away.”

“He didn’t say anything to me about that.”

“Family problems.”

“Is there a number I could call him on?” I asked.

“Why you want to call him?”

“I liked him. We got on well. And if he’s got some personal problems . . .”

“There is no number for him.”

The tone of voice was definitive. It also didn’t encourage further questioning. So I picked up my pay envelope and said nothing, except, “I want to buy a few more things for the office. Might you be able to get a message from me to the boss?”

“You tell me what you need.”

“A small refrigerator and an electric kettle. It’s very hard to work in that room all night without coffee or hot water. I’d also like a rug. The concrete floor still gives off a bit of damp—”

“I tell him,” he said, cutting me off. Then he picked up a rag and started swabbing down the bar. Our conversation was over.

When I arrived at work that night, a fridge was awaiting me in a corner of the room. Though somewhat battered—with hints of rust on its hinges—it was still working. So too was the electric kettle positioned on top of it. It looked new. When I filled it with water, it boiled its contents in less than a minute. The only problem was, I didn’t have any coffee or tea on hand. But, at least, I now knew that the man in charge was amenable to certain requests—even though there was still no rug.

But there was a change in my usual routine: a visitor in the alleyway. He arrived at 1:48 AM precisely. The phone rang on my desk, jolting me. I looked away from my Simenon novel and turned immediately to the monitor and saw a man of indeterminate age (the grainy image made it hard to discern his features) standing outside. I was instantly nervous. I picked up the phone and said, “Oui?”

His voice was raspy, and French was not his first language. But he still said, “Je voudrais voir Monsieur Monde.”

I hit the 1–1 entrance code. Downstairs I heard the telltale click of the door opening, then the door being closed with a decisive thud. I pressed 2–3 to alert my “neighbors” that they had a legitimate visitor. There were footsteps on the downstairs corridor. There was a knock on another door. The door opened and closed. Then there was silence.

I didn’t see or hear him exit, even though I kept scanning the monitor. There were no other visitors. There were no sounds from down below. My shift ended. I went home.

A few days later, the carpet finally arrived at work—and I began to bring my laptop in every night, forcing myself back into the novel. As there was no other work to do but this work—my quota of words per night—I kept at it. Days would pass when no one would ring the bell, demanding admittance. Then there would be a night when four separate callers came to the door, all men of indeterminate age, all asking to see Monsieur Monde. I’d hit the button, the door would open and close, there would be footsteps, another door opening and closing, end of story.

A month passed. February gave way to March. There was an ever-early lightening of the evening sky; the days still cold, but brighter. Had I been in a normal state of mind, the thought would have struck me: You have been working for more than five weeks now without a day off. But I was still operating on some sort of weird autopilot: work, sleep, pick up cash, movies, work. If I took a day off, I might fall out of routine . . . and if I fell out of routine, I might start to reflect about things. And if I started to reflect about things . . .

So I stuck to the routine. Day in, day out, nothing changed.

Until something unsettling happened. I was nursing a post-cinemathèque beer in the little bar on the rue de Paradis. I picked up a copy of Le Parisien that had been left on a table and started flicking through its contents. There, on the bottom right-hand corner of page 5, under the headline, BODY OF MISSING MAN FOUND IN SAINT-OUEN, was a photograph of someone named Kamal Fatel. Though the photo was grainy, there was no doubt that it was the same Kamal who ran the Internet café and found me my current job. The story was a short one:

The body of Kamal Fatel, 35, a resident of rue Carnot in Saint-Ouen, was found last night in an unused Dumpster near the Périphérique. According to the police at the scene, the body, though badly decomposed, had been identified through dental records of the deceased. The Saint-Ouen medical examiner issued a statement saying that, due to the state of the cadaver, the exact time and cause of death had yet to be ascertained. According to Inspector Philippe Faure of the commissariat de police in Saint-Ouen, Fatel’s wife, Kala, had thought her husband was traveling in Turkey to visit relatives there. Fatel, born in Turkey in 1972, had been a resident in France since 1977 and had run an Internet café on the rue des Petites Écuries . . .

I downed the dregs of the beer in one go. I grabbed the paper. I walked with considerable speed toward the rue des Petites Écuries. Mr. Beard was behind the counter of the café. I dropped the paper in front of him and asked, “Did you see this?”

His face registered nothing.

“Yes, I saw it,” he said.

“Aren’t you shocked?”

“This morning, when I first saw the story, yes, I was a little shocked.”

“A little shocked? The guy is dead.”

“Like his wife, I had thought he had gone back to Turkey. But . . .”

“Who was behind it?”

“Why should I know such a thing? I worked with Kamal. He was not my friend.”

“Was he in some sort of trouble with somebody?”

“Once again, you ask questions which I cannot answer. His life was not known to me.”

I could tell he was lying—because his eyes kept darting away from mine whenever I tried to eyeball him. Or if he wasn’t lying, he was working very hard at not appearing nervous—and failing badly.

“Will there be a funeral?”

“In Turkey.”

“How do you know that?” I challenged.

He tensed, realizing he’d just let himself be caught out.

“Just a guess,” he said, then stood up and said, “I am closing now.”

“Do I have time to check my email?”

“No.”

“Just give me five minutes, no more.”

“Be fast.”

I sat down at one of the computer terminals, clicked on Internet Explorer, and then typed in AOL. Within a minute, my mailbox covered a corner of the screen: with one actual email . . . from, of all people, my former colleague Doug Stanley. It read:

Harry:

Sorry to have fallen off the face of the planet during the past few weeks. I’m going to cut to the chase straightaway—because I’ve never tried to bullshit you about things . . . and I certainly won’t start now. Now that the dust has started to settle here, Susan and Robson have gone public as a couple. The official version is that, in the wake of your disgrace, Susan was “emotionally shattered.” Robson befriended her—and then they “became close” . . . nice euphemism, eh? As bullshit goes, this is truly choice. Everyone knew they were an item long before everything blew up in your face. And yeah, I do realize now—especially after all that’s gone down—that I should have told you long ago what was happening between them. I still feel damn guilty about that—thinking that, if you had been aware of their involvement, things might have turned out differently for you.

Anyway, you also need to know that Robson has been spreading word around the college that you have hit the skids in Paris. Worse, he’s also let it be known that he gleaned this information from Megan. In his version of things—and, believe me, I know that it is simply his version (and, as such, far from the truth)—you’ve been sending her this series of self-pitying emails, playing up your impoverished circumstances and trying to point the finger at Susan. Again, let me reemphasize the fact that I know he’s twisting whatever you sent to Megan—just as the sad, what a tragic story tone he adopts when relating this information makes me want to punch out his lights. But, as you well know, the man is the all-powerful Dean of the Faculty—which, in our little world, gives him power over all of us . . . especially if we don’t have tenure.

I thought long and hard about whether I should burden you with this ongoing horseshit—but eventually decided that you did need to know. My advice to you is: consider that chapter of your life closed, and do know that if things in Paris are as bad as Robson described, they will definitely get better . . . because you will make them better. And there is one small bit of good news from this Ohio backwater: word has it that Robson has decided not to proceed with the college’s lawsuit against you. The son of a bitch was finally convinced that continuing to crucify you was pointless.

I’m certain the separation from Megan is an ongoing agony. Trust me: she will come around. It might take some time—but it will happen. She will want to see her father again.

Finally, let me know if you are totally strapped, as I’m happy to wire over a thousand bucks pronto. I wish it could be more, but you know what they pay third-tier academics in the Ohio sticks. I certainly don’t want to see you on the street.

Bon courage.

Best

Doug

PS Did you stay at the hotel I recommended in the Sixteenth? If so, I hope you fared better than some friends I sent there last month. It seems they had a run-in with some creep at the front desk.

Trust me: she will come around. I doubt that, Doug. Without question, Susan and her new man had poisoned Megan against me—and there would be no more emails from my daughter. That knowledge—and the pervasive sense of loss that accompanied it—made Doug’s other news (Robson has been spreading word around the college that you have hit the skids in Paris) seem unimportant. Let Robson tell everyone that I had fallen on hard times. It no longer mattered what people thought of me. Because I no longer mattered—to anyone else, let alone myself.

And hitting the REPLY button next to Doug’s email, I wrote:

It was very good to hear from you. Regarding Robson’s continued demolition job on me . . . my only response is: you’re right. That chapter of my life is finished, so I can’t really worry about what is being said about me around a college to which I will never return . . . though I am relieved that Robson has called off his legal thugs. But you should know that I had managed to reestablish contact with Megan—and she had seemed genuinely pleased to have a running correspondence with her father—until Susan found out about it and . . .

Well, you can guess what happened next.

As to my situation in Paris . . . no, I am not completely down and out. But it isn’t exactly a romantic setup either. I live in a small room in a grubby building in the Tenth. I am working illegally—a non-event night watchman’s job . . . but one which gives me the opportunity to write until dawn. I have no friends here . . . but I am making use of the city and I am managing to keep my head above water. I was immensely touched by your offer of a cash injection—as always, you are a true mensch—but my straits aren’t that dire. I am managing to stay afloat.

And yes, I did spend several nights at that hotel in the Sixteenth. And yes, your friends are right: the guy at the front desk was a real little monster.

Keep in touch.

Best

As soon as I sent this email, I switched over to the New York Times website. As I scanned that day’s paper, an Instant Message prompt popped up on the screen. It was a return email from Doug:

Hey Harry

Glad to hear it’s not that desperate for you over there . . . and I’m really pleased you’re writing. Got to dash to a class, but here’s a Paris tip: if you’re in the mood to meet people—or are simply bored on a Sunday night—then do consider checking out one of the salons that are held around town. Jim Haynes—one of life’s good guys—holds a great bash up at his atelier in the Fourteenth. But if you want a more bizarre experience, then drop in to Lorraine L’Herbert’s soiree. She’s a Louisiana girl—starting to look down that long barrel of the shotgun marked sixty. Ever since she moved over to Paris in the early seventies, she’s been running a salon every Sunday night in her big fuck-off apartment near the Panthéon. She doesn’t “invite” people. She expects people to invite themselves. And all you have to do is ring her on the number below and tell her you’re coming this week. Naturally, if she asks how you found out about her salon, use my name. But she won’t ask—because that’s not how it works.

Keep in touch, eh?

Best

Doug

On the other side of the café, Mr. Beard said, “I close now. You go.”

I scribbled the phone number of Lorraine L’Herbert on a scrap of paper, then shoved it into a jacket pocket, thinking that—as lonely as I often felt—the last thing I wanted to do was rub shoulders with a bunch of expatriate types in some big-deal apartment in the Sixth, with everyone (except yours truly) basking in their own fabulousness. Still, the guilty man in me thought that I owed Doug the courtesy of taking the number down.

Mr. Beard coughed again.

“OK, I’m out of here,” I said.

As I left, he said, “Kamal was stupid man.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“He got himself dead.”

That phrase lodged itself in my brain and wouldn’t let go. For the next few days, I searched every edition of Le Parisien and Le Figaro—which also had good local Paris news—to see if there were any further developments in the case. Nothing. I mentioned Kamal’s death once more to Mr. Beard—asking him if he had heard anything more. His response: “They now think it is suicide.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Around.”

“Around where?”

“Around.”

“So how did he take his life?”

“He cut his throat.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“It is what I heard.”

“He cut his own throat while walking along a street, then tossed himself in a Dumpster?”

“I report only what I have been told.”

“Told by whom?”

“It is not important.”

Then he disappeared into a back room.

Why didn’t I walk away then and there? Why didn’t I execute an about-face and vanish? I could have gone home and cleared out my chambre in a matter of minutes, and pitched up somewhere else in Paris. Surely there were grubbier streets in grubbier quartiers, where it was possible to find another shitty room in which I could eke out a living until the money ran out.

And then? And then?

That was the question that kept plaguing me as I sat at the little bar on the rue de Paradis, nursing a pression and wishing that the barmaid was available. I found myself studying the curve of her hips, the space between her breasts that was revealed by her V-neck T-shirt. Tonight I wanted sex for the first time since Susan had thrown me out all those months ago. It’s not that I hadn’t had a sexual thought since then. It’s just that I had been so freighted with the weight of all my assorted disasters that the idea of any sort of intimacy with someone else seemed like a voyage into a place that I now associated with danger. But never underestimate the libido—especially when it has been oiled with a couple of beers. As I found myself looking over the barmaid, she caught my appraising stare and smiled, then flicked her head toward a beefy guy with tattoos who had his back to us as he pulled a croque monsieur out of a small grill. The nod said it all: I’m taken. But the smile seemed to hint an “Alas” before that statement. Or, at least, that’s what I wanted to believe. Just as I wanted to believe that Kamal “got himself killed” because he owed somebody money, or he was in on a drug deal that had gone wrong, or he’d been fingering the till at the café, or he’d looked the wrong way at some woman. Or . . .

A half-dozen other scenarios filled my head . . . along with another pervasive thought. Remember what Kamal told you when he first offered you the job: That is of no concern of yours. Good advice. Now finish the beer and get moving. It’s nearly midnight. Time to go to work.

Later that night, I opened my notebook and a piece of paper fell out of one of its back pages. It was the scrap on which I had written Lorraine L’Herbert’s phone number. I stared at it. I thought, What can I lose? It’s just a party, after all.

“It’s not a party,” said the uppity little man who answered L’Herbert’s phone the next afternoon. He was American with a slightly simpering voice and a decidedly pompous manner. “It’s a salon.”

Thanks for the semantical niceties, pal.

“Are you having one this week?”

“Comme d’habitude.”

“Well, can I book a place?”

“If we can fit you in. The list is very, very tight, I’m afraid. Your name, please?”

I told him.

“Visiting from . . .?”

“I live here now, but I’m from Ohio.”

“People actually live in Ohio?”

“The last time I looked.”

“What’s your line of endeavor?”

“I’m a novelist.”

“Published by . . .?”

“That’s pending.”

He issued a huge sigh, as if to say, Not another would-be writer.

“Well, you know that there is a contribution of twenty euros. Please arrive with it in an envelope, on which your name is clearly printed. Take down the door code now and don’t lose it, because we don’t answer the phone after five PM on the day of the salon. So if you misplace it, you will not gain entry. And the invitation is for yourself only. If you show up with anyone else, both of you will be turned away.”

“I’ll be alone.”

“No smoking, by the way. Madame L’Herbert hates tobacco. We like all our guests to arrive between seven and seven thirty PM. And dress is smart. Remember: a salon is theater. Any questions?”

Yeah. How do you spell up your ass?

“The address, please?” I asked.

He gave it to me. I wrote it down.

“Do come prepared to dazzle,” he said. “Those who shine get asked back. Those who don’t . . .”

“I’m a total dazzler,” I said.

He laughed a snide laugh. And said, “We’ll see about that.”

NINE

A BIG FUCK-OFF APARTMENT near the Panthéon.

Those words came back to me that Sunday evening as I walked up the boulevard Saint-Michel in the direction of the Luxembourg Gardens. I had dressed carefully for the occasion: a black shirt and black pants and a black leather jacket I had bought at that secondhand shop on the Faubourg Saint-Martin the previous day. It was a cold night, and the jacket didn’t put up much resistance against the cutting wind. I was around fifteen minutes early, so I stopped in a nearby café and ordered a whisky. Not a single malt or some other premium brand. Just a standard Scotch. When the waiter deposited the little bill with the drink and I turned it over and saw that it cost eleven euros, I tried to stop myself from gasping. Eleven euros for a shot of whisky? Welcome to the Sixth.

I would have spent a good hour nursing the whisky and reading the Simenon novel La neige était sale, which I had just picked up. But mindful of the seven thirty cutoff point, I finished the Scotch, placed the necessary money on the table, tried not to think too hard about how eleven euros could buy me a day’s food, and headed off to Lorraine L’Herbert’s salon.

The address was 19 rue Soufflot. Très haussmannien. You walk around Paris, you see dozens of examples of Baron Haussmann’s architectural left-behinds. This one was no different from the others: a large, formidable building, around six stories tall, with the requisite small baroque flourishes. Only given its location—just down the street from the Panthéon—and its elegant lobby, it was clear that this immeuble haussmannien was also a testament to imposing grand bourgeois values.

Which meant that, even before I had entered Lorraine L’Herbert’s building, I felt shabby and humbled by it.

I punched in the code. The door opened with a click. Inside was a speakerphone. I picked it up and pushed the button marked with her name. It was answered by the American who had vetted me on the phone. Voices could be heard in the background.

“Name, please . . . Votre nom, s’il vous plaît,” he said.

I gave it to him.

“One second, please . . . un instant . . .” Then: “Fourth floor left . . . quatrième étage gauche.”

The elevator was a small gilded cage. I took it to the top floor. Before it reached four, I could hear the sounds of loud conversation. When the elevator opened, I turned left and rang the bell. The door swung back. A short man dressed in black slacks and a black turtleneck was standing sentry. He had close-cropped hair and carried a stylish stainless-steel clipboard and an expensive pen.

“Monsieur Ricks?”

I nodded.

“Henry Montgomery. Madame L’Herbert’s assistant. Your envelope, please.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled it out and handed it over. He checked that my name was—as instructed—printed on its front. Having verified that, he said, “Coats in the first room down the corridor to your left, food and drink dans la cuisine. But after you’ve deposited your coat, you must come back here so I can take care of the introduction to Madame. D’accord?”

I nodded again—and followed Montgomery’s pointed finger down the corridor. It was a very long corridor, with high ceilings. The walls were white. There was a big abstract canvas—in five sections—that covered much of the wall space. Each panel was a varying shade of green, the outer ones lightish in timbre, the inner ones amalgamating near-blackish hue. From my fifteen-second assessment, it looked like imitation Klein or Rothko, and was showing its thirty years badly.

But I decided that now was not the moment to proclaim such thoughts at the top of my lungs. Tourette’s hadn’t seized me yet.

Instead, I followed the corridor to the first door. It was already open. It was a small room with a double bed and one of those plastic blow-up chairs that were popular back at the end of the sixties, but now looked like something out of the Paleozoic era. Over the bed (in what I presumed was the guest room) was a big garish nude of a blond, brassy woman with Medusa-like hair and a multicolored (maybe psychedelic?) menagerie of wild animals and exotic flora sprouting out of her ample bush of pubic hair.

I couldn’t imagine having a decent night’s sleep beneath such a painting. Still, its cheesy Summer of Love garishness did hold my attention. I must have lingered a little too long for Montgomery’s liking, as I heard his voice behind me.

“Monsieur Ricks . . . Madame awaits you.”

“Sorry, I was just . . .”

I motioned toward the canvas.

“You approve?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” I lied. “Especially as it’s so representative of a certain epoch.”

“You know the artist?”

“Peter Max?”

“Oh, please . . . he was so commercial.”

And this guy isn’t?

“So who’s the artist?”

“Pieter de Klop, bien sûr.”

“Yeah, bien sûr.”

“And you know that Madame was his muse.”

“That’s Lorraine L’Herbert?” I asked, hearing the shocked tone in my voice.

“Yes, that is indeed Madame,” he said.

He motioned for me to follow him. We walked back down the corridor, then turned left into a large reception room. Like everywhere else I’d seen so far, it had white walls, a high ceiling, and bad pop art. This room, however, was also large. Around thirty by twenty. Though it was currently packed with people—most of whom seemed to be wearing black (at least, I wasn’t going to stand out from the crowd)—I could see that there were white leather sectional sofas dotted around the place, and a few more blow-up plastic chairs, and two more nude studies of Madame by the same artist. But I was steered away from the paintings by Montgomery. His hand firmly on my shoulder, he spun me around toward a voluminous woman—ample in all physical departments. She was nearly six feet tall, and must have weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds. Her fleshy face was Kabuki-like, courtesy of a pancake-based makeup that tinted her near white, offset by big red-rouged lips. There were gold zodiac symbols dangling from her neck, and every finger had a ring, all of which seemed New Age in design. Her hair—now silver—was braided, and stretched down the length of her back. She was dressed in a caftan and was holding a glass of champagne. With his hand still on my shoulder, Montgomery leaned over and whispered something into Madame’s ear. She immediately burst into life.

“Well, hey there, Harry.”

Her accent was thickly Southern.

“Madame L’Herbert . . .”

“Now, y’all got to call me Lorraine. You’re some kind of writer . . .?”

“A novelist.”

“Have I read anything of yours?”

“Definitely not.”

“Well, life’s long, hon.”

She quickly scanned the room, and reached out for a guy in his early forties. Black cord jacket, black jeans, black T-shirt, small beard, intense face.

“Hey, Chet—got someone you should talk to,” Madame said loudly. Chet came over, eyeing me carefully.

“Harry, meet Chet. A fellow Yankee. He teaches at the Sorbonne. Harry’s some kind of a writer.”

With that, she left us alone. An awkward moment followed, as it was clear that Chet wasn’t going to make the conversational opener.

“What subject do you teach?”

“Linguistical analysis.”

He waited for me to react to this.

“In French?” I asked.

“In French,” he said.

“Impressive,” I said.

“I suppose so. And you write what?”

“I’m trying to write a novel . . .”

“I see,” he said, starting to look over my shoulder.

“I’m hoping to have a first draft done in—”

“That’s fascinating,” he said. “Nice talking to you.”

And he was gone.

I stood there, feeling truly stupid. Harry’s some kind of a writer. Quite. I looked around. Everyone was engaged in conversation—looking animated and at ease and successful and interesting and everything else that I wasn’t. I decided that alcohol was required. I went into the kitchen. There was a long table on which sat a dozen boxes of “cask” wine in the usual two colors. There were three large pans of half-burned lasagna and around a dozen baguettes in various states of disrepair. The cheap wine and the semi-scorched food hinted that—whatever about the big fuck-off apartment near the Panthéon and the twenty-euro entrance fee—Madame did the “salon” on the cheap. The outlay for the food and drink couldn’t have been more than four hundred. Toss in an extra hundred for staff (there were two young women manning the “bar” and making certain all the paper plates and plastic forks got thrown away), and the weekly outlay was five hundred tops. But there were over a hundred people here tonight, each paying the demanded entrance fee. A little fast math and Madame was netting a fifteen-hundred-euro profit tonight. Say she did forty of these a year. A cool sixty grand. And as it was all cash . . .

So much for Montgomery’s bullshit about shine-or-don’t-get-asked-back. The salon was a business.

But, as I quickly noted, it had its habitués. Chet was one of them. So too was a guy named Claude. Short, sad-faced, with sharp features and a black suit with narrow lapels and dark glasses, he looked like a cheap hood from one of Jean-Pierre Melville’s fifties gangster films.

“What do you do?” he asked me in English.

“You know I can speak French.”

“Ah, but Lorraine prefers if the salon is in English.”

“But we’re in Paris.”

“No, monsieur. We are in Madame’s Paris. And in Madame’s Paris, we all speak English.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I shit not. Madame does not speak much in the way of French. Enough to order dinner in a restaurant or scream at the Moroccan femme de ménage if her vanity mirror is dusty. Otherwise . . . rien.”

“But she’s been living here for . . .?”

“Thirty years.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Paris is full of Anglophones who haven’t bothered to learn the language. And Paris accommodates them—because Paris is very accommodating.”

“As long as you are white.”

Claude looked at me as if I was insane.

“Why should such things concern you? This salon . . . it is a wonderful souk des idées.”

“And what idées are you peddling, Claude?”

“I peddle nothing. I am merely a pedagogue. Private French-language lessons. Very reasonable rates. And I will come to your apartment.” He proffered me a business card. “If you are trying to improve your French . . .”

“But why improve my French when I can come here and speak English with you?”

He smiled tightly.

“Very droll, monsieur. And what is your profession?”

I told him. He rolled his eyes and gestured to the crowd in front of us.

“Everyone is a writer here. They all talk of a book they are trying to write . . .”

Then he drifted off.

Claude did have a point. I met at least four other would-be writers. Then there was the super-cocky guy from Chicago (I have never met a reserved, modest Chicagoan) in his early forties who taught “media studies” at Northwestern, and had just published his first novel with some obscurantist press (but—he told me—it had still merited a short mention in the New York Times Book Review) and was spending a year in Paris on some sort of fellowship, and went off into this extended monologue about how, in “decades to come,” we’d all be recognized as a new “lost generation,” fleeing the oppressive conformism of the Bush years, blah, blah, blah . . . to which I could only say . . . in a deadpan voice, “Yes, we are the totally lost generation.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” he asked.

“What makes you think that?”

He walked away.

I started to drink heavily. I picked up a glass of the red cask wine. It tasted rough, but I still downed three of them in rapid succession. It didn’t do wonders for my stomach—vinegar never does—but it did give me the necessary Dutch courage to continue mingling. I decided to try my luck with any available woman who crossed my path and didn’t have the sort of face that would frighten domestic animals. So I got talking to Jackie—a divorcée from Sacramento (‘It’s a hole, but I won our six-thousand-foot ranch house from Howard in the settlement, and I’ve got a little PR firm there that handles the state legislature, and Lake Tahoe isn’t far, and I heard about Lorraine’s salon in a guidebook—the place where all the Parisian artists commingle every Sunday night—and you say you’re a writer . . . Who publishes you? . . . Oh, right . . .”). And I got talking with Alison, who worked as a business journalist with Reuters—a large, flirty Brit who told me that she hated her job, but loved living in Paris (“Because it’s not bloody Birmingham, where I grew up”), even though she did find it very lonely. She came to the salon most weeks and had made some friends here, but had still not found that “special friend” she’d been looking for.

“It’s all because I’m too possessive,” she said.

“You think that?”

“That’s what my last boyfriend told me. I couldn’t let go.”

“Was he right?”

“His wife certainly thought so. When he wouldn’t marry me—even though he promised twice that he was going to leave her for me—I waited outside his apartment in Passy all weekend. Then, when he still wouldn’t come out, I smashed the windscreen of his Mercedes with a brick.”

“That is a little extreme.”

“That’s what all men say. Because, like him, they’re all cowards . . . and little shits.”

“Nice meeting you,” I said, backing away.

“That’s right, run off, just like every other coward with a penis.”

I threw back the fourth glass of wine and desperately wanted another, but feared that the mad man-hating Brit might still be at the bar. I looked around the room again. The salon’s volume was reaching high pitch now. Everyone seemed to be talking with strange animation. All I could feel was mounting despair—for the artificiality of this set-up, for the shrieking Southern Belle voice of Madame, which towered over the amassed hubbub, for the undercurrent of sadness that was so prevalent in every conversation I’d had, and for my own pervasive awkwardness. Here was proof (as if it was needed) that my isolated weeks in Paris had turned me into a real Oblomov—inept when it came to social niceties or even managing to sustain a simple dialogue with someone else. I hated it here—not just because it was a sham, but because it also exposed everything I hated about myself.

Feeling just a little tight, I decided that some air was needed. So I headed out of the kitchen, weaving my way through the throng in the living room, making a beeline for the balcony.

It was a clear, cold night. No stars, but a full moon over Paris. The balcony was long and narrow. I went to the edge of it, put my glass down on the top of the balustrade, and breathed deeply—hoping the winter chill would muffle the buzz in my head. But instead the night air just seemed to deepen my light-headedness; the sense that there was something faintly illusory about this salon, this balcony, this amazing fuck-off view. I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t yet nine. I wondered if I could catch a screening of something around nine thirty at the Accattone or any of the half-dozen other cinemas located within five minutes from here. But if I did make a film that let out at 11.30 PM, I’d be cutting it very fine to get to work by midnight. And I didn’t want to risk not getting to work on time, just in case this was the first night when a visitor for Monsieur Monde showed up right after twelve, and word would get back to Mr. Beard and the Boss that I had been negligent, and they might decide to let me go, and then I’d be back to square one in this city, and . . . shit . . . look at that view of the Panthéon from here . . .

“I’m certain you’re thinking, ‘I merit an apartment like this.’ ”

The voice caught me by surprise. It was a woman’s voice—low, slightly husky, and emanating from a far corner of the balcony. I looked over. I saw a figure silhouetted in this dark nook, her body outlined in shadow, the red ember of a cigarette lighting up the darkness.

“You can’t know what I’m thinking.”

“True—but I can conjecture,” she said, continuing on in French. “And having seen your discomfort during the salon this evening, it is clear you are not at ease here.”

“You’ve been observing me all evening?”

“Do not flatter yourself. I have simply caught sight of you, from time to time, looking forlorn. A little-boy-lost who tries to chat up women without success, and then escapes to the balcony, and stares out at the Panthéon and thinks—”

“Hey, thanks for the searing psychological profile, but if you’ll excuse me I think I’m out of here.”

I started to leave.

“Do you always react so badly to a little gentle teasing?”

I turned back toward her, but could still only see the outline of her body and the glow of her cigarette.

“Bizarrely, I find teasing from a total stranger just a little odd.”

“I think you find teasing from a woman difficult.”

“Many thanks for another slap in the face.”

“You see, my point entirely. I make a few passing comments and you are immediately defensive.”

“Maybe because I don’t like games like this one.”

“Who is playing a game here?”

“You are.”

“That is news to me—as all I think I am doing is engaging in banter . . . or flirtation, if you want to give it its proper name.”

“This is your idea of flirtation?”

“Well, what’s your idea of flirtation? Trying to have a reasonable discussion with a crazy woman like that Alison monster?”

“ ‘Monster’ is a slight exaggeration.”

“Oh please, don’t tell me you’re going to defend her after she emasculated you . . .”

“She didn’t exactly do that . . .”

“It certainly sounded that way to me. ‘Coward with a penis’ isn’t exactly an ego-enhancing—”

“How did you know she said that?”

“I was in the kitchen at the time.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“That’s because you were so absorbed with that psychotic that you didn’t notice I was standing nearby.”

“And listening to everything we said?”

“Absolutely.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it was rude to listen to other people’s conversations?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“I was being ironic,” I said.

“Were you really?”

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“For making a dumb comment.”

“Are you always so self-critical?”

“I suppose I am.”

“That’s because . . . let me guess . . . you have suffered a terrible calamity, and since then you have doubted everything about yourself?”

Silence. I gripped the balustrade and bit down hard on my lip and wondered, Why am I so damn transparent?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I obviously said the wrong thing.”

“No—you scored a direct hit, a bull’s-eye . . .”

The ember on the cigarette glowed one final time, then fell groundward. As it did, she moved out of the shadows and toward me. The moonlight brought her into focus. She was a woman who had some years ago traversed that threshold marked middle age, but was still bien conservée. Of medium height with thick chestnut-brown hair that was well cut and just touched her shoulders. She was slender to her waist, with just a hint of heft around her thighs. As the light crossed her face, I could see a long-healed scar across her throat . . . the remnant of some surgical procedure, no doubt. Twenty years ago, men would have called her striking, rather than beautiful. She was still handsome. Her skin, though smooth, had been gently cleaved by a network of lines around her eyes. But rather than diminish her attractiveness, they seemed to enhance it.

“You have been drinking,” she said.

“My, my, you are très perspicace.”

“No, I just know a drunken man when I see one.”

“You want a written confession?”

“It is not a crime, you know. In fact, I approve of a man who drinks. Especially one who drinks to soften the past.”

“Booze doesn’t soften the past. It just blots it out . . . until the next morning. Nothing softens over time. Nothing.”

“That’s a very Manichean way of looking at the world.”

“No—it’s a very Manichean way of looking at oneself.”

“You don’t like yourself very much, do you?”

“Who the hell are you?”

She smiled an amused smile—her eyes brimming with mischief. And I suddenly wanted to sleep with her.

“Who am I? I am a woman standing on a balcony in the Sixth arrondissement, looking out at the Panthéon, while talking to an American who has clearly lost his way in life.”

“May I kiss the hem of your shmatte, Dr. Freud?”

She lit up a fresh cigarette, then said, “Shmatte. Yiddish. Are you Jewish?”

“My mother was.”

“Then that makes you Jewish. The mother carries the religion and passes it on—”

“Like the clap.”

“And the other part of you?” she asked.

“Dreary Midwestern Congregationalist.”

“So you considered your father a dull man?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“You seem willing to answer them.”

“I don’t talk much about myself.”

“All Americans talk about themselves. It’s how they give themselves an identity.”

“What an original thought.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“So let me guess: you’re a professor of semiotics at the Sorbonne who has written a doctoral thesis on Symbolic Nuance in American Cultural Life . . .”

“No,” she said, “but I’m certain your doctoral thesis wasn’t far off that title.”

“How did you know I was a professor?”

“Just a hunch. And your field is . . .?”

“Was film studies. I no longer teach.”

“You lost your job?”

“Have we met before? Or do you have a file on me?”

Another smile.

“No to both questions. I’m just ‘bullshitting around,’ as they say in your country.”

“And what’s the word for bullshit in your country?”

“Two words: buta beszéd.”

“You’re Eastern European?”

“Bravo. Hungarian.”

“But your French . . . it is perfect.”

“If you have not been born French, your French is never perfect. But after fifty years in Paris, it is serviceable.”

“Fifty years? You must have been a baby when you arrived here.”

“Flattery is always pleasant . . . and utterly transparent. I was seven years old when I arrived here in 1957 . . . and now I have given away a vital piece of information: my age.”

“You look wonderful on it.”

“Now we move from flippant flattery to absurd flattery.”

“Do you have a problem with that?” I asked.

She let two of her fingers touch the top of my hand.

“Not at all,” she said.

“Do you have a name?”

“I do.”

“And it is . . .?”

“Margit,” she said, pronouncing it Mar-geet.

“A last name?”

“Kadar.”

“Margit Kadar,” I said, trying it out. “Wasn’t there some Hungarian bigwig named Kadar?”

“Yes,” she said, “the Communist stooge whom the Soviets put in place to control us. We are not related.”

“So Kadar is a pretty common name in Hungary?”

“Not particularly. Do you have a name?”

“You’re still trying to change the subject.”

“We’ll get back to me. But not until I know your name.”

I told her, then added, “And the H in Harry is not dropped, as every French person does it here.”

“So you don’t like being called ’Arry. But you do speak very impressive French.”

“Impressive because I’m American . . . and everyone assumes that all Americans are ignorant and unworldly?”

“ ‘All clichés are fundamentally true.’ ”

“George Orwell?”

“Bravo. He was a very popular writer in Hungary, Mr. Orwell.”

“You mean, during the Communist years?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“But if you left in ’57, you must have escaped all that Stalinist stuff.”

“Not exactly,” she said, drawing deeply on her cigarette.

“By which you mean . . .?”

“Not exactly.”

Her tone was quiet, but sharp. A hint that she didn’t want to continue this line of questioning. So I dropped it and said, “The only Hungarian joke I know comes from Billy Wilder. He said, ‘A Hungarian is the only person in the world who can enter a revolving door behind you and come out first.’ ”

“So you really are a professor of film studies.”

“Was.”

“And let me guess—you are trying to be a novelist . . . like half the people at this absurd salon.”

“Yes, I’m a would-be writer.”

“Why call yourself that?”

“Because I haven’t published anything yet.”

“Do you write most days of the week?”

“Every day.”

“Then you are a writer. Because you write. You actually do it. Which separates the true artist from the poseur.”

I put my hand on top of hers—briefly, but tellingly.

“Thank you for that.”

She shrugged.

“Now I’m certain you’re no would-be artist,” I said, changing the subject.

“True. I’m not a would-be artist because I am not an artist. I am a translator.”

“French into Hungarian?”

“Yes, and Hungarian into French.”

“Does it keep you busy?”

“I get by. Back in the seventies and eighties, there was plenty of work . . . especially as the French couldn’t get enough of modern Hungarian authors . . . and yes, that probably sounds comic . . . but one of the few things I have always respected about this society is their cultural curiosity.”

“ ‘One of the few things’ . . .?”

“That’s what I said.”

“So you don’t like it here.”

“Now I didn’t say that. I just said—”

“I know what you said. But that hints at a deep antipathy toward this place.”

“Not antipathy. Ambivalence. And what is wrong with feeling ambivalent toward a country, a spouse, your work, even a good friend?”

“Are you married?”

“Now, Harry—think carefully. If I was married, would I be wasting my time at this salon?”

“Well, if you were unhappily married . . .”

“I’d simply have a lover.”

“Do you have a lover?”

“I might . . . if he plays his cards right.”

I felt myself tighten. I met her smile and put my hand back on top of hers. She immediately pulled hers away.

“What makes you think I was talking about you?”

“Pure arrogance.”

“Nice reply,” she said, and now put her hand on top of mine.

“So you definitely don’t have a husband?”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“Idle curiosity.”

“I had a husband.”

“What happened?”

“That’s a somewhat involved story.”

“Children?”

“I had a daughter.”

“I see.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t see. No one can ever see that.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to . . .”

She put a finger to my lips. I kissed the finger. Several times. But when I started moving down her hand, she gently pushed me away.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

“OK,” I whispered back.

“So when did your wife divorce you?”

“Talk about a mood-breaking question . . .”

“You asked if I had a husband, a child. I think that gives me the right to ask you . . .”

“She left me a few months ago. The divorce is in the works.”

“And you have how many children?”

“How do you know that I have kids?”

“It’s the way you looked at me when you found out that I had lost my daughter. I knew immediately that you were a father.”

“You never get over it, do you?” I asked.

“Never,” she whispered.

Then she turned and pulled me toward her. Within an instant, we were all over each other. I had my thigh between her legs, and my hand on one buttock as she unbuttoned my shirt and grabbed my chest. We fell up against the wall. Her free hand was now up against my crotch, my penis so hard it strained against the zip of my pants. But when I moved my hand up her dress, she suddenly disengaged, her hands dropping to one side as she sidestepped away from me.

“Not here,” she whispered.

I came close again and gently kissed her on the lips, my hands away from her, even though I so wanted to hold her again.

“Then where?” I asked.

“I live nearby . . . but not tonight.”

“Don’t tell me you have another appointment?”

“Just things to do.”

I glanced at my watch. It was just nine thirty.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do tonight anyway. I go to work at midnight.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m a night watchman.”

“I see,” she said, reaching into her purse for another cigarette.

“It’s just to pay some bills.”

“Well, I didn’t think you did it for intellectual stimulation. What exactly are you watching over?”

“A fur warehouse,” I said, knowing that there was one around the corner from me on the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière.

“And how did you land such an unusual post?”

“That’s a long story.”

“They always are,” she said, igniting the cigarette with a small, old-fashioned lighter. “Where do you live?”

“The Tenth.”

“Some bobo loft on the canal Saint-Martin?”

“If I’m doing a night watchman’s job . . .”

“And if you are guarding a furrier’s, then it must be somewhere near the rue des Petites Écuries.”

“That’s the rue running parallel to my own.”

“Rue de Paradis?”

“I’m impressed.”

“After forty-five years of nonstop residence in a city, you don’t simply know . . . you start to haunt it.”

“Or it haunts you?”

“Precisely. Do you have a ligne fixe?”

“No.”

“So you live in a chambre de bonne?”

“You are a quick study.”

“If you don’t have a ligne fixe, you are generally hard up. But everyone has a portable these days.”

“Except me.”

“And me.”

“A fellow Luddite?”

“I simply don’t see the need to be contactable at all times. But if you do want to contact me . . .”

She reached into her purse, pulled out a card, and handed it to me. It read:

Margit Kadar

Traductrice

13 rue Linné

75005 Paris

01.43.44.55.21

“Mornings are bad for me,” she said. “I sleep until the middle of the afternoon. Any time after five PM is good. Like you, I start work at midnight.”

“It’s the best time of the day to write, n’est-ce pas?”

“You write, I translate. And you know what they say about translation: it’s about rendering morning words into evening words.”

“I will call,” I said.

“I look forward to it.”

I leaned forward, wanting to kiss her again. But she put a hand up between us.

“À bientôt . . .” she said.

“À bientôt.”

And she turned and walked back inside.

I stood on the balcony alone for a long time, oblivious to the night air, the gusting wind, still lost in the strange and extraordinary encounter that had just taken place. I tried to remember a previous time in my life when I’d met a woman and was locked in a crazed embrace with her only a few minutes after first saying hello. I knew the answer to that question: this was a first for me. In the past, the sex always arrived a few dates afterward. I was never someone who could ever make a bold move. Too cautious, too circumspect. Until . . .

No, don’t bring that up again. Not tonight. Not after what just transpired.

Montgomery suddenly walked onto the balcony.

“Hiding out here?”

“That’s right.”

“We do like our guests to mingle, you know.”

“I was talking with someone out here,” I said, hating myself for being defensive. “She just left.”

“I saw no one leave.”

“Do you watch every corner of the apartment?”

“Absolutely. Coming back inside?”

“I have to go.”

“So soon?”

“That’s right.”

He noticed the card in my hand.

“Meet someone nice?” he asked.

I immediately slipped Margit’s card into the pocket of my shirt.

“Maybe.”

“You must say good-bye to Madame before you go.”

That wasn’t a request, but a directive.

“Lead the way.”

Madame was standing in front of one of her nude triptychs—with arms of war sprouting out of her vagina, only to be enveloped by Eden-like flora and fauna. It was beyond stupid. She was holding an empty glass and looked decidedly tipsy . . . not that I was one to talk.

“Mr. Ricks must leave us,” Montgomery said.

“Mais la nuit ne fait que commencer,” she said, and started to giggle.

“I write at night, so . . .”

“Dedication to one’s art. It is so admirable, isn’t it, Montgomery?”

“So admirable,” he said tonelessly.

“Well, hon, I hope you had a fabulous time.”

“Yeah, fabulous,” I said.

“And remember: if you need company on a Sunday night, we’re always here.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“And I just can’t wait to read that book of yours.”

“Nor can I.”

“Monty, he’s so witty! We must have him back.”

“Yes, we must.”

“And, hon,” she said, pulling me close to her, “I can tell you’re a real lady-killer, a total dragueur.”

“Not really.”

“Oh, please. You’ve got that vulnerable-lonely-artist thing going, which women just love.”

As she said that, I could feel her fleshy fingers slide into mine.

“You lonely, hon?”

I gently disengaged my hand from hers. I said, “Thank you again for a very interesting evening.”

“You’ve got someone, don’t you?” she asked, sounding sour.

I thought of the card in my breast pocket.

“Yes,” I said. “I think I do.”

TEN

LATER THAT NIGHT, as I sat at my desk and tried to work, my brain kept replaying that scene on the balcony. Margit’s face continued to fill my mind’s eye. Six hours after our embrace, I could still discern the musky scent she wore, as it had adhered itself to my clothes, my hands, my face. Her taste was still in my mouth. Her low husky voice continued to reverberate in my ear.

I must have looked at her card a dozen times that night. I wrote down her phone number in a notebook and on a pad I kept on the desk, just in case the card was misplaced. I tried to grind my way through my new quota of one thousand words. I failed. I was too distracted, too smitten.

The hours dragged by. I was desperate to leave this room early and walk the streets and try to clear my head. But if I did leave here before the specified time . . .

Blah, blah, blah. I knew all the old arguments, and knew that I’d play the good employee and stay put until 6:00 AM arrived. And then . . .

Then I would call her and tell her that I couldn’t wait until 5:00 PM tomorrow; that I had to see her now. And I’d hop in a cab over to 13 rue Linné and . . .

Completely blow this affair before it has started.

A little detached cool is demanded here, mon pôte.

So when I woke up at two that afternoon, I picked up my wages and ate steak-frites at a little café near the Gare de l’Est, and then took an extended midevening stroll along the canal Saint-Martin, and caught a 9:30 screening of Chabrol’s La Femme infidèle at the Brady (they were doing a mini-festival of his films), and walked to my job, thinking at length about Chabrol’s complex morality tale. The story is an old one: a husband discovers his wife’s infidelity. He confronts and kills her lover, at which point . . .

But here’s where Chabrol pulls a very interesting rabbit out of the hat. Upon discovering that her husband has murdered her amant, the wife doesn’t become hysterical and hypermoralistic. Nor does she turn him over to the cops. Rather, the couple become collaborators in the crime—the notion being that, in any intimate relationship (especially one that has lasted many years), we are always complicit with the other person. And once the frontier of sexuality is crossed, we are, in some ways, hostages to fortune. You can compartmentalize, you can tell yourself that you know the person with whom you are sleeping is rational and playing on the same page as you . . . and then you discover one of life’s great truisms: you can never really know the landscape of somebody else’s mind.

But how desperate I was to cross that frontier with Margit.

Still . . . discipline, discipline.

So I didn’t call her until the following afternoon—from a phone kiosk on the rue des Écoles. I inserted my France Télécom card. I dialed her number. One rings, two ring, three rings, four rings . . . oh shit, she’s out . . . five rings, six . . .

“Hello?”

She sounded groggy, half-asleep.

“Margit, it’s me . . . Harry.”

“I figured that.”

“Did I wake you?”

“I was just . . . dozing.”

“I can call back if . . .”

“No need to be solicitous. I expected you to call now . . . just as I expected you not to call yesterday.”

“And how did you figure that?”

“Because I knew, though you might be eager to see me again, you wouldn’t want to seem too eager, so you’d wait a day or so before calling me. But not more than that, because that would indicate disinterest. The fact that you rang exactly at five PM . . . especially after I told you that I shouldn’t be disturbed before that hour . . .”

“Shows how completely predictable men are?”

“Your statement, monsieur, not mine.”

“So do you want to see me or not?” I asked.

“American directness. J’adore . . .”

“I’ve posed a question.”

“Where are you exactly right now?”

“Near Jussieu.”

“My metro stop. How convenient. Give me thirty minutes. You have my address?”

“I do.”

“Here’s the code: S877B. Second staircase, then third floor, right. À plus tard.”

Her place was a three-minute walk from the Jussieu metro. The area—seen in the half-light of a late-March afternoon—was a mixture of old apartment blocks and a clustered exercise in sixties concrete brutalism that turned out to be a branch of the University of Paris. For all my flâneur-ing around Paris, I had never ventured down this way (always stopping at the Grand Action cinema on the rue des Écoles, then turning left toward the river). So it was intriguing to happen upon the Jardin des Plantes. It was a surprisingly large and unexpectedly sauvage green space in the middle of the Fifth arrondissement. I wandered inside—following an inclining path up past tall trees and exotic flora until it reached a meadow-like area, slightly overgrown, with a stone cupola house in the midst of this Elysian field. Had I been a film director, out scouting a location for an urban update of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this would have won hands down. There was even a small hill—accessed by a winding path—the summit of which brought me into a pagoda-style viewing platform. The view from here wasn’t wildly panoramic. Rather, it was a vista of rooftops and chimney pots and sloping windows. There was nothing monumental about this prospect. But seen in the declining afternoon light, it still looked monochromatic and painterly: an urban still life, and one that was, by and large, out of public view. Rooftops are romantic—not just because they are, metaphorically speaking, adjacent to the sky, but also because they are hidden away. Stand on a rooftop and you cannot help but have simultaneous thoughts about life’s infinite possibilities and the omnipresent potentiality for self-destruction. Look to the heavens and you can think, Everything is possible. Look to the heavens and you can also think, I am insignificant. And then you can shuffle your way to the edge of the roof and look down and tell yourself, Just two steps and my life would be over. And would that be such a horrendous thing?

No wonder the Romantics so venerated suicide. Seen as a response to life’s fundamental despair, it was regarded as a grand final creative act: an acceptance of tragedy through the ultimate embrace of tragedy.

But why think such tragic thoughts when the prospect of sex was just ten minutes away? Ah, sex: the great antidote to all despair.

I walked down off the hill and out of the Jardin. I crossed the street and found a small grubby corner shop that sold just about everything—including champagne. The Arab guy behind the till said that he had one bottle on ice in the back. I bought it. When I asked if he sold condoms, he avoided my eyes as he said, “There is a machine on the next street corner.”

I walked down to the machine. I inserted a two-euro coin. I pulled open the metallic drawer and withdrew a three-pack of Durex, presented in a plastic case. I checked my watch. It was 5:28.

Thirteen rue Linné was an undistinguished building—early nineteenth century, of considerable width, with an imposing black door. There was a kebab place sharing its left flank; a reasonable-looking Italian restaurant its other side. The code pad was to one side of the door. I opened my notebook and punched the necessary combination of numbers and letters. There was the telltale click. I pushed open the door, feeling nervous.

As always, I was in a courtyard. But this courtyard was different from all the others I had entered in Paris: it was light and airy and leafy. Paved in cobblestones, it also looked clean and well maintained. There was no laundry hanging from the balconies—only flower boxes and trellises around which plants had been interwoven. There was no loud jungle music coming from open windows. Just absolute bourgeois silence. At the entrance to the first stairwell, there was a collection of professional plaques:

M. Claude Triffaux

Psychologue

2e étage, gauche

Mme B. Semler

Expert Comptable

1er étage, droite

M. François Maréchal

Kinésithérapeute

1er étage, gauche

I smiled at the thought of an accountant—a man who deals with the financial narrative of one’s life (and the stressful business of paying taxes)—working across the hall from someone who dealt with trapped nerves and seized muscles and other physical manifestations of life’s assorted vicissitudes.

The second stairwell was further along the courtyard. There were no plaques here, just a listing of apartments. I checked for Kadar, Margit, but didn’t see it. This worried me. Had I missed the second stairwell? The address was right, as the code had worked. But why no name?

I walked up the three flights of stairs, noting that, unlike my own state-of-collapse building, the walls here were well painted, the stairs were made of polished wood and had a carpet running up the middle of them. When I reached the third floor, there were only two doors. The one to the left had a small nameplate by its bell: LIESER. The door to the right had nothing. I rang the bell, my hands now clammy, telling myself if some irate old lady answered, I’d do my dumb American act and apologize profusely and hightail it down the stairs.

But when the door opened, Margit was standing in its frame.

She was dressed in a simple black turtleneck that hugged her frame tightly and accented the fullness of her breasts. She also wore a loose peasant-style skirt made out of a muslinlike material: very feminine, very chic. Even in the harsh glow of the stairwell lights, her face seemed radiant . . . though the eyes expressed a sadness that would never leave her be. She favored me with a small smile.

“I meant to tell you that my name isn’t listed on the chart downstairs.”

“Yeah, I did have a moment when I thought . . .”

She leaned forward and touched my lips with hers.

“You thought wrong.”

My hand went around her back, but she gently disengaged herself, saying, “All in good time, monsieur. And only after we rid you of your nervousness.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Manifestement.”

I followed her inside. The door closed behind me. The apartment was made up of two reasonable-size rooms. The first was the bedroom—with a simple queen-size bed. In a corner nook there was a bathtub (with a shower hose) and a sink. We didn’t stop here, but continued down past a small door (the toilet, I surmised) and into a large living area. A kitchen had been fitted along the near wall of this room—the appliances and cabinets all dating from the mid-seventies. There was a large sofa covered in deep red velour fabric, a divan in a maroon paisley velour, and a venerable chocolate leather armchair. There were two large floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end. They overlooked the courtyard and seemed to benefit from afternoon light. To the right of the windows was a beautiful old roll-top desk, on top of which sat one of those bright red Olivetti typewriters that were so popular thirty years ago. There were bookshelves lining all the walls, crammed largely with old volumes in Hungarian and French, though I did spot a few novels in English by Hemingway and Greene and Dos Passos. On three of the shelves stood a massive collection of records—classical mainly, and quite comprehensive in their historical and stylistic range. Her taste was very catholic: everything from Tallis to Scarlatti to Schubert to Bruckner to Berg. There were no compact discs . . . only a turntable and an amplifier. There was no television, just a large, old Telefunken shortwave radio. And there were framed yellowing photographs of Budapest in the shadows and of (I presumed) assorted family members clustered neatly on all free wall space. But what struck me most about the place was its immaculateness and its sober good taste. Though she hadn’t updated it for several decades, its subdued, mitteleuropa style still lent it a certain consulting-room warmth. Freud would have been happy working out of such an apartment, I sensed. So too would an immigré writer . . . or an immigré translator.

“This is a lovely place,” I said.

“If you don’t mind things being a little on the old-fashioned side. There are times when I think I should update it, move into the modern world. But that’s impossible for me.”

“Because of your Luddite tendencies?”

“Perhaps.”

“You actually work on an old manual typewriter?”

“I cannot deal with computers.”

“Or with CDs?”

“My father had a fantastic collection of records, which was sent on after my mother and I left for Paris.”

“Your dad didn’t come with you?”

“He died before we left Hungary.”

“A sudden death?”

“That is correct,” she said in a voice that hinted I shouldn’t press further. “Anyway, he was a music fanatic, so he had this huge collection. When we left Budapest, we traveled with just a small suitcase each. Later on, when we had immigré status here, we had to apply to the Hungarian government to get certain personal effects shipped here. Among the things that arrived from our old apartment was Papa’s record collection. Over the years, I added to it myself—but then, when the compact disc arrived, I thought, I have all the music I will ever need, so why switch over?”

“You mean, you don’t like that consumerist frisson called shopping?”

“Shopping is an act of despair.”

“That’s extreme.”

She lit up a cigarette.

“But true. It’s what people do with their time now. It’s the great cultural activity of this epoch—and it speaks volumes about the complete emptiness of modern life.”

I laughed . . . a little nervously.

“Well, I certainly need a drink after that homily,” I said. “And in ‘an act of total despair,’ I bought you this.”

I handed her the brown paper bag. She pulled the bottle out of the bag.

“I don’t know if it’s a good champagne . . .” I said.

“It will do just fine. Did you get it at the shop three doors up from here?”

“How did you know . . .?”

“Because it’s my local place. I even remember when Mustapha, the owner, opened it in the early seventies. He’d just arrived from Bône in Algeria . . .”

“Camus’s birthplace.”

“Chapeau!” she said. “Anyway, when he was new in Paris and had just opened the shop, he was timid and eager to please, and was also subjected to a lot of brusqueness, as the idea of a commerçant from the Maghreb in this corner of Paris offended many of the long-term residents of the quartier. Now, three decades later, he’s fully assimilated—and subjects everyone who comes into his shop to the same sort of brusqueness he once received.”

She found two glasses in the kitchen, then placed the bottle down on a countertop and undid the foil and gently levered the cork out of the bottle. There was the decisive pop and she filled the two glasses.

“That was very professional.”

“I could say something very banal like . . .”

“ ‘. . . if there’s one thing you learn after three decades in Paris, it’s how to open a bottle of champagne’?”

She smiled and handed me a glass. I downed it quickly.

“Precisely.”

“But you would never indulge in banalities like that,” I said.

“It would offend my Hungarian sense of the sardonic.”

“Whereas Americans like me . . .”

“You toss back half a glass of champagne in one go.”

“Are you saying I’m uncouth?”

“My, my, you’re a mind reader.”

She had her face up against mine. I kissed her.

“Flattery,” I said, “will get you . . .”

“Everywhere.”

Now she returned the kiss, then removed the champagne glass from my hand and set it down alongside her own on the kitchen counter. Then turning back to me, she pulled me toward her. I didn’t resist and we were instantly all over each other. Within moments, we had collapsed on the sofa, and she was pulling down my jeans. My hands were everywhere. So were hers. Her mouth didn’t leave mine, and it felt as if we were both trying to devour each other. The idea of using a condom went south. I was suddenly inside her, and responding to her ferocious ardor. Her nails dug into the back of my skull, but I didn’t care. This was pure abandon—and we were both lost within it.

Afterward I lay sprawled across her, half-clothed, completely spent. Beneath me, Margit also looked shell-shocked and depleted, her eyes closed, her arms loosely around me. Several silent minutes went by. Then she opened one eye and looked at me and said, “Not bad.”

We eventually staggered up from the sofa, and she suggested we take the champagne and get into bed. So I picked up the bottle and the two glasses and followed her to the bedroom. As we took off our clothes I said, “Now this is a first for me: taking off my clothes after sex.”

“Who says the sex is finished for the afternoon?”

“I’m certainly not proposing that,” I said, sliding between the stiff white sheets.

“Good,” she said.

I watched her finish undressing. She said, “Please don’t stare at me like that.”

“But why? You’re beautiful.”

“Oh, please. My hips are too wide, my thighs are now fatty, and . . .”

“You’re beautiful.”

“And you are in a postcoital stupor, where all aesthetic discernment goes out the window.”

“I’ll say it again: you’re beautiful.”

She smiled and crawled in beside me.

“I appreciate your myopia.”

“And you say I’m hard on myself.”

“After fifty, all women think: C’est foutu. It’s finished.”

“You barely look forty.”

“You know exactly how old I am.”

“Yes, I know your deep, dark secret.”

“That is not my deep, dark secret,” she said.

“Then what is?”

“If it’s a deep, dark secret . . .”

“Point taken.”

Pause. I ran my fingers up and down her back, then kissed the nape of her neck.

“Do you really have a deep, dark secret?” I asked.

She laughed. And said, “My God, you are terribly literal.”

“All right, I’ll shut up.”

“And kiss me while you’re at it.”

We made love again. Slowly, without rush at first . . . but eventually it built up into the same crazed zeal that marked our first encounter on the sofa. She was still remarkably passionate, and threw herself into lovemaking with ravenous intemperance. I had never been with anyone like her—and could only hope that my own ardor came close to the level that she reached.

When we were finished, there was another long span of silence. Then she got up and returned a few moments later with her cigarettes and an ashtray. I refilled our glasses of champagne. As she lit up her cigarette, she said, “Living in Paris must have corrupted you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you don’t criticize me for smoking. I mean, what sort of American are you, not playing the Health Fascist and telling me how passive smoking is rotting your lungs?”

“Not all of us are that anal.”

“Well, any of the Americans I have met . . .”

“Have you ever been to the States?”

“No, but . . .”

“Let me guess. You’ve met the occasional anally retentive American at Madame’s salon?”

“I go there very infrequently.”

“So it was my lucky night then.”

“You could say that.”

“Why do you go there if you so dislike it?”

“I don’t dislike it. Madame is absurd—and someone who thinks that her life is her ongoing work of art . . . whereas the truth is that she is a dilettante who had five minutes of fame back in the sixties as an artist’s muse, and briefly married a rich man . . .”

“Does that explain the big apartment?”

“Of course. The husband’s name was Jacques Javelle. He was a big-deal film producer back then—largely soft-porn junk, but it made him briefly rich. He married Lorraine when she was this sexy, flower-girl mannequin, and continued seeing his two long-standing mistresses. But Madame’s strange American morality wouldn’t put up with such sexual compartmentalization and she exploded the marriage. She came out of the divorce with the apartment and nothing more. Her looks began to diminish and she did not adapt well to the changing times. So what did she do? Reinvent herself as a curator of people. She found her little niche in Paris, the salon brings in an income, and for a few hours every Sunday night, she can pretend she is important. Et voilà—the story of Madame L’Herbert and her salon. Twice a year I find it amusing, nothing more. Occasionally it is good to go out and meet people.”

“You don’t have a lot of friends in Paris?”

“Not really . . . and no, that doesn’t bother me. Since I lost my daughter and husband . . .”

“You lost your husband as well?”

A nod. Then: “Since then I have largely kept to myself. I like it that way. There is much to be said for solitude.”

“It has its virtues, sure.”

“If you are a novelist, you must appreciate it.”

“I have no choice but to deal with being alone. Anyway, writing fills the hours when I do my job.”

“So what—besides writing—do you do all night?”

“I sit in a room, and make certain that no one is trying to break into the place, and also let in the staff who do all the shipping of furs.”

“I never knew that furriers ran a twenty-four-hour operation.”

“This one does.”

“I see,” she said. “And how did you get the job?”

I told her a bit about arriving in Paris, and the horrendous experience in the hotel, and the day clerk who was such a bastard, and Adnan’s kindness, and him getting controlled, and all the other strange happenstantial events that led me to rent his chambre de bonne and find my current employment.

“It’s all rather picaresque,” she said. “A run-in with a classic Parisian connard—Monsieur . . . what was his name again?”

“Monsieur Brasseur at the Hotel Sélect on rue François Millet in the Sixteenth. If you know anyone you hate, send them there.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But you do have fantastic material, n’est-ce pas? Getting milked by a horrid hotel desk clerk and then ending up in a chambre in le quartier turc. I’m certain, during all those years that you were practicing your French in . . . where was it that you lived . . .?”

“Eaton, Ohio.”

“Never heard of it. Then again, never having set foot in your country . . .”

“Even if you’re an American, you’ve probably never heard of Eaton, Ohio . . . unless you happen to have heard of Crewe College, which is the sole reason to know about Eaton, Ohio, though it’s not exactly a big-deal college to begin with.”

“But it’s where everything went wrong in your life, yes?”

I nodded.

“But that’s another conversation, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Maybe not. It’s something I’d rather not talk about.”

“Then don’t,” she said and leaned forward and kissed me deeply.

Then she stubbed out her cigarette and drained her glass and said, “And now, I must ask you to leave.”

“What?” I said.

“I have things I must do.”

“But it’s not even . . .” I checked my watch. “. . . eight o’clock.”

“And we’ve had a lovely cinq-à-sept . . . which was so lovely that it nearly became a cinq-à-huit.”

“But I thought we’d spend the evening together.”

“That cannot be.”

“Why not?”

“Because, as I said, I have things to do.”

“I see.”

“You sound like a little boy who’s just been told that he has to leave his tree house.”

“Thanks for that,” I said, sounding hurt.

She took my face in her hands.

“Harry, do not take this badly. You simply have to accept that I am busy now. But I do want us to have another afternoon together.”

“When?”

“Say three days.”

“That long?”

She put a finger to my lips.

“You should know better,” she whispered.

“I just want to see you before then, that’s all.”

“And you will—in three days.”

“But . . .”

Her index finger again touched my lips.

“Don’t overplay your hand.”

“OK.”

She leaned forward and kissed me.

“Three days,” she said.

“What time?”

“The same time.”

“I’ll miss you until then,” I said.

“Good,” she said.

ELEVEN

THE NEXT THREE days were difficult. I went about my daily routine. I woke at two. I picked up my wages. I killed time at the Cinémathèque. I ate dinner at the usual collection of cheap traiteurs and cafés that I patronized. I went to work. I wrote. Dawn arrived. I picked up my croissants and returned home.

So far so normal. The difference now was that every waking hour of every day was spent thinking about Margit. I replayed our afternoon together, minute by minute, over and over again: a continual film loop that kept running in the cinema inside my head and wouldn’t pause between showings. I could still taste the saltiness of her skin, still feel her nails as they dug into me as she came, still relive the moment when she threw her legs around me to take me deeper, still remember the long deep silence afterward when we lay sprawled across each other and I kept thinking how my ex-wife told me repeatedly what a bad lover I was, and pushed me away for months, and how I always tried to get her to talk about what I was doing that was wrong, and how she always shied away from what she called “the mechanics,” and how, when I discovered that she was involved with the dean of the faculty, I knew I had lost her completely, and . . .

Stop. You’re doing what you always do. You’re harping back to the unpleasant in an attempt to block out the happiness you feel . . .

Happiness? I’m being forcibly kept away from my daughter—so how could I be at all happy?

Anyway, this isn’t happiness. This is infatuation.

But in my more rhapsodic moments, it also felt a bit like love.

Listen to you, the lovesick teenager, head over heels after an afternoon of passion.

Yes—and I’m counting down the minutes until I see her again.

That’s because you are desperate.

She’s beautiful.

She’s pushing sixty.

She’s beautiful.

Have a cup of coffee and sober up.

She’s beautiful.

Have three cups of coffee . . .

I kept telling myself that I should brace myself for a disappointment . . . that, when I arrived at her place again, she’d show me the door, announcing that she’d changed her mind about continuing with our little adventure. It was all too good to be true.

When the third day finally arrived, I showed up in her quartier a good hour before our 5:00 PM rendezvous. Again I killed time in the Jardin des Plantes, then stopped in the same grocery store and bought a bottle of champagne. I loitered for three minutes outside her front door until it was exactly the hour in question. I punched in her code. I ascended the second escalier. Outside her front door I was hit by a huge wave of nervousness. I rang her bell. Once. No answer for at least thirty seconds. I was about to ring it again when I heard footsteps behind the door, then the sound of locks being unbolted.

The door opened. She was dressed in a black turtleneck and black pants, a cigarette between her fingers, a small smile on her lips. She looked radiant.

“You are a very prompt lover,” she said.

I stepped forward to take her in my arms. But one of her hands came up in traffic-cop style and touched my chest, while her lips lightly touched mine.

“Du calme, monsieur,” she said. “All in good time.”

She took me by the hand and led me to the sofa. Music was playing on her stereo: chamber music, modern, slightly astringent. She relieved me of the champagne I had brought.

“You don’t have to do this every time you come here,” she said. “An inexpensive bottle of Bordeaux will do.”

“You mean, you don’t want huge bouquets of roses and stuffed cuddly animals and magnums of Chanel No. 5?”

She laughed and said, “I once had a lover like that. A businessman. He used to send me mortifying presents: heart-shaped bouquets and earrings that looked like a Louis XIV chandelier . . .”

“He must have been mad about you.”

“He was infatuated, that’s all. Men really do have a little-boy streak. When they want something—you—they’ll shower you with toys, in the hope that you will be sufficiently flattered.”

“So the way to your heart is to be mean and ascetic. Instead of diamonds, a box of paper clips, perhaps?”

She stood up to fetch two glasses.

“I am glad to see your sense of irony is up and running this afternoon.”

“By which you mean, it wasn’t up and running when I last saw you?”

“I like you when you’re funny, that’s all.”

“And not when I’m . . .”

“Earnest. Or a little too eager.”

“You certainly put your cards on the table,” I said.

She opened the champagne and poured two glasses.

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

I was going to say something slightly petulant like, I stuck to the rules and haven’t called you once in three days. But I knew that would simply reemphasize my earnestness. So instead I changed tack, asking, “The music you’re playing . . .?”

“You’re a cultured man. Have a guess.”

“Twentieth century?” I asked.

“Very good,” she said, handing me the champagne.

“Slight hint of Gypsy edginess,” I said, sipping the champagne.

“Yes, I hear that too,” she said, sitting down beside me.

“Which means the composer is definitely Eastern European.”

“You’re good at this,” she said, stroking my thigh with her hand.

“Could be Janácek.”

“That is a possibility,” she said, letting her hand lightly brush the top of my crotch, making me instantly hard.

“But . . . no, he’s Czech, you’re Hungarian . . .”

She leaned forward and touched my neck with her lips.

“But that doesn’t mean I listen exclusively to Hungarian music.”

“But . . .”

Her hand was back on my crotch, unbuttoning my jeans.

“It’s Bartók,” I said. “Béla Bartók.”

“Bravo,” she said, reaching into my jeans with her hand. “And do you know what piece it is?”

“One of the String Quartets?”

“Thank you for that blinding glimpse of the obvious,” she said, pulling my penis out of my pants. “Which one?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my body tightening as she began to run her finger up and down my erection.

“Have a guess.”

“The Third, the slow movement?”

“How did you know that?”

“I didn’t. It was just . . .”

I didn’t finish the sentence as her mouth closed over my penis, and began to move up and down, her hand accompanying the movement of her lips. When I was close to climax, I uttered something about wanting to be inside her, but this just increased the rhythm of her sucking. I didn’t so much come as explode. Margit sat up and downed her glass of champagne in one go, then lit a cigarette.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Just a bit,” I said, reaching for her. She took my hand, but resisted my attempts to pull her down toward me. So I sat up and kissed her deeply. But when I began to slip my hand up the back of her top, she whispered, “Not today.”

She disengaged from me and took a drag of her cigarette.

“Have I done something wrong?” I asked.

A small laugh.

“Your ex-wife must have played havoc with your self-esteem.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“No, it’s not. All I’m telling you is, I don’t want to be made love to today, and your immediate reaction is to think that you’ve been ‘bad.’ Which leads me to conclude—”

“I was just wondering why—”

“I can give you a blow job but want nothing in return?”

“Well, if you want to put it in such a blunt way . . .”

“You see, you act as if I’m rejecting you . . . whereas all I’m saying is—”

“I’ll shut up.”

“Good,” she said, topping up my glass.

“I have to tell you . . . that’s the first time I’ve ever had a blow job with Bartók as the musical accompaniment.”

“There’s a first for everything.”

“Did you blow your businessman to Bartók?”

“You are a jealous man, aren’t you?”

“It was just a question.”

“And I will give you an answer. As our affair went on while I was still married, we always met at a little apartment he kept near his office. His fuck pad.”

“And all the gifts . . . did he send them here?”

“Yes. He did.”

“Your husband didn’t get upset about that?”

“You do ask many questions.”

She stubbed out her cigarette, then reached for the packet, fished out another one, and lit it up.

“No,” she said. “My husband wasn’t suspicious. Because he was fully aware of the affair from the moment it started.”

“I don’t understand . . .”

“Then I will explain it to you. It was 1975. Due to budget cutbacks, my husband, Zoltan, had just lost his job as a monitor of Hungarian radio broadcasts for some international airwaves watchdog group that was funded by the CIA. Our daughter, Judit, was just two years old. I was getting very little work as a translator, so we were dangerously low on money. Then, out of nowhere, a job dropped into my life—translating desperately boring technical documents for a French company that was exporting Hungarian-made dental supplies.”

“I never knew Communist Hungary specialized in that.”

“Nor did I before I got this job. Anyway, I did the translation and was then called out to the company’s offices—in some modern area near Boulogne—to explain a few technical points to the company’s director. His name was Monsieur Corty: fiftyish, potbellied, puff-faced, sad eyes . . . archetypal. I could see him noticing me with care as soon as I came into his office. We spent half an hour going through the documents. He then proposed lunch. I hadn’t eaten in a restaurant for a very long time, so I thought, Why not? He took me to a very nice place. He ordered an excellent bottle of wine. He asked about my husband and my daughter, and found out how hard up we were. Then he started talking: about how he was married to an impossible woman; how she had so pushed him away that he found it difficult ‘performing’ for her; how she had ridiculed him for that and essentially ended that part of their lives, and how he couldn’t leave her—that traditional French Catholic thing of keeping the family together to maintain social respectability—but was looking for someone with whom he could have ‘an arrangement.’ He also said that he found me very attractive, he could see that I was intelligent, and liked the fact that I was married . . . which meant that I had responsibilities of my own. And he offered me three hundred francs a week—a small fortune to us back then—if I would meet him twice a week for two hours in the afternoon.”

“You weren’t shocked by this offer?”

“Of course not. It was made so graciously. Anyway, I told him I would have to think about it, and that night I went home and after we got Judit to bed, I sat down with Zoltan and explained what had transpired that afternoon. The next day I called Monsieur Corty and I told him that, yes, our arrangement would be acceptable—but the price would have to be four hundred francs per week. He agreed on the spot.”

“Your husband didn’t mind?”

“I know what you are thinking: How could he have agreed to let me whore for a fat middle-aged man? But his attitude, like mine, was very pragmatic. We were virtually penniless. The money he was offering was—to us—vast. And to me, it was just sex. Actually, the sex never lasted more than a few minutes—he was very fast. But what Monsieur Corty wanted more than anything was a bit of tendresse. Someone he could talk to for a few hours each week. So I would go to the drab functional little studio near his office that he had organized for our liaison. I would undress, he would take off his suit jacket and trousers, his shirt, but he’d remain clothed in his underwear. He would pull out his penis and I would spread my legs and—”

“I think I know how the act works,” I said.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“It’s just more information than I need.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a puritan, Harry.”

“Hardly, but . . .”

“Surely the writer in you appreciates that, in storytelling, the significant detail is everything. And so, the very fact that Monsieur Corty would never make love naked with me, and that sex was merely a mechanical act for him, surely must tell you that—”

“It was a sad, sordid little arrangement?”

“It wasn’t sordid and it wasn’t sad. It was what he wanted it to be.”

“How long did it last?”

“Three years.”

“Good God.”

“It was a very lucrative three years for us. The money allowed us to buy this apartment . . .”

“Where did your daughter sleep?”

“There’s another room—a very small room . . .”

“Where exactly . . .?”

“Over there,” she said, pointing to a door on the left-hand wall, near one of the French windows.

“I hadn’t noticed . . .”

“Never overlook the significant detail.”

I wanted to ask, What do you use the room for now? but I held myself in check.

“What ended the affair?”

“Circumstances,” she said.

“Your husband must have been a remarkably tolerant man.”

“He was as complex as anyone else. He had some great strengths, some profound weaknesses. I loved him madly and often hated him . . . and I think it was the same for him with regard to me. And he was no saint when it came to other women . . .”

“He had mistresses?”

“Un jardin secret . . . avec beaucoup de fleurs.”

“And you didn’t object?”

“He was discreet, he never flaunted the fact to me, he never made me feel in any way less important to him. On the contrary, I think his many lovers kept him with me . . .”

I shook my head. She said, “You are amused by all this.”

“Absolutely—because I could never imagine an American couple agreeing to this sort of arrangement . . .”

“I am certain there are many who do . . . but, of course, never breathe a word to anyone outside of their marriage . . .”

“Maybe—but the prevailing rule in American life is, If you transgress, the punishment will follow.”

“As you well know,” she said.

“How do you know that?”

“It’s written all over you. You got caught at something. And the other great rule of American life is, Don’t get caught.”

“No,” I said, “the rule is, There is a price to everything.”

“What a sad way of looking at the world: thinking that pleasure must be punished.”

“Only illicit pleasure.”

“Most pleasures are best when they are illicit, n’est-ce pas?” she said, tracing a line down my face and kissing me. This time she responded when I kissed her back deeply. But then, a few moments later, she ended the embrace.

“Like I said . . .” she whispered.

“I know,” I said. “ ‘Not today.’ ”

“But three days from now—absolutely. Now you must go.”

“So soon?”

“I have things to do.”

“OK,” I said.

Ten minutes later I was on the street, walking quickly toward the metro, trying to sort through everything that had happened during the brief hour I had spent in Margit’s apartment. Questions, questions. “Not today.” But why? And also, what things did she have to do that made her turn me out of her apartment after sixty minutes? The story of her “arrangement” with the fat businessman strangely rankled—because it felt as if she was testing me, seeing what I would accept, and also letting me know (without much subtlety) that this “thing” (I couldn’t yet call it an affair, let alone a liaison) would be conducted according to her rules, her limits. And if I didn’t want it . . .

But the truth was, I did want it. As I descended into the Jussieu station, the letdown intensified. Three days was a long time from now.

While walking to work that night, all I could think was how I now had to spend the next six hours locked up in an airless room, and how I was tiring of the job, and wouldn’t mind taking a sixty-five-euro loss if it meant getting one day off each week.

But when I posited this idea to Mr. Beard the next afternoon, his reaction was not positive.

“I do not think the Boss would like that,” he said. “You are needed there every night.”

“But when I was first offered the job, Kamal said I could work just six nights.”

“Kamal is dead . . . and you are needed there all seven nights.”

“Couldn’t you get someone else to handle just one night of the week?”

“It will not be possible.”

“Would you at least ask the Boss?”

“I will ask him, but I know what he will say: It will not be possible.”

But the next afternoon, when I stopped by the café to pick up my wages envelope, Mr. Beard favored me with a scowly smile.

“I have spoken to the Boss. He is d’accord. ‘Every man needs a day of rest,’ he said. Yours will be Friday, but the Boss also wants you to work one evening shift: six PM to midnight, one day a week.”

“But that means doing a twelve-hour shift . . .”

“You will not lose any money that way.”

No, but if Margit will only see me at five PM every three days . . .

“Could I do six AM to twelve noon?”

“It will not be possible.”

“Ask him.”

When I returned the next day, Mr. Beard tossed me my envelope and said, “The Boss wants to know why you can’t do those extra hours.”

“Because I see a woman in the late afternoon.”

That caught him by surprise—even though he tried hard not to look shocked.

“I will tell him that,” he said, looking away from me.

And it was only three hours before I could see her again. With time to kill, I walked over to that little café near the Gare de l’Est where I ate steak-frites twice a week. The place was quiet. I sat down. The waiter approached me and took my order. I asked him if he had a newspaper I could read. He returned with Le Parisien. I opened it up and started flicking through its pages. I have to say that I liked the paper because it was full of the usual petty crimes and misdemeanors that inform the life of a city. Today’s criminal reports included: Two teenage thugs caught trashing a car in Clichy-sous-Bois. An insurance executive killed instantly when his car swerved in front of a truck on the autoroute to Versailles (and the postmortem showed that he was, booze-wise, way over the limit). A feud between two families in Bobigny that got so out of hand that one of the husbands smashed the windshield of his neighbor’s Renault Mégane. A desk clerk at a small hotel in the Sixteenth getting knocked down in a hit-and-run accident on the rue François Millet.

Hang on . . .

HOTEL CLERK LEFT PARALYZED BY

HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER

Philippe Brasseur, 43, the morning desk clerk at the Hôtel Sélect, rue François Millet, has been left paralyzed from the neck down after being struck by a car yesterday afternoon in front of the hotel. Eyewitnesses say that the vehicle—a Mercedes C-Class—had been double-parked near the hotel, and pulled out suddenly as M. Brasseur left the hotel. According to Mme Tring Ta-Sohn, who operates a traiteur asiatique opposite the Sélect, “The driver of the vehicle appeared to deliberately target the man.” Mme Tring Ta-Sohn also informed the police that the license plate of the Mercedes appeared to have been covered. According to the investigating officer, Inspector M. Guybet, this detail evidently indicated that this was a premeditated act. M. Brasseur remains in stable condition at the Hôpital de Saint-Cloud. The attending neurologist, Dr. G. Audret, said it was too early to tell whether the paralysis was permanent.

Good God. As much as I hated that bastard—and privately wanted to see him get some sort of comeuppance for his hideous behavior toward me—I still wouldn’t have wished that fate upon him. The man must have made some serious enemies over the years.

Four hours later I was recounting this tale to Margit. We were in bed, sprawled naked across each other and talking for the first time since I had arrived. When she’d opened her front door, she’d immediately pulled me down onto the bed, yanking down my jeans, hiking up her skirt. Once I was inside her, she became immoderate—her legs tight around me, her moans increasing in volume with each of my thrusts.

Afterward, she said, “Take off your clothes and stay awhile.”

I did as ordered while she went into the next room to retrieve two glasses. Then picking up the bottle of champagne I had brought (“I won’t say, ‘Again,’ . . . but you really must stop such extravagance”), she opened it, the cigarette ash falling off onto the sheets as the cork popped.

“More work for the maid,” I said.

“I am the maid. Just like you.”

“You’re beautiful,” I said, stroking her thigh.

“You’ve said that before.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You’re a liar,” she said with a laugh. “And you’re continuing to evade my question . . .”

“What question?”

“The question I posed to you last time.”

“Which was?”

“How badly did your wife damage you?”

“Badly,” I finally said. “But ultimately it was me who damaged myself.”

“You only say that because you believe her rhetoric . . . because, all of your life, you’ve been told you’re a bad boy.”

“Stop sounding like a shrink.”

“You have nothing to be guilty about.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, turning away.

“Did you kill anyone?” she asked.

“Don’t try to soft-pedal this . . .”

“It’s a legitimate question: Did you kill someone?”

“Of course I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Then what are you guilty about? Betraying your wife perhaps?”

“Maybe.”

“Or was it really all about getting found out?”

Silence. I turned away.

“We all want to get found out,” she said. “It’s sadly human . . . and sadly true. Just as we all can’t really cope with the guilt that—”

“Do you want to know about the sort of guilt I contend with, day in, day out? Well, listen to this . . .”

That’s when I told her about the hit-and-run accident involving the desk clerk at the Sélect.

“It hardly sounds like an accident,” Margit said when I finished recounting this story.

“That’s what’s nagging me, the fact that—”

“Now don’t tell me that, because you thought ill of the bastard, the wrath of the gods came down upon him?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“But he got what was coming to him. Somebody out there didn’t like the way he was behaving toward others, and decided to settle the score. And even though you had no bearing whatsoever on this person’s decision to run him down, you still feel guilt?”

“I wanted something bad to happen to him . . .”

“And that puts you at fault?”

“I have a fucked-up conscience.”

“Clearly,” she said, topping up my glass with champagne. “But I’m certain this self-loathing didn’t simply arrive one day, out of nowhere. Did your mother—?”

“Hey, I really don’t feel like talking about it . . .”

“Because she so disapproved of you?”

“Yeah, that—and because she was a deeply unhappy woman who told me repeatedly that I was the root cause of her problems.”

“Were you?”

“According to her, sure. I screwed things up completely for her . . .”

“How, exactly?”

“Before I showed up in her life, she was this big-deal journalist . . .”

“How ‘big deal’?”

“She was a court reporter . . .”

“A mere reporter?”

“For the Cleveland Plain Dealer.”

“Is that an important newspaper?”

“It is . . . if you live in Cleveland, Ohio.”

“So she was a self-important hack, covering trials . . .”

“Something like that. I arrived by accident. She was forty, a hard-bitten professional, someone who never married and lived for her work. But—and this I got from her later—she was starting to ‘feel her age’ . . . wondering if she’d end up alone in her early sixties; a dried-up spinster, living in some small apartment, on the way out at the paper, no one caring if she lived or died . . .”

“There was no husband in her life?”

“Not until she met Tom Ricks. Ex-army guy, built up a successful insurance business in the Cleveland area, divorced after the war, no kids, met my mom when she was covering an accident case in which he was testifying. She was lonely, he was lonely, they started seeing each other. It was ‘pretty agreeable at first,’ she later told me, especially as they both liked to drink . . .”

“And then she got pregnant?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. It was all a big accident, she ‘agonized’ over what to do, whether to keep it . . .”

“She told you all this?”

“Yeah—when I was around thirteen and we’d just had a fight about my refusal to do something stupid, like take the garbage out. ‘You know the biggest mistake of my life was not having you scraped out of my womb when I still had the chance.’ ”

“Charming,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette.

“Well, she was pretty drunk at the time. Anyway, she found herself up the spout, Dad convinced her to keep it and promised her he wouldn’t stop her working or anything. But then the pregnancy turned out to be a nightmare. She ended up confined in a hospital bed for around three months. As this was 1963, when maternity leave wasn’t exactly a progressive concept, the paper let her go. It was the biggest blow of her life. All the time I was growing up, she always referred to the Plain Dealer as ‘my paper’ . . . talking about it in such mournful tones you’d think it was a man who jilted her.”

“So you were vilified for being the person who ruined her life. Is she still alive?”

I shook my head. “The cigarettes got my father first—he died in ’87. Mom went in ’95—cigarettes and booze. Suicide on the installment plan. I’m pretty damn sure my mom started the slow process of killing herself the day the Plain Dealer let her go. And . . . could we drop this subject, please?”

“But it’s so illuminating—and it so explains why you feel such guilt about nothing.”

“Guilt has its own weird trajectory.”

“Which is why you weirdly blame yourself for that desk clerk getting run over?”

“I don’t blame myself . . . I just wish I hadn’t wished him ill.”

“Why spill tears over a shit? Anyway, don’t you think that those who damage others deserve to be damaged themselves?”

“Only if you buy into an Old Testament view of things.”

“Or if you do truly believe in retribution.”

“But you don’t believe in . . .?”

“Retribution? Of course I do. It’s a rather delicious concept, don’t you think?”

She was smiling at me.

“You’re joking, right?” I asked.

“Not really, no,” she said, then glanced at the watch on my wrist.

“Don’t tell me our ‘allotted time slot’ is over?” I said.

“Just about.”

“Great,” I said, then added, “And yeah, I know that sounds petulant, but . . .”

“See you in three days, Harry.”

“Same time?”

She stroked my hair.

“You’re learning,” she said.

Learning what? I wondered.

TWELVE

I WAS DETERMINED TO break out of my daily routine. So I made the point of exploring new quartiers on foot, and even forced myself to jog three times a week along the Canal Saint-Martin—my one small nod to the idea of getting back into shape. And twice a week, I declared a “movie-free” day and loitered in museums instead of the Cinémathèque.

But, for me, all these extracurricular activities were secondary to my twice-weekly rendezvous with Margit. It wasn’t just the sex. It was also the break from the quotidian—the sense that, for a couple of hours (if I was lucky), I would escape the banality of everything. No wonder we all respond to the idea of intimacy. It doesn’t just allow us to cling to someone else and believe that we are not alone in the world; it also lets us escape from life’s prosaic repetitiveness.

But with Margit, I always did still feel somewhat alone, as she continued to keep a certain distance from me. When I arrived for our fourth rendezvous, she led me to the sofa, opened my jeans, and proceeded to go down on me. But when I tried to touch her, she gently pushed my hand away with the comment I’d heard before, “Not today.”

Three days later, however, she was a different woman—sexually voracious and passionate, delighted to see me, full of chat and—dare I say it—almost loving. So much so that when eight o’clock arrived and she hinted that it was time for me to leave, I said, “Listen, I know I’m probably pushing things here—but this has been such a wonderful afternoon, why don’t we do something like go out to dinner or . . .”

“I have work. And so do you.”

“But I don’t have to be there until midnight, which gives us a couple of hours—”

She cut me off, asking, “You really just sit there all night, while the furs come and go?”

“That’s it.”

“And do you ever meet the people who employ you?”

“Just the grumpy bastard who runs the local Internet café and hands me my pay envelope every day.”

“The middleman?”

“Something like that.”

“Have you ever thought about what’s really going on in that building?”

“I told you, it’s a furrier’s.”

“And I know you’re lying to me.”

Silence. She said, “Don’t tell me you’re suddenly feeling guilty about not telling me the truth?”

“The truth is, I don’t know the truth. Sorry.”

“Why should you be sorry? All men lie.”

“No comment,” I said.

“Listen to your guilt. But let me guess: your ex-wife talked a great deal about the need for ‘trust’ in a marriage, and how without ‘complete honesty,’ there was ‘no real basis for intimacy.’ ”

Once again, I found myself tensing—and trying to rewind my memory in an attempt to remember when I told her all that about Susan. She preempted me by saying, “How did I know that? It was simply a supposition—and one based on my rudimentary knowledge of American morality in all its hypocritical finery.”

“Whereas the French way is . . .?”

“Compartmentalize. Accept the Cartesian logic of two separate universes within one life. Accept the contradictory tug between familial responsibility and the illusion of freedom. Accept that—as Dumas said—the chains of marriage are heavy and, as such, they often need to be carried by several people. But never allow the two realms to meet—and never admit anything. Whereas you, Harry, confessed everything . . . didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. And yes, I was a fool to confess.”

“But you had to share the guilt.”

“I’d been caught . . .”

“Being caught and confessing are two different things. You know the story of the man who gets caught by his wife in bed with another woman. Immediately he jumps up, naked, and starts yelling, ‘It’s not me! It’s not me!’ ”

“I’m afraid I’ve never had much in the way of ‘sangfroid.’ ”

“No—you just feel uncomfortable about lying. You consider it reprehensible and morally wrong . . . even though it is the most common—and necessary—of human impulses.”

“You consider lying necessary?”

“Of course. How else do we navigate the absurdities of life without falsehoods? And do you know what the biggest falsehood is? ‘I love you.’ ”

“Didn’t you love your husband?”

She reached for her pack of cigarettes. I said, “You always do that when I ask you something awkward.”

“You are a very observant man. And yes, I did love my husband . . . sometimes.”

“Just sometimes?”

“Now please don’t tell me that you can love somebody all the time?”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter.”

“Even though she won’t speak with you now?”

“Did I tell you that?”

“Harry, you always sound so shocked when I infer something about your life. But it’s not as if I have psychic powers. It’s just . . .”

“My story is so banal and obvious?”

“All lives are extraordinary. All lives are simultaneously banal and obvious. From what you’ve told me so far, it’s not hard to deduce certain things about you and your situation from a few hints you’ve dropped here and there. But as you don’t want to talk about it . . .”

“Any more than you want to talk about what happened to your daughter . . .”

“My daughter died.”

“How?”

“Do you really want to hear this story?” she asked.

“Yes, I do.”

She turned her gaze away from me, focusing her eyes on the window near her bed. After several long drags on her cigarette, she began talking.

“On June 22, 1980, Zoltan took our daughter Judit—who was just seven—for a walk in the Jardin du Luxembourg. I remember telling him, as he left this apartment, that I was planning to have dinner ready in an hour, and wouldn’t it be easier if they spent time across the road in the Jardin des Plantes. But Judit was very insistent about riding the carousel in the Luxembourg, and Zoltan—who so adored Judit he would give in to anything she asked—told me, ‘We’ll take a taxi there and back. Anyway, it’s midsummer’s night, so why don’t you come with us? We can splurge and go to a restaurant, and maybe even take Judit to see Fantasia afterward.’ But I had already started cooking a spaghetti sauce, and I was rather inflexible back then about changing our domestic schedule once it had been planned for the evening. So I insisted that they come back within an hour, no more. Zoltan told me I was being rigid, ‘comme d’habitude.’ I lashed back, saying that somebody had to be disciplined around here, in order to keep everything afloat. That’s when he called me a bitch, and Judit got upset and asked why we had to fight all the time, and Zoltan said it was because I needed to control everything, and I told my husband that the only thing that was keeping me in this marriage was our little girl, because he was such a complete waste of time. Judit started to cry, and Zoltan yelled that he was sick of this marriage, and he grabbed Judit and told me that they would eat elsewhere tonight, and as far as he was concerned, I could drown in my fucking spaghetti sauce, and the door slammed behind them, and . . .”

She fell silent. Then, “Hours went by. Three, four, five hours. I figured that, after they had gotten something to eat, they’d gone to the movie. But the cinema was only ten minutes from our apartment by foot. When eleven PM arrived, I was worried. By midnight, I was scared. By one AM, totally panicked—and I started inventing scenarios in my head, telling myself that, in a fit of anger, he’d decided to check them into a hotel for the night . . . and that he wasn’t letting me know their whereabouts to punish me for being such a bitch. But I knew that Zoltan would never do something so extreme. He mightn’t have had much in the way of ambition, but he still didn’t have a mean streak . . . something I always loved about him, even though I was often so stupidly critical about so much to do with him. It’s terrible, isn’t it, how we lash out at the most important people in our lives—often against our better judgment, but just because we are frustrated in our own lives and—”

She broke off again. Another long drag on her cigarette.

“The police arrived just before two. When I heard the voices on the stairs, I realized immediately that . . .”

Silence.

“The police were very quiet, very solicitous. They told me there had been an accident, and would I please accompany them to the Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière. I became immediately hysterical and demanded to know what had happened. ‘Un accident, madame,’ one of them said, also explaining that they weren’t able to discuss the circumstances of the incident or the condition of my husband and daughter. As the gendarme told me this, his colleague put his hand on my shoulder, as if to steady me. That’s when I knew they were dead.

“I remember feeling as if I had walked into an empty elevator shaft—a long free fall. My legs buckled, but I somehow managed to make it into the bathroom and empty my stomach in the toilet. At that moment I wanted to stick my head into the vomit-filled water and not pull it out again. Death seemed like the only option. One of the policemen came into the bathroom and stood over me as I was sick. I sensed he knew I might do something self-destructive—and once, when I dipped my head in the bowl, he gripped my shoulder and said, ‘You must somehow stay strong.’

“I finished getting sick. The policeman helped me up. I remember flushing the toilet and going to the sink and filling it with cold water and plunging my head into it and the policeman getting a towel and wrapping it around my head, and shouting something to his colleague, and being helped into my coat and down the stairs, and into the back of their car.

“At the hospital, they brought me into this small room. We waited almost a quarter of an hour for the ‘officials’ to arrive—but I didn’t care. I knew that the longer ‘they’ stayed away, the longer I wouldn’t have to face . . .”

She stopped in mid-sentence to light up another cigarette.

“I must have gone through six cigarettes in that fifteen minutes. Then the door swung open and two men walked in. They were both middle-aged, chubby, grim-faced. One of them wore a white coat, the other a suit. A doctor and a police inspector. The doctor pulled up a chair beside me. The cop hovered by the door, watching me with dark, middle-of-the-night eyes. The doctor forced himself to make eye contact with me. When he started to say, ‘Madame, I regret to inform you . . .’ I lost the fight I had been waging ever since the police had knocked on my apartment door. I must have cried for at least ten minutes—howling like some wounded animal. The doctor tried to take me by the hands to steady me, but I pushed him away. He offered something to calm me down. I screamed that nothing would deaden the pain. Eventually the doctor started explaining, ‘Hit-and-run . . . killed while crossing a street . . . they were at a pedestrian crossing when the driver struck them both . . . your husband killed instantly, your daughter died just fifteen minutes ago . . . we tried everything we could to save her, but her neck was broken, her other internal injuries too severe . . .’

“The police inspector then began to speak, telling me that a passer-by had taken down the number of the car—a black Jaguar—and that they expected to trace the vehicle and apprehend the driver within the next twenty-four hours. ‘We are treating this as accidental manslaughter . . . but I must ask you: Did your husband have any enemies who might have wanted him . . .?’ I started screaming again, telling him that Zoltan had been a wonderful dreamy layabout with no ambition whatsoever, so why would anyone want him dead? ‘Très bien, madame,’ the inspector said. ‘I am sorry to have posed such a difficult question at this time.’

“ ‘I want to see them,’ I started screaming. But they refused, informing me that their injuries were too severe. My screaming intensified. ‘I don’t care what they look like, I will see them.’ But they still said no, the doctor telling me it would be too traumatic . . . that Zoltan’s skull had been crushed by the wheels of the car and Judit had been dragged for several meters by the car, and her face . . .

“That’s when I went crazy—kicking the desk, overturning the chairs, clawing at my face with my nails, and then trying to smash my head against the walls. I remember the policeman and the inspector attempting to hold me down, and me fighting against them, and the doctor running out of the room, and returning with a nurse, and me now shrieking that I wanted to die, and someone forcing my jacket off me and a needle penetrating my arm and the world going dark and . . .

“When I came back into consciousness, I was strapped down to a bed in the hospital’s psycho wing. The nurse on duty said that I had been sedated for the past two days. She also told me the police wanted to speak with me. A few hours later, the inspector showed up. By this point, one of the doctors on call had decided I was calm enough to be freed from my restraints, so I was sitting up in bed, still being fed intravenously, as I refused all offers of food. The inspector was all business.

“ ‘Madame, we have apprehended the driver . . .’ he said. The man’s name was Henri Dupré. He was an executive with a big pharmaceutical company and lived in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. They were certain that he was very drunk when he killed my husband and daughter—because when they arrested him the next morning at his house, the blood test showed he was still way over the limit . . . which meant that when he had struck them, he must have been completely bourré. Smashed beyond reason.

“The inspector also said that one of our neighbors had identified the bodies, and that they had been released to a mortician who had reconstructed their faces, and if I wanted to view them now . . .

“But I told the inspector that I didn’t want to see them dead. Because I couldn’t face . . .”

Silence.

“We didn’t have many friends in Paris. But my businessman lover, Monsieur Corty, did come and see me. I was still being sedated, still under ‘suicide watch,’ but I could nonetheless tell that he was shocked by my appearance. His kindness was extraordinary. He spoke in a very quiet voice and told me that he would be taking care of all funeral expenses, and that he had spoken with the mortician and that he could hold off for a week or so with the burial until I was well enough to leave the hospital.

“But I said that I didn’t want to be present at the funeral . . . that I couldn’t bear the sight of their bodies . . . that they should burn them straightaway. I didn’t care what they did with the ashes, because they were just fucking ashes and had no meaning now that my daughter and husband were dead. Monsieur Corty tried to reason with me, but I would hear none of it. ‘Burn them now,’ I hissed, and eventually Monsieur Corty nodded quietly and said that, with regret, he would carry out my wishes.

“A few days later, I was discharged from the hospital. Monsieur Corty sent a car for me. I went home to an empty apartment—yet one in which everything seemed completely frozen in that moment in time just before they died. The spaghetti sauce I had been making was coagulated in the pot on top of the stove. Judit’s drawing books and dolls were scattered in front of the fireplace. Zoltan’s reading glasses were still balanced on the arm of the easy chair where he always sat. So too was the book he was reading: a Hungarian translation of Moravia’s Contempt. Do you know the novel?”

“Of course,” I said. “It was filmed by Godard.”

“We saw it when our marriage was in a happier place. When things started to go wrong, Zoltan became obsessed with both the film and the novel. Because he identified with the central character. Like Moravia’s protagonist, he had lost the respect of his wife. Until he was dead—and every moment of every day was spent mourning him and my wonderful daughter.”

“You felt guilt?”

“Of course. Especially when, a few days after being released from the hospital, I was called into the commissariat de police of the Sixth arrondissement. The inspector needed to formally interview me for the dossier of the case. That’s when I found out that the same bystander who managed to get the vehicle’s registration number had also seen Zoltan and Judit right before the accident. Zoltan had seen a taxi on the far side of the road, and ran across with Judit to hail it. Halfway there . . .”

“Surely you didn’t blame yourself for . . .”

“Of course I fucking blamed myself. If it hadn’t been for me insisting that they rush home for dinner . . .”

“That’s absurd, and you know it.”

“Don’t tell me what’s absurd. Had I been more flexible about things, about my stupid spaghetti sauce . . .”

Another silence, only this time I didn’t dare fill it. Finally she said, “It’s time you left.”

“OK.”

“You think me rigid, don’t you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No—but I know you hate the fact I shoo you out of here after a few hours and insist that I only see you every three days.”

“It’s OK, Margit.”

“Liar. It’s not OK. You tolerate it, but you don’t like it.”

“Well . . . if this is the way it has to be . . .”

“Stop being so reasonable . . . especially when I know it’s an act.”

“Everyone acts in relationships . . . especially ones as strange as this one.”

“There! You said it. A strange relationship. So if you find it so strange, why don’t you abandon it? Tell me I’m a rigid, controlling bitch and . . .”

“What happens after I leave here?”

“I work.”

“Bullshit.”

“Believe what you want.”

“So what are you translating right now?”

“That’s my business.”

“In other words, nothing.”

“What I do after you leave is my business.”

“Is there another guy?”

“You think me that energetic?”

“No, just completely cryptic.”

“Do yourself a favor, Harry. Walk out of here now and don’t come back.”

“Why the melodrama?”

“Because it won’t end well. It never does with me.”

“Maybe that’s because you’ve never been able to get over—”

“Don’t play the psychiatrist here. You know nothing about me. Nothing.”

“I know . . . what you just told me . . . that terrible story . . .”

“What? It ‘touched your heart.’ Or maybe it brought out your long-dormant protective instincts which you didn’t extend to your wife and daughter—”

“That was a shitty thing to say.”

“So leave and don’t come back.”

“That was the point of that comment, right? See if you could really alienate me and make me never want to come back here. But maybe if you stopped blaming yourself—”

“That’s it!” she said, standing up. “Get dressed and get out.”

But I grabbed her and violently yanked her back onto the bed. When she struggled, I pinned both her arms down and climbed on top of her legs.

“Now you can answer two questions for me.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

“That scar on your throat . . .”

She spat in my face. I ignored that and increased my pressure on her hands and legs.

“That scar on your throat. Tell me . . .”

“A botched suicide. Happy now?”

I let her arms go. They lay motionless on the bed.

“Did you try to kill yourself right after you were released from the hospital?”

“Two days later. In the apartment where I fucked Monsieur Corty.”

“He asked you to fuck him forty-eight hours after . . .?”

“No. I proposed the idea. He was hesitant, telling me there was no need to rush things. But I insisted. After he’d given me his usual two-minute in-and-out, I excused myself and went into the kitchen and grabbed a bread knife and . . .”

“You really wanted to punish him, didn’t you?”

“Absolutely—even though he was always so good to me. Or as good as anyone could be to a whore.”

“But the very fact you did it when he was in the next room . . .”

“No, it wasn’t a cry for help. If you cut your throat the right way, you die on the spot. I botched it . . . and Monsieur Corty somehow managed to stop the bleeding and call an ambulance and . . .”

“You lived.”

“Unfortunately . . . yes.”

“And Monsieur Corty?”

“He visited me twice in the hospital, then sent me a check for ten thousand francs—a small fortune back then—with a short note, wishing me well in the future. I never heard from him again.”

“And the driver of the car?”

“He was a man with many connections—so he managed to keep everything out of the papers, and the magistrate investigating the case somehow decided to drop the charges from manslaughter to something punishable by a slap on the wrist and a fine. His people offered me compensation. Fifty thousand francs. I refused the offer—until my lawyer reasoned with me and said that I would be spiting myself if I didn’t take his money . . . especially as he could get it increased by fifty percent. Which he did.”

“So you accepted the payment?”

“Seventy-five thousand francs for the lives of the two people who meant most to me in the world.”

“And the driver just vanished from view?”

“Not exactly. The world sometimes works in strange ways. Three weeks after the accident, there was an attempted burglary at the home of Henri Dupré. It was the middle of the night, Dupré surprised the burglar, there was a tussle, and Dupré was stabbed in the heart. Fatally.”

“And you felt avenged?”

“It counted for something, I suppose—especially as Dupré showed little remorse for the murder of my family. His lawyers did all the dirty work for him—but I never even received a card apologizing for the terrible thing he had done. All I received was a check.”

“So revenge has its virtues?”

“The standard moral line on revenge is that it leaves you feeling hollow. What bullshit. Everyone wants the wrongs against them redressed. Everyone wants to ‘get even.’ Everyone wants what you Americans call ‘payback.’ And why not? Had Dupré not been killed, I would have lived my life thinking that he’d gotten away with it. That burglar did me a huge favor: he ended a life that was worth ending. And I was grateful to him.”

“But did it in any way balm the wound?”

“Hardly. You might come to terms with the loss of a husband—no matter how much you miss him—but you never get over the death of a child. Never. Dupré’s death didn’t mollify my grief—but it did give me some grim satisfaction. And I’m certain that shocks you.”

“Part of me wants to say, ‘Yes, I am appalled . . .’ ”

“And the other part?”

“Understands exactly why you felt that way.”

“Because you too want revenge?”

“I haven’t suffered anything like you have.”

“True, no one died. But you did suffer the death of your marriage, your career. And your child will not speak with you . . .”

“As you reminded me earlier.”

“As you remind yourself every hour of every day. Because that’s how guilt works.”

I stood up and started to get dressed.

“Leaving so soon?” Margit asked, sounding amused.

“Well, it is close to the ‘witching hour,’ isn’t it?”

“True—but unusually you’re the one leaving without a shove for a change. Now why might that be?”

I said nothing.

“Answer this question honestly, Monsieur Ricks. The person—I presume it is a man—who did you harm . . . Wouldn’t you want harm to befall him?”

“Absolutely. But I’d never perpetrate it on him.”

“You’re far too ethical,” she said.

“Hardly,” I said, then added, “three days from now?”

“You are a fool to be pursuing this.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Three days then,” she said, reaching for her cigarettes.

Later that night, as I sat at my desk in my windowless office, Margit’s story continued to rattle around in my head. The sheer terrible randomness of it all—the way life can come completely asunder in a moment—nagged at me all night. It also explained plenty about Margit’s emotional reticence and the way she kept a certain distance from me. The longer I dwelled on it, the more I realized just how haunted she was by this appalling calamity, and how the grief would only end with her own death. Margit was right: there are certain tragedies from which we never recover. We may eventually adjust to the sense of loss that pervades every waking hour of the day. We may accept the desperate sadness that colors all perception. We may even learn to live with the loss. But that doesn’t mean we will ever fully cauterize the wound or shut away the pain in some steel-tight box and consider it vanquished.

I finally got back to work, cranking out the usual thousand words. But when 6:00 AM finally showed up, I couldn’t break free of my confinement, as this was the first night when I agreed to a twelve-hour marathon in exchange for a day off. The extra six hours dragged by. I forced myself to write another thousand words. I read another fifty pages of Simenon’s La neige était sale, gripped by his account of France under German occupation. Eventually I found myself pacing the room and actually doing sit-ups on the concrete floor in an attempt to keep blood circulating and my brain awake. There were a few callers in daylight. Their images were clearer on camera. They were all men of seemingly Turkish origin, and they all kept their heads turned downward as they uttered the necessary password into the speakerphone. Who, I often wondered, was Monsieur Monde? Someone you don’t need to know.

When noon arrived, I found myself blinking into the sunlight and needing to take in extended lungfuls of air and staggering home without the usual croissants and remembering to set the clock for 7:00 PM that night, and falling into a vast empty sleep, and waking with a jolt, and thinking how strange my existence was now: an all-night non-job, a sort-of girlfriend who would only see me every three days, and the realization that—even though this was allegedly my “day off”—I would be staying awake all night, as I couldn’t suddenly break the sleep-by-day schedule I had been living since starting this idiotic, wretched job.

So when I came to during the early evening, I hurried off to the Cinéma Grand Action on the rue des Écoles, where a new print of Kubrick’s Spartacus was being shown at 8:15. When it let out at 11:30 I kept thinking, Margit’s apartment is just a five-minute walk from here. But I turned away and found a Mexican place off the boulevard Saint-Germain that did very authentic guacamole (or what I took to be authentic guacamole) and even better margaritas, and wonderful enchiladas washed down with Bohemia beer. The meal cost me fifty euros and I didn’t give a damn, because I had just worked twelve hours, and this was my first night off in almost two months, and I was determined to throw financial caution to the wind tonight and get a little smashed and fall about Paris like a pinball. So when I finished my meal, I stopped in a tabac and bought a Cohiba Robusto and sauntered across the Seine, puffing happily on this absurdly expensive Cuban cigar and eventually reached Châtelet and a string of jazz clubs on the rue des Lombards. As it was almost 1:30 in the morning, the guy on the door let me into Sunside without hitting me for the usual twenty-euro cover charge. I threw back a couple of whiskies and listened to a so-so local chanteuse—thin, big frizzy hair, a reedy voice that still somehow managed to swing with the Ellington and Strayhorne standards, which she sang with her backing trio. When the set finished and the club emptied, I found myself on foot toward the Tenth arrondissement. It was well after two. This corner of Paris was deserted, bar a few entangled couples, and the street people who would once again be sleeping rough tonight, and the occasional drunk like myself. I followed the boulevard de Sébastopol most of the way home. As I got to Château d’Eau the smattering of Africans on the street looked at me as if I were a cop, taking a step back as I strode by. The rue de Paradis was shuttered—the Turkish workingmen’s cafés long closed. Ditto the bobo restaurants. The occasional streetlamp cast an oblong shaft of light on the pavement. There was no traffic, no ambient urban noise—just the percussive click of my heels punctuating the night . . . until I heard the tinny beat of shitty pop music up ahead, and saw that my local dingy bar was still open.

The barmaid—the same Franco-Turkish one I had seen there before—smiled as I entered. Without me asking, she poured me a beer, set it in front of me, and then turned and retrieved two glasses and a bottle and poured out two shots each of a clear liquid. Reaching for a pitcher, she added a drop of water to both drinks. As the liquid went murky, she raised a glass to me and said, “Serefe.”

Turkish for cheers.

I raised my glass and clinked it against hers and, following her example, downed the shot in one go. As it traveled down my throat, all I could taste was its pastis-like flavor. But as soon as it hit my stomach, the alcoholic content kicked in: a one-hundred-and-ten-percent proof burn that made me grab the beer and drain it. The barmaid saw my discomfort and smiled.

“Raki,” she said, pouring us two more shots. “Dangerous.”

Her name was Yanna. She was the wife of the owner, Nedim, who was back in Turkey helping bury some uncle.

“You marry a Turk, you find out they are always burying some fucking uncle, or sitting in a corner with a bunch of their friends, conspiring against someone who dared to make some pathetic slight against their family, or—”

“You’re not Turkish?” I asked.

“Supposedly. Both my parents came from Samsun, but they emigrated in the seventies and I was born here. So yes, I am French—but if you are born into a Turkish family, you are never really allowed to escape its clutches. Which is why I ended up marrying Nedim—a second cousin and a fool.”

She clicked her glass against mine and threw back the raki. I followed suit and accepted the bottle of beer she handed me.

“Raki is good for just one thing,” she said. “Getting smashed.”

“And every so often,” I said, “we all need to get smashed.”

“Tout à fait, monsieur. But I have a question. Omar—le cochon—tells me you are American.”

“Absolutely.”

“So why do you have to live in his proximity?”

“Ever heard the expression ‘a struggling artist’?”

“I’ve never met an artist. In this work, the only people you meet are assholes.”

“Artists can be assholes too.”

“But they are probably interesting assholes.”

Then, over three rakis—interrupted by the final orders of the two drunks semi–passed out in a corner—she gave me a rambling version of her life. Raised in this “shitty arrondissement” when it was still primarily Turkish, always getting crap in school for being the child of immigrés, working in her father’s little épicerie when she was seventeen, very strict parents, pushed into this arranged marriage with Nedim three years ago (“My twenty-first birthday present from my fucking parents”).

“It could be worse,” she said. “At least it’s a bar, and not a laverie.”

But Nedim was a slob who expected her to play the traditional wife when it came to picking up after him. “I am also duty-bound to spread my legs and fuck the idiot twice a week . . . a disgusting experience as the fool always burps just before coming . . .”

We kept throwing the rakis back, and she kept lighting up cigarettes and coughing. Finally she told the two drunks to beat it. When they had both staggered out, she looked at the mess around her—the dirty glasses, the brimming ashtrays, the tables and counters that needed wiping down, the floor to be swept and mopped—and shuddered.

“This,” she said, “is the sum total of my life.”

“I should go,” I said.

“Not yet,” she said, standing up. She walked to the front door, locked it, then pulled down an inside set of shutters. She returned to where I was sitting, flashing me a drunken smile, took my hand, and pulled me up from the chair, then placed the same hand under her short skirt and inside her petite culotte. As my index finger touched her slit, it became wet and she uttered a small groan before grabbing my head and shoving her tongue down my throat. I might have been drunk, but I was also cognizant of the fact that I was engaged in an insane activity. But my finger pushed deeper inside her. And her smoky, raki-coated mouth tasted . . . well, smoky and raki-coated. And the rational side of my brain was being trumped by the intoxicated moron with a hard penis. Before I knew it we were staggering into a dingy back room where there was a cot bed and a sink with rust stains (the small shitty details one notices while locked in a drunken carnal embrace), and she was unbuckling my jeans and I pulled down her panties and she kicked off her shoes, and we collapsed half-clothed on the cot, and I smelled damp from the grungy blanket covering the mattress, and the cot creaked under our combined weight, and when I hesitated from entering her she whispered, “It is safe.” As soon as I was deep within her, she started doing mad, violent stuff like pulling my hair and lacerating my buttock with her nails, and pushing her free hand between us and aggressively rubbing her clitoris as I thrust into her. She must have woken two neighboring arrondissements as she came, then bit down hard on my tongue and wouldn’t let go until I detonated inside of her.

Immediately she stood up and said, “I have to clean up now.”

A minute or so later, after I had pulled up my jeans and spat blood into the sink (she had really done a number on my tongue), she hustled me out onto the street without a good-bye—just a fast guilty glance in either direction along the rue de Paradis to make certain no one she knew was about. The shutters came down. I walked a few steps along the street, then leaned against a wall, trying to fathom if what had just happened in the last ten minutes had just happened. But my brain was still too addled from all the booze and the sheer madness of it all. The blood in my mouth was flowing freely now and my tongue suddenly hurt like hell. So I staggered home and went back to my room and ran the tap and gargled with salt water for around two minutes, and spat out the bloodied water, and stripped off my clothes, and took three extra-strength ibuprofen tablets and a Zopiclone. The chemicals did the trick, but when I jolted awake at two, I found that I couldn’t speak.

I discovered this because my wake-up call this morning wasn’t my clock radio; rather, several loud knocks on my door. As I staggered out of bed, my tongue touched the roof of my parched mouth and immediately recoiled in agony. I went to the little mirror hanging by the kitchen sink and opened my mouth. I shuddered when I saw what was inside. My tongue had taken on a general blue-black appearance and was grotesquely distended. The banging on the door increased. I opened it. Outside stood Omar—in a dirty T-shirt and a pair of cotton drawstring pants with fresh urine stains around the crotch. The first words out of his mouth were, “You give me one thousand euros.”

“What?” I said, sounding as if my mouth was filled with dental cotton wool. That’s when I realized that speech was virtually impossible.

“You give me one thousand euros today. Or else you are dead man.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, though the sentence came out all muffled and distorted. As in: jenecomprendspas.

“Why you can’t speak?”

“Bad cold.”

“Liar. She bit you, yes?”

Now I was very awake and scared.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I see you this morning. Very early. Leave bar.”

“I wasn’t in a bar . . .”

“Bar closed. Shutters down. Shutters then open. She looks out, looks both ways. Coast clear. You come out. Shutters close. Got you.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“Bullshit. I am coming down street. I see her open bar. When she gives nervous look, I duck into doorway. Hidden. I see you. Now I tell Nedim—when he comes back next week—that you fucked his wife. How you like that, American? Nedim will cut off your balls. Unless you pay me to keep my mouth closed.”

I slammed the door in his face. He immediately began to pound on it.

“You pay me one thousand euros by end of the week, or you are man who will lose his balls. You no fuck with me.”

There are moments in life when you feel as if you are in free fall. This downward spiraling motion is underscored with the knowledge that you have stumbled into something so potentially dangerous and maniacal—all because you have engaged in that most commonplace of male displacement activities: thinking with your prick.

I forced myself into the shower and into some clothes and out onto the street. Mr. Beard glowered at me when I came into the café to collect my pay packet—did he already know what had happened as well?—but we exchanged no words, which was no bad thing just now; as any verbal utterances caused immense pain. My stomach was rumbling, I knew that solid food would also be a problem. So I hit upon a grim option: a chocolate milkshake at the McDonald’s by the Gare de l’Est. It was raining as I entered its portals. At three on a wet afternoon, there were a handful of travelers grabbing fast-food provisions before catching a train. Largely, however, the people huddled at the plastic tables eating plastic food were those who lived on the streets. Or they were immigrants—a mélange of African and Middle Eastern faces—who saw this dump as nothing more than a cheap meal. Looking at my fellow diners, all I could feel was a curious solidarity with these people who lived in Paris and yet really lived outside of it; who had few opportunities here; who were quietly ignored or despised by everyone doing better than just “getting by.” But in expressing camaraderie with my fellow outsiders, I knew I was playing the hypocrite. After all, I longed for the other side of the Parisian divide: a nice apartment, an intellectual (yet chic) cinephile girlfriend, dinners in good restaurants, drinks at the Flore (and not worrying about the exorbitant prices they charged), a little bit of literary fame and its attendant fringe benefits (invitations to salons du livre, being asked to write the occasional reflective article for Libération or Lire, more women). Instead I was a self-marginalized loser—and currently a fearful one, as I wondered if Omar really would shop my ass to Yanna’s husband.

The catastrophist in me invented ten different ruinous scenarios, all of which centered around sexually transmitted diseases and grievous bodily harm being meted out by a gang of angry Turkish gentlemen.

But once the thousand euros was handed over to Omar, then what? Paying a blackmailer does not guarantee the cessation of threats. From my extensive knowledge of film noir and dime-store mysteries, I knew that, au contraire, it usually signaled the start of an intensive campaign of menace. And Omar was stupid enough to think that he was smart enough to get me cornered and keep the hush-money game going for as long as I lived in fear of disclosure.

Which meant that I couldn’t give in to the slob in the first place. But how to cut him off at the pass?

Margit would have an interesting answer to that question. But Margit was the last person to whom I could tell any of this . . . for obvious reasons. I lived in dread of seeing her in two days’ time, as all sorts of questions would be raised about my distended tongue and the scratch marks on my ass from Yanna’s exceptionally sharp nails.

For the next forty-eight hours, time flowed like cement. Everything seemed interminably long, overshadowed by my fears of disclosure and disease. However, I did do something sensible: I took myself off to a walk-in medical clinic on the boulevard de Strasbourg. The doctor on duty was a thickset man in his midfifties with thinning hair and an indifferent seen-it-all countenance. He looked at my tongue and appeared impressed.

“How did this occur?”

I told him.

“Ça arrive,” he said with a shrug, then explained that there was little he could do to cure a badly bitten tongue. “Keep rinsing it in salted water to keep the wound clean. Otherwise it must heal on its own. Within a week the swelling will diminish. I would also suggest to your ‘petite amie’ that she doesn’t demonstrate her ardor in such an aggressive way the next time you make love.”

“There isn’t going to be a next time,” I said.

Another indifferent shrug. “Très bien, monsieur.”

I then detailed my worry about having unprotected sex with Yanna.

“She is French?” he asked.

“Yes, but her husband is Turkish.”

“But he lives here?”

“Yes.”

“Is she an intravenous drug user?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Her husband?”

“He’s a drunk.”

“Do you think she sleeps with other men? More specifically, Africans?”

“She’s a racist.”

“In my experience, you can be a racist and still have sex with those you allegedly despise. Are you having unprotected sex with anyone else?”

“Yes, but . . . I do not think there is any risk involved.”

“A final question then,” the doctor asked. “Might you have any cuts or wounds in or around your genitalia?”

“Not to my knowledge. But if you wouldn’t mind taking a look.”

Another shrug—this time accompanied by a bored sigh. He reached behind him and grabbed a small bag from an easy-to-reach pile, opened it, and began to pull on surgical gloves, while motioning me to stand up. I dropped my trousers and underwear. The doctor took my limp penis between his latexed fingers and then, using a small pen flashlight, peered around my testicles and crotch. The entire inspection only lasted around thirty seconds and should have been humiliating, but was carried out in such a dispassionate way that he might as well have been examining a turnip.

“Generally, female-to-male HIV transmission needs some sort of open wound or sore in order to enter the immune system. Yes, it allegedly can swim up the urethra, but you would have to be profoundly unlucky.”

“I can be profoundly unlucky, Doctor.”

“The odds are still very small . . . Still, if you want to be absolutely certain, we can do a blood test now and also screen you for other STDs. And then we can do another in six months’ time—to give you the complete ‘all-clear.’

“I’d like the test.”

“Très bien, monsieur . . .”

Ten minutes later, I was out on the street, a small card in my pocket with a number to ring tomorrow to get the results of the test. I knew that, privately, the doctor regarded me as a man suffering nothing more than a surfeit of guilt. Just as I also knew that when I saw Margit later that afternoon, I would have to make a clean breast of everything. There are certain things about which you can lie. And others . . .

Forty-five minutes later I was walking obsessively around the Jardin des Plantes, trying to work out how I’d tell Margit what had happened, terrified about how she’d react, and cursing myself for, yet again, detonating a relationship thanks to sexual transgression—a relationship I definitely didn’t want to lose. Do we ever learn anything from our mistakes? Not when it comes to sex. That’s the one arena of bad behavior in which we are recidivists, over and over again.

As I mounted the stairs to Margit’s apartment, I told myself, As long as you’re prepared for the worst, there’s really nothing to fear. But I couldn’t embrace such advice. I was guilty—guilty of so much.

I knocked on the door. A minute went by. She opened it. She was wearing a black dressing gown and smoking a cigarette.

“Hi there,” I said, leaning forward to kiss her and wondering if she could hear the blurriness of my speech. She accepted the kiss. I stepped inside. She led me by the hand past the bedroom and into her front room. I sat down in an armchair. Without saying anything she went to the little table where she kept a few bottles of booze and poured me a whisky. She handed it to me. I sipped it and flinched, the alcohol burning my wounded tongue. She sat down opposite me. She smiled. Then she said, “So who have you been fucking, Harry?”

THIRTEEN

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT you’re talking about,” I said.

“Liar,” she said with a laugh.

I sipped some whisky and winced again.

“What’s wrong with your mouth?”

“I bit my tongue.”

“Liar.”

“Haven’t you ever bitten your tongue?” I asked.

“What was her name?”

“I’m telling you—”

“You are telling me shit. Which is fine by me. I don’t care. Any more than I care if you slept with someone else—which I know you did. So what was her name?”

Pause. Then, “Yanna.”

“Turkish?”

“Half-French, half-Turkish.”

“How did you meet her?”

I explained.

“And how did the fuck happen?”

I explained.

“Did she did bite you before or after penetration?”

I explained.

“And when you were finished?”

“She threw me out.”

“And let me guess—you didn’t use a condom . . .”

“I’m sorry.”

“But why?”

“Because now . . .”

“Now what?”

“Now perhaps you won’t want . . .”

“To have sex with you?” She laughed again. “Sometimes, Harry, you become infantile.”

I hung my head . . . and felt infantile.

“Surely that doctor you consulted . . .”

I looked up at her.

“How did you know I consulted . . .?”

“Here we go again. Harry, you are so charmingly predictable. And you are so American when it comes to your need to feel bad about everything to do with sex. So let me guess: the doctor told you there’s nothing to worry about. But you’re still worried—still calculating the million-to-one possibility that you might have contracted—”

“Stop,” I said.

“But why, chéri? You feel guilt about fucking someone else. But instead of properly hiding it, you wear it on your sleeve. And when I call you on it, you admit all—and hand the guilt on to me.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“I don’t care what you did. I don’t care into which of her orifices you shoved your penis. All I care about is being treated as an adult by an adult. But when you enter my apartment, cowering—”

“It’s not just the sex,” I said, cutting her off.

“Even though the doctor gave you the virtual all-clear?”

“I am being blackmailed.”

“By whom exactly?” she asked

I gave her the complete run-down on Omar, then said, “The guy has a certain animal cunning. He thinks he’s got me cornered . . .”

“But he does have you cornered.”

“So what do I do?”

“You don’t pay him the money.”

“But he will make good on his threat . . .”

“Let him. You can always deny it. And believe me, Madame Teeth Marks will deny it too.”

“That won’t change his mind. At best, I’ll get my face smashed in.”

“The thing to play for is time. Tell Omar you will give him the money, but you don’t have the cash right now. Tell him you’ll get it to him in a few weeks. If he pushes you, be firm. What’s he going to do? Go ahead and tell her husband? If he does that he doesn’t get the money. That’s all he’s after—the thousand now and whatever he can bilk from you later. So keep him on the long finger. Meanwhile, I think you should make contact with Madame Teeth Marks and let her know what’s going on. She can definitely help you contain things. Suggest to her that she tells her husband that Omar tried to make a pass at her late one night while he was away burying his uncle. Suggest to her that she gives him graphic details of the pass he made . . . how he attempted to touch her everywhere. She really needs to make it sound as grubby as possible. Once she’s done that, Omar’s credibility will be zero. He can tell him anything about you, and the husband won’t believe it. Because he’ll think Omar is simply trying to off-load blame on you.”

I looked at her, impressed.

“That’s a very elegant, nasty solution to the problem.”

“It comes with a price, however.”

“Which is what?”

“I want to know what happened to you in the States—what you did that was so shockingly terrible that you had no choice but to flee over here.”

A long pause—I downed the whisky, even though the alcohol burned into the wound and hurt like hell.

“You owe me this, Harry,” she said.

“Because of my transgression?”

“No—because I’ve told you so much about my past. Whereas you . . .”

“You’ll think it such a banal story.”

“If it destroyed your life, it’s hardly banal. Anyway, you want to tell me.”

“Could I have another shot of that whisky?” I asked.

“Dutch courage?”

“What other courage is there?”

She poured me out a hefty shot. I downed half of it, my eyes watering up as it went down.

“On y va, monsieur,” she said. “Get on with it.”

I finished the whisky. I took a deep breath. I started to talk.

“I suppose I should first tell you about my wife. I met Susan in grad school in Michigan. She was doing drama—and had all these great plans for becoming a professional theater director. I was getting a doctorate in film studies and wanted nothing more than a nice secure tenured job at a nice secure university which wouldn’t be too taxing, would allow me to teach something I genuinely liked, and would also give me plenty of time to write ‘the novel’—check that: ‘the novels’—that I knew I was destined to write. From the moment I met her, Susan struck me as the ideal ‘life partner.’ She was attractive . . . in a very wholesome Midwestern way. She certainly wasn’t chic—that would have been anathema to her. But yes, she was genuinely cute.”

“A horrible word, cute. And let me guess: she always wore jeans and hiking boots and crème-colored sweaters and a ski parka and . . .”

“Do you want to tell this story?”

“I’m right, am I not?”

“Yes, you’re right. And yes, we got married before we both got our doctorates. And yes, we both found jobs at the same middle-ranking small college—Crewe, in Ohio. No mean feat that, considering how hard academic jobs are to come by. I was an instant hit with my students. . . .”

“And Susan? Was she too a hit in the realm of ‘student drama’?”

“Susan—as it turned out—had difficulty fitting in at the college. Everyone saw that she was a very talented director—great creative vision and all that—but she wasn’t the easiest of teachers, and several students complained that she was too demanding on them, that she expected standards far higher than those kids at Crewe College could obtain . . .”

“Was she hypercritical of you as well?”

“Yes, she could be rather finicky around the house. And yes, she did push me very hard professionally—as we both came into the college as assistant professors, and both had to get enough articles and the like published in order to get tenured.”

“Let me guess what happened next. You got tenured and she was turned down?”

“That is precisely what happened. The thing that decided it against her wasn’t her lack of professional accomplishment—it was her inability to relate to her students.”

“So suddenly she was out of a job, and you had the permanent post you wanted, which meant that you were stuck in this little town—which was the original master plan, except that now that your wife had nothing to do . . .”

“Well, she did get a few more small directing gigs at some small regional theaters—but again, there would always be some blowup with the cast, some dispute with the scenic designer, or she would rub management the wrong way . . .”

“An endlessly angry woman?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“So the next obvious plot twist of this story is . . . like your mother, she gets pregnant?”

“Bravo.”

“Well, what else would she do, being now out of work and thirty . . .?”

“Thirty-two to be exact. And yes, within two months of not getting tenured she was pregnant. Though we both adored Megan straightaway, it was Susan who was around the house most of the time—and within a year or so, the strain started to show.”

“Didn’t she try to get other work?”

“Of course she did. The problem was, with all her regional theater opportunities dried up, the only directing jobs around Eaton, Ohio, were high school productions. Totally rinky-dink stuff which further played into her growing despair.”

“And that despair continued to grow for the next . . . how old is Megan now?”

“Fifteen.”

“So for the ensuing thirteen years, she floundered?”

“Well, she did have our daughter, and she was a very attentive mother. But as Megan got older and entered school, not only was there less and less for Susan to do, but she also hinted from time to time that she resented being a mother and wife . . . telling me several times during a squabble that, if she wasn’t rooted to Eaton because of her husband and daughter, she’d be having a proper high-flying career in a big city like Chicago, where they would naturally appreciate her high professional standards and wouldn’t get offended by her acerbity.”

“Such a happy woman. How did you deal with all that?”

“I chose to ignore it . . . especially as it always came out when she’d had a few glasses of wine.”

“So she was drinking heavily?”

“Hey, we were living in a small town with not much to do at night—and she was, for all intents and purposes, depressed. So what else do you do but drink? Like I started to hit the hard stuff a bit as well. Largely because her own negativity was beginning to corrode things between us . . .”

“So you decided that the only way to combat this negativity was to have an affair?”

“It was actually she who had the first affair . . . though I didn’t know that until some time later.”

“And who was the lucky man?”

“Around two years ago, the college got a new dean of the faculty—a true smoothie named Gardner Robson.”

“They actually name people such things in the States?”

“White Anglo-Saxon Protestants do. This guy was a real Mr. Preppie. Ex–air force. Ex–management consultancy. Early fifties. Superfit. Superstraight. Supercorporate—and brought in by the Board of the College to ‘streamline management,’ whatever the fuck that meant. There was a reception for Robson when he became dean—and, having already met him briefly at some administrative thing, I remember telling Susan on the way over to the party that she was bound to loathe him—as he stood for everything Republican and conservative that she hated about Bush’s America.

“There were a lot of people swirling around Robson that night, but Susan did manage to spend some time talking with him. Only later did I realize that there was a moment when I saw their eyes meet . . .”

“How romantic.”

“I thought nothing of it at the time. On the way home, Susan’s only comment about him was, ‘He’s not bad . . . for a Republican.’

“Around a week or so later, she came home and told me she now had a private drama student—some local high school junior who was trying to get into the Juilliard acting program. She said she’d be doing intensive dramatic training with her every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six.”

“And you didn’t suspect anything?”

“No. Maybe that was completely naive of me, but there you go. I was simply happy that Susan had something to do with herself.”

“My, my, you were so trusting.”

“I just wanted my wife to stop being so bitter and self-loathing and, in turn, critical of me. The thing was, once she started to ‘teach’ this private course, her spirits began to improve. Susan even began to sleep with me again. On the surface, things were better between us. Until something curious happened. Out of nowhere, the woman who replaced Susan in the Drama Department left to take a job offer at another college. Susan was offered a one-year contract to replace her.”

“Engineered by the dean of the faculty.”

“Once again, I suspected nothing. Susan was naturally thrilled. Once back to teaching she seemed to mend her ways. No more of the old aggression or perfectionism toward her students or the other faculty members. Instead, she was a real ‘team player’ . . .”

“A transformation also brought about under the tutelage of the dean of the faculty.”

“Well, all tracks were so carefully covered that I still had no knowledge that she had a ‘jardin secret.’ Even the following year, when she was suddenly promoted and actually became a tenured professor, I still didn’t suspect . . .”

“Did others?”

“Being a small college, I’m sure there was a lot of talk about this promotion—because it’s absolutely unprecedented for someone who has been denied tenure to suddenly get a second chance. Still, I heard nothing of this talk—because the rule of gossip is that you don’t tell the person being gossiped about that they are the subject of whisper-whisper talk. But, as I found out from a faculty friend much later on, their liaison didn’t become official until well after my—”

“Downfall?” she asked, finishing the sentence.

“Yes—after my downfall.”

“And that came about . . .?”

“When I met a student named Shelley. But before I turn to that . . .”

“Susan gets her tenured job—and suddenly the domestic balance of power shifts again? She becomes arrogant and very preoccupied and busy, and begins to push you away?”

“Bull’s-eye. Now that she too was a tenured professor, Susan started playing the arrogance card. As in, telling me that her time was now more important than mine, and that I had to be at home every day at four when Megan got home from school. And she stopped wanting to have sex with me. Or we’d be in the middle of the act and she’d push me away and say something like, ‘You’re useless.’ ”

“Charming.”

“That was one of the milder things she hurled at me. One night, mid-act, she grabbed my head in both her hands and looked up at me and said, ‘Do you have any idea how boring this all is?’ ”

“Did you think it boring?”

“Not particularly—but she let it be known that I now turned her off.”

“So she made you feel unwanted, unloved, and all that. And you still didn’t suspect . . .?”

“Of course I suspected something. I even came out one night and asked her if she was having an affair. You know what her response was: ‘I should be so lucky.’ ”

“And you still—still!—didn’t suspect?”

“I was naive, OK? Or maybe I just didn’t want to really see what was going on.”

“And then this Shelley student came into your life?”

“Shelley Sutton. From Cincinnati. Super-bright, super-precocious. A complete film nut and very pretty—if you like the artsy intellectual type.”

“Long black hair, little Lenin-like glasses, black jeans, a black leather jacket, and a dreadful family background?”

“And someone who was far too bright to be at Crewe College—but was a self-admitted screwup in high school . . .”

“And she was in one of your lectures and came up to you afterward and started talking about . . .”

“Fritz Lang.”

“How romantic.”

“Listen, it’s not every day that you meet a very attractive freshman student who knows everything there is to know about Lang’s Hollywood noirs.”

“So it was a coup de foudre?”

“Not exactly—especially as all American colleges have insanely strict rules these days not just against student/professor relationships, but even doing something mild and innocent like having a meal with a student of the opposite sex. At Crewe, we were even sent directives by some faculty committee on ‘sexual ethics,’ informing us that, if we had a student in our office, we had to keep the door open and that we should always maintain at least three feet of physical distance between ourselves and them.”

“No wonder America is insane.”

“Anyway, after that first lecture, Shelley and I had coffee in the café on campus—and I have to say that there was this absolute instant rapport between us. She might have been nearly thirty years my junior—but within a few meetings it was clear to me that her worldview was so considerably more mature than her age.”

“Isn’t that always the cliché with the significantly younger woman? Yes, she might just have stopped playing with Barbie dolls, but her insights into Dostoyevsky are extraordinary.”

“OK, I do realize I was acting out certain Humbert Humbert fantasies—”

“But Lolita was only in her early teens.”

“Still, we had to be fantastically careful. So we started meeting at a coffee shop downtown. When the woman who ran the place noticed we’d been there around three times too often, we arranged that I would pick her up on a backstreet far from the college and then we’d drive to a small shitty city named Toledo—”

“Like Toledo in Spain?”

“Like Toledo—the rubber-tire capital of America.”

“When did you finally have sex with her?”

“Around two months after—”

“Two months!” she said, interrupting me. “What took you so damn long?”

“I was nervous as hell. Naturally I was smitten with her—but I also knew I was playing an insanely dangerous game.”

“What made you finally decide to sleep with her?”

“Susan kept pushing me away at home, and Shelley kept telling me how wonderful I was . . . and how we should ‘give ourselves to each other’ . . . even if it was just for one time.”

“And you believed that?”

“After two months of flirtatious chat, I thought I knew her. The thing was, I kept trying to patch up things at home.”

“So what triggered you finally sleeping with her?”

“I came home one night from the college and walked into Susan’s study and put my arms around her and told her how much I loved her and how I wanted things to be put right between us again. Know what her response was? ‘If you think that’s going to ever make me want to fuck you again, you’re completely deluded.’ ”

“Charming.”

“No—it was anything but that. The next day I saw Shelley again for coffee. She put her hand on mine and told me she wanted me, and that we had to stop being so damn cautious and . . .”

I fell silent.

“Where did you go?” Margit asked. “A hotel?”

“A grim little place called Motel 6 in Toledo. It’s a chain in the States, and only twenty-four ninety-nine if you check out of the room by six PM. Twenty-four ninety-nine meant I could pay cash, as I didn’t want the motel stay clocking up on my credit card. We really didn’t care about the look of the place, we just wanted—”

“To fuck each other.”

“Well, that’s a crude way of putting it, but—”

“Completely accurate.”

“Absolutely.”

“And the sex was wonderful?”

“I was in love with her. I know that sounds inane—and probably strikes you as yet another example of male midlife stupidity. But it’s the truth. I fell completely for her—and she for me. Truth be told, I’d never been in this sort of realm before . . . never really felt this sort of . . . OK, I’ll say it . . . completeness with another person. She might have been several decades my junior, but there was no sense of gulf between us. She was so damn smart—and not just when it came to movies and books and jazz and all the other things I also loved to talk about. She was just so wise about everything . . .”

“Very touching,” Margit said.

“Haven’t you ever been so smitten by another person you couldn’t stand being out of their presence?”

“Once,” she said quietly.

“Zoltan?”

“Someone else.”

“What happened?”

“This is your story, remember? So you were madly in love with your ‘student.’ And you kept meeting twice a week at the same autoroute motel?”

“No—after that first tryst in the Toledo motel, I ended it.”

“Out of guilt?”

“Absolutely. As smitten as I was, once we crossed that line I knew it had to stop immediately. Because—”

“You feared for your job, your career?”

“Yes, that. But also because I kept telling myself that things with Susan and I would eventually improve . . . that her disaffection with me was just one of those temporary dips that happen in a long marriage.”

“Why couldn’t you have simply arranged to see your student discreetly a few times a week? That’s what she wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Once we finally did the deed, Shelley was head over heels. And she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t sleep with her again. I tried to explain—many times—that I simply couldn’t continue to be her lover . . . that as much as I was taken with her, this simply had no future . . .”

“She took it badly, of course.”

“Who could blame her? Especially as I’d been stupid. Wildly stupid—in the way that only a man can be stupid. I’d carried on an ever-escalating two-month flirtation with a very impressionable student, and then—once we finally consummated it—I broke it off.”

“But why was that stupid? All right, you enjoyed a quasi-platonic relationship with this girl. Then you both decided to become lovers. Then you decided that it was not wise to continue as lovers. Surely, had she been emotionally more mature, she would have accepted your decision—”

“The thing was, she was eighteen—”

“There are emotionally mature eighteen-year-olds. She wasn’t.”

“All during those months of holding hands in cafés, and staring dreamily into each other’s eyes, I knew that if I kept seeing her, it was all going to blow up in my face. But the thing is, I couldn’t bear the thought of not keeping it going.”

“That’s because you were in love. That’s also why you ended it—because you knew that, once you started sleeping with her regularly, you wouldn’t be able to stop.”

“Perhaps. But don’t you see how my thinking was so completely contradictory? I so desperately wanted her. Then when I’d finally had her . . .”

“Why shouldn’t you have thought that way? And why can’t you accept that when it comes to matters of the heart, we all do contradictory things? You know that line from Pascal—‘The heart has its reasons which reason itself does not know.’ ”

“You’re trying to tell me it’s ‘all right,’ when the truth is—”

“You resisted temptation, you acceded to temptation, then you decided to resist temptation again. End of story. But because Americans equate sex with risk and potential disaster, it wasn’t the end of the story, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“So what happened to the girl, Harry?”

“The story goes a little haywire here. In the days after that afternoon in the motel, she started sending me love notes all the time—five a day on colored paper in my office mailbox at the college. There were just as many emails. And they all said the same thing: ‘You are the love of my life . . . I can’t bear to be apart from you for more than another day . . . can we go to the motel tomorrow?’

“I was just a little unnerved by all this instant emotional excess. When we were just meeting over coffee, she was always romantic . . . but I never got the idea that, once we’d slept together, she’d get so clingy.”

“You can never predict another person’s emotions . . . especially the postcoital ones.”

“Too damn true. When I found Shelley loitering outside one of my classes two days after Toledo, I decided to take immediate action. I suggested we go for a drive out into the country. Once we got to the place by a lake, I quietly explained that, as much as I cared for her, the affair had to end. She was devastated—and told me that she would never have slept with me if she knew it was going to end straightaway. I tried to patiently explain that, as crazy as I was about her—”

“You were a man with a conscience . . .”

“Something like that, yes. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how you agonize over crossing a dangerous threshold. Then, when you finally summon the courage to make that move, you instantly regret it.”

“Another of those large contradictions, Harry. So did she cry when you broke her the news?”

“She simply wouldn’t accept it . . . simply couldn’t believe that I had changed my mind. Again, I tried to explain. Yes, I had feelings for her . . . yes, I’d loved all our conversations, and thought she was a fantastic person . . . and yes, if I wasn’t married and wasn’t her professor . . .

“She didn’t take the news well—and started to plead with me, telling me she’d do anything to keep it going between us.”

“Was she a virgin?”

“No—there had been a big high school love affair . . . which ended when she came to college. But as far as she was concerned, we were Tristan and Isolde: destined to be together from here to eternity. Try as I did to persuade her that, in time, she’d just see this as a passing blip in her romantic life, she remained devastated . . . and determined to somehow keep things going between us. There were constant notes in my mailbox, at least a half-dozen emails every day, and she made a point of hanging around every class I taught.”

“Surely your colleagues began to realize that one of your students was a bit obsessed about her professor?”

“Of course. Doug Stanley—my one close friend on the faculty—took me aside and asked me directly if I had been involved with Shelley. Naturally I told him everything—and wondered out loud if I should go to the dean of the faculty, Gardner Robson—and make a clean breast of everything. He was adamant that I confess nothing. Because once I did that, I was finished. He also emphasized that, until Shelley went public about the affair, I was in the clear. His hope was that she would soon calm down—and he even offered to speak to her and see if she might agree to seek help from the college psychotherapist.”

“Knowing you, the guilt must have been massive.”

“It was nonstop. I wasn’t sleeping and lost about fifteen pounds in less than two weeks. I couldn’t teach, couldn’t concentrate. Even my wife, who was totally ignoring me, noticed that I was in rough shape, and asked me what was wrong. I said I was depressed—and that’s when she told me that, as far as she was concerned, I had been in a gloomy place for years. ‘And the only time you’d lightened up was during the last few months—when it was clear to me that you were having an affair.’ I didn’t deny it, nor did she hint that she knew who my lover might be. But when I came back from the college the next night, I found her in my office, on my computer, reading my email files.”

“Don’t tell me you hadn’t deleted everything you’d written to your friend—and she to you.”

“I’d deleted it from my AOL account, but not the recycle bin. A bad oversight on my part, as that’s where Susan found them all.”

“Your wife had the password to your computer?”

“I’m pretty certain she once heard me tell our daughter that it was her name: Megan123. Whatever way she had managed to get into my files, the fact was, she had managed to get into my files. When I walked in and found her sitting in my desk chair, and staring at an email that Shelley had sent me, she said—in a voice so low and cold it sounded like a frozen whisper—‘Pack a bag and leave right now. Otherwise I’ll call the police and tell them you’ve assaulted me.’ ”

“And you bowed to this threat . . . this blackmail?”

“I thought it best to let the initial shock she was feeling—”

“Harry, she was fucking some guy before you even hooked up with Shelley—”

“I still didn’t know that—”

“But she betrayed your privacy—”

“True. And she also evidently emailed all this evidence against me to her lover, the dean. Because, the next day, I had a visit from representatives of the firm that looks after security for the college. Two of their goons showed up at my office around ten that morning, telling me that they were escorting me off the premises and that I was now legally barred from setting foot on the campus again. They brought me downtown to the office of the law firm which handled all the college’s legal stuff. There, some flinty small-town lawyer—bow tie, blue serge suit, suspenders—read me a document, informing me that, as I had contravened several college codes of professional conduct, I was being summarily dismissed from my tenured position ‘without pay or any subsidiary benefits.’ He also said that if I made trouble, the case would go public and—”

“You didn’t get a lawyer yourself?”

“The college’s legal eagle said that if I signed an agreement he’d prepared, in which I promised not to contest this dismissal, they would announce that I had ‘resigned’ for health reasons. ‘You might just be able to rebuild your career,’ he told me. So I signed the damn document . . . not knowing that Susan’s lover, the dean, had another denouement in mind for me. The next day I woke up on the sofa in the house of Doug Stanley, to find I was being laid siege to by assorted regional television stations, not to mention a couple of local newspaper reporters.”

“All over a brief fling with a student?”

“Being dismissed for sexual misconduct is a big thing in small-town America. As it turned out, somebody had forwarded to the Ohio press the salient details of my correspondence with Shelley. Doug was certain that Gardner Robson had tipped them off and also told them where I could be found—because Doug had run into Robson on the campus, and the dean had started spewing this bullshit of how it ‘genuinely injured’ him to have to let me go, and how he wondered if Doug knew of my whereabouts. When Doug made the innocent mistake of telling Robson that he was harboring me, do you know what that sonofabitch told my friend? ‘I really feel for him right now.’

“Doug managed to keep the reporters from invading his house—and I essentially took refuge in the rec room in his basement until . . .”

Pause. I looked away.

“Until . . .?” Margit asked.

“Until Shelley killed herself.”

FOURTEEN

LATER THAT NIGHT, before going to work, I stopped by my room to pick up my laptop computer and a book I was reading. When I arrived home, the note I was dreading was stuck under my door:

I GET 1000 EUROS TOMORROW OR YOU FUCKED.

The handwriting was scrawly. I turned over the scrap of paper and wrote:

YOU WILL GET YOUR MONEY IN A COUPLE OF DAYS. IF YOU REVEAL ANYTHING BEFORE THEN, YOU WILL GET NOTHING.

I shoved this note under Omar’s door, then entered my room and sat down on my bed and tried to sift through everything I had told Margit tonight, and how good it felt to finally unburden myself of this secret, and how I felt simultaneously exposed and self-belittled for having admitted the terrible shame that haunted my every waking hour.

But Omar’s blackmailing note also emboldened me. En route to work I walked directly into the little bar on the rue de Paradis. Yanna was serving the usual crew of drunks (many of whom were her husband’s chums). Her eyes grew wide when I entered her establishment—a case of the guilty jitters, which she tried to temper with a tight smile as she pulled me a pression and simultaneously filled a shot glass with bourbon.

“What brings you here?” she said in a low whisper, glancing at the half-cocked clientele, wondering if they were picking up on her nervousness.

“We need to talk,” I whispered back.

“Bad time.”

“It’s somewhat urgent.”

“I can’t leave the bar with all these creeps watching us.”

“Make an excuse. I’m going to finish these drinks and leave. Meet me in ten minutes up on the corner of the rue de Paradis and the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. What I need to say can’t be said here right now.”

Then I threw back the whisky and drained the beer and left—all the other clientele glaring at me as I hustled myself out the door. As expected, Yanna did show up ten minutes later at my proposed rendezvous spot. She had a cigarette going when she arrived and appeared hyper-tense.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” she hissed at me. “Everyone in the bar saw you were trying to talk to me.”

“It was an emergency,” I said. “Omar . . .”

And I told her how he saw us and what he was now threatening.

“Oh fuck,” she said. “My husband will first kill you, then me . . .”

“Not if you do what I tell you.”

That’s when I outlined the idea that Margit gave me (though not telling her that another party had cooked up this scheme). Yanna didn’t seem convinced.

“He’ll still believe that fat slob,” she said, “because he’s a fucking Turk. It’s an idiotic Turkish male code-of-honor thing. If the slob tells you that your woman is a slut, then, without question, she is a slut.”

“If you go to your husband crying, saying how Omar forced himself on you, how he had his hands everywhere, how he was so drunk he obviously didn’t know what he was doing, but still did vast amounts of improper things to you—”

“He’ll still beat me.”

“Not if you sell it properly to him.”

“He’ll do it anyway—even if he totally believes me. And his justification will be that—as it was me acting like a slut which prompted Omar’s ‘attentions’—I deserve to have my eyes blackened.”

“You should get out of this marriage.”

“Thank you for such intelligent advice. My husband gets back tonight. If you value your life I would lay low for a few days—just in case he does believe his fellow Turk and decides to come looking for you with a sickle.”

“I’ll make myself scarce.”

“One last thing: don’t come into our bar again. I want to erase you from my life.”

“The feeling is entirely mutual,” I said, then turned on my heel and left.

Some hours later, at work, the thought struck me: “laying low” was not going to be the easiest of tasks, especially in an area where everybody knew each other and in a job where an unexplained absence from work wouldn’t be tolerated. There was a part of me that wanted to return to my room, pack up all my possessions (a process that would take no more than ten minutes), and vanish into the night. But once again, I was plagued by the question: Then what? I also knew that if I did do a bunk, I’d severely disappoint Margit. Earlier that evening—after I had finished telling her what had happened to Shelley—she had returned to the subject of Omar’s threat, saying, “It would be far simpler for all concerned if Omar simply disappeared from view before the husband got home.”

“Sure it would. But from what I’ve heard, he has no family back in Turkey, and no life to speak of outside of his job and his chambre de bonne. And he’s completely legal here. Even flashed his French passport in my face.”

“A pity, that. Had he been illegal, you would have been easily able to turn the tables on him. One phone call to the Immigration Authorities—”

“But he could have ratted on me too. After all, I am working here without a carte de séjour.”

“But your job doesn’t really exist, does it? You live beneath the usual Social Service radar that would get you found out if you were legitimately working. Anyway, if forced to choose between the story told by an educated American and an illiterate greasy Turk, who do you think they are going to believe?”

“Racism has its virtues, I guess.”

“Absolutely. And you’re just as racist as the cops.”

“Or as you.”

“That’s right. But remember this: though an immigrant like Omar, living on the margins in this city, might despise all the people here having plush, proper lives, his real scorn and despair are aimed at those in closest proximity to him. Zoltan always used to say, ‘Never trust another immigré. They wish for your downfall in order to reassure themselves there is someone lower than themselves.’ So, yes—Omar will rat you out. Which means you should go home right now and pack a bag and flee the rue de Paradis. But if you do that—”

“I’m running away again.”

“As you ran away after your friend’s suicide . . . even though you weren’t to blame for what she did.”

“I will always blame myself for what happened.”

“As a way of hating yourself. But suit yourself. You haven’t finished the story, Harry. So . . . tell me about the suicide.”

Margit poured me another glass of whisky. I tossed it back. Even though I had already downed half the bottle, I still felt nothing.

“First I have to tell you about the abortion business,” I said.

“Your friend had to have an abortion?”

“No. It was alleged that I was trying to talk her into having an abortion . . . which was certainly news to me. That day—the day I woke up on Douglas’s couch to find his front lawn under siege by reporters—all hell broke loose. By six that evening, it was a major story across Ohio: PROFESSOR TRIES TO FORCE FRESHMAN STUDENT TO HAVE ABORTION AFTER AFFAIR.

“Now, you have to understand that I never, never, spoke with Shelley about an abortion. Nor was I even aware that Shelley was pregnant. In fact, it struck me as virtually impossible that she was carrying my child, as I had used a condom when we slept together.”

“So how did this fantastic story about you trying to talk her into a termination go public?”

“It seems that Shelley had kept a journal since we’d started seeing each other. When all the shit hit the fan, the proctor in her dormitory—a real little goody-goody born-again Christian type—carried out her own raid on Shelley’s room, found the journal, and dutifully turned it over to the dean of the faculty. As it turns out, Shelley’s journal was full of crazy romantic stuff: about me being the love of her life, about me telling her that I had never felt so passionate about anyone before—something I never said—and also promising her that I’d leave my wife and daughter to marry her—another complete fabrication. This romantic fantasia went on and on for pages, and recounted, in prurient detail, the afternoon we spent together in that Toledo motel—something the press leaped upon after the diary was leaked to them . . .”

“Leaked by Robson?”

“As I found out later. But though the media loved all the graphic stuff in the diary about our afternoon of love—Shelley’s exact words—they really went crazy when they read a long sequence of entries about her wanting to be the mother of my baby. Then, after I decided to break it off with her, her imagination went wild. Suddenly there were statements in the diary like, How could he do this to me when he knows I’m pregnant? and, All I want is to have our child, but Harry tells me he will never allow that. And then there was the kiss of death: I got the results of the pregnancy test today. I am a Mom-to-Be! I raced to Harry’s office to tell him the good news. But his reaction was horrible and absolute: the baby must die. And he picked up the phone and called an abortion clinic in Cleveland and made us an appointment in three days’ time. But there’s no way I will kill our baby.

“Margit, I swear to you, I never had any of those conversations with Shelley. It was pure invention on her part.”

“And one which the dean must have looked upon as a gift from God.”

“Not just the dean, but every right-wing press commentator in the country. The story played right into their hands: ‘progressive’ professor seduces young student and then insists on ‘murdering’ their baby. I was held up as an example of everything that was degenerate and sordid about the so-called liberal elite . . . while Shelley was considered a heroine for saving the life of her unborn child.

“All the television stations staked out my house—and showed my wife and daughter being ambushed by the press as they left our home. One of the journalists actually asked Megan, ‘What do you think of your father having a girlfriend who is only three years older than you?’ She burst into tears and I wanted to kill that bastard.

“They also showed footage of some greasy lawyer for Shelley’s father—an ex-marine whom she loathed—telling the cameras that he was filing, on behalf of his client, a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit against the college for allowing a degenerate like me to teach there. There was also a sound bite with Robson, where he put on this face of gravitas and concern, saying how it was horrible that ‘this poor young woman’ had been victimized by me, and how he would personally ensure that I never entered a center of higher education again.”

“And where was Shelley during all of this?”

“Her parents had taken her home to Cincinnati—where she was kept locked away from the press.”

“And meanwhile . . .”

“I stayed in Douglas’s basement and ignored all knocks on the door and all phone calls. But I did email a statement to the press, in which I categorically denied that I had ever demanded the abortion, as she had never told me that she was pregnant. And as we had practiced safe sex . . .

“Well, this created a new feeding frenzy. The next day the television crews caught Shelley and her family en route to church, and started hurling questions at her like, ‘Are you lying about being pregnant? Did you make it all up . . .?’ Shelley looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Later that afternoon, the family lawyer issued a statement, saying that I was being even more of a monster by calling Shelley a liar . . . and how they would have certified medical substantiation of her pregnancy within forty-eight hours.

“In the middle of all this madness, Doug was fantastic. He ran interference for me, keeping all intruders at bay and screening all phone calls . . . except for one from Megan, which came right after Shelley’s lawyer appeared on TV, saying that I was a beast. Megan must have gotten the number from Susan—who, in turn, had to have been told by Robson where I was hiding out. Anyway, when I got on the line, I started saying something lame like, ‘Megan, darling, I know this is awful. And I know you must hate me for all this. But I just want you to know—’

“She cut me off. ‘I never want to talk to you again,’ she said, crying. Then she hung up.

“Naturally I called her straight back. Susan answered—and said, her voice completely calm, ‘You will never see—or hear from—your daughter again.’ And then she added, ‘If I were you I’d kill myself.’

“But it was Shelley who did that. Late that night, while everyone was asleep, she left her parents’ house. Around two hours later, she jumped off a highway overpass a mile from where they lived. She landed right in the path of an oncoming truck. The cops said someone saw her standing on the overpass for several minutes before she jumped. This led them to surmise that she was waiting for some large vehicle to approach.”

“Or maybe she was trying to find the courage to jump.”

“She left no note, or any hint that she was planning to . . .”

I fell silent and reached for the whisky bottle, pouring myself another substantial slug.

“Do you think she jumped because she was about to be revealed as a fantasist?”

“Perhaps. Or maybe her father had been making her life hell for her. And if her obsessive behavior was anything to go by, she was certainly not in the most balanced and reasonable state . . . which, in turn, was all due to me breaking it off with her.”

“Harry—if the diary proved anything, it’s that she lived in a fantasy world. She didn’t reveal the extent of her compulsions while you were getting friendly with each other . . . which means she was either very good at disguising her manias or you were completely blind to them. But knowing you, I sense it was the former. Had she shown telltale signs of obsessiveness—”

“I would have ended it well before we slept together.”

“My point entirely. But instead, she wove this fiction about ‘having your baby.’ Robson went public with it. You countered, saying she was making it up. When faced with probable exposure as a fantasist, she killed herself.”

“That’s one interpretation.”

“Was it your friend Douglas who found out all the details of the suicide?” Margit asked.

I nodded.

“And did he inform you about Robson and your ex-wife?”

“Doug finally did tell me about the rumors going around. He also admitted that he had known about them for the past few months—but felt uneasy about telling me, in case it blew over. I understood—especially as I never told Doug that I knew that, a couple of years earlier, his ex-wife had been sleeping with the college librarian . . . who was also a woman.

“Anyway, Doug was also unable to accuse Robson of leaking both the story and Shelley’s diary to the press. He was coming up for promotion in a few months and, if he crossed Robson, he was finished. Still, privately, he was appalled—and encouraged me to simply disappear. ‘You start exposing Robson now, and it’s going to look like you’re trying to deflect responsibility. It’s really best if you just vanish.’

“The next day, the Cincinnati medical examiner revealed that Shelley hadn’t been pregnant when she killed herself. Within an hour, the family lawyer issued a statement saying that it was medically plausible that her period had been several weeks late—and that the pregnancy test might have been faulty. ‘Whether or not she was actually carrying Professor Ricks’s child,’ he said, ‘is less important than the fact that she thought she was pregnant—and that Ricks, upon hearing the news, dropped her and insisted on the abortion . . . a demand that sent her fragile psyche into a downward spiral, eventually resulting in her suicide. Ricks, in essence, murdered this poor young woman.’

“Well, this spin on the story played everywhere—and I decided to take Doug’s advice. I got him to go over to my house when Susan wasn’t there to collect my passport and laptop. I went downtown to my bank. When I walked in, the manager told me that my patronage was no longer welcome here. I said, ‘Fine by me, because I’m closing my account.’ I had twenty-two thousand dollars in a savings account. I transferred fifteen of that into a mutual fund for Megan. I took the rest in cash—and grabbed my things at Doug’s and got into my beat-up Volvo and left town. Eight hours later I was in Chicago. I found a cheap hotel—four hundred and fifty dollars a week—off Lake Shore Drive. I parked my bags and drove out into the ’burbs and stopped at the first used-car lot I found and accepted three grand in cash for my Volvo. Then I caught a cab back to the subway, returned to the hotel, and began a life of . . . well, nothing, really. My room was shabby, but adequate. It had a lumpy bed, and an old television, and a toilet that flushed, if you were lucky, on the third go. But the management asked no questions, and I paid my weekly bill on time, and didn’t ever complain or say much to them during the weeks I was there.”

“How many weeks?”

“Six.”

“What did you do during that time?”

“I forget.”

“I see.”

“It’s the truth. I remember sleeping until noon every day and always having breakfast in the same little luncheonette, and never buying a newspaper or magazine because I was afraid of reading something about the case. I never checked my email. I spent a lot of time at the movies. I bought paperbacks in secondhand shops, I drank in down-at-heel bars near the hotel, then watched shit television half the night. I suppose I was in total shock. I never had any sort of emotional highs or lows. I just dragged myself through the day like the walking dead. Until, one evening, I came home from an all-day session at the same multiplex cinema. The night porter on duty told me that a guy had come by that morning, asking for me. ‘He looked like some sort of process server to me,’ he said, and added that he was certain to come back very early the next morning, ‘because that’s what those assholes all do.’

“I went upstairs and called Doug. He asked me why the hell hadn’t I answered any of the emails he’d sent me, and did I know that Shelley’s father had made good on his threat to sue the college? The college, in turn, had decided (at Robson’s urging) to sue me for defamation of their public reputation, gross professional negligence, and so forth, and had hired a private detective to find me. ‘If you’re calling me, the gumshoe has obviously tracked you down,’ Doug said. When I explained that it seemed I was about to be served papers, he told me to flee immediately. ‘Get out of the country now, otherwise prepare to be destroyed in the courts.’

“So I said, ‘OK, I’ll get the next flight to Paris.’ ”

“And once you got here?”

“I did manage to get back into contact with Megan—and we actually started a correspondence until her mother found out and put an end to it. I haven’t heard from my daughter since then. But after they reached some sort of smallish payoff arrangement with Shelley’s dad, the college did decide to drop its threatened action against me. According to Doug, the college’s board of directors overruled Robson, who wanted me pursued to the ends of the earth.”

“That man really has it in for you.”

“Yes. It’s not enough that I have been ruined. He won’t be happy until he sees me completely crushed.”

“And if you could be revenged against him . . .?”

“I don’t want revenge.”

“Yes, you do. And you deserve it. So does Shelley. Had he not leaked any of this to the press, she would probably still be alive today. So what do you think would be an appropriate payback for all the harm he perpetrated?”

“You want me to fantasize here?” I asked.

“Absolutely. The worst thing that could happen to the bastard.”

“You mean, like discovering that he had a huge collection of kiddy porn on his computer?”

“That would do nicely. And say you wanted to devise an appropriate punishment for your ex-wife . . .?”

“Now let’s not get ridiculous here . . .”

“Go on, it’s just loose talk.”

“If she lost her job—”

“You’d feel vindicated then?”

“Why are you playing this game?”

“To help you.”

“Help me . . . what? Psychologically?”

“The talking cure is a good one—especially when it comes to articulating your anger, your grief. But it doesn’t fully close the wound.”

“Then what does?”

She shrugged and said nothing. Except, “You need to be on your way now. We will continue talking in three days’ time, if that’s fine with you.”

“Of course.”

“We might even have sex the next time . . . as you might be feeling less guilty about fucking that barmaid. You will definitely tell her to go crying to her husband about Omar’s horrible assault on her.”

“I’m dreading the idea—”

“You will dread a beating even more. À très bientôt . . .”

Having now done what Margit had demanded—having spoken to Yanna and hatched my plan with her—I felt strangely calm. Though there was a part of me that wanted to go to Mr. Beard and make up some story about having to leave town for a few days on “personal business,” I decided to stay put and see just how things played out . . . like someone playing Russian roulette, who was certain it was worth staying in the game because the odds were six to one that he wouldn’t get his brains blown out.

Back in my office later that night, I opened my laptop and went to work. My novel was now more than four hundred pages in length. The doubts that haunted the early months of writing had been replaced by a fierce momentum—and the sense that the novel was starting to write itself. This was another reason why I was loath to run away from this small nocturnal cell. Its claustrophobic bleakness had become almost talismanic to me; the place where, free from all outside distraction, I pounded out the words and moved the story on. And I feared if I suddenly left this room, the writing would stop. So despite all the creeping doubts about everything to do with this job, this quartier, I was determined to stay working here until the novel was finished. Then, one day, I’d simply pack up my things and slip away. Until then—

Why is somebody screaming downstairs?

The scream was loud, shrill, alarming. It had an almost animalistic intensity—like that of a wild beast caught in a trap and howling in torment. After a moment it fell silent. Then I could hear the same voice engaged in loud supplications, followed by other voices shouting him down, and then . . .

The scream this time was agonizing. Pain was being inflicted in a merciless manner. When a further howl pierced the concrete walls of my room, I found myself on my feet and unbolting the door. But as soon as I yanked it open, the howling stopped. I peered downstairs into an empty corridor. I walked down several steps and stared at the door at the end of the corridor on the ground floor. A voice in my head whispered, Are you out of your fucking mind? I dashed upstairs, closed the door and bolted it again, trying my best to secure it quietly. But it still made a decisive thwack when I pushed it home. After a minute, the howling started again. This time, the other voices started to shout, the howls became hysterical, a word—Yok! Yok! Yok!—was repeated over and over again by the man who was screaming. There was further shouting, then one final appalling screech . . . then a deep, eerie silence.

I sat at my desk, chewing on a finger, feeling helpless, terrified. Don’t move, don’t move. But if you hear footsteps coming up the stairs, grab your laptop and make a dash for the emergency exit (not that I had any idea where that exit might actually bring me).

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes went by. I kept staring at the television monitor. No one appeared on its fuzzy screen. Twenty-five minutes. Silence. Then, suddenly, I heard the downstairs door open and footsteps in the corridor. The front door opened. A man came out into the lane. He appeared short—but it was hard to discern anything about him, as he had the hood of his parka pulled up around his head to conceal his face. He also had a broom in one hand. What the hell is he doing with that? I wondered—until he thrust the broom handle at the camera hanging above the door. I flinched—because the image that appeared on the monitor made it seem like he was jabbing the broom handle directly at me. With the first blow the camera just shook. With the second, he scored a bull’s-eye on the lens and the screen went black. Then I could hear whispered voices and low grunts accompanied by the sound of something heavy being dragged along the corridor. The dragging sound stopped, there were more whispers—Were they checking that the coast was clear before hoisting the body?—then the sound of further dragging before the front door closed with a dull thud.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic . . .

But say they come back for you . . .?

If I left now, they could be waiting for me outside. I’d see who they were . . . and that would be, at best, unfortunate. If I waited here, at least I’d be sending a signal that I was playing by the rules. I wasn’t going to ask questions, go to the cops, make trouble.

I was desperate to flee. I couldn’t flee. But as soon as my watch read 6 AM, I was gone. Though I wanted to take a long walk by the Canal Saint-Martin to try to calm down, I sensed that it was best to stick to my usual routine, just in case somebody might be watching my movements. So I hung on until 6 AM, went to the boulangerie and bought my pains au chocolat, then returned to my room, where I found a new note stuck under my door:

I GIVE YOU TWO MORE DAYS, NO MORE. 1000 EUROS OR I TELL.

I crumpled up the note and shoved it into my pocket. Then I went inside and took a Zopiclone and crawled into bed.

Up as usual at two. At the Internet café thirty minutes later. But as soon as I walked in, I could tell that Mr. Beard knew all about last night. Because he came out from behind the bar and locked the front door, then motioned for me to follow him into a back room. When I hesitated, he said, “You do not leave here until we have a talk.”

“Let’s talk here,” I said, thinking if some stooges emerged from the back room, I’d have some minor chance of throwing myself through the glass of the front window and getting away with mere major lacerations.

“It’s quiet in the back.”

“We’ll talk here,” I said.

A pause. I could see him staring out at the street, looking just a little paranoid.

“What you see last night?” he asked.

“I saw some vandal smash the television camera.”

“Before that?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“That’s right: nothing.”

“I don’t believe you. You opened the door. They heard you.”

“They heard wrong.”

“You lie. They heard. They know.”

“I didn’t hear a sound all night. I never left the room all night. The only thing out of the ordinary was the clown who threw something at the camera—”

“You see his face?”

“He had a hood pulled up over his head, so it was hard to—”

“Why you think he broke the camera?”

“How should I know?”

“You lie.”

“Lie about what?”

“You know what happened. And if the police ask you what you heard?”

“Why would the police do that?”

“If the police ask you . . .”

“I’d tell them what I told you: I heard nothing.”

Silence. He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed my pay envelope on the floor. I decided not to raise objections to this little act of aggression, and instead played the subservient role demanded of me and leaned over to pick up the envelope. As I stood up again he said, “They know you heard the screams. They know you left the room—because they heard you leave the room. You don’t do that again. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

I tried to go about my business that day. But as I sat down in a restaurant for lunch, as I took the metro out to Bercy for a screening of Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass, as I sipped a coffee afterward in the little brasserie opposite the Cinémathèque, I couldn’t help but wonder, Is someone watching me? I kept scanning people near me to see if I noticed the same recurring face. Walking down a street, I’d stop and spin around in an attempt to catch the man tailing me. But I saw no one. Still, I was taking no chances. I resisted the temptation to use a phone kiosk and call the walk-in clinic to get the results of my HIV test—out of fear that someone would report back to them that I was seen on the phone and, ergo, to the cops. So I decided to go there myself, my apprehension about the result somewhat tempered by everything else that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

The clinic was open until eight. I arrived half an hour before closing time. The doctor I had seen was in the reception area as I walked in.

“What brings you back here?” he asked.

“I just came by for the test results.”

“You could have phoned.”

“I’d rather hear them in person.”

He shrugged, as if to say, If you insist. Then he turned to the receptionist and told her my name (I was impressed that he remembered me). She riffled around an inbox until she found the necessary file and handed it to him. He motioned for me to follow him into his office. I shut the door behind us. He settled into his desk chair and opened the file and started to read. I studied his face—in a manner similar to a defendant staring at the foreman of a jury as he returns holding the verdict envelope in his hand.

“Please sit down, Mr. Ricks,” the doctor said.

“Bad news?”

“No need to be a fatalist, monsieur. The HIV test came back negative. However, I must inform you that you did test positive for another sexually transmitted disease: chlamydia.”

“I see,” I said.

“It is not a serious condition, and can easily be treated with antibiotics . . .”

“I thought only women got chlamydia.”

“Think again.”

He started scribbling something on a script pad.

“You will need to take these four times a day, and drink at least three liters of water daily. And no unprotected sex for three weeks.”

Three weeks! Margit would be thrilled to hear this—though the fact that I might have also given her a sexually transmitted disease would probably overshadow that minor detail.

“It is also advised that you do not drink alcohol during this course of antibiotics. It diminishes their efficacy.”

Better and better. Three weeks without booze. How could I get through this life of mine without booze?

“Naturally, you will also need to inform all your sexual partners of this condition.”

How do you know that I have “partners” and not just a partner? Or is my ever-growing sleaziness that apparent?

“I would also strongly advise you to return after the course of antibiotics for another blood test—just to be certain that there is no ongoing ambiguity.”

Doctor, there is always ongoing ambiguity . . . not to mention ongoing worry, as the past few days have shown.

“Fine,” I said. “Just fine.”

After stopping off at a late-night pharmacy on the boulevard de Sébastopol and handing over an exorbitant thirty-eight euros for the prescribed tablets, I decided to get the first bit of nasty business over with. I returned to the rue de Paradis and walked into Yanna’s bar. It was a slow night. There were only three other customers there—and they were conveniently installed in a table toward the back. Yanna’s eyes grew wide as I sat down at the otherwise empty bar.

“I thought I told you not to come here anymore,” she hissed.

“Did you speak to your husband?”

“He was delayed. He comes back tomorrow.”

She glanced nervously at the customers at the back table.

“Order a drink,” she whispered, “otherwise they will get suspicious.”

“Water.”

“Water?”

“Not my idea of a good time, believe me. But I am on antibiotics.”

“For what?” she asked.

That’s when I told her. She turned several shades of white.

“You fucker,” she hissed. “You gave me—”

“I gave you that? Think again, madame. It’s a female condition that’s passed on to the male.” I had no idea if this was true. “And since I haven’t been sleeping around—”

“Liar.”

“I caught this from you. And who knows where you caught it. Maybe your husband—”

“Get out,” she said.

“Not before you see this,” I said, and passed her the crumpled note that Omar had left under my door. She opened it up, glanced at it, then handed it back to me.

“Cochon,” she said.

“You’ve got to tell your husband as soon as he arrives.”

“Believe me, I will. And I’ll also tell him that Omar raped me and gave me this condition.”

“Now hang on . . .” I said, thinking if she told her husband that, it would result in an automatic death sentence for Omar.

“I hope he kills him,” she said. “And if you don’t get out now, I’ll also tell him that you tried to interfere with me as well.”

I stared at her furious face—and knew that I should not pursue this discussion any further.

Some hours later, staring at the screen of my laptop, ticking off the hours until 6:00 AM, I wondered, Why do I have this singular talent for making women angry at me? Or, to cut to the heart of the matter, Why do I always seem to fuck it up? But this was superseded by a larger concern: Omar. The sonofabitch was a blackmailer and a moron who wouldn’t think anything of selling me down the river. Still, the scheme that Margit devised for tripping him up would now result in . . . well, a fast death might be the mildest of punishments once Yanna’s husband and his collection of goons got their hands on the man who had “raped” his wife and given her a disease (even though Yanna’s husband probably picked it up from one of the whores he frequently slept with). The twisted morality of all this—do I endanger somebody who is threatening to endanger me?—preoccupied me all night. Then dawn came and I was out in the street, walking back to my chambre de bonne, a bag of pains au chocolat in hand.

I mounted the stairs to my room. When I reached my floor, my bladder felt full from all the water I had been drinking that night (doctor’s orders), so I turned toward the hallway toilet.

I opened the door and suddenly jumped back in horror, a scream leaping out of my throat. There before me was Omar. He lay slumped on the toilet seat. His throat had been cut. There was blood everywhere. And a toilet brush was sticking out of his mouth.

FIFTEEN

INSPECTOR JEAN-MARIE COUTARD was a flabby man. He was in his fifties and short—maybe five foot six—with a double chin, a large gut, and a red face that made him look self-basting. His clothes were a jumble of contrasting styles and patterns: a checkered sports jacket, gray trousers, a striped shirt dappled with food stains, a paisley tie. His lack of sartorial interest mirrored his general air of unhealthiness. He had a cigarette screwed into his mouth, and he seemed to be puffing away on it in an attempt to wake himself up. It was only seven fifteen in the morning, and he looked like he had been summoned directly from his bed to this crime scene.

When he arrived, there was already a crowd of people around the tiny bathroom. Three plainclothes policemen, two forensic guys in white coats and latex gloves, a photographer, and a medical man examining the grotesque mess that was Omar. Two plainclothes inspectors then showed up, one of whom was Coutard.

The uniformed cops had been the first on the scene. They came within ten minutes of me racing downstairs and calling them from the phone kiosk at the end of rue de Paradis. Running out to phone them had been an instinctual reaction—and one made in the complete shock of the moment. As soon as I had done so, the thought struck me, They are going to ask where I was when the crime took place. As I couldn’t tell them about my “work,” I raced back to my room and “unmade” my bed, hoping that it looked like I had slept there that night. Then I started thinking fast, trying to construct the alibi I would give the cops when they arrived.

I charged downstairs again to let the police in: two young officers who followed me upstairs and tried hard not to blanch when they saw the bloody state of Omar in the toilet. Within moments they were calling for backup. One of them posted himself outside to make certain nobody left the building. The other stepped into my room with me and asked to see my papers. When I handed over the American passport, he looked at me quizzically.

“Why do you live here?” he asked.

“It’s cheap.”

Then he began to ask me some basic questions. What time did I find the body? Where was I last night? (“I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a walk.”) What time was that? (“Around two.”) And where did I go? (“I just walked along the canal Saint-Martin, then eventually crossed the river and followed the Seine as far as Notre-Dame, then headed back here, stopping at the local pâtisserie for pains au chocolat.”) Did I know the deceased? (“We were merely passing acquaintances.”) Did I have any idea who might have done this? (“None at all.”)

After this brief Q&A, I was told to wait here in my room until the inspector arrived. The cop held on to my passport—and left me alone to my thoughts. My alibi sounded flimsy, full of holes . . . though, at least, they’d be able to confirm with the guy at the pâtisserie that I was there around six this morning. I lay down on my bed and shut my eyes and tried to expunge every grisly detail of Omar on that toilet: the splatter-effect crimson blood, the deep oozing gorge around his throat, the fact that his trousers were down and he must have been in mid-bowel movement when the attack happened. Two people must have killed him: one held him down while his partner shoved the toilet brush in his mouth to stifle his screams before slitting his throat. Had Yanna somehow managed to call her husband that night in Turkey to tell him about the “rape,” and then he phoned some friends who . . .?

No, that was completely implausible—as Yanna told me he was on the night flight back to Paris yesterday. Which meant he would have been out of contact. So rule out Yanna’s husband. But knowing Omar—and how he pissed off everyone who ventured into his path—he must have had a lot of enemies.

That was Inspector Coutard’s first question to me.

“Did the deceased have any ongoing disputes with anyone?”

I had figured this question would arise and decided to play dumb.

“I didn’t know the man.”

“Even though he lived next door to you?”

“We didn’t speak.”

“You shared the same floor, the same toilet.”

“You can share a communal toilet and still not speak with someone.”

Coutard reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out my passport. I tried not to look surprised. He flicked through its pages, stopping at the two sole entry stamps.

“You entered France on December 28 of last year, via Canada.”

“That’s right. My connecting flight was from Montreal.”

“From where?”

“Chicago.”

“That is where you last lived in the United States?”

“No, I lived in . . .”

And I named the town in Ohio.

“And what made you come to France on December 28 of last year?”

I was prepared for this.

“My marriage had fallen apart and I had lost my job at the college where I taught, and I decided to flee my problems, so . . .”

“There are no direct flights from Chicago to Paris?” he asked, and I could see the subtext behind that question: if you flew here via another country, perhaps you weren’t just fleeing a failed marriage.

“The Air Canada flight via Montreal was the cheapest option.”

“What sort of work do you do, Monsieur Ricks?”

“Novelist.”

“What is the name of your publisher?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Ah, so you are an aspiring novelist.”

“That’s right.”

“And you have lived on the rue de Paradis since . . .?”

“Early January.”

“An intriguing place for an American to live—but I’m certain you have been asked this question already today.”

“Yes, I have.”

“And your neighbor, the late Monsieur Omar Tariq. He was a good neighbor?”

“We had little contact.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Nothing at all.”

He nodded, taking this in. Then, “No sense whatsoever of who might have done this to him?”

“Like I said, I stayed out of his way.”

He tapped my passport against his hand, looking directly at me. Then he slipped the passport in his pocket.

“You will be required to make a statement about all this—so if you wouldn’t mind, I ask that you present yourself at the commissariat de police for the Tenth arrondissement at two this afternoon.”

“Fine. I’ll be there. And what about my passport?”

“I’ll keep it until then.”

He left my room. I sat down on the bed and suddenly felt very tired and just a little worried that I was playing it a bit too dumb about having had no contact with Omar. But if I told the truth, I might put myself under suspicion, and they also might start demanding to know what I did with my nights. And if they found out I was working illegally . . .

My guess was that Omar owed somebody money or had done something grievous enough to be bumped off in such an unpleasant manner. No doubt, the cops would question everyone in the building. No doubt, someone would tip them off as to who was the assailant.

My lack of sleep—it was now 9:00 AM—somehow managed to override the nightmarish image of Omar in death. I nodded off for a few hours, waking with a jolt when I heard something bang against my door. I jumped up from the bed, opened the door, and found four ambulance attendants trying to maneuver a stretcher with the now bagged body of Omar down the stairs. The ambulance guys looked up at me as I stood, half awake in the doorway. Then, with several audible groans, they continued attempting to inch this stretcher containing a very overweight dead man down the narrow, circular stairs.

I went back inside and checked the time: 12:48 PM. I showered and shaved and dressed, choosing conservative clothes for my interview with the police. When I went out into the hallway, there were several technical guys still working on the toilet and Omar’s room, picking up every microfiber in the vicinity. Downstairs, a uniformed cop was still posted outside the door.

“No one is allowed to leave the building,” he said.

“But Inspector Coutard asked to see me at the commissariat de police at two PM.”

“Your name?” he asked me. I gave it to him. He picked up his walkie-talkie and spoke into it. I heard him mention “Monsieur Harry Ricks.” There was a static-filled pause, then a voice coming over the speaker. The cop lifted it to his ear, then said, “D’accord,” and turned to me.

“Yes, you are expected at the commissariat de police at two PM sharp. Do not be late, monsieur.”

I nodded and hurried off to the Internet café. Once inside, Mr. Beard immediately shut the front door, locking it behind him.

“What have you told the police?” he asked.

“News travels fast.”

“What have you told the police?”

“I’ve said nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I told them Omar was my neighbor, I didn’t know him, I had no idea who might kill him, and that’s all.”

“They ask you about your work?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“I have to go to the commissariat de police now and make a statement.”

“You must tell them nothing about your work.”

“Believe me, I won’t.”

“You must tell them nothing about what you saw the other night.”

“As I told you at the time, I saw nothing.”

“If they ask you what you do—”

“I will continue to tell them I am a writer. That’s it. Happy now?”

“If you say anything else, we will find out. And then—”

“There is no need to threaten me. I certainly don’t want to be exposed as someone working illegally here. So don’t worry. I’m not going to give the game away.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“You have no choice but to. Just as I have no choice but to trust you . . . even though I don’t either. Now may I have my money, please?”

He reached into his jacket and handed me the usual envelope.

“You say nothing, life will continue as before,” he told me.

“That sounds good to me.”

“Omar was a pig. He deserved his death.”

I felt like saying, No one—not even gross-out Omar—deserved that sort of gruesome finale. But I held myself in check.

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mr. Beard said, “tomorrow.”

The commissariat de police for the Tenth arrondissement was located on the rue du Louis Blanc. It was an ordinary squat building—three stories high—which didn’t stand out amid the other squat shabby buildings along this street. There was a man behind the reception desk as I came in. I told him I was here to see Inspector Coutard and gave him my name. He told me to take a seat. The chairs were cheap plastic ones. The walls of the reception area were painted an institutional beige. There were ceiling tiles gone yellow from extended exposure to cigarette smoke, and fluorescent tubes, and posters taped to the walls, exhorting all citizens to be vigilant about bags left on the metro, and to not drink and drive. A framed photo of Chirac hung in a discreet corner of the room. After a few minutes, a youngish man in shirtsleeves—his gun and holster exposed for all to see—popped his head through the door.

“Monsieur Ricks?”

I stood up. The cop introduced himself as Inspector Leclerc. He ushered me inside and down a flight of steps. We came into an open area, where two men sat shackled to a bench. (I quickly noticed there were two other empty shackles at the far end of this long bench awaiting new customers, as well as a man locked into a small cell adjacent to the bench.)

“Busy afternoon?” I asked the inspector.

“It’s always busy here,” he said.

I followed him down a corridor and into a cramped office with two desks. Leclerc took a seat at the first one, pushed aside some papers, lit up a cigarette, and explained that he would take my statement from me. He then talked me, point by point, through everything that had happened when I discovered Omar, and also asked me (as Coutard had done) about my relationship with my neighbor.

“I saw him from time to time in the corridor of our building,” I dictated to Leclerc. “I saw him from time to time in the street and around the quartier. Beyond that, we had no additional contact.”

When Leclerc finished typing, he reread the statement to me and asked if I agreed with it. When I nodded yes, he hit a button on his keyboard and a copy whizzed out of an adjoining printer.

“Please read it, then sign and date it.”

After I had done so, he said, “Now we need to fingerprint you.”

“I thought I was just being called in to make a statement.”

“You must be fingerprinted as well.”

Am I a suspect here? I felt like asking. But I knew the answer to that question, just as I also knew that if I refused to be fingerprinted, I would be acting guilty.

“Lead the way,” I said.

He escorted me to another room—where a technician rolled each of my fingers in ink and then made the necessary imprints. I was pointed to a sink and told I could wash my hands there. As I finished, Leclerc said, “You will need to wait outside while I get your statement to Inspector Coutard. If he needs to interview you further, you’ll be summoned to his office.”

“How long might that be?”

“It is a busy afternoon . . .”

He stood up and escorted me to the bench where the two men still sat shackled to its steel frame.

“You can wait here,” Leclerc said.

“You mean, you’re not going to shackle me down?” I asked.

A sour smile from Leclerc.

“Not unless you insist.”

The two men on the bench eyed me up and down. When I met the gaze of one of them—and saw a druggy aggression in his dilated pupils—he hissed, “What are you staring at, asshole?”

“Nothing,” I hissed back.

“You trying to start something?”

I just shook my head. But when he jumped up to confront me, the chain on his hand stopped his trajectory and caused him to yelp in pain.

“I’ll get you later,” he said.

“Don’t count on it.”

I sat at the far end of the bench and pulled out a new book I was plowing through—a collection of Jacques Prévert’s Paroles. Though I greatly admired his wordplay and imagery, I wished I had brought something more narrative-driven to read. I tried to ignore the clown at the end of the bench. Having been, in his mind, “provoked” because I’d looked at him the wrong way, he continued to jeer at me, until one of the uniformed cops came along and told him to shut up. When he back-talked the cop—“You think you scare me, flic?”—the officer took his nightstick and slammed it down a few centimeters away from where he was sitting. The guy jumped in fright.

“Keep shooting off your mouth, the next time it will land between your legs.”

I pulled the volume of Prévert higher up around my face.

Either Coutard was truly busy or he was deliberately ignoring me, as half an hour passed without a word from him. I stopped a uniformed officer and asked him if he could find out whether or not Coutard wanted to see me. Twenty more minutes passed, during which time the thought struck me: This is the law-enforcement version of “passive aggressive.” I stopped another officer.

“Might you please find out if Inspector Coutard—”

“He will call you when he’s ready.”

“But I have been waiting nearly an hour—”

“So? An hour is nothing. Sit down and he’ll call you when—”

“Sir, please—”

“Sit!” This wasn’t a request; rather, an order. I did as told. The thug—still chained to the bench—glowered at me.

“They’ve got you by the balls, asshole.”

“And you’re the guy chained to the bench.”

“Fuck you.”

The uniformed cop—halfway out of the room—spun around and pointed his baton at me. “You—no talking.”

“This guy started it—”

“I said, no talking.”

I nodded, looking meek. The psycho laughed. I tried to sink back into Prévert’s verses. Psycho Boy continued cackling to himself and occasionally whispering to the other shackled guy. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty, then . . .

This is crazy. Just get up and leave—and let them try to stop you.

But as I was seriously considering this stupid idea, Coutard stuck his head around the door.

“Monsieur Ricks . . .”

He motioned for me to follow him. As we left the holding area and headed down a corridor, he said, “I am sorry they kept you waiting with the local trash.”

I said nothing—pretty damn certain that I was placed next to Psycho Boy to unnerve me . . . which, truth be told, he succeeded in doing.

“Just in here,” he said, steering me into a more substantial office than the one occupied by Leclerc. There were two functional armchairs facing a large desk, several framed citations, the ubiquitous photograph of Chirac, and a brimming ashtray next to his computer terminal. He lit up a fresh cigarette and picked up a pair of bifocal glasses and placed them on his nose.

“So, Monsieur Ricks . . . I have read your statement. Interesting.”

“Interesting?” I asked cautiously.

“Yes, interesting. In fact . . . very interesting.”

“In what way?”

“In your statement, you repeat what you told me in your chambre yesterday—that you only had minimal contact with Monsieur Omar. And yet, the gentleman who rented you the room, Monsieur Sezer, made a statement to us, where he stated that you had an ongoing war with Monsieur Omar over his sanitary habits . . . specifically, the condition of the toilet you both shared.”

“That’s true, but—”

“The fact that Monsieur Omar was found dead with a toilet brush in his mouth—”

“Now hang on a minute—”

“You have an unfortunate habit of interrupting me, Monsieur Ricks.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“I repeat: according to Monsieur Sezer, you repeatedly complained to him about Monsieur Omar’s lack of hygiene. Couple this with the fact that a toilet brush was found lodged in Monsieur Omar’s mouth, and this leads one to presume that the murderer was making some sort of symbolic point about the gentleman’s disregard for communal cleanliness. So . . .”

I raised my hand. Coutard peered down at me over his bifocals.

“You have a question?” he asked.

“More of a statement.”

“You have already made a statement.”

“But I want to add to that statement.”

“You have signed that statement.”

“All I want to say is—”

“You wish to amend your statement.”

“I didn’t kill Omar.”

A shrug from the inspector.

“You expect me to accept that as truth?”

“Consider this: I called you to report the crime.”

“In sixty-five percent of the murders I have investigated, the actual killer reported the crime.”

“I am part of the thirty-five percent.”

“Sticking a toilet brush down your victim’s throat while cutting his jugular . . . It is most original.”

“I didn’t—”

“You say you didn’t, but you had a motive: rage at his disgusting habits. Let me guess: he never flushed the toilet after taking a shit, and then mocked you when you tried to get him to amend his vile ways. Americans, I know, have a thing about cleanliness . . . and smoking.”

He exhaled a small cloud as he said that.

“I have nothing against cigarettes.”

“I applaud you for such open-mindedness. You also have no objections to living in cramped conditions. In fact, I would posit that you might be the only American living on the rue de Paradis in a chambre de bonne.”

“It’s cheap.”

“We do know how you found the room. A certain Adnan Pafnuk, who worked at the Hôtel Sélect on the rue François Millet in the Sixteenth. You were a guest at this hotel from December 28 of last year for a period of ten days, during which time you fell sick with the flu and had a dispute with the day clerk—a Monsieur Brasseur . . .”

His face was impassive as he said this, but I could see him simultaneously studying mine . . . and registering my growing nervousness as the revelation hit me: I am the prime suspect here.

“Brasseur was a deeply unpleasant man.”

“So we have learned from anyone who worked with him. Nonetheless, it is also intriguing to note that—just as you had a little war with Monsieur Omar and he was found dead on his beloved toilet—so you also had a little war with Monsieur Brasseur and he was struck down by a car—”

“You don’t think that I—”

“What did I tell you about interrupting me, monsieur?”

I hung my head and wished a hole would open up in the floor and whisk me out of this nightmare. Coutard continued, “We have, of course, checked the motor vehicle records. You do not own a car, nor did you rent a car on the day that Monsieur Brasseur was run down. He remains paralyzed—and it appears that the condition is permanent. But who’s to say that you didn’t hire somebody to mow him down?”

“My motive being . . .?”

“Wasn’t there a dispute about money?”

“He overcharged me for the doctor who came to see me when I was ill.”

“Voilà: the motive.”

“I am not in the habit of running down people who cheat me, any more than I cut the throats of neighbors who treat the communal toilet like an open sewer.”

“Perhaps. But the fact that your fingerprints are all over the toilet brush that had been shoved down Monsieur Omar’s throat—”

I now knew why I had been kept waiting over ninety minutes. They were running a computer check, comparing my prints with those found at the crime scene.

“I used that brush to clean the toilet,” I said.

“And you’ve just interrupted me again.”

“Sorry.”

“So you quarreled with Monsieur Brasseur. You quarreled with Monsieur Omar. But you befriended Monsieur Adnan. Was your friendship just a friendship?”

“What are you implying?”

“Once again, the peculiarity of the story is fascinating. Consider: an American comes to Paris and falls sick in a hotel. Nothing unusual about that. But then the same American meets a young Turkish gentleman in the hotel—and before you know it, he takes over his chambre de bonne. Now that is an unusual narrative twist, n’est-ce pas?”

I raised my hand. He nodded that I could speak.

“If I could explain . . .”

“Off you go.”

I took him through everything that happened at the hotel, and how Adnan had looked after me, and how hearing that I was short on funds—

Now Coutard interrupted me.

“Because you had lost your job and had to flee the States after your tragic affair with your student?”

A long pause. I wasn’t surprised that he knew this—but hearing him confront me with this fact still unnerved me.

“Your detective work is most impressive,” I said.

“It must have been a great tragedy for you, losing your professorship, your family, your maîtresse.”

“Her death was the worst aspect of it all. The rest—”

“I saw all the press coverage—courtesy of Google. May I say something which is perhaps beyond my professional concern? As I read about your downfall, I actually felt sorry for you. So what if she was your student? She was over eighteen. She was not coerced. It was love, yes?”

“Absolutely.”

“The fact that everyone accused you of trying to make her have an abortion—”

“I never even knew she was—”

“You do not have to plead your case with me, monsieur. As far as I’m concerned, you were a victim of a very American inability to accept moral complexity. It all must be black and white. Right and wrong.”

“Isn’t that what a police officer deals with all the time?”

“All criminal action is fundamentally gray. Because everyone has a shadow . . . and everyone is haunted. Which leads me to another curiosity about this case: your whereabouts at night. Monsieur Sezer told us you were usually out until dawn, and slept in most days until the early afternoon.”

Sezer was evidently doing his best to shop me—for reasons best known to him. Did he have Omar bumped off? Was that why he was trying to pin it on me?

“I’m a night owl, yes.”

“So what do you do all night?”

“Often I simply walk, or stop in an all-night café and write on my laptop. But many nights I am at home.”

“But the owner of the boulangerie on the rue Montholon informed us that you arrive every morning just after six to buy two pains au chocolat. You do this without fail six mornings a week.”

“I am a man who likes to stick to a fairly strict routine.”

“Do you work somewhere at night?”

“Only on my novel.”

“The novel that has yet to find a publisher?”

“Yes, I am an unpublished writer.”

“Perhaps that will change.”

“It will.”

“I admire your self-belief. But I can’t wholly believe that you simply walk all night or spend time writing in a twenty-four-hour café. Which café might that be, by the way?”

“I use several,” I said, wondering if he could hear the lie in my voice.

“So which ones exactly?”

“There’s this place in Les Halles called Le Tambour. And there’s also the Mabillon on the boulevard Saint-Germain—”

“That’s a long way from your quartier.”

“Half an hour on foot.”

“If you walk fast.”

“All right, forty-five minutes if you’re limping. As I told you, I like to wander at night.”

“You’re a flâneur?”

“Absolutely.”

“Might you also be a flâneur who holds down a full-time job?”

“I don’t have a carte de séjour.”

“That has never stopped the vast majority of immigrés from working here. Professionally speaking, I don’t care at all if you are holding down illegal employment or not. I am investigating a murder. As you are ‘of interest’ to us, I simply want to find out your whereabouts on the night of the murder.”

“As I said, I was—”

“Yes, yes, strolling the streets of Paris like Gene Kelly. May I say that I don’t believe you. I know you are hiding something. Clarity, monsieur, is essential now.”

Why didn’t I tell him about the all-night job? Because I might also be implicated in whatever was going on downstairs. And it still wouldn’t clear me of suspicion in the death of Omar. Who would vouch for me being in full-time employment?

Nobody.

“I am hiding nothing, Inspector.”

His lips tightened. He tapped two fingers on the desk. He reached for the phone. He swiveled around in his chair and spoke in a low voice. Then he hung up and swiveled back toward me.

“You are free to go, monsieur. But I must inform you that we will be keeping your passport . . . and that I advise you not to leave Paris.”

“I’m going nowhere.”

“We’ll see about that.”

SIXTEEN

THEY’RE FOLLOWING ME.

Now I was sure of this. Just as I was also sure that it was only a matter of time before they found out where I worked at night, and raided the place.

Someone’s on your tail.

Had an innocent passerby seen me on the street, he would have thought, That man is mad. Because I had developed the paranoid habit of turning around every two minutes or so to see who was behind me. This was no neurotic knee-jerk response that only lasted a few hours after I was allowed to leave the commissariat de police. No, this became a full-blown tic—and one that was difficult to control. Every two minutes—one hundred and twenty seconds exactly (I was counting it down in my head)—I had to spin around and try to surprise the gumshoe who was shadowing me.

But no one was ever there.

That’s because they know how to make themselves vanish . . . to duck into a doorway as soon as they see you twirling around.

Several times, this abrupt pirouette nearly landed me into trouble. An elderly African woman—using a walker to help her negotiate the Faubourg Saint-Martin—screamed when I spun around. I apologized profusely, but she still glared at me as if I was delusional. The second time, the victims were two young toughs. They were both around twenty, of Arab origin, dressed in tight leather jackets and wearing cheap sunglasses. Their initial shock was quickly replaced by umbrage and aggression. Immediately they grabbed me and shoved me into a doorway.

“What you fucking doing?” one of them hissed.

“I thought you were the cops.”

“Stop talking shit,” the other said. “You thought we were following you, right?”

“I honestly didn’t think—”

“Racist asshole, thinks we’re a couple of sand niggers, wanting to jump him for his cheap watch.”

“I meant no disrespect. I—”

“Yes, you did,” the first said, then spat on me. Simultaneously the other guy shoved me hard, knocking me off my feet.

“You do that again to us,” he said, “we cut you the next times.”

But as soon as I had picked myself up and wiped that man’s spittle from my jacket and headed off down the street, I still found myself turning around every two minutes.

I’m sure they’re there. I’m sure they’re watching me at all times.

When I left the commissariat, I decided to do what I always do whenever life overwhelms me: I hid in a movie. (Come to think of it, I hide in a movie even if I am finding things moderately cope-able.) There was a Clint Eastwood festival at the Action Écoles—so I caught The Beguiled. (Wounded Civil War veteran ends up in a house of spinster women, starts sleeping his way through them, and pays a horrible price for his sexual profligacy . . . I must have been insane to have chosen this movie—especially as I had seen it twenty years earlier and therefore vaguely remembered what I was letting myself in for.)

Afterward, it was time for work. Now I turned around every minute, reducing this to thirty seconds as I approached the alleyway and the steel door, behind which . . .

I spun around. No one there. I walked back to the intersection of the alley and the street. I looked both ways. No one there. I walked back down the alley, turning one last time. No one there. I opened the door and locked it behind me. I went up to my office, knowing that tonight I wouldn’t get a single word written . . . that I would be watching the monitor nonstop, just in case anyone suspicious poked their head into the alleyway, looking around.

My eyes hardly left the monitor for the entire six hours of my shift. Somewhere toward the end of the night, the thought struck me, You’re a little unhinged by all this. To which the only reply could be, Being under suspicion for murder does strange things to one’s psyche.

When I left my work at six, however, I did discover someone waiting at the end of the alley for me. It was Sezer’s stooge, Mr. Tough Guy. He blocked my path as I approached him.

“Monsieur Sezer wants to see you,” he said.

“At this hour?” I said, trying to appear cool—even though I was suddenly anything but cool.

“He is awake.”

“I need to sleep.”

“You sleep afterward.”

“I’d like to stop by the boulangerie and pick up—”

He had me by the arm.

“You come now,” he said.

So back we went to my building and up the stairs to Sezer Confection. Himself was seated behind his desk, sipping a demitasse of coffee.

“You keep early hours,” I said.

“I don’t need much sleep,” he said. “Unlike you.”

“How do you know that?”

“You come home every morning at six ten, six fifteen the latest, after stopping at the pâtisserie for two pains au chocolat. You sleep until two PM. You pick up your wages at the Internet café on rue des Petites Écuries. You generally eat at a café near the canal Saint-Martin or the Gare de l’Est. You spend most of your days at the movies—though every few days, you pay a visit to someone on the rue Linné in the Fifth. A woman, I presume?”

“You’ve had someone following me?” I asked, my voice just a little shrill.

“We simply like to monitor our employees’ movements . . .”

“Our employees. Am I working for you?”

“Put it this way: we are all working for the same organization.”

“And what organization might that be?”

“You surely don’t expect me to tell you that.”

“Well, how about telling me why you told the cops that I killed Omar?”

“I never said such a thing. I simply informed them, under interrogation, that you’d had an ongoing dispute with Monsieur Omar about the condition of the toilet.”

“Under interrogation? You make it sound like they were beating you with a rubber hose.”

“Like most people, I am not at ease when in conversation with the police.”

“You tried to set me up . . . tried to finger me as the killer as a way of deflecting attention from—”

He raised an index finger and said, “I would stop right there if I was you, monsieur. I dislike accusations.”

“Even though you think nothing of making false accusations against other people.”

“The police have nothing whatsoever on you—”

“Except a motive—courtesy of you—and my fingerprints all over the toilet brush.”

“Fear not. The evidence is weak.”

“I’m their prime fucking suspect.”

“There will be no problem—this I can assure you—as long as you do what you are told.”

“By which you mean . . .?”

“You tell the police nothing about your work, no matter how hard they press you—”

“I wouldn’t dream of—”

He raised his finger again to silence me. Why was everybody doing this?

“And you also don’t do anything idiotic like try to run away.”

“The cops have taken my passport.”

“That has never stopped anybody from fleeing. False passports can be bought in this quartier for two hundred euros maximum.”

“I’m going nowhere.”

“I’m pleased to hear that. Because it would be very problematic for you if you did try to vanish. Not that we would allow you to vanish . . . unless, of course, you made us make you vanish.”

A small tight smile from Monsieur Sezer. I could feel the sweat cascading down my neck.

“Do you understand what I am telling you, Monsieur Ricks?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Very good. Then if you understand that, you must also understand that your movements are known to us at all times. Continue with your life as it is—your bookshops, your movies, your cafés, your woman in the Fifth, your work at night—and, I assure you, there will be no problem. Try to make a run for it—head to some railway station or attempt to purchase false documents—and the response will be fast and brutal. Are we clear about that?”

I nodded again. He said, “I need to hear you say, ‘I understand.’ ”

“I understand.”

“Very good. I also want you to assure me that, if the police approach you again, you will inform me immediately about their line of questioning.”

“You have my assurance,” I said, sounding like a complete flunky. Though I wanted to add, If you’re so worried about me going to the cops, why the hell did you finger me as the prime suspect? But I knew the answer to that question: By putting me under suspicion, he could appease the police and also keep me in his control.

“Then we are in complete understanding?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Excellent. One last thing: regarding that idiot you fucked—Yanna. I’m afraid that her husband has been informed of her infidelity with you. He has also been informed that you visited a walk-in medical clinic a few days ago and were diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease—”

“You asshole,” I heard myself say.

“Intemperate remarks like that cannot but upset me. And I do not like to be upset. Yes, Yanna’s husband will kill you . . . but only if we tell him to. He’s like Omar—stupid, bestial. But he also knows his place in the pecking order of things. So, once again, fear not: he won’t hurt you, unless ordered to.”

“I don’t want trouble,” I heard myself say.

“Then you won’t have any . . . unless you make trouble. Good day to you, Monsieur Ricks.”

He motioned to Mr. Tough Guy, who tapped me on the shoulder and pointed toward the door. I exited through it and down the stairs. Though part of me wanted to hurry across the courtyard, out the door, and down to the commissariat, I knew I’d just be playing into everybody’s hands if I did that. Sezer would find some way of providing definitive evidence that I murdered Omar, and the cops would happily buy it. As far as they were concerned, this case needed a denouement—and my conclusive guilt was it.

Think, think.

But all I could do right now was think about how tired I was, and how bed was the only logical place for me right now.

So I went to my room and drugged myself, as I knew sleep wouldn’t arrive without massive chemical help. I didn’t set the alarm. The next thing I knew there was a loud banging on my door.

“American! . . . American!” a familiar voice shouted.

It took me several moments to work out where I was, and to squint at my watch. Four thirty. Shit, shit, shit. I was due at Margit’s in thirty minutes.

“American! . . . American!”

More banging.

I staggered out of bed, my head still fogged in, and opened the door. Mr. Beard was standing outside, looking pissed off.

“Where the fuck were you?”

“What?” I asked.

“You always pick up your money at two thirty PM. Today you’re not there . . .”

“Overslept.”

“You no oversleep again,” he said, tossing my pay envelope on the floor. Then he turned and left.

I picked up the envelope. I went back inside. My grogginess had suddenly vanished, replaced by a deeper, unnerving realization: They really are following me now. Any moves out of the ordinary will be jumped upon in a nanosecond.

I forced myself into the shower. I was dressed and heading out the door ten minutes later. I turned around three times as I hurried toward the metro. No one there. But they were there. They knew my every move.

I was back on the street by 5:15, hurrying down the rue de Paradis. I passed the joint that Yanna co-owned. I made the mistake of glancing in as I passed by. Yanna was behind the bar. Our eyes met—and immediately I could tell that something was very wrong. Within moments, she was out on the street, screaming at me. With good reason. Her face looked like it had come under extended assault. Both eyes were blackened, her lip had been split open in two places, there were gashes above her eyebrows, and her right cheek had turned an inky purple.

“You stupid bastard,” she shouted. “I follow your advice, I tell him what Omar did, and look what he does to me. Starts telling me someone informed him you’d been fucking me too.”

“I’m so sorry—”

“Sorry?” she shouted. “The bastard nearly killed me . . . and now he’s going to kill you. So much for your brilliant ‘plan’—”

“You have to go to the police—”

“And really end up dead? You understand nothing, American. Nothing. You better run away now. Far away. Otherwise you’ll end up dead. Like Omar.”

“He killed Omar?”

“Impossible. I didn’t tell him until the morning he got in. Omar was dead by then. But he knew about Omar’s death by the time he walked in here. Just as he also knew I’d been stupid enough to fuck you. That’s the part I can’t figure out . . . how he found out about us . . .”

Because Sezer must have called him in Turkey before his departure and told him. Maybe he also threw Omar into the mix, and Yanna’s husband made a phone call before boarding the plane and Omar received his mid–bowel movement tracheotomy that night.

“. . . and why he hasn’t killed you yet.”

“I’ll make myself scarce,” I said.

“Shit really follows you around, doesn’t it?”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“I’m sorry you’re in such bad shape,” I said.

“As soon as I feel better, I’m planning to beat him to death.”

It was five forty by the time I reached Margit’s apartment. She was not pleased.

“You cannot be late like this,” she said as soon as she opened the door. She was wearing a black silk robe. It was half open.

“I can explain.”

“Don’t explain,” she said, pulling me inside. “Fuck me.”

“I can’t do that,” I said, dodging her grasp.

“Playing hard to get?” she said, reaching for me and thrusting her crotch against mine.

“It’s not that . . .”

“Shut up then,” she said, pulling her head toward mine and trying to kiss me. But I broke free.

“I just can’t,” I said.

“Yes, you can,” she said, reaching for my crotch.

“Will you stop!”

My tone made her freeze. Then she shrugged and walked away from me, past her bed and onto the sofa in her living room. She lit up a cigarette and said, “Let me guess: you’re in love . . .”

“I have a sexually transmitted disease.”

She considered that for a moment, puffing away on her cigarette.

“The fatal kind?” she finally asked.

“Chlamydia.”

“Just that?”

“I’m sorry . . .”

“For what?”

“I might have infected you.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because . . . I just doubt it. Anyway, chlamydia is not the end of civilization as we know it.”

“I’m aware of that. Still . . .”

“Ah yes. Guilt, guilt, and more guilt. It’s nothing, Harry.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I’ve had chlamydia myself. Courtesy of my husband. He gave it to me around a week before he was killed. Picked it up from some Sorbonne hottie he was fucking. I was rather aggrieved at the time—mainly because it hurt like hell every time I peed. In fact, on the night he and Judit were killed, our fight started with me telling him I now understood why he wasn’t that interested in sex with me . . . courtesy of his little girlfriend. He became outraged that I would mention this in front of Judit. He stormed out with her. And that’s the last time I ever saw them alive . . .”

She poured herself a whisky and sipped it.

“So, to tell the truth,” she said, “chlamydia is no big deal for me.”

“That’s a terrible story,” I said.

“All stories are fundamentally terrible,” she said. “But you’re not just worried about a sexually transmitted disease, Harry. It’s more than that, isn’t it?”

“I’m in a lot of trouble,” I said, and the entire story came pouring out. When I finished she was stubbing out her second cigarette.

“This Monsieur Sezer . . . you think he set you up?”

“Think? I’m sure of it.”

“So he murdered Omar?”

“Sezer would never grubby his hands like that. But he does have this resident thug who probably does all his dirty work for him.”

“Any thoughts on why he wanted Omar dead?”

“Everyone hated Omar.”

“You especially.”

“I didn’t want him dead.”

“True. But you did intimate you wanted him out of your life. Now he’s out of your life. The problem is, Sezer is now in your life . . .”

“Not just that—he’s having me tailed everywhere.”

“I think he wants you to think that.”

“If he knows where I eat lunch, if he knows I come here every three days . . .”

“True, maybe he has a couple of flunkies who have tailed you. But all the time? That’s a bit labor-intensive, don’t you think? He’s relying on his powers of intimidation to keep you in place. Anyway, if he wanted you dead . . . you’d probably be dead by now.”

“It’s Yanna’s husband who will probably beat me to death with a hammer if Sezer gives him the go-ahead.”

“But Sezer evidently wants you alive . . .”

“For the time being.”

“How badly was Yanna beaten?”

I gave her the full picture. Her face tightened as I explained the extent of the injuries inflicted on Yanna.

“Bastards,” she said. “That’s what they did to my mother.”

“Sorry?” I said.

“The secret police . . . when they came to kill my father, they also beat the shit out of my mother. Actually beat her around the face.”

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“May 11, 1957. I was seven years old. My father was a newspaper editor—a one-time Party member who turned very anti-Communist after the 1956 Uprising was crushed by Russian tanks. Since martial law was declared, he had gone underground and was publishing a samizdat newspaper—very anti-Kadar and his regime—which was being run from a variety of safe houses around Budapest. Father was never at home—he was essentially on the run all the time—but I remember these men in suits or leather jackets frequently waking us up in the middle of the night, and sometimes ransacking the apartment and even pulling me from bed to see if Father was hiding underneath it.

“This went on for months. I kept asking Mother, ‘Why are these men after Papa? When do I get to see Papa again?’ Mother simply told me to be patient . . . that we would be reunited with Papa soon . . . but that I should stop asking questions about his whereabouts and that, if anyone at school asked me where he was, I was to say that I had absolutely no idea.

“Then, one Friday, Mother said, ‘I have a nice surprise. We’re going away for the weekend.’ But she wouldn’t tell me where exactly we were heading. So we got into our little car and drove off after dark. Hours later—I had no idea how long we’d been on the road, as I’d fallen asleep in the back—we turned off down a dirt road and eventually stopped at this tiny cottage in the woods. There, inside the cottage, was Papa. I ran into his arms and wouldn’t let go of him . . . even when Mother, who was crying with happiness to see him, tried to hug him. Papa was mine . . . until I got tired and they put me to bed on the lumpy sofa in the front room. I remembered waking once or twice in the middle of the night when I heard groans from the bedroom—not knowing what they were doing at the time—but then falling back to sleep again . . . until, suddenly, there was this loud pounding at the door. The next thing I knew, there were loud voices and Mother came running out of the bedroom and I turned around and saw Papa trying to scramble out of the bedroom window. Then the front door burst open, and several policemen and two men in suits came marching in. One of the cops went running into the bedroom and pulled Papa back from the window and started beating him with his stick. My mother began to scream—and a plainclothes officer grabbed her while his colleague repeatedly punched her in the face. Now I started to scream, but the other cop held me down while his colleague dragged my father outside. The officer who was beating Mother stopped, and pushed her onto the sofa. Her face was a bloody pulp and she was evidently unconscious. Now he started shouting orders and dashed to join the cop who pulled Papa outside, then ducked back in once to grab a chair. His colleague—certain that Mother wasn’t moving—ran out as well. There was more shouting—then the cop holding me lifted me up and frog-marched me outside.

“First light was in the sky—and what I saw there I will never forget. My father—his hands behind his back, a rope around his neck that had been suspended from a tree—was being forced to climb on top of a chair placed right under the tree. When he refused, one of the plainclothes cops grabbed him in the crotch and squeezed so hard that Papa doubled over and the two men forced him on the chair, and I was crying and trying to turn away, and the same officer who’d grabbed Papa in the crotch shouted to the cop holding me, ‘Make her watch.’ So he grabbed my ponytail and forced me to see the other plainclothes guy kick the chair, and Papa wriggling and jerking and coughing up blood as . . .”

Margit stopped and sipped her whisky.

“It must have taken him a good two minutes to die. And do you know what one of the plainclothes officers—they were Secret Police—told me? ‘Now you know what we do to traitors.’ ”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “I never knew . . .”

“Because I never told you.”

“How the fuck could they have done that to you . . . a little girl . . .?”

“Because they were bastards. And because they could do this. They had the power. They made the rules. They could force a seven-year-old girl to watch her father being lynched.”

“What happened after?”

“They bundled me into a car and took me off to a State orphanage. A hellhole. I was there for three weeks. Refused to leave my bed, except to go to the bathroom. Refused to speak to anyone. I remember they sent doctors to see me. I said nothing. They were always talking in whispers to the nurses and the orphanage people, saying things like, ‘She’s traumatized . . . She’s in shock . . . She has to be fed.’ But I refused to eat. So they eventually tied me down to a bed and stuck needles in my arms and fed me that way.

“After three weeks, one of the matrons of the orphanage came in and said, ‘Your mother’s here. You’re leaving.’ I didn’t feel elation. I didn’t cry with happiness. I felt nothing but numbness.

“Mother was waiting for me in the director’s office. Her face had only half-healed. One eye was half closed, the other . . . she was never able to use that eye again. She came over and put her arms around me, but there was no strength to her hug, no comfort. Something had been killed in her. She was accompanied by two men in suits. When I saw them I immediately recoiled—and hid behind my mother—because I was certain they were the same sort of men who had killed my father. Even they were embarrassed by my fear of them, and one of them whispered to my mother who then whispered to me, ‘They want you to know they will do you no harm.’

“But I still refused to come up and face everyone until Mother crouched down beside me and said, ‘We have been given permission to leave Hungary. These men will drive us to the Austrian border, and there we will be met by other men who will bring us to a city called Vienna. And we will start a new life there.’

“Again, I said nothing. Except, ‘Those men who killed my father . . . will they hurt us again?”

“One of the suits crouched down and spoke to me. ‘No, they will never hurt you again,’ he said. ‘But I can promise you they will pay terribly for what they did.’

“As I found out from my mother some years later, those men with her at the orphanage were also from the Secret Police. My father’s death had been something of a big deal. One of the uniformed officers who had been on the scene when he was murdered had a crisis of conscience, and made contact with the Reuters correspondent in Budapest. The story went everywhere—especially the bit about me being forced to watch Papa’s execution. The fact that the cop who yanked my ponytail to make me keep my eyes open was the same one who ratted out his colleagues and went to the Western press . . . well, I suppose it shows that even the police sometimes have a conscience.”

“What happened next?”

“There was a small international cause célèbre. It was the height of the Cold War, and the press outside of Hungary jumped on the story—Communist savagery and all that. Anyway, the Kadar government was under a lot of pressure to ‘solve the problem.’ So they offered my mother and me free passage out of the country and a little money to start a new life in the West.”

“And what happened to the two plainclothes officers?”

“Their names were Bodo and Lovas. After we left Hungary they were put on a big public trial and sentenced to many years of hard labor. But through sources in the country, I found out that, after the trial, they were secretly transferred out to the intelligence division of the Hungarian Embassy in Bucharest . . . which, I suppose, was a prison sentence of sorts. Two years later, they were back working in Budapest in big jobs.”

“And since then . . .?”

“Dead.”

“You know that for a fact?”

She nodded.

“And the cop who ratted on his comrades?”

“After he leaked everything to the Reuters man, he did what every true soldier would do who betrayed his cause. He went home and blew his head off. The ethical ones among us often pay a very high price.”

Silence. She finished her cigarette. I topped up her whisky glass. She didn’t touch it. I tried to take her hand in mine. She pushed me away.

“You expect me to accept your sympathy?” she asked.

I ignored her anger—as I knew she would want me to—and instead asked, “How could you have ever gotten over something like that?”

“You can’t—and I didn’t. But to those bastards, it was war. And when it’s war you can do whatever you want. And I don’t really want to say anything more about this, except . . . now you know why I hate any man who hits a woman in the face.”

Then, “You are going to have to kill Yanna’s husband.”

“Are you insane?” I said.

“He will kill you.”

“Only if Sezer tells him to. And if Sezer has me bumped off, the cops will immediately know that he was behind it—”

“If the cops even care. You could ‘disappear’ and who would notice?”

“I’m not killing Yanna’s husband,” I said. “I could never kill anyone.”

“Everyone is capable of murder, Harry. You must remember that Yanna’s husband is a thug—and one whose pride has been damaged by the fact that you fucked his wife. Where he comes from, that’s up there with genocide and pedophilia in the catalog of human horrors. Sezer might hold him off for a while . . . but he is going to kill you. Be absolutely certain about that.”

After leaving Margit’s apartment, I took the metro over to Les Halles and a sporting goods shop that I passed once in that subterranean shopping center, and was open late this evening. I stopped a clerk and said, “I know this probably sounds very American, but you wouldn’t happen to sell baseball bats by any chance?”

“Straight ahead, then turn right,” he said.

So much for me thinking I’d have to explain what a baseball bat is.

Ten minutes later, I walked back into the metro at Les Halles, carrying a full-size Louisville Slugger. Yes, several passersby did stare at me—no doubt wondering what I was doing with such a threatening object in a metro—but I didn’t care. If Yanna’s husband—or any of his goon friends—did try to jump me, at least the baseball bat would give me a fighting chance (unless, of course, he used a gun).

As I walked out of the metro at Château d’Eau—baseball bat in hand—several people actually crossed the road when they saw me coming toward them. I took a different route to work, dodging the rue de Paradis, cutting down some small back alleys, and always carrying the bat up against my chest, while spinning around every twenty paces to see who was following me.

I reached work. I bolted the door behind me. I drank coffee all night and kept my eyes glued to the screen. An image kept filling my head: the seven-year-old Margit being frog-marched out by the cop. No wonder she tried to cut her throat after the death of Zoltan and Judit. How much tragedy can one person bear? How do you get up in the morning and negotiate the day, knowing that you have twice lost—in horrible circumstances—the people closest to you?

My admiration for her had increased sevenfold. But so too had my unease with her cut-and-dried solutions to things: You must kill Yanna’s husband.

No, I must dodge Yanna’s husband and somehow hope the police work out who really killed Omar and get my passport back and . . .

Vanish.

Because now—after Sezer’s threats and Margit’s warnings about the inevitable—I knew that I had few choices open to me.

But I couldn’t just disappear right now. Not with my movements being so closely observed, and with my passport in the pocket of Inspector Coutard.

Say the cops followed me here tonight? How would I explain that one? ’Fess up—“All right, I do have a job”—and hope whatever they found downstairs wasn’t so gruesome that . . .?

You can work out that one once they’ve arrested you. And maybe getting arrested is the safest option going right now.

But if they arrest you, they can pin everything on you. And they will. Better to tough it out, get the passport returned, and skip town.

You could buy false documents . . . and be elsewhere tomorrow.

And be on the run for the rest of my life? And never see my daughter again? And always be looking over my shoulder? And . . .

You’ll never see your daughter again. And you’ll always be looking over your shoulder . . . unless you kill Yanna’s husband.

You’re talking melodrama. If you flee to the States . . .

You’ll still never rest easy. Get rid of him.

Shut up.

You know you can do it.

Says you. Look what happened when Omar was silenced. His dirty little secret—with which he attempted to blackmail me—was still whispered into the ear of Yanna’s husband. So if I kill Yanna’s husband, then I also might as well kill Sezer and Mr. Tough Guy and Mr. Beard . . . since they all could still get me . . . all could want me dead.

When 6:00 AM came, my brain felt fried. My all-night anxiety had left me feeling as if I had overdosed on Dexedrine or some other form of high-octane speed. As I walked down the stairs to the front door, the entire grubby concrete hallway seemed to blur and take on a certain strange liquidity, as if it could form another shape or dimension around me. I hoisted the bat, holding it against me the way a soldier on inspection might keep his rifle crossed against his chest. At the pâtisserie, the Algerian guy behind the counter gave me a scared look when he saw the weapon.

“It’s just a precaution,” I told him. “Just self-defense in case they try to get me.”

“Monsieur, do you want your pains au chocolat, comme d’habitude?” he asked.

“You see them, you tell them I used to be a pinch hitter on my high school baseball team, so I really know how to swing one of these—”

“Monsieur, please. There is no need to . . .”

That’s when I realized I was brandishing the bat and also talking in English.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, switching back into French. “Very overtired. Very . . .”

“No problem, sir,” he said, handing me the usual bag with the pains au chocolat.

“Don’t know what’s wrong. Don’t—”

“Two euros, sir,” he said, still proffering the bag.

I threw five on the counter and took the bag and headed off.

“Don’t you want the change?”

“I want sleep.”

Did I sound spooked, maybe a little insane? Absolutely. But I knew that things would all look a lot better after eight hours of sleep.

Actually, things wouldn’t look better at all.

I turned the corner into the rue de Paradis. I reached my doorway. I punched in the code and went up to my room. I passed the toilet. It was still sealed off with police tape, forcing me to always use the toilet on the upper floor. I opened my door, leaned the bat against a wall, undressed, climbed beneath the sheets, and—

There was a loud pounding on the door, followed by one uttered word, “Police!”

I blinked and looked at the bedside clock: 6:23 AM. Great. I’d been asleep for maybe ten minutes.

“Police!”

More heavy knocking. Part of me wanted to play dumb and hope they’d go away and let me sleep.

“Police!”

I was about to say something, but the door burst open and two uniformed officers came charging in. Before I knew it, they’d forced me to put on a pair of pants and a jacket and had handcuffed me and frog-marched me downstairs and into a car that had now pulled up in front.

Ten minutes later, I was in the commissariat de police of the Tenth arrondissement, sitting in front of Inspector Leclerc. My hands were no longer cuffed behind my back. Instead, one of my wrists had been chained to the metal chair where I had been placed . . . and the chair itself bolted to the floor. The two arresting officers had brought me in here, attached me to the chair, and left me to my own devices for around twenty minutes. Then Leclerc arrived, carrying my baseball bat in one hand.

“Good morning, Monsieur Ricks,” he said, sitting down behind his desk. “I presume you know what this is?”

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“Please answer the question.”

“A baseball bat.”

“Very good. And I presume you also know that we just found this bat in your chambre.”

“Can you search somebody’s place without a permit?”

“Answer the question, monsieur. Is this your bat?”

“I’m answering no questions until I know why I’m here.”

“You don’t know why you’re here?” he asked, studying my face with care.

“No idea.”

“Do you know a Monsieur Attani?”

“Never heard of him.”

“He runs a bar on the rue de Paradis—a bar where you have been seen to drink on several occasions.”

I tensed. Leclerc noticed this.

“Do you know his wife, Madame Yanna Attani?”

I felt a sweat break on my forehead. I said nothing.

“I take your silence to mean—”

“I know her,” I said.

“Then you must also know Monsieur Attani?”

“We’ve never been formally introduced.”

“Even though you were formally introduced to his wife. In fact, word has it that you were intimately acquainted with his wife . . . that Monsieur Attani was made aware of your intimate acquaintance upon his return from Turkey a few days ago, and was heard publicly to say that he was planning to kill you. So . . . were you aware of these threats?”

I went silent again.

“We need to know your whereabouts last night.”

“Why?”

“Because we have reason to believe that you assaulted Monsieur Attani with this bat.”

“He was assaulted?”

“He is currently in the hospital, fighting for his life.”

“Oh, my God . . .”

“Why are you sounding shocked, when it was clearly you who assaulted him?”

“I didn’t—”

“You have a motive—he threatened to kill you. Perhaps you were so madly in love with his wife—”

“I didn’t—”

“And now we have found the weapon used to smash his head in—”

“His head was smashed in?”

“He is in intensive care with a crushed cranium, a crushed face, and two crushed kneecaps. He is brain-dead and will not survive the day. The assailant was very violent and used a hefty circular object, like a baseball bat.”

“I swear to you—”

“Where were you last night?”

“I only bought the bat to protect myself after Omar was found—”

“Where were you last night?”

“If you run forensic tests on the bat, you’ll see it’s clean.”

“Where were you last night? And I will not repeat the question again. Answer it or I will call an examining magistrate and have you formally charged with murder.”

Silence. I could feel the sweat now cascading down my face. I knew there was only one alibi I could give—and that she might hate me for implicating her in all this, but she’d still cover for me.

“I was at my girlfriend’s place,” I said.

Leclerc pursed his lips. He didn’t like that one bit.

“Her name?”

I told him.

“Address?”

I gave him that too.

He picked up the phone. I heard him read out Margit’s name and her address in the Fifth. Then he hung up and said, “We will be keeping you here, pending further inquiries.”

“I’d like to talk to a lawyer.”

“But why? If your girlfriend vouches for you, you get to walk out of here.”

“I’d like to talk to a lawyer.”

“Do you have a lawyer?”

“No, but . . .”

He hit an intercom button on his desk, spoke briefly into it, then stood up.

“My superior, Inspector Coutard, will, no doubt, be speaking with you before too long.”

Then he left. A few moments later, two uniformed officers came in. They unshackled me from the chair, recuffed my hands behind my back, then marched me down several flights of stairs, through a maze of corridors. Then we emerged in that holding area in which I had waited for Coutard yesterday. Only this time I wasn’t going to be left unshackled on the bench. No, this time I was being placed directly in the cell located next to this bench. I started to protest, saying something like, “I want to talk to a lawyer,” but one of the cops pulled hard on the cuffs, making certain they dug deep into my skin.

“Shut up,” he said as his colleague unlocked the cell door. I was shoved inside. I was ordered to lie facedown on the concrete bed located in one corner of this tiny cell. The bed had a bare dirty mattress, a pillow that was a blotchy canvas of dried blood and snot, and a thin dirty blanket. I did as requested. The cop uncuffed me, while also informing me that if I did anything stupid—like taking a swing at him—his colleague had his nightstick in his hand and would think nothing of beating me senseless.

“A taste of your own medicine, after what you did to your lover’s husband.”

“I promise you I’ll behave.”

“Smart boy,” he said, removing the cuffs, then added, “You can get up from that bed once we have left the cell and the door has been closed. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

After the cell door closed behind him, however, I didn’t get up. Rather, I gripped the thin mattress and buried my head against the filthy pillow, thinking, I’m dead.

I reached down for the blanket. I pulled it over me. The only good thing about not yet having slept was that, finding myself in a horizontal position, exhaustion overtook me and I was vanished from this terrible world in moments.

And then a voice said, “Get up.”

The voice came from a metal slit in the cell door. I glanced at my wrist and remembered they had earlier taken my watch off me, along with my belt and shoelaces. I felt stiff all over and grubby and parched.

“What time is it, please?”

“Five twenty.”

I had been asleep all day.

“Get up,” the voice said again. “Inspector Coutard wants to see you.”

“Can I use the toilet first?” I asked, pointing to the stainless-steel commode next to the bed.

“Make it fast.”

After I finished peeing, the officer opened the cell and cuffed my hands behind my back and started leading me back up through the maze of corridors we’d traveled earlier that morning. Coutard was seated behind his desk when we entered. A lit cigarette was in his mouth. He was reading a file and looked up at me over his half-moon glasses.

“You can uncuff him,” he told the officer. When this was done, Coutard motioned for me to sit in the metal chair facing his desk. The cop was about to recuff me to the chair, but Coutard said, “No need.” Then looking at me again, he added, “You look like you could use a coffee.”

“That would be nice.”

He motioned to the cop who disappeared into the corridor. Then he returned to studying the file, deliberately ignoring me for the moment. The cop returned with a small white plastic cup and handed it to me. It was hot to the touch, but I still downed it in one go.

“Thank you,” I said to both the cop and the inspector. Coutard put down his file. He now faced me square on.

“Inspector Leclerc informed me that you said you spent last evening at the apartment of a woman friend . . . a Madame Margit Kadar, resident of thirteen rue Linné, Fifth arrondissement. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Naturally, we investigated this. We sent several of our men to Madame Kadar’s apartment. And I regret to inform you that we discovered that Madame Kadar is dead.”

The news was like a mule kick to the stomach.

“That can’t be true,” I finally said.

“It is, I am afraid, completely true,” he said.

I put my head in my hands. Not Margit. Please, not Margit.

“What happened?”

“Madame Kadar killed herself.”

“What?” I whispered.

“Madame Kadar took her own life.”

“But I saw her yesterday. When did this happen?”

Coutard stared right at me. And said, “Madame Kadar killed herself in nineteen eighty.”

SEVENTEEN

“WHAT DID YOU just say?” I asked.

“Madame Kadar killed herself in 1980,” Coutard said.

“Very funny.”

“It is not at all funny. Suicide never is.”

“You expect me to believe—?”

“Monsieur, the question should be rephrased: ‘You expect me to believe that you spent yesterday evening at the apartment of a woman who has been dead for twenty-six years?’ ”

“What proof do you have that she died in 1980?”

“I ask the questions here, monsieur. You tell me you were at her apartment last night.”

“Yes,” I said, deciding fast that, under the circumstances, it was better to maintain the lie than to backpedal.

“How long have you been involved with Madame Kadar?”

“Several months.”

“You met her where?”

I explained about Lorraine L’Herbert’s salon. Coutard noted this on a pad and asked for her address.

“And you’ve regularly seen Madame Kadar since that first meeting?”

“Twice a week.”

“And you were ‘intimate’ with her?”

“Absolutely.”

“You are being serious here?”

“I am completely serious.”

He looked at me and shook his head. Slowly.

“Have you suffered hallucinations like this in the past?”

“Inspector, I am telling you the truth.”

“Have you ever been hospitalized—committed—for psychotic disorders? I can—will—run a complete check on your medical history and—”

“I am not delusional, Inspector.”

“And yet you insist that you’ve been having an affair with a dead woman. That certainly exceeds the definition of delusional.”

“Show me some proof that she is dead.”

“In time,” he said quietly. “Describe Madame Kadar to me.”

“Late fifties. Striking face, sharply etched features, not much in the way of age lines, a shock of black hair—”

“Stop. Madame Kadar was thirty when she died in 1980. So the woman you were allegedly seeing was over twenty-five years older.”

But if she was thirty in 1980, wouldn’t she be in her late fifties now?

“Do you have a photograph of her in 1980?” I asked.

“In time,” he said again. “Anything else you wish to tell me about her physical appearance?”

“She was—is—beautiful.”

“Nothing else? No distinguishing marks or characteristics?”

“She had a scar across her neck.”

“Did she tell you how she received such a scar?”

“She tried to cut her own throat.”

Coutard seemed thrown by my answer, but was simultaneously trying to mask his bemusement.

“Tried to cut her own throat?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“The suicide was not successful?”

“Well, evidently not, if she was telling me about it.”

He reached for a file in front of him. He opened it. He turned several pages, then looked up at me again.

“Did she explain why she tried to kill herself?”

“Her husband and daughter were killed in a hit-and-run accident.”

Coutard stared down at the file again. His eyes narrowed.

“Where exactly did this accident take place?”

“Near the Luxembourg Gardens.”

“When exactly?”

“1980.”

“What month?”

“June, I think.”

“And what were the circumstances of the accident?”

“Her husband and daughter were crossing the road—”

“The husband’s name?”

“Zoltan.”

“The daughter?”

“Judit.”

“How do you know this?”

“She told me.”

“Madame Kadar?”

“Yes, Madame Kadar told me. Just as she told me the driver of the car—”

“What was the make of the car?”

“I forget. Something big and flashy. The guy was a businessman.”

“Why do you know all this?”

“Because Margit is my lover. And lovers tell each other their pasts.”

“Did your ‘lover’ tell you what happened to the driver of the black Jaguar—”

“That’s right—she said it was a Jag . . . and the man lived in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.”

Again he glanced down at the file, then looked up at me. His cool was cracking. He now seemed angry.

“This game is no longer amusing. You have obviously engaged in some sort of warped research about a dead woman who murdered the man who ran over her husband and daughter and then—”

“Murdered?”

“That’s what I said. Murdered.”

“But she told me he was killed by a burglar.”

“How was he killed?”

“Knife wound, I think.”

“When?”

“Around three months after the accident.”

“You’re right. Henri Dupré—”

“That’s the name she mentioned. A pharmaceuticals executive, right . . .?”

“Correct. And Monsieur Dupré—a resident, as you said, of Saint-Germain-en-Laye—was murdered at his home on the night of September 20, 1980. His wife and children were not at home at the time. In fact, his wife had just filed for divorce. The man was a hopeless alcoholic and the hit-and-run accident which killed Madame Kadar’s husband and daughter also ended Dupré’s marriage. However, Dupré was not killed by a burglar. He was killed by Madame Kadar.”

“Bullshit.”

He reached into the file and pulled out a faded Xerox copy of a newspaper article. It was from Le Figaro and dated September 23, 1980. The headline read:

EXECUTIVE MURDERED

AT HOME IN SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE

BEREAVED WOMAN SUSPECTED

This story outlined the facts of the murder—how Dupré had been surprised in his bed in the middle of a Saturday night; how the attack had been very frenzied; how the murderer had used a shower in the house, then left a note in the kitchen: FOR JUDIT AND ZOLTAN. A neighbor who had been up early saw a woman leaving the house around 5 AM and heading to the metro—and the police now wanted to question Margit Kadar, whose husband and daughter had been killed by Dupré in a hit-and-run accident several weeks earlier.

“This is unbelievable,” I said.

Coutard reached into the file and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph and pushed it across his desk. It was a police photo—black and white, but still shockingly lurid. Dupré was shown strewn across a bloodstained bed—huge black blotches surrounding him—his chest ripped open in several places; his face and head gashed horribly.

I sucked in my breath and pushed the photograph back to Coutard.

“To call this attack ‘frenzied’ would be to exercise understatement,” Coutard said. “This was a murder committed in white-hot rage; the killer unable to desist even after the fatal blow was struck. What most intrigued the investigating inspector at the time were two interrelated aspects to the case: its meticulous planning and the fact that the murderer clearly wanted the police—and the public—to know that she was responsible. The police checked Madame Kadar’s phone records after the attack. It seems she had rung the Dupré household the night before the attack. In his report, the inspector presumed that she was calling on a pretext—perhaps using a false voice to ask for his wife and simultaneously finding out that he was at home that weekend. How did the police work this out? Because Madame Kadar’s phone records also show that she called Madame Dupré on the same Friday evening at the apartment in Saint-Germain-en-Laye to which she had moved with her son, having first obtained this new number from Directory Enquiries. Madame Dupré remembered the call when she was questioned by the police—a woman, sounding very French, telling her that she got this number from her husband, and that she was working for a company selling holiday apartments near Biarritz and she would like to send Madame some information, and should she use her husband’s address? Madame Dupré then informed her that she no longer lived with her husband, and that she wasn’t interested in a holiday apartment near Biarritz, and hung up the phone.

“So Madame Kadar now knew that Dupré lived alone and was at home that weekend. The attack happened the following night around four. Madame Kadar had visited Saint-Germain-en-Laye earlier that day. The same neighbor who spotted her leaving the Dupré home at five that morning saw someone looking carefully at the house the previous afternoon—walking around it, inspecting every aspect of it. But as Dupré had it on the market, the neighbor thought it was just a prospective buyer. When Madame Kadar returned that night, she entered through a window that had been left open on the ground floor. She evidently made no noise, as Dupré was surprised by her in bed. We have no idea whether she briefly woke him before beginning the attack or murdered him while he was asleep . . . though the medical examiner postulated that Dupré must have woken up as soon as the first blow was struck and was therefore aware of his assailant. The police were fairly certain that Madame Kadar wanted Dupré to see it was her—as this was an obvious act of revenge.

“Afterward, Madame Kadar stripped off her clothes and used Dupré’s bathroom to have a shower. She left her blood-splattered clothes on the bathroom floor and the knife by the bed. She had evidently arrived with a small suitcase containing a change of clothes—and after dressing, she went down to the kitchen and made coffee and waited—”

“She made coffee after knifing him like that?”

“The first train doesn’t leave Saint-Germain-en-Laye until five twenty-three AM. She didn’t want to be waiting outside the station—so, yes, she made coffee and wrote that simple note, FOR JUDIT AND ZOLTAN. It sounds like a book dedication, doesn’t it? Besides being an act of revenge perhaps she considered this murder to be a creative act. Certainly her planning was most creative. She left the house around five. It was a fifteen-minute walk to the station. She boarded the first train and changed for the metro at Châtelet. There she proceeded to the Gare de l’Est and bought a first-class ticket to Budapest. She even paid for a separate sleeping compartment. She had to give her own name when booking the first-class compartment. This she did. But she evidently gambled that no one would be stopping by the Dupré house on Sunday . . . or that if it was discovered, it would still take the police most of the day to figure out she was the murderer, and to alert Interpol that she was now on the run. In other words she had, at a minimum, a clear twenty-four hours to get to Budapest. As it turned out, she gambled right. Dupré’s body wasn’t discovered until late Monday afternoon when he failed to show up for work, and his employers called his wife. She went back to his house and came upon the crime scene. Of course, she was immediately considered the prime suspect—the spouse always is in a case of a murder in the home—until the forensics showed that Madame Kadar’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon and that the bloodstained clothes left behind were not Madame Dupré’s.”

“How did you have her fingerprints on file?”

“All resident aliens are fingerprinted. Also, in 1976, Madame Kadar became a French citizen—so she was re-fingerprinted. However, as she was traveling as a Frenchwoman, she had to apply for a visa at the Hungarian Embassy here in Paris. At the time, the Communist regime didn’t allow foreigners to obtain an entry permit at their border . . . especially former citizens. Madame Kadar applied for this visa fourteen days before she murdered Dupré, stating that she wanted to visit family members there.”

“But she hated Hungary . . . especially after what had happened to her father.”

“What had happened to her father?”

I told him everything Margit had told me. Several times during this recitation, he looked down at the file, as if he was comparing the story I was telling with that which he had inside this battered, thick manila folder. When I finished, I asked, “Does that correspond with the information you have?”

“Naturally the Hungarian police—who cooperated with us during our investigation—also informed us of the findings of their investigations into the two murders that Madame Kadar committed on her return to Budapest.”

“She killed Bodo and Lovas?”

Long silence. Coutard glared at me. He put down the file. He lit a cigarette. He took several deep thoughtful drags, never once taking his eyes off me. Finally: “I am trying to discern the game you are playing, monsieur. You are under investigation for two murders, and you simultaneously show extensive knowledge of a sequence of murders carried out here and in Budapest by a woman who killed herself in Hungary shortly after murdering her second victim there.”

“She cut her throat after killing Bodo?”

“No, after killing Lovas. But let us not digress from the issue of concern to me: why you know so much about this case. Please do not repeat that preposterous alibi that she told you all about this. I will not accept such absurdities. So how and why did you garner all this information? You are a writer, yes? Perhaps someone told you about this case—it got quite a bit of publicity at the time. You were intrigued, and using the Internet, you found out all the details of the case. And now, under suspicion for two murders yourself, you spin this absurd tale of an affair with a dead woman in an attempt to—”

“Were there any reports in the Hungarian papers about the reason why she returned to Budapest to murder Bodo and Lovas?”

“You interrupted me again.”

“Sorry.”

“You do that once more, I’ll send you back to the cells for twenty-four hours.”

Won’t you be sending me back there anyway?

Coutard reopened the file and spent several minutes studying some more old photocopied pages.

“We have a selection of the Hungarian press clippings about the case, and a French translation provided for us. Given the nature of the regime back then, the official reason given as to why she murdered Bodo and Lovas was, ‘These two brave defenders of Hungary had arrested Madame Kadar’s father when he was spreading “seditious lies against the homeland’ ” . . . that’s an exact quote. According to the State media, he subsequently killed himself while in prison after it was revealed he was an agent working for the CIA. There is no mention in any report—either police or in the press—of the incident you describe, in which Madame Kadar was forced, as a seven-year-old girl, to watch her father’s hanging. Then again, the Hungarian police in 1980 would never have shared such information with us. Instead, in their reports—and in the State press—Madame Kadar was depicted as a mentally unbalanced woman who, having recently lost her husband and daughter in a tragic accident, was on a rampage of revenge. The State newspaper printed all the French reports about Dupré’s murder. They also intimated that the attacks on Bodo and Lovas were savage ones.”

“Did the Hungarian police let you know how she tracked the two men down?”

“Of course not. According to the inspector’s report at the time, the police in Budapest only nominally cooperated with us. And no, they didn’t inform us that Bodo and Lovas were members of the security services—though in all the Hungarian press reports, they constantly referred to the two men as ‘heroes’ who had ‘given their lives to protect the security of the homeland’ . . . which is usual State double-speak for members of the Secret Police.”

“And Margit killed herself after murdering the two men?”

He opened the file and found a document, glanced at one page, then turned to those stapled beneath it.

“This is a translation of a telex—remember the telex?—sent to us from the police in Budapest. First victim, Béla Bodo, age sixty-six, was found dead in his apartment in a residential district of Pest on the night of September 21, 1980. He was found bound and gagged to a chair in front of his kitchen table. His hands had been taped to the table using heavy duct tape, of the type generally employed for patching leaky pipes. The victim’s ten fingers had been severed from his hands, his eyes had been gouged out, his throat cut.”

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.

“There was nothing frenzied about such an attack. One must surmise that the murderer was very slow and deliberate in her maiming of her victim, in order to inflict maximum pain and terror on him. The coup de grâce when his throat was cut must have been a desperate relief to him.”

“Did the police tell you how she had managed to bind and gag Bodo in the first place?”

“No, but like us, they too intimated that she must have entered his apartment carrying a firearm—thus forcing him to ‘assume the position’ at the kitchen table while she bound and gagged him. Had he known what was awaiting him, I’ve no doubt he would have tried to escape. Being shot to death is so much cleaner than the torment he suffered.”

“And Lovas?”

“The same treatment. Only in this instance, a neighbor heard Lovas scream something—probably before Madame Kadar gagged his mouth—and decided to call the police. They took their time arriving—maybe thirty minutes after the call. When they got there, they banged on the door and announced themselves and insisted whoever was there should open the door immediately. There was no reply. So they got the concierge to open the door. As the door swung up, a spray of blood hit the officers. Madame Kadar had just cut her throat . . . and judging from the blood still pumping from Lovas, Madame Kadar had sliced his jugular right before her own.

“They tried to save them both. They both died.”

He reached into the file, pulled out two aging black-and-white photos, and pushed them across the table to me. The first showed the bloodied head of a man lying limp, his torso also covered in blood, his hands taped to a table and so mutilated that they appeared to be gory stumps.

The second showed a woman sprawled on a linoleum floor, lying in a pool of blood, her clothes sodden, a kitchen knife in one hand, a gash across her throat. I studied the face. Without question, it was a younger version of Margit. I looked at her eyes. Though frozen, they seemed to glow with an exultant rage—the same sort of heightened fury that I saw in her eyes when she talked about the death of her father, or the accident that took Zoltan and Judit from her. I stared at her postmortem eyes again in the photograph. It was as if Margit had taken this rage with her from the past life into eternity.

The past life? But she was here, in this life. Now.

I pushed the photograph back toward the inspector. I bowed my head, not knowing what to say, what to think.

“Given the monstrousness of the attacks,” Coutard said, “it is obvious that the murderer was not of sound mind. Yet she might not have committed suicide if the police hadn’t shown up while she was slowly maiming Lovas to death.”

“But she is not dead,” I said.

He tapped the crime-scene photograph of Margit.

“You insist that the woman shown here is alive?”

“Yes.”

He handed me another document from the file. It was in Hungarian and looked official. Toward the top of it was a space in which Margit’s name had been written.

“This is the death certificate from the medical examiner in Budapest—signed after he performed the autopsy on Madame Kadar. The investigating inspector in Saint-Germain-en-Laye closed the case on the murder of Monsieur Dupré upon receiving this certificate from the Hungarian authorities, as he had proof that the individual who perpetrated this crime was dead. But you still insist that Madame Kadar is alive?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand the seriousness of your position, Monsieur Ricks?”

“I didn’t kill Omar. I didn’t kill Yanna’s husband.”

“Even though all the evidence points to you. Not just evidence . . . but motive as well.”

“I had nothing to do with their deaths.”

“And your alibi—at least in the case of the murder of Monsieur Attani—is that you were at the apartment of the woman whose death certificate you have just read?”

“You have heard me tell you, in detail, essential aspects of her life—”

“And these details could have been easily researched by you using a search engine . . .”

“Ask yourself, Inspector, please, the same question you posed to me: Why would I be interested in such an old murder case? How would I have found out about it in the first place? And how would I know more intimate details of Madame Kadar’s past than you do?”

“Monsieur, I have been doing this job for over twenty years now. And if there is one thing I comprehend about human behavior, it is this: the moment you think you can predict its pattern is the moment when it changes, and you discover that other people’s realities are often divorced from the one you exist in. You say a dead woman is alive. I say, the man sitting in front of me seems rational and lucid and intelligent. And yet, when shown proof that his lover left this life twenty-six years ago . . .”

He opened his hands, as if to say, And there it is.

“So you must understand, monsieur . . . I am not interested in why you have created this invention in your head, or how you gleaned your facts, or whether or not you embellished the story with tales of your lover being forced to watch her father’s execution. Naturally, I am intrigued by such detail. Naturally, I am curiously impressed by your forceful certainty that Madame Kadar exists. But as a police inspector, such interest is overshadowed by empirical facts. And the empirical facts of the case are profoundly empirical. The facts point to your culpability. Just as the fact that you use a dead woman as an alibi . . .”

Another shrug.

“I do suggest that you reconsider your story, monsieur.”

“I am telling you the truth,” I said.

He let out a deep, frustrated sigh.

“And I am telling you that you are either a compulsive liar or an irrational liar or both. I am now sending you back to the cells so you can reflect on your situation, and perhaps come to your senses and end this mad self-deception.”

“Am I not allowed some sort of legal representation at this stage?”

“We can hold you for seventy-two hours without contact with the outside world.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, monsieur . . . that’s the law.”

He picked up the phone and dialed a number. Then he stood up and went over to the window and peered out.

“This morning we visited the address you gave my colleague of the apartment where you were having your ‘assignations’ with Madame Kadar. The concierge said that he wasn’t aware of your visits. So how did you gain access to it?”

“Madame Kadar let me in.”

“I see.”

“How else would I have gotten inside? I mean, the apartment I described to you is exactly the one you saw, isn’t it?”

Coutard continued to stare out the window as he said, “Madame Kadar did live in that apartment until her death in 1980. Since then, it has been empty . . . though it has remained in her estate. A small trust that was left behind after her death continues to pay, by prélèvement automatique, the service charge. But no one has occupied it in over twenty-five years. Can you describe the apartment to me, please?”

I did. In detail. He nodded.

“Yes, that is the apartment as I found it . . . including the 1970s décor. There was one major difference, however. The apartment I saw hadn’t been cleaned or dusted in years.”

“That’s nonsense. It was always spotless when I visited it.”

“I’m certain that’s how you saw it, monsieur.”

A uniformed officer knocked on Coutard’s door and came inside.

“Please take Monsieur Ricks back to his cell. He will be spending some more time with us.”

The officer approached me and took me by the arm. I turned to Coutard and said, “You have to try to believe me.”

“No, I don’t,” he said.

They locked me up in the same cell. I was left alone there for hours with no reading material, no pen or paper on which to write, nothing but my thoughts to preoccupy me.

Am I insane? Have I been imagining all this? During the past few months, have I been acting out a strange, warped reverie? And if it is true that Margit has been dead for all these years, what sort of alternative reality have I been living in all these months?

A tray of cold tasteless food arrived around seven that evening. I was famished, so I ate it. Around nine, sleep began to overtake me. I stripped off my now rank jeans and crawled under the grubby blanket and quickly drifted into unconsciousness. Only tonight I did not sleep the dreamless sleep I craved. Tonight the nocturnal screening room in my mind played out a horror show where there was a trial, and I was in the dock, and everyone kept pointing fingers at me and shouting in French, and there was a judge calling me a danger to society and condemning me to life imprisonment with no chance of parole, and being locked up in this cell for twenty-three hours a day, and me continuing to swear blind that they had to find this woman Margit . . . that she would explain it all . . . and the walls of the cell closing in around me . . . and me huddled in a corner on the concrete floor, my head leaned up against the toilet, my eyes as frozen as Margit’s in the crime-scene photograph . . . and . . .

That’s when I jumped awake, my body drenched, my teeth biting in the filthy pillow. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. Then the realization hit: You’re incarcerated.

I had no watch, so I didn’t know what time it was. I had no toothbrush, so I couldn’t rid my mouth of the disgusting aftertaste of my nightmare. I had no change of clothes or access to a shower, so I was now feeling totally ripe. After emptying my bladder in the toilet and finishing what little water was left in the bottle, I stretched out on the bunk and shut my eyes and tried to empty my brain and blank out the present and tell myself to somehow stay calm.

But it’s hard to vanquish negative thoughts when you’re about to be charged with two murders, and when you’re living in a hall of mirrors where nothing is as it seems . . .

The cell door opened. Morning light filtered in. An officer stood there with a tray of food.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Eight thirty.”

“Is there any chance I could have a toothbrush and toothpaste, please?”

“We’re not a hotel.”

“How about something to read then?”

“We’re not a library.”

“Please, monsieur . . .”

He handed me the tray. The cell door closed behind him. There was a plastic cup filled with weak orange juice, a hard roll, a pat of butter, a small plastic mug of coffee, plastic utensils. Five minutes later the cell door briefly opened and a hand shot in, holding a copy of yesterday’s Le Parisien.

“Thank you,” I said as the cell door clanged shut. Having devoured the breakfast—I was famished—I now devoured the newspaper, reading it cover to cover, trying to lose myself in its reports of petty crimes, of disputes between neighbors, of road accidents, of more internal problems with some local football team, of new movies opening this week, and the bust-up of a French pop star marriage. The obituaries, as always, gripped me. How do you summarize an entire life—especially one that doesn’t merit a big journalistic splash? Beloved husband of . . . Adored husband of . . . Much admired colleague of . . . A respected employee of . . . Sadly missed by . . . Funeral Mass held tomorrow at . . . In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to . . . And that’s that. Another life vanished.

That’s the thing about the obituary page. You always know there is a story behind a story—all the hidden complexities that make a life a life. You also know that, one day, your life too will be summarized in a few hundred words . . . if you’re lucky. Death is the great leveler. Once you’ve crossed over into that realm of nothingness, your story only really stays in the minds of those closest to you. And when they too vanish . . .

Nothing matters. And because of that, everything matters. You have to counter the insignificance of what you do with the belief that, somehow, it does have import. Otherwise what can you do but despair and think, When I’m dead, none of the forces that drove my life—the anger, the neediness, the ambition, the search for love, the regrets, the terrible mistakes, the futile pursuit of some sort of happiness—will count for anything.

Unless death isn’t the end of everything.

This is the death certificate from the medical examiner in Budapest—signed after he performed the autopsy on Madame Kadar . . . But you still insist that Madame Kadar is alive?

I didn’t know the answer to that question anymore.

The cell door opened again. A new officer entered.

“The inspector wants to see you now.”

I pulled on my jeans and ran my hands through my grubby hair. The officer coughed loudly, a signal for me to hurry up. Then he took me by the arm and led me back upstairs.

Coutard was seated by his desk, smoking. My passport was next to the ashtray. Inspector Leclerc was standing by the window, in conversation with Coutard. The talk stopped as soon as I was brought into the room. Coutard motioned for me to take a seat. I did so.

“Sleep well?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Well, you won’t have to spend another night as our guest.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you are no longer a suspect.”

“I’m not?”

“It’s your lucky day: we found the murderer of Monsieur Omar and Monsieur Attani.”

“Who was it?”

“A certain Monsieur Mahmoud Klefki . . .”

“Never heard of him.”

“A diminutive man with what seems to be a permanent scowl. He works for your landlord, Monsieur Sezer. Perhaps you met him?”

Of course I did. Many times. Only I knew him as Mr. Tough Guy.

“Once or twice, in passing.”

“We found the knife used to murder Omar in Klefki’s chambre, as well as the hammer with which he attacked Monsieur Attani. The blood of both victims matched that found on the respective weapons.”

“Did Klefki confess?”

“Of course not—and he cannot begin to explain why the hammer and the knife were hidden beneath the sink in his room.”

Leclerc came in here: “Murderers can often be overconfident—or stupid—when it comes to disposing of the weapons. Especially if they are arrogant enough to believe they can escape detection.”

“Did he give you any reason for the attacks?”

“How could he—as he continues to deny them? But we did discover that his employer, Monsieur Sezer, was having a long-running dispute with Attani over the protection that Sezer charged for the bar Attani owned. And in the case of Monsieur Omar, we have heard rumors that he had borrowed a significant sum from Monsieur Sezer—which he was supposed to be paying back, at an exorbitant rate of interest, on a weekly basis. So we will also be charging Sezer with ordering the two murders. With any luck, we can turn Klefki against his employer—in exchange for a fifteen-year sentence, rather than life imprisonment . . .

“So, Monsieur Ricks—you are free to leave. But if you could tell us anything else about Monsieur Sezer and his various business enterprises . . .”

“Why would I know about such things?”

“Because we know you work for him.”

“That’s not true.”

“There is an alleyway on the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, near the corner of the rue des Petites Écuries. You have been spotted going in there most nights.”

“By whom?”

“As I told you yesterday, I ask the questions here.”

“I use the place as an office.”

“Yes, we found your laptop when we raided it yesterday.”

“You raided it?”

“Another question, monsieur. If it is merely your office, why is there a television monitor on the table where you work? A monitor connected to a television camera on the street.”

“Yeah, that was there when I rented the office.”

“Rented it from whom?”

“Sezer,” I said, knowing full well that if I mentioned Kamal’s name, they would start asking questions about how I knew the late owner of my local Internet café and whether I had any thoughts on why his body was discovered some months back in a Dumpster near the Périphérique. Anyway, Sezer would back me up here, because he didn’t want it known what went on downstairs . . . though I was certain that the cops had already raided the place and were now trying to see how much I knew.

“What did you pay Sezer for the office?” Coutard asked.

“Sixty euros a week.”

“Not much for an office.”

“Well, it’s not much of an office.”

“And you worked there on your novel . . .”

“Most nights from midnight until dawn.”

“But on the night that Omar was murdered . . .”

“I was having writer’s block, so I went for an all-night stroll.”

“You didn’t mention this when I first questioned you.”

“Mention what?”

“Mention that you were at your ‘office’ before taking your all-night stroll.”

“That’s because you didn’t ask me.”

Pause. A quick glance between Leclerc and Coutard.

“It’s rather convenient, you being ‘out walking’ the night Omar was murdered.”

“I thought you’d found your murderer already?”

“Yes, we have. It was just a passing comment, that’s all. But I would like to know if you were acquainted with your neighbors in the building where you maintained your ‘office.’ ”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Do you have any idea of what sort of business was going on in the ‘office’ on the ground floor?”

“None whatsoever. Do you?”

Another look from Coutard to Leclerc.

“We raided the place last night,” Leclerc said. “The downstairs office—it was more like a small warehouse space—was empty. But it looked like it had been cleared out, with haste, only a few hours before we got there. Our forensic team did discover traces of blood in the wood floors and the walls, as well as several large electrical cables . . . the types often used for cinema lights. There was also a stage-like area in the center of the space, with a few pieces of furniture and a bed. The mattress had vanished, the headboard on the bed had been washed, but there were still microscopic particles of blood imbedded in the wood grain.”

Coutard came in here.

“Our belief is that the downstairs premises were used to front several activities—including the making of pornographic and snuff films. You know what snuff films are, don’t you?”

I nodded—and remembered the night the body was dragged out as I peered out of my doorway. But if I had been the night watchman for a snuff film operation, why didn’t I hear other bodies being carted away?

“We have been aware, for some time, that these sorts of films have been shot in this quartier. We just didn’t know where. Now we have reason to believe it was in the same building where you were writing your novel.”

“That’s news to me.”

“And that is bullshit, monsieur,” Coutard said. “You were the guard on the door; the man who vetted everyone who came and went there. That’s why you had the monitor on your desk.”

“I never knew what was going on downstairs. I never used the television monitor. As far as I was concerned the building was empty.”

“We also found traces of cocaine and laxative in the kitchen area of the downstairs space,” Leclerc said. “So a drugs operation was also working out of the same premises. And forensics turned up traces of gelignite as well.”

“Gelignite is a plastic explosive,” Coutard said. “A favorite of bomb makers. And still you had no idea of the activities taking place directly below you?”

“Absolutely none.”

“He’s a liar, isn’t he?” Coutard asked Leclerc.

“I’ve no doubt he was the night watchman,” Leclerc said, “but he could have been kept in the dark as to what was going on downstairs.”

“I think he knew everything.”

“I knew nothing,” I said.

“We weren’t speaking to you.”

“You have no proof I knew anything,” I said.

“Monsieur,” Coutard said, “I can legally hold you for another twenty-four hours . . . which I will be most willing to do if you are disrespectful to us again.”

“I mean no disrespect,” I said.

“Curious man, Monsieur Ricks,” Coutard said to Leclerc. “You know about the circumstances that brought him to a chambre de bonne in our quartier?”

“I read the dossier, yes.”

“And do you remember from the dossier that there was a man in authority at the mediocre college who orchestrated Monsieur Ricks’s downfall?”

“Wasn’t that the same man who ran off with Ricks’s wife?”

“Absolutely. And during the course of my further investigations into Monsieur Ricks’s background yesterday, I discovered a fascinating new twist to the extraordinary narrative that is Monsieur Ricks’s life. I typed in the name of the college at which Monsieur Ricks used to teach. What was it called again?”

“Crewe College,” I said.

“That’s it. Anyway, among the many entries listed was a news report from a local paper. It seems that the dean of this college—a Monsieur Robson—was dismissed from his job just a few days ago when it was discovered that he had an extensive child pornography library on his computer at work.”

“What?” I said loudly.

“You heard me. According to the paper, it’s quite the scandale. Your ex-wife must be appalled.”

I put my head in my hands.

“He looks upset,” Leclerc said.

I wasn’t upset. I was suffering from a massive dose of disbelief and horror as I recalled the remnants of an exchange I had had with Margit only a few days earlier.

So, she said to me, what do you think would be an appropriate payback for all the harm he perpetrated?

“You want me to fantasize here?”

“Absolutely. The worst thing that could happen to the bastard.”

“You mean, like discovering that he had a huge collection of kiddy porn on his computer?”

“That would do nicely.”

“Oh my God,” I said under my breath.

“I thought he’d be pleased to hear such news,” Coutard said to Leclerc.

“Yes, you would have expected him to applaud such a downfall.”

“Unless he feels guilty about it.”

“But why would he feel guilty?”

“Perhaps he himself planted the pornography on the gentleman’s computer.”

“Unlikely . . . unless he’s one of those highly skilled hackers who can tap into somebody’s hard drive.”

“Maybe he asked a friend to do it for him?” Coutard said.

“Yes—maybe he has a very malicious friend.”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Leclerc said. “I mean, the man is also sleeping with a dead woman, so why shouldn’t he also have an avenging angel?”

“I bet he also believes in Santa Claus.”

“And the Easter Bunny.”

“And Snow White . . . who was once his mistress.”

Coutard began to laugh. Leclerc joined in. I didn’t look up at either of the inspectors. I kept my head in my hands.

“The man has no sense of humor,” Leclerc said.

“Don’t you find any of this funny, Monsieur Ricks?”

“Am I free to go now?” I asked.

“I’m afraid you are.”

Coutard pushed my passport across the desk.

“You need help, monsieur,” he said.

To which I felt like saying, I’ve got all the help I don’t want.

But instead I picked up my passport and gave the two inspectors a quick nod of good-bye.

“We’ll meet here again,” Coutard said as I turned to leave.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Trouble is your destiny, monsieur.”

EIGHTEEN

I HIT THE STREET. I hailed a cab.

“Rue Linné,” I said.

As soon as I reached Margit’s address, I punched in the code and charged up the staircase to her apartment. When I reached her door I held down the buzzer. No reply. I banged on the door. No reply. I banged again and called her name. No reply.

“Goddamnit, Margit—open the fucking door.”

Without thinking I threw my entire weight against it. There was a bit of give around the lock, but it still wouldn’t open. I stepped back and attempted another flying tackle. No further give, but my right shoulder suddenly hurt like hell. I ignored the pain and charged at the door again. There was a loud crunch as it splintered free of the lock. Gravity carried me into the apartment. I stumbled and landed on the bed, breaking my fall with my hands. I immediately began to cough, courtesy of the thick layer of dust that covered everything. I raised up my hands. They were coated with gray powder. I looked at the bed, upon which I had made love so many times with Margit. Soot enveloped the pillows, the blanket, the sheets. I stood up, dusting off my jeans. I walked into the front room. All the furniture was buried under dust. Ditto the little kitchen. The windows were opaque with grime. There were cobwebs in every corner of the room. The carpet was covered with rodent droppings. And when I opened the door of the side room—the room that Margit’s daughter called her own—I jumped back in horror. Three rats were huddled together on the floor, picking at the corpse of a dead mouse.

Then, suddenly, from behind me came a voice.

“Get out.”

I spun around. Standing in the living room was a diminutive man of around sixty-five. He was gray, stooped, and holding a hammer in one hand. He glared at me with a mixture of anger and fear. His hand started to shake as he raised the hammer.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Who lives here?” I asked.

“No one.”

“Do you know Margit Kadar?”

“She’s dead.”

“That can’t be—”

“Get out now.”

The hammer trembled again.

“Margit Kadar lives here,” I said.

“She lived here. Until 1980, when she went back to Hungary and died.”

“No one has lived here since then?”

“Look around you. Do you actually think someone lives here?”

“I have been coming here twice a week for months.”

“I’ve never seen you—and I see everybody who comes through the front door.”

“You’re lying.”

The hammer trembled again.

“I’m calling the police,” he said.

“What sort of fucked-up game is going on here?”

“You’re crazy.”

He turned around and started to walk quickly toward the door. I chased after him. When I grabbed his shoulder, he spun around and swung the hammer at me. I just managed to duck out of its path, catching the concierge by the other wrist, then yanking it up behind his back. He squealed in pain.

“Drop the hammer,” I said.

“Help me,” he yelled to no one in particular. I yanked his arm harder. He squealed again.

“Drop the hammer now or I’ll break your fucking arm.”

The hammer fell from his hand. The concierge began to whimper.

“There’s forty euros in my wallet, if that’s what you’re after.”

“All I’m after is the truth,” I said. “Who lives here?”

“Nobody.”

“When did you last see Margit Kadar?”

“In 1980.”

“Liar.”

“You have to believe me—”

“The apartment is always clean, always—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why haven’t you seen me before? Why?”

“Because I never have. Now will you please let me go.”

“Did you know about the murder she committed?”

“Of course. It was in all the papers. The man who ran over Zoltan and Judit.”

“You know their names.”

“Naturally I know their names. They lived here.”

“With Margit?”

“I don’t know why you are asking these mad questions. This was Margit’s apartment. When she lost her husband and daughter, she went crazy and killed the driver of the car that killed her family. Then she fled back to Hungary, and the next thing I heard she was dead.”

“And since then . . .?”

“Since then? Nothing. The apartment remains unused. The bills get paid, but no one has ever come in here. Until this afternoon. Please, monsieur . . .”

I suddenly felt as if the world was spinning in front of me. I was in a reality that might not be a reality that still might be real. Dust and cobwebs and mouse shit and rats. And yet, just a few days ago when I was here . . .

“I don’t understand,” I heard myself saying.

“Please, monsieur, you’re hurting me.”

“I just want the truth.”

“I’ve told you the truth. You must believe me.”

I can’t believe anything right now.

“If I let you go, do you promise not to start yelling for help or reaching for the hammer?” I asked.

“I promise.”

I pulled my hand away from his arm.

“I’m leaving now,” I said, taking one last bewildered glance around the room. “If you do anything . . .”

“You have my word, monsieur. Just go now. Please.”

“I’m sorry if I hurt your arm. I’m just . . .”

“Go, monsieur, go . . .”

“. . . lost.”

I raced down the stairs and out into the street, wondering, What now? I saw a cab. I flagged it down. I climbed inside.

“Where are you going, monsieur?” the cabbie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Monsieur, this is a taxi. I need a destination.”

One suddenly arrived in my head.

“The Panthéon. Rue Soufflot.”

“Très bien, monsieur.”

He dropped me in front of Lorraine L’Herbert’s apartment building. There was no intercom speaker on the front door, but I got lucky. An elderly woman with a small dog was going inside as I approached. After she punched in the code, I held the door open for her and followed her inside. She thanked me, though I could see her looking over my bedraggled state and wondering if she did the right thing by letting me in.

“Are you visiting someone, monsieur?”

“Madame L’Herbert.”

That reassured her. I excused myself and headed up the stairs. When I reached L’Herbert’s apartment, I rang the bell. No answer. I rang it again, holding it down a long time. From inside, I heard L’Herbert shouting, “All right, all right, I’m coming.” After a minute, the door opened. She was in a long silk bathrobe. Her face was covered in some black substance—a makeup mask—which she was attempting to rub off with a handful of tissues.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Harry Ricks and I was at your salon a couple of months ago.”

“You were?” she said, staring at my unkempt state.

“I met somebody here—a woman named Margit Kadar . . .”

“And you came by to get her phone number? Hon, we’re not a dating service. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

I put my foot in the door as she tried to close it.

“I just need to ask you—”

“How’d you get in here?”

I told her.

“Well, the salon’s on Sunday night, and you know the rules: you have to call up and reserve your place. Coming by like this, unannounced . . .”

“You have to help me. Please.”

She looked me over with care.

“You’re American, right?”

“You don’t remember me?”

“We have fifty to one hundred people every week, so, no, I don’t remember everyone. Something wrong, hon? You look like you’ve been sleeping in the park.”

“Margit Kadar. The name doesn’t ring a bell?”

She shook her head.

“You sure?” I asked, then described her. Again L’Herbert shook her head.

“Why is this so important? You in love or something?”

“I just need to verify that she was here the night I was here.”

“Well, if you met her here, then she was here.”

“Please, could you get your assistant to check your records?”

“He’s out right now. If you phone him in about two hours—”

“I don’t have two hours. Don’t you have a database or something where you could look her up?”

She stared down at my foot in her door.

“You’re not going to go away until I do this, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“If you agree to let me shut the door, I’ll see if I can help you.”

“You will come back?”

“Fear not,” she said with an ironic smile. “’Cause if I don’t, y’all are going stand here, beating on my door till I do come back. Am I right, hon?”

“Absolutely.”

“Back in a jiffy.”

I removed my foot. She closed the door. I sat down on the stairs and rubbed my eyes, and tried to get that image of Margit’s apartment under dust out of my brain. I failed. No doubt the concierge had called the cops by now. No doubt they were probably searching for me. If they couldn’t pin two murders on me, they could still have me arrested for assault and general lunacy. By the end of the day I could be locked up in some madhouse, awaiting deportation back home. Imagine what will happen if word gets out that I was thrown out for insisting that I was romantically involved with a dead woman. Then again, compared with the scandal that had engulfed Robson . . .

But it wasn’t just Robson. It was also Omar—because I’d mentioned to her how I despised his toilet habits. And then there was Yanna’s husband: “. . . now you know why I hate any man who hits a woman in the face.”

Then: “You are going to have to kill Yanna’s husband.”

But surely she didn’t take it on herself to beat him with a hammer . . . any more than she ran over that desk clerk at Le Sélect. But again, I had told her of the harm these people had done—or were threatening to do—to me. And then . . .

Brasseur was a deeply unpleasant man, I informed Inspector Coutard during my first interrogation.

To which he said, So we have learned from anyone who worked with him. Nonetheless, it is also intriguing to note that—just as you had a little war with Monsieur Omar and he was found dead on his beloved toilet—so you also had a little war with Monsieur Brasseur and he was struck down by a car . . .

There was a pattern. I talk about someone who has done me wrong, she responds with . . .

No, that’s so out of left field . . .

But her being dead is just a little out of left field too.

I don’t get it . . .

There’s only one way of “getting” it. Show up for your rendezvous with her today at five.

The apartment door opened. Lorraine came out. The remnants of her black makeup mask had gone. She was now holding a printout and a small card.

“OK, hon. I checked our guest list for the night you were there, and as you’ll see . . .”

She handed me the page.

“. . . you’re on the guest list, but Margit Kadar isn’t. I ran her name through our system—which only goes back ten years. Nothing. Then I checked our Rolodex, where we always kept the names of anyone who had ever come to the salons prior to 1995. And guess what I found . . .?”

She handed me the Rolodex card. On it was written Zoltan and Margit Kadar, their address on the rue Linné, and a date: May 4, 1980 . . . just a few weeks before the accident.

“So she did come to the salon?” I asked.

“Once—with her husband . . . but I don’t remember much about them. Hell, how could I, considering the amount of human traffic that comes through here every week. She and her husband never came back. So they were filed away as One-Offers.”

“And there’s absolutely no way she could have snuck in here on the night I came?”

“None at all. We’re pretty strict on security for the salon. You don’t get past this door unless you’re on the list. And we certainly don’t like it when people show up unannounced. But let me ask you something, hon. If you think you met her here, and I have proof that you didn’t . . . well, what sort of conclusion do you expect me to draw from that?”

“Thank you for your time,” I said and headed quickly down the stairs.

Outside there were no taxis. Rain was falling. I ran down the boulevard Saint-Michel to the Line 4 metro. I hopped on, my clothes now sodden with the rain. I started to shiver—the same sort of feverish shakes that had hit me on my first day in Paris. As always, no one was speaking in the metro, and the passengers in my carriage were avoiding eye contact. But several of them stole glances at this derelict man with wet, grimy clothes and several days’ growth of beard and sunken eyes and chattering teeth.

At Château d’Eau I got off the metro and went back out into the rain. By the time I reached the Internet café, the febrile shakes had escalated into a sense of total depletion. Mr. Beard looked me over with cold anger as I walked in. Without saying anything, he went to the front door and locked it.

“You didn’t go to work last night.”

“That’s because I was a guest of the police in one of their better cells.”

“You told the cops . . .”

“Nothing.”

“Why did they arrest you?”

“I was under suspicion . . .”

“For the murder of Omar . . .?”

“Yes,” I said, deciding it was best not to mention anything about Yanna’s husband.

“Did they also tell you about the man whose wife you fucked?”

“They did.”

“And did you tell them it was Monsieur Sezer and Mahmoud who did it?”

“Of course not.”

“They’ve arrested them . . . but they’ve let you go. Why?”

“I’m not the cops, but the cops generally don’t arrest people unless they have evidence—”

“You planted the evidence—”

“You’re crazy.”

“We know it was you—”

“Why would I—”

“Because you killed Omar and Monsieur Attani, that is why, and then you put the weapons—”

“My fingerprints weren’t on the weapons. Mahmoud’s were—”

“Ah, so the cops did tell you they arrested Mr. Sezer and Mahmoud.”

“If I allegedly ‘planted’ the weapons, then why were Mahmoud’s fingerprints on them?”

“You could have left them somewhere obvious in Mr. Sezer’s office. Mahmoud might have picked them up to hide them—”

“Mahmoud would have seen the blood on them and thrown them out. But maybe Mahmoud isn’t the cleverest guy to have walked the face of the earth. Maybe, having killed Omar and Attani on the orders of Sezer, he simply threw the weapons into some back room, some attic, not thinking that the cops would—”

“The weapons were found below the sink in Mahmoud’s room. They were placed there, the police were called—”

“And I was in police custody at the time—”

“You could still have put them there. Did you also tell them about where you worked?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Liar. They raided the building last night, pulled everything apart. Fortunately, after the arrests of Monsieur Sezer and Mahmoud, we had a little time to clear out—”

“Were you making snuff movies and bombs there?”

“Stop asking questions. You are in enough trouble right now—”

“Trouble for what? I kept my mouth shut. I showed up every night at midnight. I never asked questions. I never interfered—”

“But you saw—”

“I saw nothing.”

“Liar.”

“Think what you like. I didn’t send the cops to you, I played by the rules you set.”

Pause. He stared at me for a very long time. Then: “You go back to work tonight.”

“But what is there to guard?”

“That is not your business.”

“Surely the cops are treating downstairs as a crime scene. Surely they’ll have men guarding the place.”

“The cops are no longer there. They have finished all their ‘tests.’ They are gone.”

“Did you pay them off or something?”

“They are gone. And you must return to your work tonight.”

I knew that if I now said, “No damn way,” I wouldn’t be allowed off the premises. I also knew that if I did show up for work tonight, I might not ever walk out of there alive. The fever was now making me shiver. I clutched myself tightly.

“You sick?” he asked.

“Didn’t get much sleep in the cell . . .”

“Go home, get some rest, be at work on time tonight.”

Then he opened the door and motioned for me to leave.

On the way back to my room, I thought, They are going to kill me. They just want to do it in an enclosed environment where they can make me disappear with minimal detection. There was only one thing to do: flee.

But before I did that, I had to go see Margit at the agreed hour of five. I had to convince myself I hadn’t gone completely crazy. I had to know the truth.

I also needed to lie down for a couple of hours, before this fever overwhelmed me. I would take a nap, then pack a bag, then arrive at the rue Linné, then run to the Gare du Nord and get the last Eurostar out to London. God knows what I would do there once I arrived, but at least it would be away from all this. That’s all that mattered to me now: disappearing from view.

But when I reached my room, I found the door half open, the lock dangling from its hinges, everything trashed. Shelves had been ripped from the walls, drawers pulled out, their contents dumped. All my clothes had been rifled through, many of them torn. The bed had been overturned, the sheets and duvet ripped apart, the mattress split down the middle. I stood in the doorway, stunned. Then I was immediately on my knees by the sink. Everything in the cabinet had been pulled out, but whoever rampaged through my room didn’t notice the loose linoleum covering the floor. Pulling it up, I reached into the same hole that Adnan once used as a safe and found the money I had been storing was still there. I pulled out the Jiffy bags in which I had placed twenty euros a day from my wages. I quickly counted the three separate wads. Twenty-eight hundred euros—the total savings from all my nights of work.

My relief was enormous. But there was a possible stumbling block from my newly hatched escape plan: the backup disk for my novel. I kept it hidden in a paperback copy of Graham Greene’s This Gun for Hire. Scouring the debris on the floor, I found the book and riffled through its pages. The disk was gone.

Don’t panic . . . don’t panic . . . it has to be here somewhere.

But I did panic. I rummaged again through all the debris, getting more frantic as I couldn’t find it. I must have spent the better part of a half hour combing every corner of the room, my anxiety growing as it dawned on me that the disk had been taken.

But why take the disk and nothing else? It wasn’t as if it contained secret codes or some revelation that would overturn the foundations of all Judeo-Christian faith. It was just a backup copy of my novel—insignificant to anyone but myself.

The thief—having found nothing of value here—probably pocketed it as a way of saying “Fuck You” for not leaving anything for him to steal.

Or maybe it was Sezer’s henchmen. They knew I was writing something in my “office” at night. Maybe they decided to really stick it to me by lifting the only backup copy of the novel I had.

But it wasn’t my only copy . . . as I had hidden another disk in a crevice above the “emergency exit” in my office. To retrieve it, however, would mean returning to that building . . . and I knew that was impossible now. The ransacking of my room—and Mr. Beard’s menacing belief that I had set up Sezer and his stooge to take the fall for those murders—heightened my belief that the only thing to do was disappear. But with my laptop still impounded by the cops, I was in a quandary. If I left Paris now, I would be doing so without a copy of the novel I had worked on for the past four months. Though the police might send on my laptop computer at some future date, they also might decide to hang on to it. Which would leave me with nothing to show for all those midnight-to-dawn stints in that claustrophobic room. I had nothing else in my life right now but that novel. I couldn’t . . . wouldn’t . . . leave Paris without it.

The fever was spreading. Every joint in my body pained me. But I couldn’t afford to give in to exhaustion. The longer I stayed in Paris, the more chance I would have of ending up like my room: broken into pieces. Time was of the essence. They could be coming for me any minute.

I scrambled through the debris. I found my suitcase. Amid the torn clothes, I discovered a pair of jeans, a shirt, underwear, and socks that had not been shredded. I reached into the shower stall and grabbed soap and shampoo and a toothbrush and toothpaste from the medicine cabinet. My portable radio—though badly dented by having been tossed from my bedside table—still worked. Along with everything else I’d rounded up, I dumped it into the suitcase, stuffed the cash and my passport into my jacket pocket, and slammed the broken door on my chambre de bonne, thinking, I’m never coming back here again.

Out in the street, I scanned the rue de Paradis to see if anyone was on the lookout for me. It seemed clear. I wheeled my bag down to the Faubourg Saint-Martin. Five minutes and several turns later, I walked into the commissariat de police. I asked to see Inspector Coutard. The man on the desk told me he was out of the building. I asked to see Inspector Leclerc. A phone call was made. I was told to take a seat. Leclerc came downstairs ten minutes later. He nodded hello and immediately noticed my suitcase.

“Planning to move back into your cell?” he asked.

“Very funny,” I said.

“Leaving Paris then?”

“A short break to London,” I said. “And I need my laptop computer.”

“What laptop computer?”

“The one you confiscated when you raided the office.”

“I wasn’t part of that assignment. It was another division. If they have the laptop—”

“Inspector Coutard told me they did have the laptop—”

“Then you should speak to Inspector Coutard.”

“But he’s not here now.”

“He should be back tomorrow—”

The man on the desk came in here.

“No, he’s taking four days off.”

“He didn’t bother to tell me,” Leclerc said.

“Is there any chance you might still be able to locate the laptop?” I asked.

“If it is part of an ongoing investigation . . . no. I cannot interfere with evidence. And as the inspector in charge is not here to approve its return to its alleged owner—”

“I am the owner.”

“So you say. But without Inspector Coutard here to verify—”

“Couldn’t you phone him on his cell phone?”

“While he is on his vacances? Impossible. More to the point, he would tell you the same thing. If the computer is part of an investigation, it stays with us until we have finished the investigation.”

“But couldn’t I copy something off the hard disk?”

“That would be tampering with evidence.”

“It’s just my novel.”

“Your novel could be part of the evidence.”

“But how?”

“As it is not my investigation—”

“I need a copy of my novel so I can continue writing it.”

“You didn’t make a backup copy?”

“I lost it,” I said, not wanting to tell Leclerc about my trashed room, which might lead to more questions and him insisting that I stay around for a few more days in Paris . . . which I simply wasn’t prepared to do.

“Too bad,” he said. “Surely a proper novelist makes more than one copy of his work in progress.”

“I’m just a goddamn amateur.”

“No need to get touchy, monsieur. And if you don’t mind me saying so, you are looking very unwell and smelling rather ripe.”

“You didn’t exactly provide me with an en suite bathroom.”

“Be pleased that you were released . . . with your passport. The inspector could still be legally detaining you.”

“You could watch me make the copy.”

“It would still be tampering with evidence.”

“That novel is my life.”

“Then I can’t understand why you didn’t duplicate ‘your life’ many times over.”

And he turned and walked back toward his office.

I sat slumped in a chair, trying to figure out my next move. The cop behind the desk spoke.

“Monsieur, if you have no further business here, I must ask you to leave.”

“Ok, Ok,” I said, standing up. “Any chance I could leave my bag here for a couple of hours?”

The cop looked at me as if I had lost all reason.

“Monsieur, this is a commissariat de police, not a vestiaire.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said as I wheeled my suitcase toward the door.

Outside I checked my watch: 1:23 PM. Just under four hours to go before I could cross the threshold again at rue Linné. I needed shelter before then. So I walked down the first side street to my left and saw a cheap hotel—Le Normandie—directly in front of me. It looked shabby from the outside and had a one-star rating pasted onto its doorway. It looked shabby on the inside. The lobby was narrow, with peeling paint, scuffed linoleum, fluorescent lighting. I rang the bell on the desk. No answer. I rang it again. An elderly African man came out, rubbing his eyes.

“I need a room, please,” I said.

“Check-in is at three.”

“Is there any chance . . .?”

“Three PM, monsieur.”

“I’m not well. I’m . . .”

He studied me for a moment, trying to see if I was telling the truth or just trying to get an extra ninety minutes free of charge.

“How many nights?” he asked.

“Just one.”

“With shower?”

“Absolutely.”

He turned to the box of keys and pulled out one. It had a wooden tag on it marked 7.

“Forty-five euros, payable now.”

I handed him the cash.

“Second floor, turn right.”

“Thank you.”

He just shrugged and disappeared back through the door behind the front desk.

The room was a dump. I didn’t care. It was shelter. I stripped off my filthy clothes. I dug out the soap and shampoo and stood under the drizzle that passed for a shower. I dried myself off with the tiny towel that had been provided, amazed that it was clean. I set the clock on my radio to wake me up in two hours. I climbed between the sheets. I shut my eyes. I felt as if I were falling. Within seconds the bed was drenched with sweat. My teeth were chattering, and I clutched the pillow as if it were a life preserver. I blacked out. I woke up again to the sound of France Musique playing Berlioz. The Symphonie fantastique. 3:45 PM. Back into the shower. Clean clothes. My body still ached with fatigue, but the fever had broken. I put my jacket back on, tapping the pocket where my money and passport were stored. A voice in my head whispered, Just leave now. You can get the laptop back from the cops some other time. You can walk away from all the questions about Margit and write it off as . . .

As what? My insanity. A four-month delusion that I sleepwalked through?

Call it whatever you like. Quit while you’re ahead.

I will quit—as soon as I’ve confronted her and found out what I need to know.

And what is that?

Am I insane?

No comment.

Down the crumbling stairs of the hotel, out into the street, a left turn, and an abrupt stop at an Internet café on the boulevard de Sébastopol. I checked my watch again: 4:07 PM. I had to be out the door and on the metro toward the Fifth in under ten minutes. I was going to check the local Ohio papers to find out more about the alleged downfall of my nemesis . . . but first I opened my mailbox. There was only one email waiting for me—from my former colleague Doug Stanley. It explained the entire scandal breaking around Robson; how the dean’s computer crashed last week and a technician was called in to remedy the problem and discovered:

. . . something like two thousand pornographic images of children on his hard drive. The technician informed the college authorities, the authorities called the cops, the cops called the Feds, and Robson is now being held in a slammer near Cleveland, trying to raise the $1 million bail that has been set. Ever since this went down, he’s been protesting his innocence, saying that somebody “planted” these images on his computer. But the Feds released a statement yesterday, saying their experts had conclusive evidence that he had downloaded all this stuff himself.

The man is in total shit—of the type that simply won’t wash away. The college has dismissed him, the scandal has been picked up by all the usual tabloid media, and rumor has it that he’s under suicide watch in jail. The prosecutor on the case has announced that he plans to make an example of Robson—“horrible breach of public trust, especially for an educator”—and demand a minimum twenty years . . . as Robson was trading these images with other like-minded perverts. Unlike trading baseball cards, trading in child pornography can be classified as “trafficking in obscene material,” which is a Federal offense. The DA also stated that he had proof that Robson was the ringleader for this ring of kiddy porn collectors, as they also found some credit card account he’d set up for collecting payment for this stuff. It’s unbelievable . . . and further proof that you can never really know the dark side of other people.

There has been another victim of Robson’s downfall, and that is Susan. In studying every document on the hard drive of Robson’s computer, the Feds found a sequence of emails he sent her several months before he drove you out of your job. The emails were love letters—and, I hate to tell you this (but you need to know), very graphic when it came to intimate stuff between them. This has provoked a subsidiary scandal, which has just broken in the press. And the college has suspended Susan without pay while it conducts an investigation into whether she received tenure because she was Robson’s mistress.

I called Susan last night. She sounded terrible—appalled about the revelations about Robson and pretty convinced that it was just a matter of time before the college permanently dismissed her. She was also worried about how Megan would take all this, and how she was going to meet the bills, since the scandal was also going to make her unemployable as a professor. I’m going over to see her this afternoon. Without wanting to unsettle you any further, Susan really struck me as shaky—and on the verge of some sort of breakdown. I’ll report back by email later.

As you can well imagine, the entire college is reeling. In the wake of all these revelations, many faculty members have told me that they now felt guilty about voting for your dismissal. Because among the “love letters” he sent Susan, they also found ones in which he talked about how he was going to “go public” on your affair with Shelley, and decimate you. I’m afraid that Susan’s email reply was not pretty: “Let him have it,” or words to that effect.

Sorry to have to lay this all at your feet . . . but I did think you should hear it from a friend rather than read about it or get a call from some hack journalist, wanting to know how you were taking the news.

Be grateful you’re in Paris, and away from this shabby Peyton Place. I’ll be at home this evening if you want an update.

Best

Doug

I put my head in my hands, and actually felt appalled at what had befallen my ex-wife. Yes, the “Let him have it” comment did rankle. But I still feared for her now.

I signed off the computer and decided to hop a cab to the rue Linné. The traffic was light. We made it there in less than twenty minutes. I checked my watch: 4:58 PM. I walked up and down outside her doorway for two minutes, then took in a deep steadying breath and punched in the code.

The door clicked open. I entered the building. I scanned the courtyard. Nothing different. But when I turned toward the concierge’s lodge I saw the man with whom I had scuffled yesterday. He was sitting in his chair and staring out at me. But he also seemed to be looking right through me. So I walked over to his window and tapped three times on it. No response from him. His face was blank—as if he was in some sort of catatonic state. I tapped again on the window. Nothing. I opened the door. I put my hand on his shoulder. His flesh was warm to the touch—but still no recognition that someone was now shaking him, trying to rouse him from his stupor. I shouted, “Can you hear me?” His eyes remained frozen, his body immobile. I felt a chill run through me. I backed away from the lodge, spooked. Get out . . . get out now. But when I tried the main door in the courtyard, it was locked. I must have spent five minutes struggling to open it. You can’t open it, because you can’t leave. I looked for other ways out. There were none. I stared up the staircase leading to Margit’s apartment. You have no choice now. You have to go up there.

On the way up to her apartment, I tried knocking on every other door en route. Not one answer. Had I ever heard any neighbors before? Had I ever been cognizant of other life in this place? Had I . . .?

As I approached her floor, her door opened. She stood there in her usual black lace nightgown, a sardonic smile on her lips.

“What did I tell you about not coming here other than at our agreed-upon time?”

Her voice was calm, quiet. Her smile grew. I approached her, saying nothing. I grabbed her and kissed her fully on the lips.

“You taste real,” I said.

“Do I?” she said, pulling me inside the apartment. She took my hand and stuck it between her legs. “And do I feel real?”

I pushed a finger inside her. She groaned.

“It seems so,” I said, putting my free hand through her hair and kissing her neck.

“But there’s one big difference between us, Harry.”

“What’s that?”

With one sudden movement, she pushed me off her. As I stumbled, I saw the flash of a cut-throat razor in her spare hand. It headed toward me, slicing me lightly across the hand.

“Fuck,” I screamed as blood began to pour from the wound.

“The difference is . . .”

She took the razor and slashed her throat. I screamed again . . . but then stood there, dumbfounded, as nothing happened.

“You get it, Harry?” she asked.

Now she took the razor and sliced her left wrist, cutting deep into the skin. Again, not a single sign of injury.

“The difference is: you bleed, and I don’t.”

NINETEEN

“SO WHAT DO you want to know?” she asked.

“Everything,” I said.

“Everything?” she said after a sharp laugh. “As if that would explain—”

“Are you dead?”

“Have another drink, Harry.”

She pushed a bottle of Scotch toward me.

“Fuck your Scotch,” I said. “Are you dead?”

We were sitting on her sofa. It was a few minutes after her razor attack. My hand was now bandaged. She insisted on dressing the wound and wrapping it in gauze moments after cutting her own throat. I was in such shock—both from the pain of the sliced hand and her bloodless suicide—that I allowed her to lead me to the sofa and pour me a steadying whisky (I downed it in one go) and play nurse on the hand she had cut with such swift deftness.

“How’s the pain?” she asked, pouring me a second whisky and handing me the glass.

“It hurts,” I said, throwing back the whisky, and not thinking too much about how the alcohol would deaden the effects of the antibiotics I was taking.

“I don’t think any of the tendons were damaged,” she said, taking my hand and checking its mobility.

“That’s wonderful news. Are you dead?”

She refilled my glass. I drank.

“What did the police tell you?” she asked.

“That you slashed Dupré to death and left a note: FOR JUDIT AND ZOLTAN. Is that true?”

“It is.”

“And then you fled to Hungary and hunted down Bodo and Lovas.”

“That is correct.”

“They also showed me Hungarian police reports. They said you mutilated both men before killing them.”

“That is also correct.”

“You cut off their fingers and gouged out their eyes?”

“I didn’t gouge out Lovas’s eyes because I didn’t have enough time. But yes, I did cut off all their fingers and I did blind Bodo before cutting his throat—”

“You’re insane.”

“I was insane. Insane with grief. With rage. With an absolute need for revenge. I thought if I killed the men who killed the most important people in my life, somehow the fury that consumed me would cease.”

“But you just didn’t kill them. You butchered them.”

“That is also correct. I butchered them in a completely premeditated way . . . and with great malice aforethought. I was determined to make them pay for what they did to me.”

“But to cut off their fingers?”

“Dupré didn’t suffer that fate. I stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach and arms and made him look me in the face—so he could hear me tell him how he destroyed my life—before I plunged the knife into his heart and then cut his throat.”

“And then you left a note and took a shower and left all your clothes behind.”

“They did get very bloody during the attack. But yes, I had planned it all out. And yes, after administering the coup de grâce I used his bathroom to shower. I left the note. I made myself some coffee, as I had some time to kill before the first train left at five twenty-three . . . funny how I can still remember all such exact details. I reached the Gare du Nord forty minutes later. I collected my bag and bought my ticket and boarded the train. I splurged on a first-class couchette—so I had a compartment to myself. I remember giving the porter my passport and a large tip and telling him I didn’t want to be woken up at the German or Austrian borders. Then I took off my clothes and got into the couchette and slept soundly for the next eight hours, by which time we were somewhere near Stuttgart—”

“You slept soundly after murdering a man?”

“I had been up all night. I was tired. And the adrenaline rush . . . well, it did exhaust me.”

“Did you feel better after killing Dupré?”

“A crazed numbness best describes it. Ever since I had decided on this course of action, I had been operating like an automaton. You do this, you do that, you go here, you go there. It was all carefully plotted out in my mind. Point by point.”

“Including your own suicide?”

“That wasn’t part of the plan.”

“So you are dead?”

“I’ll get to that—but only after I tell you about Bodo and Lovas.”

“I don’t want to hear about how you tortured them.”

“Yes, you do—and you have no choice but to listen. Otherwise you won’t find out what you want to know.”

I reached for the Scotch, poured myself two fingers, and threw it back.

“Tell me then,” I said.

“Some weeks before I set my plan in motion, I contacted a friend in Budapest—a man who, like my father, was part of the entire samizdat newspaper brigade that operated for a time in the fifties. He was now in his seventies . . . and had done time in prison for his crimes of talking back to the State. He had been ‘rehabilitated’—though he’d also been tortured so badly during his ‘reeducation’ that he could no longer walk. I had made one journey back to Budapest in 1974, right after I had become a French citizen. I had a need to see it again, I suppose, as an adult—and had taken tea with this gentleman at his apartment. We couldn’t talk openly—he was certain the place was bugged—but he did ask me if I’d push him out in his wheelchair in a nearby park. Once we were outside, I asked him if he could find the whereabouts of the men who executed my father in front of me. He said, ‘It’s a small country . . . everybody can be found. But are you sure you want to find them?’

“I said, ‘Not now. But one day, perhaps . . .’ He told me that when that day arrived, I should inform him by mail that ‘I would like to meet up with our friends,’ and he would take care of the rest.

“So, six years later, when I decided to régler les comptes, I sent him a letter. He wrote back, saying, ‘Our friends are alive and well and living in Budapest.’ I made my plans, deposited my bag at the Gare de l’Est, and cut Henri Dupré’s throat. When I arrived in Hungary I went directly to this gentleman’s apartment. He was now a very old man, very infirm. But he smiled when he saw me and told me he’d like to head out to the park. Once I had wheeled him outside, he handed me a piece of paper and said, ‘Here are their addresses. Is there anything else you need?’ I told him, ‘A gun.’ He said, ‘No problem.’ When we went back to his apartment, he sent me rummaging around an attic storage room for a shotgun that his father used for hunting back when Charles I was our king. He even provided me with a saw to shorten the barrel. As I left the apartment—with the gun in my bag—he pulled me toward him and whispered in my ear, ‘I hope you kill them slowly.’ Then he sent me on my way.

“I checked into a hotel. I went to an apothecary—they still had such things in Budapest—and bought a cut-throat razor. I went to another shop and bought tape. I took the metro over to the Buda Hills, where Lovas had his flat. I found it, no problem. I even rang the intercom and put on a funny voice and asked him if the woman of the house was in. ‘She died five years ago. Who is this?’ I said I was a member of the local Party committee for Senior Activities, and apologized for the mistake. Then I went over to Bodo’s flat in some ugly modern block in Pest. This time there was no intercom. But he answered the door himself: a hunched man around seventy in a dressing gown and wheezing while he smoked a cigarette. Of course he didn’t recognize me. ‘What do you want?’ Is the woman of the house in? ‘She left years ago.’ I said, ‘I’m from the Party committee on Pensioners and we want to see . . .’ and I spun some lie about looking into the needs of the elderly. ‘Well, the woman you want isn’t here . . . but if you want to talk about the needs of the elderly . . . you can come in now and hear an earful.’

“Now, I hadn’t expected to carry out my plan so quickly—but I did have everything I needed with me, so I let him usher me into his small, depressing flat. Crap furniture, crap wallpaper, a nasty little kitchen, brimming ashtrays, empty bottles of cheap booze.

‘So who are you again?’ he asked.

“I told him my name.

‘Kadar . . . like our Party chairman?’ he asked me.

‘No . . . Kadar like Miklos Kadar. You remember Miklos Kadar, don’t you?’

‘I’m an old man. So many people have come and gone in my life.’

‘Yes, but Miklos Kadar must hold a special place in your memory . . . as you executed him in front of his daughter.’

“By this point we were seated in his little bed-sitting room. I opened the bag. I pulled out the shotgun. He gasped, but I put my finger to my lips and he didn’t say another word.

‘Surely you must remember his little girl, Margit? You ordered one of your police stooges to keep her eyes open while you lynched him two meters from where she stood.’

“At that point, he started to feign ignorance. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . I don’t remember such things.’ I hit him on the side of the head with the gun and told him that if he didn’t tell me the truth I’d shoot him on the spot. That’s when he started to cry, to plead, to say how sorry he was, how he was ‘only following orders’ . . . Yes, he actually used that expression.

“I told him, ‘My mother and I were whisked out of the country afterward and even paid a pittance of a recompense by the government, because they were ashamed of what had happened. So please do not tell me you were only following orders. The cop who held me, he was only following orders—because you barked at him on several occasions when he let me shut my eyes. You, sir, wanted a seven-year-old girl to witness her father’s death. You wanted that scene burned on my memory forever. You succeeded. I’ve spent the ensuing decades trying to wipe that image away—but it simply will never leave me . . . a trauma which you inflicted on me out of sheer malice and cruelty—’

‘You’re right, you’re right,’ he cried. ‘I was so wrong. But they were terrible times and—’

“That’s when I hit him again on the head and ordered him to sit down at his kitchen table. The fool complied. When I told him to lay his hands flat down on the table, he didn’t resist . . . even though he could have made a break for it when I had to put down the gun to start taping him. I used three rolls of tape—making certain he couldn’t move his arms and couldn’t get out of the chair.

“When I had finished I said, ‘You dare to tell me, “They were terrible times.” You were one of the perpetrators of those terrible times. You were an essential part of a repressive regime—against which men like my father had the courage to raise their voice. And how did you respond to his criticisms of your tyrannical methods? You strung him up in front of his daughter and forced her to watch him jerk and twist as he slowly strangled to death. How can you justify such a thing? How?’

“He didn’t answer. He just sat there weeping. Much later, I was certain the reason why he didn’t put up a fight when I started taping him down was not just because of the gun within reach of me. It was also because part of him knew he merited this . . . that what he had done was so monstrous he deserved a terrible retribution.”

“But what you did to him . . . that wasn’t monstrous?”

“Of course it was. And after I wound the tape around his mouth and head—ensuring that he couldn’t scream or breathe—I did tell him, ‘In a few moments, you will wish I’d shot you and ended your life quickly.’ Then I reached into my bag and pulled out the razor and opened it and severed his right thumb. It’s not easy, severing a finger. You have to work your way through bone and tendon and—”

“Enough,” I said.

“I told you, if you don’t sit through my story you don’t get to hear the truth—”

“The truth? You expect me to believe there’s any truth to any of this?”

“Where are you right now, Harry? In some dream?”

“I haven’t a fucking idea anymore . . .”

“In dreams you might get your hand cut, but it doesn’t bleed. This is real. It’s simply a different version of real. But again, you’re interrupting my story. And until I finish the story—”

“You’re sick, you know that?”

“Sick because I cut off all of Bodo’s fingers? Without doubt, it was a sick thing to do. Even through the tape around his mouth I could hear his screams. But I was very systematic. Every finger on his right hand. A short pause. Every finger on his left hand. Then I started on his eyes. The police were wrong, by the way. I didn’t gouge them out. I simply sliced across them. You remember that Buñuel exercise in surrealism: Un chien andalou, where a woman gets her eye cut by a razor. It approximated that. And yes, you can think me mad and twisted for inflicting such horror . . . but surely you can grasp the madness that overtakes someone when they have been so wronged that—”

“Don’t try to justify it. Don’t.”

“I’m trying to justify nothing, Harry. I am simply relating to you what happened.”

“Did it settle the score? Did doing that to Bodo in any way make you feel better about your father’s death?”

“At the time, all I could think was, Do what you must do . . . Be systematic . . . Then get out of this dreadful country. So after blinding Bodo, I made a small incision in the side of his throat—to let him slowly bleed to death . . . though within moments I could hear gurgling and gasping behind his taped nose and mouth: a sign that he was starting to drown in his own blood. I had packed a spare set of clothes in the bag—so it was the same drill as with Dupré. I stripped everything off and had a shower. Only this time, I cleaned up all the evidence. I wanted everyone in France to know what I did. I also wanted everyone to know in Hungary . . . but only after I was out of the country. So I scrubbed down every surface I touched and bundled up my bloody clothes and waited until Bodo was no longer gasping and gagging.

“Then I left and took the metro back across the city to Buda. I returned to the shop where I had purchased the duct tape and bought four more rolls. I walked over to Lovas’s apartment and rang his bell. He said, ‘Go away, I want to see nobody.’

“I said, ‘But I am the woman from the Party’s senior services. I have come with a special present for you. You must let me deliver it.’

“Once I had talked myself inside his apartment and revealed who I was and brought out the gun, he began to scream. I told him to shut up, but he kept screaming. That’s when I slammed him on the head with the gun. It knocked him out cold. I taped him down, I gagged him as I had done with Bodo. But just as I started working on him, there was a banging at the door. It was some neighbor who’d evidently heard his screaming, as she kept shouting, ‘Mr. Lovas, are you all right? Is someone there with you?’ If I had been sensible, I would have cut his throat right there and hightailed it out of the kitchen window—his apartment was on the ground floor. But I wasn’t sensible. I was deranged. So deranged that I convinced myself I had to dismember all of his fingers and blind him as well. The pain caused Lovas to wake up when I was cutting off his right pinky, and I’d been sloppy when it came to taping his mouth, as I left a small gap. So he started to scream again. The neighbor heard this and told him she was going to call the police. But I still didn’t make a run for it. I just continued my grim work—”

“You wanted to get caught—”

“I don’t know what I wanted at the time. When you’re deranged you don’t think logically. You just tell yourself, Get the next finger off . . .”

“Jesus . . .”

She smiled and lit up a cigarette.

“It gets worse. The police arrived. They pounded on the door, demanding to be let in. I worked super-fast, making certain all his fingers were severed. By this time, their pounding was replaced with the boom-boom sound of a battering ram they were using against the door. As it began to give, I grabbed Lovas by the hair. As soon as the door burst open and the cops fell in, I cut his jugular. Then, as they watched in complete horror, I drew the razor across my own throat.”

“And then?”

“And then . . . I escaped arrest, detention, trial, and probable execution by a regime I loathed.”

“By dying?”

“Yes. I died.”

Silence. She continued to puff on her cigarette.

“And then?” I asked.

“Death is death.”

“Which means?”

“I no longer existed in a temporal form.”

“But what happened after you died?”

Another smile. Another deep lungful of smoke.

“That I cannot say.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . I can’t.”

“The cops showed me your death certificate. And you yourself have confirmed that you slit your throat and you died. So why . . . why . . . are you here?”

“Because I am.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. How can I believe you when I know what you’re telling me is impossible?”

“Since when has death ever made sense, Harry?”

“But you’ve been there. You know.”

Another smile.

“True—and I’m saying nothing.”

“You have to tell me—”

“No, I don’t. And no . . . I won’t. Any more than I have to explain my work on your behalf.”

“Your work on my behalf. Now I know you are insane.”

“Think what you like, my sweet. But consider this: every person who has recently done harm to you has, in turn, been punished.”

“You ran over Brasseur outside the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“How else do you run a man down? I got into a car that I borrowed on the street. A Mercedes C-Class—not the best Mercedes, but still a car with considerable kick. I waited for him to emerge from Le Sélect. When he stepped off the pavement, I hit the accelerator and ran right into him.”

“He said he couldn’t see the driver, but he thought it was a woman.”

Another smile.

“And you cornered Omar when he was on the toilet?” I asked.

“You were right about him. His shit truly stank. And I’ll let you in on a small revolting secret: when he wiped himself he only used a minimal amount of paper, so the shit was everywhere on his hands. A disgusting bastard. And I’d seen how he had treated you, how he left that communal toilet in such a grim state—”

“You saw? How?”

She stubbed out a cigarette and lit another.

“Do you know what I like best about being dead? You can smoke without guilt.”

“But even in death you still age, just like the rest of us.”

“Yes, that is rather ironic, don’t you think? But that’s how it works . . . for me, at least.”

“And the others?”

A shrug.

“So you didn’t go to heaven after you—?”

“Killed myself? Hardly.”

“To hell then?”

“I went . . . nowhere. And then, somehow, I was back here. I was ten years older, but the apartment was here . . .”

“Who paid the bills?”

“Before I left for Hungary, I saw my lawyer and told him to set up a trust with the money I received as compensation from Dupré. I left my estate to no one. And I made certain in my will that no one could sell the apartment from under me. You see, I knew what I was going to do in Budapest . . . and I also knew that I would have to disappear for a very long time afterward . . .”

“So you weren’t planning to kill yourself?”

“Not until the police burst in. It was a completely impulsive decision. But, like I said, I was crazy then.”

“And you’re not crazy now? Beating men to death with a hammer—”

“He kicked the crap out of his wife, and he also threatened to kill you.”

“That was never established.”

“I heard it.”

“When?”

“In his bar. When he didn’t think I was there.”

“And Robson?”

“I asked you what you thought was the worst thing that could befall him. You said—”

“I didn’t think you’d actually download kiddy porn onto his computer.”

“It’s what you wanted, Harry. That man systematically destroyed your life. His punishment struck me as . . . apt. His life is now completely shattered. And before the week is out, he’ll take his own life in jail.”

“Are you going to force him to do that?”

Another laugh.

“I am not a spirit who invades the souls of others and forces them to do things.”

“No—you’re just a succubus.”

“A succubus has sex with men while they are asleep. You’re very much awake, Harry.”

“So all this then is . . . what? When I came here yesterday, the apartment was covered in dust, the concierge acted as if I was a lunatic, telling me the place hadn’t been inhabited—let alone cleaned—for years.”

“You’re not a lunatic. But when you come to visit me every three days, you enter this.”

“But what is this? And what about everybody else in the building? Do they go into the same sort of trance which the concierge seemed to be in?”

“Think whatever you like.”

“I still don’t get it. Why just the three hours? Why just every few days?”

“Because that’s all I can do . . . all I can take. I want this . . . our little liaison. But only on my terms. That’s why I refused to see you more than our few hours twice a week.”

“Because that’s all you were allowed?”

“No one controls me. No one.”

“But you still loiter with intent every Sunday on the balcony of some dilettante American’s salon, picking up idiots like myself?”

“You were only the second man I ever picked up there.”

“Who was the first?”

“A German named Horst. I met him there in June of ’91. I had just . . . reemerged, so to speak. And I was revisiting places I had been in the past. So, when I found myself back in Paris—eleven years after my death—I decided to try my luck and see what might come of a sojourn on Lorraine’s balcony. I must have lurked there for weeks . . . until Horst saw me. Like you, he was a man in his forties, recently divorced, on his own in Paris, sad, lonely. We chatted. He came to this apartment at the agreed-upon five PM time. We had sex. We drank Scotch. We smoked a few cigarettes. He talked about how his wife had fallen in love with another man, his stalled career as a painter, the lycée where he taught art and how it all bored him, and so forth and so on. All our stories are simultaneously unique and desperately similar, aren’t they? At eight o’clock, I told him he had to leave—but that he’d be welcomed back three days later. He said he’d show up. He never did. After that, I occasionally ‘returned’ to Lorraine’s balcony, hoping someone might see me. No one did for years. Until you showed up, Harry. You saw me . . . because you wanted to see me.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“You must stop talking about ‘sense’ or the apparent illogicality of our time together. There is no logic to this—except that we are here together because, as I said before, you wanted to see me.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Then why did you keep coming here, dutifully, week after week? Simply for the sex?”

“That was a big part of it.”

“You’re right. It was. But there was more to it than that. You needed to see me . . . in every sense of the word. And I needed to put things right for you.”

“I cannot accept—”

“Accept, accept. Faith may be the antithesis of proof . . . but you have proof. You. Me. Here. Now.”

“You don’t exist.”

“I do exist . . . as much as you exist. In this room. This moment. This time. This bit of nothingness that is still everything because it’s the instant we share now. You can’t escape that, Harry. Nor should you. It’s the closest you’ve ever come to love in your life.”

“You have no idea about—”

“Love? How dare you? I went out of my mind for love. I killed—butchered—for love. I have far too many ideas about love . . . and I also know it’s like everything else in life: it can drive you to the worst extremes, the absolute edge. Yet, in the great scheme of things, it all comes down to a moment here, a moment there . . . and a flicker of connection with someone else. That’s happiness, Harry. Nothing more.”

“And what about love for your child?”

Silence. Then she said, “That’s everything. And you feel you have to kill the person who takes everything away from you.”

“Did the revenge help balm the wounds?”

“You mean, do I still relive the sadness and horror of what happened . . . and of what I did? Of course. I still can’t get away from it. It will be with me forever. But I have sought redemption . . . through you.”

“That’s insane.”

“Putting things right for another person isn’t insane.”

“It is when you resort to violent means to do it.”

“But look how everything is gradually working out for you. Robson is in jail. So too is Sezer and his nasty henchman . . . and you know they were both gunning for you. Omar tried to blackmail you. He’s been eliminated. Yanna’s husband didn’t deserve a further day of life on this earth. So I cannot really see how you can complain. Because, in time, things will come even more right for you.”

I stood up.

“Do you really think I’m going to buy into this madness?”

“You have already done so, Harry. You’ve been complicit in this from the start.”

“You mean, because I visualized you—the invisible woman—whereas others never did?”

“But why did you see me? Because you needed to. Just as you needed me to settle all the scores you so wanted resolved.”

“So you follow me everywhere, is that it?”

“Perhaps.”

“But why me?”

“What an absurd question. We are involved.”

“You call this an involvement? For you, it was an afternoon fuck twice a week, nothing more.”

“And for you, it was . . .?”

“The one thing I had in my life that I looked forward to.”

“Don’t you think I also looked forward to it? We didn’t just fuck in this room, Harry—and you know it. We talked. We told each other our stories. We found some comfort in that. I certainly grew to like it . . . and to need it. I mightn’t have always shown it. I might have discouraged you from getting closer . . . but you still did. You needed me—this—as much as I did you.”

“Well, if you think I’m going to keep coming back here, slipping into this little twilight zone you’ve set up here—”

“You can’t leave now,” she said, her voice quiet, flat.

“Yes, I can . . . and I will. Because this is now dead. As dead as you.”

“No, it’s not. Now that you know about me . . . now that you come into this place with me twice a week . . . now that I am the person who watches your back . . . this is not ending.”

“Fuck you,” I said, walking toward the door.

“A stupid response, Harry. But, I suppose, understandable. You will need time to accept—”

“I am accepting nothing. Got that? Nothing. You’re never seeing me again.”

“Yes, I am. And you’ll want to see me . . . or, at least, call out to me at some moment when you’re in a situation from which you can’t extricate yourself.”

“Don’t count on that. Stay away from me.”

“No, Harry . . . the real question here is: Can you stay away from me?”

“That won’t be hard to do,” I said and walked fast toward the door.

“See you in three days,” she said as the door closed behind me.

I raced downstairs. Once I had crossed the courtyard I stopped for a moment outside the concierge’s lodge. He was still sitting there, comatose to the world. I reached the main door. I hit the button to release the lock. This time it opened with a telltale click. I stepped out into the street. Automotive sounds filled my ears as cars drove by. I looked both ways. There were pedestrians on the rue Linné. The old guy in the corner shop was sitting behind his small counter, looking bored. Life was, per usual, going on around me. I returned to the front door of Margit’s apartment. Less than a minute had evaporated since I had crossed back into the quotidian world. I punched in the code. I stepped back inside the courtyard. I turned toward the concierge’s lodge. He was no longer in an inanimate state. On the contrary, as soon as he saw me he was on his feet, grabbing a large two-by-four by his desk, then stepping just outside the lodge and brandishing this club.

“You again? I told you to stay away. You go. Now.”

I did as requested, hightailing it back out into the street. I walked quickly toward the Jussieu metro station. Halfway there I got a bad case of the shakes. Is she with me right now? Does she shadow my every move?

I ducked into a café. I bought a double whisky. Even when added to all the other Scotch that Margit had poured into me, it still did little to dampen down my anxiety, my growing belief that I had lost all reason. I put my fingers to my nose, the same fingers that Margit had pushed into herself. Her smell was still there. I touched the bandage on my hand. She’s dead . . . and she bandaged that hand. I ordered another whisky. Think, think. No, don’t think. Just run. Go back to the hotel. Get your bag. Hop a cab to the Gare du Nord. Buy a ticket on the last train out tonight to London. But what about the novel? Fuck the novel. Run.

And then what? Without the novel I have nothing to show for my time here . . . nothing to do when I get to England. At least if I have the disk I can pick up the narrative again. I can give the day some shape by punching out my quota of words. I can tell myself, You are trying to accomplish something. So go back to the office and get the disk. There’s now nothing to fear. The place has been raided. Sezer and Mr. Tough Guy are locked up in some commissariat de police, and the cops are no longer interested in the place. Get the disk. You’ll be in and out of there in less than a minute. Then make a beeline for the Gare du Nord and slam the door on this entire deranged episode . . .

By the time I had left the café I had decided that a better strategy would be to go back to the office in the middle of the night . . . preferably right before dawn. If anyone was lying in wait for me—doubtful, but I was still paranoid—they would most likely give up an all-night stakeout by six. More important, I could sleep until five thirty—sleep now being a major need.

I forced myself out of the café and took the metro to the Gare du Nord, where I booked a ticket on the 7:35 Eurostar to London the next morning. I paid cash. As I counted out the notes, I again wondered if she was watching me buy the ticket. I jumped Line 4 back to Château d’Eau and walked into one of the many long-distance phone shops that lined the boulevard de Sébastopol. The place I entered looked like a fly-by-night operation—and was crowded with men trying to get through to relatives in Yaounde and Dakar and Benin and other West African cities. I bought a phone card and took my place at a crude plywood booth and made a call I was dreading, but couldn’t avoid. I checked my watch: 8:05 PM in Paris . . . 2:05 PM in Ohio. Susan answered on the second ring.

“Hi there,” I said.

“Harry?” she asked quietly.

“That’s right. How are you doing?”

“How am I doing? Terribly, that’s how. But you must know that already, otherwise why would you be calling after all this time.”

The angry tone was the one she always used with me during the final years of our marriage—when I never seemed to be able to do anything right, and when she seemed to have so completely fallen out of love with me.

“The only reason I haven’t called is because you barred me from—”

“I know, I know. Rub it in, why don’t you. Especially in light of—”

“Susan, I just called to see how you were. That’s all.”

A pause. I could hear her stifling a sob.

“He hanged himself this morning.”

Oh fuck.

“Robson killed himself?” I said.

“His name was Gardner—and yes, he hanged himself with a bedsheet in his cell early this morning. I just found out. Some asshole reporter from Fox News who called me and asked me for a comment. Can you imagine that?”

I said nothing. She continued, “Over the past week, I have lost everything. Everything. My job, my career. Now that it’s been revealed I was fucking the dean of the faculty, no one’s going to be hiring me in a hurry. Then there’s the little discovery that Gardner had a thing for naked seven-year-old girls and boys. I just can’t tell you how horrible it was to . . .”

Another stifled sob.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“Stop trying to sound magnanimous . . . when I know you must be gloating now that your nemesis . . .”

She broke off, crying. I said, “Susan, I want to talk to Megan.”

“Megan’s very upset right now. The news about Gardner’s crime . . . it was everywhere. All the kids at her school . . . well, you know how horrible children can be.”

“Will you tell her I want to speak to her?”

“All right.”

“Please ask her to send me an email if she wants me to phone her back. And if you need money or anything . . .”

“Are you still in Paris?”

“That’s right.”

“Working?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Then how can you have money?”

“I did have a job . . . nothing much . . . but I’ve saved a bit. So if things get tight . . .”

“I can’t deal with this . . . you . . . right now.”

Then, “I will tell Megan you called.”

The line went dead.

You’ve just overheard all that, haven’t you? You must be very proud of your handiwork. Another dead man to add to the tally of my adversaries you’ve rubbed out. And you expect me to be pleased . . . when all I can really feel is sheer overriding guilt.

Stop, stop. You need sleep. Deep restorative sleep. Take pills. Take whisky. Take whatever you can. Just get back to the hotel and hide under the blankets until day breaks and you can flee everything.

So I returned to my grim room in the Normandie. I repacked my bag. I set the alarm on my portable radio for 5:15 AM. I took pills, I climbed into the damp, saggy bed. I clutched the pillow against me. I kept hearing Margit say, “You can’t leave now.”

You know, don’t you? I’m abandoning you come morning and there’s nothing you can do to stop me getting on that train. Spook me all you want. Follow me spectrally to London. I’m still leaving. This is over.

The pills did their stuff. I conked out. When the radio snapped on seven hours later, I jumped up, certain that she was in the room with me. Did that mean she inhabited my unconscious as I slept? She watched me sleep, didn’t she? Just as she was standing nearby as I sat in that plywood cubicle, overhearing my conversation with Susan. And now she was plotting to get Susan and . . .

It’s morning. You’ve slept. The train leaves in just over two hours. Go get the disk. Go to the station. Vanish. And this will vanish with you. “Faith is the antithesis of proof.” She told you that as a way of playing with your head. The cut on your hand? You cut your hand, acting out this delusional fantasy. The concierge is right: you’ve lost it. Get the disk. Get the train. Find a sympathetic doctor. Get some pharmaceuticals to end this phantasmagoria in which you’ve been living. Get back to Planet Earth.

I stood in the tiny shower and turned my face up toward the enervated spray of water. I dressed quickly and was out the front door by five forty. The streets were empty, though a few stallholders in the market on the Faubourg Saint-Denis were taking deliveries from assorted vans. I turned up the rue des Petites Écuries, rolling my suitcase behind me, stealing a quick glance at the shuttered Internet café. Au revoir, Mr. Beard . . . and fuck you too. I reached my former place of work. I stopped at the top of the alleyway and peered down. Light was just breaking in the sky, casting a gray-blue tint on its cracked cobbles. No one could be seen lurking in the shadows. I turned back to the street. Empty, deserted, even devoid of cars. I checked onlooking windows. All shuttered or curtained. No one peering out at me. The coast was clear.

OK, here we go. Start counting and promise yourself by the time you reach sixty you’ll have come and gone.

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one . . .

I reached the front door and looked up and saw that the video camera had been prized off its bracket. Probably taken by the cops as evidence.

I had my key at the ready. I opened the door.

. . . nine-one-thousand, ten-one-thousand, eleven-one-thousand . . .

Inside, the corridor was empty, some police tape hanging limply in front of the steel door at the far end; a door now open. But I didn’t stop to inspect what was in this once-forbidden zone. I left my bag by the front door and dashed up the stairs, second key at the ready. I unlocked the door.

. . . seventeen-one-thousand, eighteen-one-thousand, nineteen-one-thousand, twenty-one-thousand . . .

My desk had been turned upside down, the emergency door pried open . . . the escape route that I never had to use. The cops had also pulled up much of the linoleum, but they hadn’t seen the small crevice above the emergency exit where I had secreted the disk.

. . . twenty-three-one-thousand, twenty-four-one-thousand, twenty-five-one-thousand . . .

I crossed the room and reached up into the crevice. My fingers touched the disk, but they now couldn’t gain purchase around it. Shit. Shit. Shit. I tried to pry a finger to one side of the disk in an attempt to push it forward, then started digging at it with my key.

But just as I started to edge it forward, something happened.

There was a large bang behind me as the office door slammed. And this was immediately followed by the sound of the lock being turned twice.

I dashed across the room and started yanking on the door handle. It wouldn’t give. I inserted my key and attempted to turn the lock. It wouldn’t budge. When I tried to pull the key out and start again, it remained frozen within the lock. I yanked and yanked on the key, jiggling it madly from side to side. It wouldn’t give. I kicked the door, two, three, four times. It wouldn’t give . . . it wouldn’t fucking give . . .

Then I heard another sound. A loud whoosh—followed by an explosion of hot air from the one ventilator shaft in the room. But this wasn’t just an overcharged blast from the heating system—as the air that blew out quickly turned into a gray toxic cloud. Within seconds, the room was fogged in, a sulfuric stench enveloping me, singeing my eyes, my lips, my nose, my lungs. I clawed my way through the cloud to the emergency exit. It was already starting to fill up with smoke, but after about ten steps I hit a pocket of fresher air. The corridor was so narrow I kept hitting my elbows off its sides as I ran toward its end.

But when I reached it, I didn’t run into a door that would lead me to some sort of freedom. I just hit a wall. A flat brick wall, against which I crashed. I fell down, stunned. The smoke billowed into the tunnel. All fresh air vanished. I began to choke, to gag, to spew blood through my nose. The cloud thickened. My lungs now felt scorched. I pitched over onto the dirt floor. I continued to gag, to vomit. And I screamed, “Margit! . . . Margit! . . . Margit!”

Nothing happened . . . except that breathing became impossible.

“Margit! . . . Margit! . . . Margit!”

My voice was stifled now, my vision fading. And somewhere within all the vaporous confusion, there was one pervading thought: So this is what death is . . . a slow choke to black.

“Margit! . . . Margit! . . . Mar . . .”

My voice was fading. I coughed, I sputtered, I heaved. I should have panicked because death was near. Instead, I began to surrender to asphyxiation. The panic was replaced by a weird calmness: a sense that dying—even in such appalling circumstances—was the most natural of progressions. You’re here. You’re not. And everything beyond this smoke-filled room simply continues on.

But the moment I accepted that death was nothing strange, the strangest thing happened.

The door burst open and a fireman dashed in. He was wearing a gas mask and carrying a spare in his hand. He grabbed me and slung the mask over my face. As the rush of oxygen hit, he said two words, “Lucky man.”

TWENTY

I SPENT THE NEXT five days in the hospital. My condition—I learned later—was initially listed as “serious, but stable.” No burns, but I had suffered severe smoke inhalation and there were worries about the lasting effect on my lungs. My eyes had also been badly singed by the toxic fumes. For the first forty-eight hours they were covered with saline compresses until the inflammation died down. I was also attached to a respirator until the pulmonary specialist ordered a further set of X-rays on me and then decided that, though they had received a scorching, the damage to my lungs would be repaired in time.

“But don’t even think about getting on a plane for the next six months,” he told me. “Any change in cabin pressure could seriously damage the entire pulmonary system, with fatal consequences. You will simply have to stay put for a while, and consider yourself fortunate to have survived such an incident.”

Everyone who attended me in the hospital told me how fortunate I was. The police too. Even Coutard—who came by to see me once I was taken off the respirator. As became quickly apparent, his reasons for seeing me had little to do with inquiring after my health.

“Providence was with you,” he said, pulling up a chair next to my bed. “The fireman who rescued you told me that if he had arrived three minutes after he did, you would have definitely died.”

“Lucky me, then.”

“It’s not uncommon to feel depressed after such a close escape. But I’m certain the doctors here can give you something for that as well.”

“I’m fine, under the circumstances.”

“We’ve charged someone with the arson and attempted murder. I think you know him: a Monsieur Delik, who works at the Internet café on the rue des Petites Écuries?”

“A guy with a beard and a less-than-sunny disposition?”

“The very gentleman. We have reason to believe that he attempted to burn down the building on the order of Monsieur Sezer—who, as you may remember, is still in custody for ordering the murder of Monsieur Attani over a bad debt. Sezer was your landlord and your employer . . . though he never let on that he was the boss behind that charming establishment where you played night watchman. Delik ran the Internet café after his predecessor, Monsieur Kamal Fatel, was found murdered on the Périphérique. Monsieur Delik has confessed to killing Monsieur Fatel over a dispute about a kilo of heroin that seems to have gone astray while in Fatel’s possession. Delik was promised half-ownership of the café if he would eliminate Fatel, whom Sezer thought was also trying to muscle in on several of his enterprises.

“Now Delik still refuses to admit responsibility for setting the fire that nearly ended your life. He also adamantly denies locking you in that room and turning on the heating fan full blast and pouring sulfur onto the fire that was started near the generator which runs the building’s ventilation system. But a bag of sulfur was found at the Internet café. He continues to deny knowledge of its existence. But who else would have put it there?”

I can tell you exactly who put it there.

“The bag was three-quarters empty—and the sulfur used in the fire exactly matched that found at the café. So voilà, we have definitive proof that he was the arsonist. You should consider yourself fortunate that some anonymous woman—a passerby—phoned the pompiers after seeing smoke rise from the top floor of the building. That woman turned out to be your savior, monsieur.”

“Did she say who she was?”

“Not at all, monsieur. She simply reported the fire and hung up. Another of your phantom women, no doubt.”

No, just my one and only phantom woman.

“We also believe that Delik was responsible for destroying your room. Quite a mess he left there.”

“You were snooping around my room?”

“We were alerted to the fact that your room was ripped apart—”

“By whom?”

“Monsieur, it was located next door to a crime scene. Our officers had to return to the place where Monsieur Omar died for assorted administrative reasons, and discovered your chambre de bonne in upheaval. Naturally we investigated . . . because we were curious as to why someone would want to so destroy the room of a rather poor writer. And by ‘poor’ I am referring to your financial state, not your literary abilities . . . though we did commission a translation, en français naturellement, of the first chapter of your novel, just to validate your claims that you are a novelist.”

“Is that legal?” I asked, my voice hoarse, barely audible.

“You should be pleased, monsieur. You have become a translated writer. Many would kill for the chance . . . though that might be a wrong choice of words under the circumstances.”

“Did you like it?”

“Ah, this proves that you are a true writer. Always concerned about public reaction. Yes, I found it very . . . interesting.”

“So you didn’t like it.”

“How can you discern such a thing?”

“Because, despite rumors to the contrary, Americans do understand irony.”

“But your first chapter was . . . fascinating. Most fascinating. The day-to-day rhythms of American suburbia. The conservative father, the crazy mother, the sensitive son. Most original . . . and I do presume there are certain autobiographical elements that—”

“You’ve made your point. Thanks.”

“Monsieur, you take me the wrong way. I would have continued reading . . . but that would have meant hiring the translator to deal with the subsequent chapters and as the book is terribly long . . . over six hundred pages so far, and your hero is still not out of university. I presume it’s what the Germans call a bildungsroman, ja? It certainly has the heft of a bildungsroman—”

“Heft is also a synonym for ponderous.”

“Again, you misread me. But literary criticism is not the object of this conversation. Rather, it’s piecing together the narrative of your life on the rue de Paradis. So having ascertained that, yes, you were writing a book and had this very strange job—about which you initially lied to us—we were still curious as to why your room was torn apart. Given that several of your associates—”

“They were never my associates.”

“So you say. But given that many of the people with whom you associated—both personally and professionally—were also involved in the sale of illegal substances, we naturally wondered if you yourself were hoarding a kilo or so of—”

“I never, never had anything to do with . . .”

I started to cough and sputter; the agitation causing me to suffer shortness of breath; my mouth tasting of burned phlegm. Coutard stood up and handed me the glass of water on the table by my bed. I sipped it and struggled to keep the water down. Coutard watched me impassively. When the spluttering subsided, he said, “There is also the question of the twenty-eight hundred euros we found in the pocket of your jacket. Wrapped up in several plastic bags. An intriguing way of carrying money.”

I tried to explain how I had saved all that money, how it was kept hidden in a hole beneath the sink in plastic bags, and how it was the only money I had in the world, so were he to “impound” it . . .

“You will be on the street?” he asked.

“I won’t be able to live. Because I have nothing. Nothing. You can run a credit check on me, search for bank accounts. You’ll find zilch. That twenty-eight hundred is my entire net worth.”

Silence. I noticed that he had a Zippo lighter in between his right finger and thumb and he was clicking it open and shut. The man was desperate for a cigarette.

“You will get your money back . . . because it has no real bearing on our investigations. Your bags and clothes were clean. We found nothing in your room . . . though I am still intrigued as to why it was pulled apart.”

Because she’s a mad bitch, that’s why.

“It’s a strange quartier . . .” I said.

Coutard allowed himself a little smile.

“Of this I have no doubt. Just as I also know that you are a man of remarkable naïveté to have fallen into a job like that.”

“It wasn’t naïveté, Inspector. It was indifference to what happened to me.”

“That’s another definition for nihilism. But in your case, the nihilism is mixed in with tendencies toward delusion. Or have you finally accepted that Madame Kadar is dead?”

“Yes, I know now that she is truly dead.”

“Well, that is an improvement. Did your near-death experience somehow convince you that there is a considerable frontier between temporal life and the underworld?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“And all that extraordinary knowledge you had on Madame Kadar’s long-forgotten life? Can you now explain to me why you had amassed such detailed information?”

“Does it matter anymore?”

Click, click, click as he opened and closed the Zippo again.

“I suppose it doesn’t,” he said.

A wave of tiredness hit me. I slumped against the pillows on the bed. Coutard took the hint and stood up.

“The doctors say you will be discharged in a few days. What will you do then?”

“Find a new place to live and try to finish my novel. That’s the only reason I was in the office that night, to retrieve the disk that I had left there . . .”

“Yes, I had read that in the statement you gave Inspector Leclerc yesterday.”

“Did he also tell you that if you had given me back my laptop, I wouldn’t have had to return there for the disk . . .?”

Click. Click. Click.

“The laptop was part of an ongoing investigation,” he said. “Had you had a disk in your room . . .”

I did have a disk in my room. But she took it when she trashed the place. To panic me. To force me back to the office so she could lock me in and set fire to the place and leave me no option but to cry out for her help. Whereupon . . .

“When can I get the laptop back?” I asked.

“In time.”

“Might I, at least, get a copy of the novel transferred to a disk?”

“In time.”

I shut my eyes. I said nothing.

“We will, no doubt, be in touch,” Coutard said. “We will naturally need your new address once you are discharged from here . . . so we will know where to contact you when the laptop is ready to be returned.”

And to know where to keep tabs on me.

“Fine,” I said.

“You’re a free man now,” Coutard said.

I am not free.

They kept me in the hospital for a further five days. Leclerc came by on the final day with a copy of a statement for me to sign—a reiteration of my story of how I had been locked into the office as the fire started, and how I had been in the employ of Monsieur Sezer, who had always kept the nature of the activities in the building a secret from me.

“This will lend weight to the accusation that he ordered Delik to destroy the building and yourself at the same time.”

They were also buying my story about not knowing what went on downstairs, while framing a man for a crime he didn’t commit. But isn’t that how all narratives are framed? We apportion blame to some, excuse others, and hope that the tidy package will end the story in a satisfactory way. If I now started talking about how the fire was all down to “her,” that would complicate the way they wanted the story to work—and it might lead to me being transferred to the nearest rubber room. Anyway, Delik was guilty of other things. We all are.

I signed the statement. As I handed it back, Leclerc said, “You must feel vindicated after what happened to the gentleman who orchestrated your problems in the States.”

So they had continued to track the Robson story. Then again, they were cops. And cops tracked anything that had to do with tracking you.

“I orchestrated my problems,” I said. “Whatever I feel about that man, I still pity him.”

“You are more magnanimous than I would be, under the circumstances.”

Magnanimous. That word again. I wasn’t magnanimous. I was just aware of a third party controlling everything.

“You seem to be on the mend,” he said as he was leaving.

Nothing’s mended.

But they did give me my walking papers the next day. Using the phone directory the day before, I had come across a great find: an actual one-star hotel in the Sixth. The guy on the desk sounded pleasant. Yes, they had a room available—seventy euros a night. “But you say you need it for three or four weeks? Then I can reduce it to sixty euros per night.”

I did some fast math. Four-twenty a week and another one-fifty in living expenses. I had just enough to fund the next month and a half.

And then? And then? How will you survive?

No idea.

The hotel was on the rue du Dragon. As I got out of the taxi with my suitcase, I scanned the street. Shoe shops everywhere. Expensive women in expensive clothes. Tidy pavements. Tourists. Businessmen in suits. Good restaurants. Money.

The hotel was agreeable in a fusty old-fashioned way. But it was clean, and the bed was hard, and the floor-to-ceiling windows let in considerable light, and the two men who ran the front desk remained professionally polite. I was also within walking distance of fifteen cinemas. But venturing out was not something I was interested in doing right now. The effects of smoke inhalation were still very much with me. I tried a shortish walk to the Odéon and a secondhand English-language bookshop on rue Monsieur-le-Prince. But after buying four paperbacks, I found the walk home to the hotel a strain—and I collapsed in bed for the rest of the day. The hospital had provided me with three small canisters of oxygen—each with a plastic mouthpiece attached to the top. The nurse in charge of me told me to administer four or five blasts of oxygen whenever shortness of breath arrived. By the end of my first day at the hotel, one of the cans was nearly empty. I could hardly sleep that first night—not just because of my irregular, painful breathing . . . but also because at five the next afternoon, I was due back at rue Linné.

Because I was still attached to a ventilator I had missed our rendezvous three days ago. I figured she understood that—and would excuse it. But as she was following my every move, she also knew I was mobile enough to have checked into this hotel. So I would be expected to show up at her place tomorrow without fail.

I stayed in bed all that day, tiredness still overwhelming me. I left the hotel at four forty. I walked to the taxi rank on the boulevard Saint-Germain. There was—miraculously for rush hour—a single taxi in line. I took it. I arrived at the rue Linné ten minutes later. I crossed into the Jardin des Plantes. I walked slowly, conscious of my breathing. My lungs still felt as if I had been a three-pack-a-day smoker for the last thirty years, but the breathlessness seemed a little less ominous today. I noticed the verdancy around me, the deep blue sky, the hint of heat in the air. Early summer had arrived. In fact it had probably arrived weeks ago—but my head was elsewhere.

Four fifty-five. I approached the door. Five PM I punched in the code. Click. I stepped inside, entering that big silence I now recognized as not being normal. The concierge was immobile in his lodge. I headed up the stairs. Not a sound from a single apartment. Until I knocked on her door. She opened it and said, “You should have been here three days ago.”

“A fire delayed me,” I said, stepping by her into the apartment.

“Really?” she said, following me in.

I grabbed her arm and pulled it up behind her back.

“Don’t bullshit me. You know exactly what happened.”

“Trying to hurt me now, Harry?” she said, struggling against the arm. “Because you can’t. Pain doesn’t have any effect on me.”

I pushed her away.

“Well, it does on me—and I nearly died.”

“But you made a rapid enough recovery if you’re now able to push me around.”

“Push you around? You follow me everywhere—”

“You have no proof of that—”

“—you trap me in a burning building. And then, having told me that I would be in a situation where I’d have no choice but to cry out for you and demand your help, I do find myself in a situation where I have no choice but to cry out and demand your help. And what happens?”

She smiled and lit a cigarette.

“You have no proof of that.”

“The cops said a woman phoned them.”

“Maybe she did. And maybe you should have made more copies of this.”

She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a black floppy disk.

“You stole that from my room . . .”

“It’s just a floppy disk. One of many millions. And it doesn’t have an identifying label on it. Who’s to say that it’s yours?”

“You knew that the only reason I went back to that hellhole of an office was to retrieve the disk containing my novel because—”

“The cops impounded your computer after they raided that building?”

“There! That’s my proof you’ve been following me—”

“But you still have no actual proof . . . except that you think that I started the fire near the ventilation shaft on the second floor of the building, and added three-quarters of a bag of sulfur, which I later hid in the Internet café to make certain that the entire business was pinned on that bastard Delik—”

“Stop playing with my head.”

She came toward me, opening her robe. She had nothing on underneath.

“But I like playing with your head,” she said, reaching for my pants. “It’s so easy.”

I tried to pull away, but she grabbed hold of my belt and forced my crotch against hers.

“If you think I’m going to fuck you—”

“I do think that,” she said, popping the buttons on my fly.

“I’m not interested,” I said, trying again to push her away.

She reached in and took hold of my now erect penis.

“Liar,” she said. “And don’t give me any crap about your scorched lungs.”

She grabbed the back of my head and shoved her tongue down my throat, then pushed my pants down. I threw her onto the bed. I was inside her immediately. She became violent, pulling my hair, biting into my neck. But I didn’t resist, instead drilling into her with angry ferocity. I came fast. So did she. But as soon as it was over, I too felt something close to derangement. Standing up, I touched my neck and felt blood.

“Just think,” she said, reaching for her cigarettes. “You’ve just fucked a dead woman who made you bleed.”

I pulled on my jeans.

“Going so soon?” she asked.

“What do you want from me?”

She laughed.

“What do I want from you? Quel mélodrame, Harry. You know what I want. Our little rendezvous every three days. Nothing more, nothing less. You come here at the specified time. We make love—or ‘fuck’ if you prefer. We drink a little whisky. We talk a bit. You leave at eight, comme d’habitude. I don’t care who you see or what you do when you are not here. Go where you want, sleep with who you want . . . as long as you are here at the times agreed. And in exchange for your visits—your fidelity to our rendezvous—I can promise you—”

“What?” I asked. “Eternal life?”

“Oh, you will die . . . like everyone. That’s something completely beyond my power. But one thing I can promise you is that, for the rest of your life, you will have someone watching your back at all times, smoothing the way for you. As I said last time, I cannot manipulate things to give you fame and fortune. Getting your novel published, for example . . .”

“Have you read it?”

“Well, I do have the disk . . .”

“But no computer.”

“I have access to any computer I want—as long as the person who owns it isn’t using it at the time. Anyway, I read it. It’s clear you have talent, Harry. Abundant talent. Your turn of phrase, your sense of place, your ability to describe a character’s attributes and complexities. All very admirable. The problem—for me, anyway—is that you cannot simply tell the story and let us discover your cleverness. You have to remind us all the time how clever—and faux-poetic—you are . . .”

“Faux-poetic?”

“Don’t take it so hard, Harry . . . but the narrative is swamped by this absurd lyricism, this need to overexplain, this terrible portentousness—”

“Everyone’s a fucking critic, aren’t they?”

“Are you talking about the inspector?”

“So you were there in the hospital room when he told me—”

“—that he had the first chapter of your novel translated? You have no proof that I was there, but—”

“Can I have the disk back?”

“By all means,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her robe and tossing it on the front of the bed. “But honestly, you should either rework the entire narrative, cutting out all the posturing, the—”

“I don’t want to hear any more of this—”

“As you like . . .”

I picked up the disk.

“I’m never coming back here.”

A weary sigh as she sat up and closed her robe and reached for her cigarettes.

“Harry, why make trouble for yourself when I ask so little and offer so much?”

“Because you’re insisting I be indentured to you for—”

“Three hours twice a week! You call that being ‘indentured’? Think of your current predicament. No job. No prospects. And what do you have saved from that awful night job? Twenty-eight hundred euros. All right, you’ll eke out a few weeks in that one-star hotel on the rue du Dragon. But then . . .?”

I put my face in my hands, as again I heard that voice in my head: She is everywhere . . . she knows everything.

“I’m not coming back . . . and that is final.”

“Fool.”

“I don’t care what you do to me.”

“Yes, you do. And yes, you will . . .”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It will matter to you.”

“Torture me, ruin me some more, even take my life . . .”

“Harry, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly—”

But I couldn’t finish that sentence, as I suddenly doubled over, coughing wildly. Phlegm filled my mouth and, for a few moments, I felt as if I were drowning. Margit stood up and guided me into the bathroom, where she held me as I coughed up black gunk into the sink. Then she led me into her kitchen area and opened a cabinet and handed me a canister of oxygen. Check that: the exact same make of oxygen that had been given to me in the hospital. I took it from her with relief and pried off the cap and clasped the mouthpiece in my teeth and took two deep blasts of the oxygen. It helped. After a third blast, my breathing eased.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You got the canister at the hospital where I was recovering from your pyrotechnics?”

“Perhaps . . .”

I stood up, tucking the canister under my arm.

“You should leave that here for the next time,” Margit said.

“There’s not going to be a next time.”

“Yes, there will.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“You’ll be here—because you’ll have to be here. But Harry—think carefully before you decide to terminate your minor obligations—”

“Obligations? I’m not indebted to you for anything.”

“You called out for me when you were about to die . . . and then you didn’t die.”

“You are not my savior, and you are not seeing me again.”

“Don’t make me force you back here.”

“Do whatever you want to do,” I said. And I left.

Half an hour later I was back in the hotel, curled up on the bed, a blanket over me, the plastic wastebasket from the bathroom near me in case I had another phlegm attack. But I now expected to have the roof of my room collapse on me, or to be attacked by a platoon of poisonous bedbugs, or to start spitting up internal organs (surely she couldn’t orchestrate something so invasive). I touched my neck and felt the still-moist wound she had made with her teeth. You’ve just fucked a dead woman who made you bleed. I covered my head with a pillow. This can’t be happening. I also thought of a lifetime of afternoon liaisons stretching out in front of me—all in service of some surreal notion that I had a permanent guardian angel lurking in my corner, as long as I screwed her twice a week. You have no proof. How she taunted me with that phrase. But my anguished attempts at disbelief were quickly superseded by a realization that had taken hold of me in the hospital and had only been reinforced by my encounter with Margit that afternoon: This was all very real. And I did take seriously her threats to bring further harm to me if I didn’t meet my “obligations” to her. But I didn’t care anymore. Let her take my life. It meant so little to me now.

I holed up in the room until one the following afternoon, finally venturing out for something to eat. I stopped in an Internet café. There was only one email in my inbox: a long missive from Doug, telling me the details of Robson’s suicide. He also said that Susan had gone to ground. She had been officially dismissed from the college, and was also now under FBI investigation to see if she was, in any way, involved in Robson’s extracurricular “business.”

I did call her yesterday and she sounded rough. Word has it that she has been suffering from appalling depression—who can blame her—and that Megan is understandably traumatized by what has happened. If you could get back here for a few days, I think it might do Megan some good. If you broach this idea with Susan, I sense she will respond positively to it.

After reading this, I used a search engine to find all the up-to-date press reports on Robson’s suicide. There were plenty of them. Susan’s dismissal from the college had also merited a few paragraphs in the news reports, cross-referenced with the scandal that had forced me out of my job. That was the thing about a media feeding frenzy—it engulfed everybody, and I could only begin to imagine the grief that my poor innocent daughter was taking at school for her parents’ crimes and misdemeanors.

Switching back to my Internet server, I wrote Susan:

I am genuinely sorry to hear of your terrible problems. I just want you to know that I am here to help. As I mentioned in our last phone call, I would also very much like to reestablish contact with Megan, and would be most happy to come back and see her, if she is willing to see me. If you want to contact me by phone . . .

And I supplied the number for the hotel and for my room there.

I checked my email the following morning and night. No reply. Otherwise I spent most of the day in my room, reading and sleeping and having the occasional bout of hack coughing. The following day there was also no email from Susan. I went to the movies—Hitchcock’s last film, Family Plot. I managed a fifteen-minute walk by the Seine. At 5:00 PM I returned to the hotel, missing my rendezvous with Margit.

I waited for the sky to fall in. It happened late the following night. The phone in my room rang just before midnight. It was Susan. She could barely talk.

“Megan was knocked down by a car on her way to school today. A hit-and-run driver. She’s still unconscious with a broken leg and a fractured pelvis and they don’t know if she’s suffered any brain damage, but the fact that she doesn’t respond to . . .”

She started weeping uncontrollably. She managed to get out a few more words, saying that she’d been taken by ambulance that afternoon to the University Hospital in Cleveland, where they had the best neurology department in the state. “I’m calling from there right now,” she said. “It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t . . .”

She broke off, unable to speak anymore. I told her I’d get the first plane out tomorrow morning. Then I hung up and staggered into the bathroom and fell down in front of the toilet and got violently ill. When I could heave no longer, I started to cry.

Don’t make me force you back here.

Do whatever you want to do.

And she had done just that.

I didn’t sleep. I wandered the streets all night. I found a twenty-four-hour Internet café near Les Halles and went online and discovered there was a 9:00 AM flight to Chicago that morning, with an onward connection to Cleveland at 2:00 PM local time. Had I been in possession of a functional credit card I would have booked the flights on the spot. Instead I returned to the hotel and asked the night man to book me a taxi leaving for the airport at 5:00 AM. The guy on the desk—his name was Tadeusz, he was Polish—was fantastically kind when I told him why I had to rush back to the States. He said he would hold my room for me at no charge (“It’s a quiet time for us”), and was a little surprised when I said I would definitely be back in Paris within forty-eight hours.

“But do not worry, sir. If we need the room we can always pack up your things and store them. If your daughter’s condition hasn’t improved . . .”

My daughter’s condition will only improve if I present myself at 13 rue Linné at 5:00 PM in two days’ time.

I was at the airport by six. I paid cash for a round-trip ticket to Cleveland via Chicago, returning to Paris that evening. I phoned Susan on her cell phone from a kiosk inside the departure lounge. It was just after one in the morning in Ohio. She sounded exhausted and stressed beyond the limits of endurance. “She’s still unconscious,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “The MRI has shown some bruising to the brain, but the neurologist still cannot determine how damaged it is. The fact that she’s not responded to any stimuli is, he admitted, very worrying. The next twenty-four hours will be critical.”

“I’ll be there by two PM your time. Meanwhile, try to get some sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep. I just want my daughter back.”

I felt sick. And helpless. And crazed. Did Margit put Megan in the way of the car that hit her? Susan had yet to tell me the details of the accident . . . but in my more rational moments, I couldn’t help but think that Margit had set this up as a near-facsimile of the accident that had killed her daughter and husband. But say she hadn’t set it up? Say it was all just terrible happenstance? What then? And what if Megan died? You never get over the loss of a child. Never.

When the plane took off and I felt my diaphragm starting to contract, I could again hear the pulmonary specialist tell me I’d be risking death by flying. Ten minutes later, as we reached cruising altitude, I felt a crushing pain in my chest. The large woman seated next to me said to her friend, “Oh my God, he’s having a coronary!” and rang for a hostess. Two of them arrived, looking very concerned.

“Are you all right, sir?”

I explained it was just a little breathlessness after a lung injury (“You were actually caught in a fire!” one of them said), and asked them if they had any oxygen. One of them disappeared, returning moments later with a canister. I gripped the mouthpiece between my lips and blasted myself three times. Presto. The pain dissipated, but the anguished thought that Megan might die continued to clobber me.

“I think we might be able to find you somewhere more comfortable for the remainder of the flight,” one of the hostesses said.

I was escorted to the rarefied confines of Business Class and a seat that turned into a bed. I accepted pillows and a duvet. I went into the bathroom and changed into the sleeper suit they provided. I popped a Zopiclone. I returned to the seat. I hit myself with two more blasts of oxygen and passed out for six hours. It was the first proper sleep I had received in days—and when I awoke thirty minutes outside of Chicago, I felt that, at least, I would be able to function, no matter how terrible the next twenty-four hours might turn out to be.

The landing was tricky—the decompression causing my diaphragm to turn viselike again. Two minutes before we hit the runway, the pressure was so bad I felt as if I was starting to strangle. The oxygen did little good . . . until we were on the ground and I could re-blast myself for a solid minute, emptying one of the canisters in the process.

I had similar problems in the air between Chicago and Cleveland, emptying another whole canister en route and feeling completely breathless by the time I reached University Hospital half an hour after landing.

The Neurological Unit was located on two floors in a new wing of the hospital. ICU was at the far end of a hallway. I was escorted inside by an attending nurse. She said my timing had been good, as the neurological resident was on the ward right now. “I must warn you that walking into the unit always unnerves people the first time, and you might find all the apparatus around Megan rather disturbing. If you find you can’t take it—and many people can’t—just let me know and we’ll get you out of there straightaway.”

Her bed was at the end of the unit. That meant walking past patient after patient, all unconscious, all looking submerged by wiring, monitors, probes, drips, and a spaghetti junction of tubes. When I reached Megan’s bed, I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. There was nothing different about all the apparatus engulfing her. It was simply the realization that this was my little girl, being kept alive by all this medical paraphernalia, including a ventilator that let out an ominous whish as it regulated her breathing. Her long blond hair had been hidden inside a white surgical cap—but her face, though bruised, was, as always, angelic. Susan was seated slumped in a chair, looking more tired than I had ever seen her. Her face was drawn, her shoulders hunched, her eyes sunken, her nails ravaged. A man in a white coat was talking to her in a calm voice. I approached Susan and put my arm around her shoulder. She reacted stiffly to this—no hello or greeting, and she quietly disengaged herself from my attempt at a supportive hug . . . something the doctor noticed immediately.

“This is Megan’s father,” Susan said tonelessly.

I shook his hand and introduced myself. His name was Barry Clyde. A guy in his late thirties. Calm, considerate, if a little professionally distanced.

“I was just telling Susan that Megan has suffered what could be described in layman’s terms as a deep concussion which has been coupled with a certain amount of brain-stem trauma. The MRI showed considerable bruising on the brain stem. The good news is that such bruising does dissipate and can be followed by a gradual recovery. The more tentative, difficult news is that she continues to be unable to respond to stimuli. Frankly, this has us worried. It could be that the concussion is so pervasive she simply has to heal first before emerging from this comatose state. But—and I must be direct with you about this—it could also be that she has suffered far more profound neurological damage and might be in this absent state for . . . well, it’s hard to gauge how long this could go on for.”

“Is there a chance she might die?” I asked.

“All her other vital signs are good, her heart is immensely strong, and the brain is getting all the oxygen it needs. So, no, death is not an immediate worry. But—and again I must outline the worst for you, just so you can be prepared—a persistent vegetative state might continue indefinitely. That, I should add, is the worst-case scenario . . .”

I bowed my head and closed my eyes and felt tears sting them. The doctor touched my shoulder. “Please don’t give up hope. The brain is an extraordinarily mysterious organ and can frequently recover from serious trauma. Time will tell.”

He left us alone. We both stood there, in front of the daughter we made together, saying nothing. When Susan started to break down again and I tried to take her hand, she pushed it away, saying, “I don’t want—need—your comfort.”

“OK,” I said quietly. “How about a cup of coffee?”

“You just got here and you immediately want to go out for a coffee? Spend some time with your daughter.”

“I can’t bear to look at her like that.”

“Well, get used to it. She’s not coming out of this. I called my brother Fred yesterday. He put me on to a friend of his—a leading neurologist out in the Bay Area. I was able to get everything about Megan’s case emailed to him in San Francisco. He was much more blunt about it than Dr. Clyde. ‘In these sorts of brain-stem trauma cases, there is generally less than a fifteen percent chance that the person will make a full recovery, and more than a fifty percent chance that she will never emerge from that vegetative state.’

“Fifteen percent isn’t zero—”

“But it’s shit odds. And I keep telling myself, If only I had driven her to school yesterday. But I was rushing to see my fucking lawyer, who’s doing his best to keep me out of jail as well.”

“Surely the Feds don’t think you had anything to do with Robson’s porn business.”

“You’ve evidently been kept well informed on my downfall. And it must give you enormous pleasure, under the circumstances.”

“It gives me no pleasure at all. And let’s not fight in front of Megan.”

“Why not? She can’t hear us. Even if she could, what would she think? How wonderful it is to have a pair of narcissistic fuckups as parents?”

“I’m sure she’s been terribly torn apart by what’s happened over the last year. But that doesn’t mean she hates us. And if we can somehow make it all up to her—”

“Listen to you, Mr. Bromide, Mr. Polly-Fucking-Anna. She’s not coming out of this, Harry. We’ve lost her. And she is the innocent victim in all this. Whereas we . . .”

Again she started to lose it, grabbing on to the metal railings on Megan’s bed and crying wildly. The attending nurse came marching down the corridor at speed. She put her arm around Susan’s shoulder and led her off back toward the doorway. I stood by the bed and gripped the railings as well, trying not to fall apart, trying to tell myself that I would make this better, that I would get her out of it, no matter what it took.

The nurse returned a few minutes later.

“Your wife is about to be seen by a doctor. He will probably admit her for nervous exhaustion—and we’ll find her a bed. She’s at breaking point, the poor thing—and who can blame her. If you’d like to see her after the doctor . . .”

“I think I’m about the last person she wants to see right now.”

The nurse thought about that for a moment, then said, “Is there anything I can get you?”

“A glass of water, please. And I would like to stay here for a while . . .”

I sat in front of my daughter’s bed for the next five hours. I held her warm hand, I watched the undulating beeps of the heart monitor and was frequently lulled into nodding off by the metronomic whoosh of the respirator. I sat there, thinking, thinking, thinking. I put my head in my hands. I started to whisper, All right, Margit, I’ll be back with you tomorrow. I will never miss another of our rendezvous again. You’ll have me for as long as you want to have me. Just bring Megan back to us whole.

I nodded off around midday and woke with a start at three. Megan was still motionless, her eyes stock-still. At five I forced myself out of the stiff uncomfortable metal chair. I leaned over and kissed her good-bye. Then I found the nurse on duty and explained that I had to fly back to Paris now, but to tell my wife that I’d be in touch by phone within the next twenty-four hours.

A cab to the airport, an hour long flight to Chicago, a two-hour stopover, seven and a half hours over the Atlantic: a sleepless night of coughing and sputtering, and I started to have that drowning sensation when the plane made its final approach. Once we were inside the terminal I staggered into a bathroom, bent over a toilet, and heaved up clumps of reddish phlegm. Then I threw some water on my face and headed off to Immigration—an experience I was dreading, just in case the cops at the commissariat de police in the Tenth had informed the frontier boys that I was an American whom France could easily do without.

I approached the booth. The cop scanned my passport, glanced at his screen, and said, “Back again with us?”

“I like it here.”

“Are you working?”

“I’m a writer. I work for myself. So I’m not holding down a job here.”

“And how long will you be with us this time?”

“A few weeks,” I lied. “No more.”

Stamp, stamp. I was back in . . . with a new three-month visa.

The clerk at the hotel on the rue du Dragon smiled and handed me the key as I came in.

“Did your daughter recover?”

“Not yet.”

“Does it look good?”

“No.”

“I don’t know what to say but ‘sorry.’ ”

“Thanks for that.”

“If you want to sleep now, the room’s ready.”

“Please call me at four, in case I don’t get up.”

I slept straight through the afternoon. I was out of the hotel by four thirty. I was outside Margit’s front door just at five. I stepped inside the parallel world. I climbed the stairs, she opened the door on the first knock. That’s when I slugged her, catching her with my fist right in the mouth. She fell backward onto the bed.

“You fucking bitch . . . you punish me by trying to kill my daughter . . .”

She stood up, holding her cheek.

“You have no proof.”

“Don’t fucking say that again,” I shouted and then caught her across the face with the back of my hand. She collapsed back on the bed again, but then turned up at me and smiled.

“You forget, Harry—pain means nothing to me. But pain means everything to you. All you do is live in pain. And you know what you’ve just demonstrated? You’re like every man I’ve ever known. When you discover you’re powerless, you lash out . . . even though the act of punching a woman is nothing more than a testament to your complete pathetic impotency. But go on, Harry. Punch me again. Pull off my clothes and ravage me while you’re at it. Anything to make you feel better.”

“The only thing that is going to make me feel better is if my daughter comes out of her coma and has a complete recovery with no lasting side effects.”

“You ask a lot, Harry.”

“You’ve got to help me—”

“No, I’ve got to help her. But that can only happen if you play by the rules of the game. Here from five until eight every three days without fail. If you say yes now, and then don’t show up for our next rendezvous, your daughter will die. As soon as you are here—”

“I promise I will be here.”

Silence. She sat up.

“That’s settled then. You can go now. We will start again at our next rendezvous as if this never happened. But do know that if you ever hit me again . . .”

“I will never hit you again.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Harry. Now go.”

“Before I do, I need to know something. Are these rendezvous of ours going to go on indefinitely?”

“Yes, they are. À bientôt . . .”

En route back to the hotel, I stopped in a kiosk and rang Susan’s cell phone. When I explained that I was back in Paris, her reaction was angry.

“That’s so damn typical of you, running away in the middle of a crisis . . .”

“I had no choice. I have a job interview today, and you will be needing money to keep going . . .”

“Don’t guilt trip me here, Harry.”

“Why, why do you always think I’m attacking you when all I’m doing is—?”

“Reminding me I have lost my goddamn job and am just praying that Blue Cross will cover these hospital bills. Otherwise, it’s bankruptcy and—”

“Is there any change there? Any sign of improvement?”

“Not so far.”

“Did you get any rest?”

“A bit, yeah.”

“Please call me as soon as there’s any change.”

“OK,” she said and hung up.

A day went by. I ventured up to the hospital for a previously arranged appointment with the specialist. He ordered an X-ray and gave me a very hard time when he saw the state of my lungs.

“You’ve been on a plane, haven’t you?”

“My daughter is seriously unwell, and I had no choice but to—”

“Try and kill yourself? I warned you, monsieur, about the tremendous dangers that pressurized environments cause. By choosing to ignore me, you have retarded your recovery completely. The reason you have blood in your phlegm is evident. Take another journey in a pressurized cabin and you might do yourself fatal damage. You are grounded for at least six months. Understood?”

I returned to my room in the hotel. I counted out the cash I had left after paying for the ticket to the States. Around eighteen hundred dollars. Don’t think about it. Just take everything as it comes now. What else can you do?

I stayed in the room, trying to read, trying to think about everything but Megan. Eventually, around ten that evening, I climbed into bed. Three hours later I was jolted awake by the ringing phone.

“A call for you, monsieur,” said the night clerk. With a click he put it through. It was Susan. And the first words she said to me were, “She opened her eyes.”

TWENTY-ONE

THE SAME EVENING that she opened her eyes, Megan began to speak again. The next day she was able to be fed by spoon. Forty-eight hours later, she insisted on getting up out of bed to use the toilet. Despite having a cast on her left arm and leg she still managed to hobble there on crutches. The following morning, the police found the driver of the hit-and-run vehicle. It was a messy story—a recently divorced woman in her forties; a lawyer in a big-deal firm in Cleveland, with “alcohol issues.” On the morning of the accident, she had been drinking in her hotel room during breakfast. She was blotto and smashed into Megan around five minutes after leaving the hotel. She panicked and kept on driving, eventually checking into a motel near the Kentucky border, where the cops found her. She was heavily insured—and the lawyer now representing Megan threatened publicity if she and her law firm didn’t settle quickly.

“The negotiation was very fast,” Susan told me in our daily transatlantic phone call. “Our guy was a complete sonofabitch and very shrewd. Megan will be getting a check for half a million dollars. So that’s her college education sorted out—and it will give us a little cushion until I find a new job.”

I said, “The important thing is, she will have no lasting physical effects from the accident. The psychological scars, on the other hand—”

“—will be added to the large amount of shit that her parents have already dumped into her lap . . . and the fact that her mother is a slut who slept her way back into a tenured position at the college by fucking a pedophile.”

“I really think you should stop blaming yourself here—”

“But I do. I do.”

“Well, I blame myself too.”

“You’re being magnanimous again . . . which is a way of making me feel bad.”

“You think that, by being reconciliatory, I’m actually trying to get at you? I just feel very sorry for you . . .”

Silence. I could hear her weeping into the phone.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .” she whispered. “I’ve messed up so badly. I’ve . . .”

“Our daughter is alive and well. That’s the only thing that matters right now. And I do want to speak with her again,” I said.

“I did tell her you rushed over to be by her side. She seemed happy about that, but couldn’t understand why you had to hurry back so fast to Paris.”

Because the dead woman who had put Megan in the path of that car demanded her twice-weekly “service.” If I had failed in this obligation, our daughter would have remained in her coma.

“As I tried to explain to you in that phone call . . . I had a job interview . . .”

“You could have told them your daughter was seriously injured,” she said at the time.

“I did tell them that—and they were very understanding, but also said that they had to fill the post immediately. I have no money. Nor do you. So I really couldn’t tell them to wait—”

“That’s right—rub it in again that I lost my job. Heighten my massive guilt about—”

“Susan . . . stop.”

“But if I stop, you won’t have to listen to the truth. And the truth is—”

The truth is: these sorts of conversations are why I started hating this marriage . . .

“The truth is . . .” I said, interrupting her, “I cannot travel anywhere now for the next six months.”

“What?” she said, sounding outraged.

I explained about being caught in a fire at the place where I was a night watchman (she had a hard time accepting that bit of information), and that I was told by the specialist who treated me that I couldn’t risk air travel now.

“So do you want me to congratulate you on risking your life by flying to your daughter’s bedside?”

“Susan, I honestly do not give a shit what you think. What I do know is that, when I got back here I was coughing up blood. The pulmonary specialist has grounded me until after Christmas. This is completely maddening, as where I want to be right now is with Megan. But go ahead and think the worst of me. You always have. You always will.”

And I hung up.

Several hours later, as I lay next to Margit in her bed, she said, “I liked the way you handled things today with Susan. Far more assertive than you used to be.”

“How do you know how I used to be with her?”

“I know everything about you. Just as I also knew you would do the honorable thing and be here today.”

“You call ‘coercion’ honorable? I am only here because—”

“If you want to carry on with the delusion that you have been trapped into this, be my guest. But you will spend the rest of your life enraged by my alleged ambush of you. Whereas if you are in any way canny, you will see all the benefits our arrangement can bring you. And since you are about to run out of money in two weeks, we need to get you that job.”

“But I made that job up.”

“So you say.”

Three days later, while we were drinking our usual postcoital whisky, Margit said, “You need to go back to Lorraine L’Herbert’s salon this Sunday.”

“There’s no chance of that.”

“Why?”

“Because as soon as Madame or her majordomo hears that it’s me asking for an invite, they’ll slam the door in my face.”

“Poor Harry—always thinking that people actually care about him. You didn’t outrage Madame L’Herbert when you came bursting in on her, demanding to know if she knew me. Like all self-obsessives, she never muses for a great deal of time about other people, except in relation to herself. So your little scene in her apartment lasted about fifty-five seconds in her consciousness. Fear not—all she and her pimp are interested in is your twenty-euro admission fee. Call them tomorrow and be certain to be there on Sunday night. Then get yourself introduced to a gentleman named Laurence Coursen. He’s the head of the American Institute in Paris, and he’s been going to L’Herbert’s salon for years to pick up women, as he’s married to this very rich nightmare who weighs around one hundred and fifty kilos and spends much of her waking hours giving him a hard time. I know he’s in the market for someone to teach film at the Institute. Just put yourself in his path and be charming . . .”

“Fat chance of that.”

“But Harry, you are charming . . .”

It was the first time Margit had ever paid me a compliment.

I did as instructed. I called Henry Montgomery, “Madame L’Herbert’s assistant.” He didn’t verbally flinch when I said my name. He just gave me the door code and reminded me to arrive with twenty-five euros (“The price has gone up a bit”) in an envelope on Sunday night. This time it was an easy twenty-minute stroll from my hotel on the rue du Dragon to her apartment down the street from the Panthéon.

When I arrived there at the appointed hour on Sunday night, the salon was in full swing. Henry Montgomery didn’t seem to recognize me. But he did relieve me of my envelope and glanced at my name (printed as instructed on the front) and then brought me over to Lorraine. As before, she was standing under one of her nude portraits, holding court. Montgomery whispered something in her ear. Immediately she was all effusive.

“Harry, what a joy to see you again. It’s been . . . how long?”

“Quite a few months.”

“And still here. So Paris has taken hold of you.”

“That it has,” I said.

“Now you paint, right?”

“I teach. Film studies. And I was wondering if Larry Coursen might be around tonight?”

“Cruising for a job, are we?”

“Actually, I am.”

“American directness. Nothing like it, pardner. Larry! Larry!”

She started yelling to a man in late middle age, dressed in an off-white suit that looked around twenty years old and was in need of a good pressing. He came over.

“Larry, you must meet Harry. He’s a brilliant professor. Teaches . . . what was it again?”

“Film studies.”

“That a fact?” Larry said. “Where do you teach?”

“Well, I used to teach at . . .”

And the conversation was off and running. L’Herbert drifted off. Coursen and I must have talked for around half an hour—largely about the movies (he was a serious film nut), but also about the Institute of which he was the director. As he asked me a bit about the sort of courses I used to teach and my “professorial style,” it was evident that he was conducting an impromptu interview on the spot.

“What exactly have you been doing in Paris?”

“Trying to write a novel.”

“Have you published before?”

“Plenty of academic papers and the like . . .”

“Really? Whereabouts?”

I told him.

“And do you have an apartment here?”

“I did. I’m between them right now, staying at a hotel.”

“Would you have the number on you?”

I wrote it down for him.

“I might be in touch in the next few days.”

He started glancing around the room and then locked eyes with a woman around twenty. She gave him a small wave.

“Nice to meet you, Harry,” he said.

After Coursen had gone off with his very young friend, I drifted out onto the balcony. It had started to drizzle, so it was empty. I looked over at the spot where I first met Margit. Say I hadn’t come here that night? Say I hadn’t flirted with her and engaged in that mad embrace and taken her phone number and called her up? But I had done all that because I was lonely and sad and feeling unwanted and lost . . . and because I had so wanted to see her again.

I came into your life because you needed me, Harry.

Yes. I did. And now . . . we are together. In perpetuity.

I turned and headed back into the salon. Lorraine was standing near the food table, talking to a Japanese woman dressed head to toe in tight black leather. Lorraine turned away from her as I approached.

“I wanted to thank you for your hospitality,” I said.

“Going so soon, hon?”

I nodded.

“Good conversation with Larry Coursen?”

“Yes . . . and I appreciate the introduction. We’ll see if anything comes of it.”

“And I saw you out on the balcony. Still looking for your Hungarian?”

“No. But I didn’t think you remembered me . . .”

“Hon, you barging in—asking about a woman who came here once in 1980—was hard to forget. But want to hear something rather droll? After you left I did ask Henry about—what was her name?—Kadar? He actually remembered her rather well—because her husband, Zoltan, got talking with another woman the night they were here, and there was a scene out on the balcony with the Hungarian threatening to toss the other woman into rue Soufflot. Henry said he’d never seen such a jealous rage—and one that came out in whispers . . . a sure sign of insanity in my book. Hell, give me a proper screaming match any day. So consider yourself lucky you really didn’t meet her. That kind of crazy—when they get their claws into you—”

“I really have to go now,” I said, cutting her off.

“Hey, fear not. I won’t say a word to Larry Coursen about any of this. Don’t want to cost you a job or anything. And y’all come back here again, you hear?”

L’Herbert was true to her word about not telling Coursen about my “girlfriend.” There was a message the next day at my hotel from his secretary. Could I present myself at his office at 3:00 PM tomorrow for an interview?

The American Institute was out in Neuilly. A sprawling hôtel particulier refurbished with classrooms and offices and a large public lecture theater. Coursen was pleasant and businesslike. He had dug out all my professional details. He had googled some of my academic papers and journalistic pieces. As expected, he had read all about the scandal that had cost me my job.

“I’d appreciate hearing the story from you,” he said.

I took him through it, trying to be very honest about my errors in judgment and saying that, although Robson went public with the affair, I still felt great guilt about what happened to Shelley.

After I finished, Coursen said, “I appreciate your directness. It’s damn unusual these days—and rather refreshing. I also did make a call to one of your former colleagues in your department: Douglas Stanley. He gave you a fantastic recommendation and also said that the entire business with the student wouldn’t have turned into the drama and tragedy that it became if Robson hadn’t fanned the flames. And hey, that’s one hell of a story about what happened to Robson, isn’t it? Kind of makes you believe there is some cosmic force out there that punishes bastards.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Anyway, the thing is, this is France, thank God, not the U.S. . . . so I can’t see too many people objecting if I offer you a post here. Between ourselves . . . I completely sympathize. My second marriage ended when my wife caught me in bed with one of my students back at the University of Connecticut. Best thing that ever happened to me, as it got me to France. We’re fellow refugees, Harry.”

The post was initially for one thirteen-week term. I would teach two courses: “Introduction to Film” and “Great American Directors.” The entire total of class time would come to twelve hours a week and I’d be paid eight thousand euros for the term. He’d also arrange the necessary carte de séjour with the French authorities. If everything worked out, we could discuss an extension of my contract toward the end of this probationary period.

I accepted on the spot—but with one proviso: none of the courses could run between 5 and 8 PM.

“No problem,” Coursen said. “We’ll set them up for the mornings and afternoons. But hey, who’s the dame? And if you’re seeing her from five to eight she must be married.”

“It’s . . . uh . . . complicated.”

“It always is. And that’s what makes it fun.”

When I saw Margit the next day, she said, “You handled the interview very well. And you were absolutely right to explain the affair the way you did. No excuses. No attempting to apportion blame elsewhere. Very smart. So congratulations . . . though I do think your new patron is très louche. And by the way, don’t listen to that old queen Henry Montgomery about my deranged jealousy. What Madame L’Herbert failed to mention to you was that I caught that woman giving Zoltan a blow job on the balcony. Now as you well know, I am very open-minded about such things. But to shame me in public like that? So yes, I did hiss a lot at her and I did half-tip her over the balcony. But I was holding her very tightly. A little salope like that wasn’t worth a lengthy spell in jail.

“But I digress. I am delighted for you, Harry. And don’t worry about the one-term probation business. Coursen will extend your contract.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

“I need you to do something else for me. I need you to get Susan her job back.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, she’s had some more good financial news come her way. Most of Robson’s estate went to his children, but he rewrote his will recently, making your ex-wife the beneficiary of his pension from the college in case he died before retirement. It isn’t vast—but she will have an income of around fifteen hundred dollars per month. And with your daughter’s tuition now taken care of, she’ll get by.”

Susan gave me this news herself when I called her that night.

“It’s about the only thing that bastard Robson did right,” she said. “And it couldn’t come at a more critical moment.”

“I’m pleased for you.”

“Benefiting from the pension of a child pornographer—and having to accept it because I am in such financial hot water—now there’s dramatic irony for you. And it shows just how low I’ve sunk.”

“You’re right to take the money.”

“Well, at least the FBI have decided I wasn’t the bookkeeper for his little Internet business. They cleared me today.”

“More good news. And I have some to add to that.”

I told her about the job at the American Institute.

“Lucky you. I so miss teaching.”

“And I so miss my daughter.”

“She managed to sit up in a chair by the hospital bed for most of the morning. The doctors all say they cannot figure out how she came out of the coma without significant brain damage.”

“Miracles can happen, I suppose. We’re very lucky. And I’m desperate to speak to her.”

“I broached it with her yesterday. She’s still very angry at you. I do take some of the blame for that. After everything blew up for you, I really turned her against you. It was pure rage and revenge. A terrible thing to have done. I see that now. And I will try to put it right.”

At our next liaison, Margit said, “What an act of contrition on her part. Guilt is such a fantastic leveler.”

“Did you organize the pension business?”

“Perhaps.”

“And the Feds?”

“Perhaps.”

“You really like to keep me guessing, don’t you?”

“But look at what you get in return. Emotional tidiness. Wrongs righted. Jobs offered. Admissions of guilt from those who hurt you. Even my services as a real-estate agent. There’s a studio apartment for rent in a Haussmannian building on the rue des Écoles. Twenty-six square meters, nicely renovated, and only six hundred euros a month. Very reasonable for this quartier, and you’ll be in walking distance of so many cinemas . . .”

“Not to mention you.”

“Well, five minutes away on foot is far more convenient than all that travel you used to do from the Tenth.”

“And you’ll have me almost on your doorstep.”

“Harry, you’re always on my doorstep. You know that. Just as you know I’m with you even when you don’t want me to be with you. But again I digress. You need to get to the estate agent first thing tomorrow morning. Tell them you’re a prof at the American Institute—they’ll like that. If they make worried noises about your lack of a bank account, tell them you’ve just arrived from the States and are about to open one. Coursen will supply you with a reference and a two-thousand-euro advance on your contract. That should get you set up. After that—”

“I think I can take it from there.”

“Am I sounding like your mother?”

“No comment.”

“I just want to get your life full back on track. And this apartment, it’s perfect. You won’t find anything like it for—”

“OK, Margit. Point taken. I will be at the agence immobilière by nine.”

By ten the next day I had rented the apartment. Margit was right: it was a terrific little place. Simple, but stylishly done. Coursen was very good about getting the Institute to front me two grand in advance. Within three days I had moved into the studio. After the squalor and dinginess of rue de Paradis, my new apartment seemed pristine and splendidly private. With the balance of money left over from the salary advance, I bought sheets and towels and a stereo and began the process of settling in.

Then the teaching began. I liked my students. They seemed to like me—and I quickly remembered what a pleasure it could be to stand up at a lectern and spout on about movies. The first term passed by with great speed. I got a phone installed in the apartment. I called Susan every day. Megan was back at school within four weeks of her accident. But she was still refusing to speak to her father. “She doesn’t talk much to me either,” Susan said. “She really mopes a lot. The doctors say it’s a natural side effect after coming out of a coma. She’s depressed. But at least she’s talking to a psychotherapist at school. So . . . be patient. She will come around.”

Everything began to fall into place. My contract at the American Institute was extended for two years. I met a guy at a reception at the Institute who edited a weekly magazine for expatriates and was looking for a film critic. The pay wasn’t much—one-fifty a column—but it got me writing about movies again and brought in a little more money. I was able to buy a few better clothes. I invested in a television and a DVD player. I purchased a new laptop. I bought a cell phone. I gave my lectures, I wrote my column, I worked out in the Institute’s gym, I continued to haunt the Cinémathèque and the little movie houses that crammed my quartier. I had my daily call to Susan about Megan. We were polite with each other on the phone—the edgy anger now abating into a respectful distance. We were no longer enemies; rather, weary combatants who had decided it was now easier to be civil with each other and only had one agreed subject of conversation: their daughter.

Time continued to accelerate. I taught all summer. I loved the vacant streets of Paris in August, and managed a two-and-a-half-day holiday on the beach in Collioure. Outside of my work I found something to “do” every day—a movie, an exhibition, a concert, books to read, magazines to peruse—anything to fill the hours.

One afternoon, I spent the better part of a half hour in the permanent collection of the Pompidou, staring at one of Yves Klein’s blue monochrome paintings. I’d seen this one in art books before. But approaching it—in the flesh, so to speak—was revelatory. At first sight, it was just a canvas painted a deep blue—its tint somewhat akin to a late-afternoon sky on a clear winter’s day. Darkness was visible within its confines. But the longer I stared at it, the more I began to see the subtle gradients in Klein’s shading of the canvas: a complex array of textures and tonal variations, all lurking behind what, at first, simply seemed like a large blue square. But it wasn’t just its intricate blueness that held my attention. After a few minutes of direct eye contact, the painting proved hypnotic. The textures disappeared and I found myself staring into a place of spatial emptiness: a void without limits, from which there was no return. Until someone bumped into me, jolting me back to terra firma. I felt a little befuddled. But much later that night, as I climbed into bed and turned off the light, Klein’s infinite blueness came back to me. And I couldn’t help but think, That’s the void I live in now.

The floppy disk that Margit had returned to me was put away in a drawer in my new apartment. One evening, toward the beginning of September, I pulled it out and loaded it into my laptop. I spent a long Saturday reading all six hundred pages of my still unfinished novel. When I reached the end, I removed the disk from the computer. I put it back in my desk drawer and resolved never to look at it again.

You’re right, you’re right, I heard myself telling her. Overcooked, self-important posturings with no real storyline, no motor to keep you turning the pages.

I knew she could hear me say that. Just as I knew she was always there, always watching.

“So you finally gave up on the novel,” Margit said when I saw her the following day.

“Why ask a question to which you already know the answer?”

“Just making conversation.”

“No, you’re just doing what you always do: reminding me of your omnipresence.”

“I would have thought that, by now, you would have adjusted to—”

“I’ll never adjust. Never. How can I, knowing you’re hovering over me, making certain—?”

“—that no harm comes to you—”

“But that I also stay within the rules.”

“There’s only one rule, Harry. Here twice a week from five until eight.”

“And in the future, if I want to visit my daughter for four days?”

“Make it three days. Or—when she’s ready—fly her over here.”

“Can’t we negotiate?”

“No. This is the setup. It has its minor limitations. It has its liberties. As I said before, you are free to do what you like outside our time together.”

“Even though you’re watching over me at all times?”

“And what is wrong with that?”

I said nothing. But a few nights later, I started writing this book. I wanted to get it all down on paper; a record of what happened—just in case something did happen to me—and to try and convince myself that I was not living in a state of permanent delusion. But why should you accept this story as given? It’s just a story—my story. And like all stories, it isn’t, in the pure sense of the word, true. It’s just my version of the truth. Which means it is—and isn’t—true at all.

How do you step out of one world and into another? I’ve no damn idea—but I keep doing it twice a week.

“What happens to you when you grow older?” I asked her recently. “Do you die again?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“And when I die, do I join you in spectral perpetuity?”

“I have no idea . . . but I like the turn of phrase. Are you putting it in your book?”

I met her gaze.

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s interesting reading,” she said. “Not that anyone will believe you.”

“I’m not writing it to be read.”

“Rubbish. All writers write to be read . . . to have their story ‘out there.’ But trust me: this will never get published.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Just a statement of fact . . . as I see it, of course.”

“So you’re going to make certain it never gets published?”

“Did I say that?”

“You implied that.”

“Hardly. Your life outside our hours together . . .”

. . . is my own?

But how can it be when she’s constantly there? How can you make a decision when you know there is a third party present, guarding you from the wrong choice? Recently I dashed out into the rue des Écoles, trying to hail a taxi, and unaware that I had stepped right into the path of a motorcyclist. Though less than two seconds away from hitting me, the cyclist flipped over, as if shoved out of my path by some hidden force. He got up, unhurt. But when a cop showed up moments later and asked him if he had swerved to avoid me, he said he was certain someone pushed him.

“Did you see anyone push him?” the cop asked me. I shook my head.

The next afternoon, chez Margit, I said, “Thank you for saving me yesterday.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you to look both ways before stepping out into the street?”

“If he had hit me, it might have taught me a lesson.”

“If he had hit you, you would have been dead. The fact that he didn’t also taught you a lesson.”

“How wonderful to have a fairy godmother,” I said.

“How wonderful to be appreciated. Still writing the book?”

“Aren’t you reading it as I write it?”

“You have no proof. But I do worry about the way you work so late into the night, and are then up a few hours later.”

“I don’t need much sleep.”

“Correction: you don’t get much sleep, but you still need it.”

How can anyone sleep when they know there’s someone monitoring them all the time?

“I’m fine.”

“You should start taking those pills again.”

They won’t help. Because I will never rest easy with you in my life.

“They didn’t do much good.”

“Go see a doctor and get something stronger.”

“I’m fine.”

“You hate this. Us.”

“I’m fine.”

“You will adjust. Because you’ll have to. You have no choice.”

But I still clung to the belief that, outside of our hours together, I did have a choice. A few nights after this conversation, I went to a jazz joint on the rue des Lombards and got talking at the bar with a fellow American named Rachel: a woman in her forties, single, something in mutual funds in Boston, attractive, alone in Paris for a long weekend (“The job’s so pressured, I only can squeeze a few days off, here and there”), chatty, and happy to match me drink-for-drink over the course of three hours. Around two in the morning, as the place was closing down, she covered my hand with hers and said her hotel was a five-minute stagger from here.

It was all very pleasant and rather romantic. I had to get up early to teach. Rachel wrapped her arms around me in bed and said, “What a nice bit of luck meeting you. And if you’re free tonight . . .”

“I’m free tonight.”

She smiled and kissed me.

“You’ve just made my day.”

And she’d made mine. I spent much of it in a state of delighted exhaustion, thinking just how smart and lovely Rachel was, and how nice it was to want and feel wanted again.

I arrived back at her hotel, as arranged, at seven that night, a bottle of champagne in hand. But when I asked the desk clerk to call Rachel in her room, he asked, “Are you Monsieur Ricks?”

I nodded.

“I’m afraid Madame has checked out. A death in the family. She left you this.”

He handed me an envelope. Inside, on a piece of hotel stationery, was a hastily scribbled note.

Dearest Harry:

Have just found out my mother passed away this morning. All very sudden and shocking. I so loved our night together. If you’re ever in Boston . . .

And she gave me her number.

I crumpled up the note and handed the desk clerk the bottle of champagne and told him I had no use for it anymore.

If you’re ever in Boston . . .

Rachel, I’d come like a shot to see you in Boston—but only for forty-eight hours. Because that’s all the time allotted to me.

“Did you kill her mother?” I asked Margit the next afternoon.

“She was an eighty-year-old woman. At that age, a sudden heart attack . . .”

“So if I see another woman again . . .?”

“Hopefully she won’t lose her mother so suddenly.”

“Or walk under a bus. You like traffic accidents, don’t you? They’re your preferred way of settling the score.”

“You have no proof.”

“You’re always saying that.”

“See you in three days, Harry. And who knows, you might get a pleasant surprise before then.”

The surprise arrived just before midnight that night. I was at home, working on this book, when the phone rang. I answered it.

“Dad?”

The receiver shook in my hand.

“Megan?”

“Thought I’d call and say hello.”

We talked for around twenty minutes. I didn’t raise the subject of the last ten months. Nor did she. Her conversation was tentative, guarded. She talked about the accident, about school, how her mother was still out of work, how she wasn’t sleeping well, and still felt “spooked by stuff.”

“This counselor I’ve been talking to at school—well, he’s more of a shrink—he says, ‘We’re all spooked by stuff.’ ”

“He’s right,” I said. “We all are.”

She said she had to go. “But maybe I can call you next week.”

“That would be great,” I said.

“Cool. Catch you then, Dad.”

After Megan hung up I sat at my desk for a long time, swallowing hard, choking back tears. Only sometime later did I find myself wondering, Did “she” set that up? Was this the “pleasant surprise” she talked about?

You have no proof.

But I did have evidence.

Inspector Coutard also had evidence. My laptop. Still impounded in the commissariat de police of the Tenth arrondissement. A week before Christmas, he rang me at the American Institute to say that I could come by and collect it now.

I showed up later that afternoon. He was wearing the same grubby jacket he had sported when he first interviewed me. His desk was awash with paperwork, his office ashtray clogged up with butts, and he had a cigarette screwed into a corner of his mouth.

“How did you find out I was teaching at the American Institute?” I asked.

“I’m a detective. And I also see that you now have a carte de séjour and a new address in the Fifth. I’m pleased that you have moved up in our world; that things are better.”

“Yes . . . I suppose they are.”

“Well, we no longer have any use for this,” he said, pointing to the laptop positioned on the edge of his desk. “Sezer and his associates are still under lock and key. They’ll go to trial for Omar’s murder and everything else in February. It’s a fait accompli that they will be convicted. The evidence is so conclusive . . .”

Because she knows how to plant conclusive evidence.

“Anyway,” he said, tapping the laptop, “now you can return to your novel.”

“I’ve given up on it.”

“But why?”

“You know why. It was no damn good.”

“I never said that.”

“I’m not saying that you did.”

“But surely you haven’t given up on writing altogether?”

“No, I’m working on something.”

“A new novel?” he asked.

“Nonfiction . . . though everyone will think otherwise.”

I could see him taking that in.

“And your ‘friend’—the woman in the Fifth—do you still see her?”

“Every three days without fail.”

Coutard raised his eyebrows. He shook his head. He put out his cigarette and lit another, puffing away on it for a good minute while studying me with detached professional interest. Finally he said, “You are truly haunted, monsieur.”

Guilty as charged.

The WOMAN in the FIFTH

DOUGLAS KENNEDY

A Readers Club Guide

INTRODUCTION

Harry Ricks is a deeply troubled man on the run. After a messy affair, a broken marriage, and a disgraced end to his career as a film professor, Harry ends up impoverished and fleeing to Paris, trying desperately to live his fantasy of writing a novel in the city of his dreams. Upon arrival, Harry realizes the city is nothing like the one from his fantasy, and he finds himself living in a virtual flophouse on the wrong side of town. The one light in this bleak world is a chance meeting with Margit Kadar, a mature, beautiful, and charming woman living in the Fifth arrondissement. They begin a torrid, fierce affair. But something very sinister surrounds Harry, as many of his enemies are befallen by sudden misfortune and death. As the bodies begin to stack up, Harry must confront the ghoulish truth about his past, his future, and the one woman who cares for him in this strange city.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Harry Ricks is a deeply flawed individual. We know virtually nothing about his life at the onset of the novel, except that he is on the run from his past. At the outset of the novel, did you think he had any redeemable character traits? How did your opinion of him change as you read more?

2. No one is warm or friendly to Harry upon his arrival in Paris. Harry feels “an ominous sense that I was about to detonate at any moment. . . . The doctor was right: I had broken down.” (p. 18) This does not assuage the coldness and downright cruelty he experiences by the citizens of Paris. How much of this instant distaste toward Harry is deserved?

3. Paris is a city that has lived in Harry’s imagination for some time. “[It] had been my dream for years; that absurd dream which so many of my compatriots embrace: being a writer in Paris.” (p. 24) What do you think the draw to Paris is for writers? How dangerous is it to build up a fantasy for something one has no direct experience with? What are some of the ramifications when fantasy and reality collide?

4. We learn that Harry Ricks has a lot to prove to himself and the world around him. Despite the troubles and chaos of his life, Harry believed he would “find a quiet place in which to get it all down on paper, and finally demonstrate to the world that I was the serious writer I always knew myself to be. I’ll show the bastards is a statement uttered by someone who has suffered a setback . . . or, more typically, has hit bottom.” (p. 52) He doesn’t want to write a novel out of inspiration, but out of vengeance against the world he believes has wronged him. Can art be used for vengeance? How productive is this philosophy?

5. The writer Richard Bach comments: “Argue your limitations and sure enough they are yours.” Harry Ricks is a man drowning in self-pity and depression. He continually reminds himself he is worthless and deserves nothing. “It no longer mattered what people thought of me. Because I no longer mattered—to anyone else, let alone myself.” (p. 86) How much does his initial attitude affect the course of his existence in Paris?

6. Harry Ricks escapes his troubles at the cinema. “The majority of my free time outside my chambre was spent haunting all those darkened rooms around town that cater to film junkies like myself. . . . Every day, I’d spend at least six hours at the movies.” (pp. 52–53) What do you think the draw of the cinema is for Harry? How does watching films help him to escape life’s problems?

7. Harry arrives in the Tenth arrondissement, a seedy, crime-filled neighborhood in Paris, in dire financial peril. After some time, he discovers a secret stash of money, an amount that could seriously change his financial and psychological situation. But instead of keeping the money, he decides to send it to the wife of the one man who showed him kindness, Adnan, who was recently deported and jailed. Why does he do this? What does this say about Harry and his judgment of his own character? Does Harry receive any repayment for his good act?

8. Harry works nights at a very shady job for sinister individuals, but decides he must do it because of his horrible financial situation. He realizes “that I might be landing myself in a situation which could be potentially dangerous, or could jeopardize my future freedom. But I found myself being won over by a bleak but consoling thought: Nothing matters.” (p. 72) What sort of freedom comes from this nihilistic emotion? Is hitting bottom really freedom, or just another sign of debilitating depression? How dangerous is this notion?

9. The only breath of fresh air that enters Harry’s bleak existence comes when he meets Margit Kadar, a mature, beautiful, and charming woman. They begin a tempestuous romance full of passionate sex and raw emotive dialogues. But after a few meetings, Margit bluntly pushes Harry away. “Do yourself a favor, Harry. Walk out of here now and don’t come back.” (p. 145) Why does Margit try to push Harry away? What is she sparing him from?

10. Margit discusses the human desire for vengeance with Harry. “The standard moral line on revenge is that it leaves you feeling hollow. What bullshit. Everyone wants the wrongs against them redressed. Everyone wants to ‘get even.’ ” (p. 147) Do you agree with Margit’s philosophy on vengeance? What prevents people from taking such actions into their own hands? Do we deserve our “vengeance”?

11. Right after Harry’s sexual tryst with Yanna, he contemplates telling Margit about his encounter. But once he arrives at her front door, she knows about it immediately. How do you suspect she knew of this instantly? What gives Harry away?

12. Ghosts are everywhere in The Woman in the Fifth, both metaphorically and physically. All the characters are haunted by their pasts, and in Harry’s case, he’s haunted by a real ghost. What do these “ghosts” represent? Does it resemble the philosophy that “there are certain tragedies from which we never recover. We may eventually adjust to the sense of loss that pervades every waking hour of the day. We may accept the desperate sadness that colors all perception. We may even learn to live with the loss. But that doesn’t mean we will ever fully cauterize the wound or shut away the pain in some steel-tight box and consider it vanquished.” (p. 148)

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

1. The Woman in the Fifth employs a strong narrative style, telling a story rife with human flaws, personal vendettas, and tormented pasts, all spiced with plenty of tension and gritty violence. Harry Ricks is a stranger in a strange land, overwhelmed by the seedy world of the Tenth arrondissement.

Another author who shares this protagonist-based, fast-action style is famed American crime author Elmore Leonard. Pick up some of his classic crime thrillers such as Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky, Cuba Libre, and Killshot if you’ve developed a taste for this addictive style of pop literature.

2. Harry Ricks is comforted by the dark rooms of the cinemas across Paris. Jean-Luc Godard says, “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world,” while another famed director, Roman Polanski, comments, “Cinema should make you forget that you are sitting in a theater.” Pedro Almodóvar explains, “I . . . wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.”

Imagine the films Harry Ricks would discuss in his classroom in Paris. Rent some of the great films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, and Akira Kurosawa’s Ran to see just what these great directors are talking about.

3. The city of Paris is as varied as life itself, each arrondissement representing another form of the city’s great cultural legacy. Harry Ricks confesses, “The Fifth was my preferred terrain.” (p. 52)

It is also known as “The Latin Quarter,” the literary and artistic soul of the city itself. The Fifth has been the home of many artistic luminaries, such as Ernest Hemingway, Paul Verlaine, Albert Camus, Gertrude Stein, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Research the history of this world-famous section of Paris to understand more of Harry’s romantic love affair with this unique and creative neighborhood.

A CONVERSATION WITH DOUGLAS KENNEDY

There are remarkable twists and turns in The Woman in the Fifth. When the initial idea came to you, did you foresee these plot upheavals from the onset? What was the process that led you to the discovery of this narrative?

I never plot out a novel in advance. I start with the general premise—the narrator and his or her central dilemma—and the rest arrives during the actual writing. In the case of The Woman in the Fifth I was coming out of a difficult juncture in my life when I knew my marriage was failing, and I was beset with the onset of midlife melancholy. One of the manifestations of this was six months of profound insomnia that saw me walking the streets of Paris frequently half the night whenever I spent my week per month in that city. Eventually I was able to put this melancholia and insomnia behind me. And a long-overdue divorce in 2009 rendered me a much happier man. But The Woman in the Fifth came out of this strange, bleak juncture in my life. As such it’s a novel that reads like a perpetual nuit blanche—an endless sleepless night, full of dread and misgiving.

The Woman in the Fifth is a novel of many forms. It applies the psychological narrative of Henry James mixed with the hard-boiled crime-fiction style of Raymond Chandler. It also blends themes of the American expatriate experience with the nineteenth-century ghost story. Could you give some examples of other novels that may have inspired this amalgamation of themes?

There’s a brilliant novel by Georges Simenon called Three Bedrooms in Manhattan. It concerns a French actor whose marriage has just combusted and who finds himself wandering the shadowy, down-at-the-heels, neon-silhouetted world of 1950s New York. Simenon captures so superbly this nocturnal world of midcentury Manhattan, a time when the city really did wear a perpetual five o’clock shadow. Simenon’s portrait of my hometown (Manhattan) as a sinister construct—and of a man grappling with serious emotional demons—began to bounce around in my imagination. And the result was this novel, which is so wildly and radically different from Simenon’s, even though it was initially inspired by it.

Harry Ricks finds only coldness and strife in his first days in Paris. As a man who has spent considerable time in Paris, did you encounter any of the coldness Harry experiences upon your own arrival in Paris?

I decided to write a novel against the cliché of the American in Paris. I’ve read far too many of those sorts of novels, in which the character arrives in the City of Light and inhabits a picture postcard of chic apartments, chic restaurants, chic women, and (God help us) trying to write a novel in his local über-chic café. The Woman in the Fifth subverts all these clichés and brings the reader to a very different but profoundly real Paris that is, very much, on the other side of the tracks.

The descriptions of the Tenth arrondissement are so full of life that one can feel the grit underneath one’s nails while reading the passages. What personal experiences had led you to write so truly about this “other” side of Paris?

The novel was a huge hit in France—selling more than six hundred thousand copies and receiving largely terrific reviews. But you would not believe the number of Parisians who came up to me after its publication and asked me how I had discovered this alternative Paris. My reply was a simple one: “On foot.” I happen to be quite the flâneur—a wanderer of cities (something I developed during my Manhattan adolescence)—and the Paris depicted in the novel, especially the Tenth arrondissement, where Harry lands, is a very real Paris: grubby, tough, anti-picture-postcard. I decided to use Paris as a nightmare landscape, and one in which Harry rarely emerges into the city during the morning. As such, the novel is set in a largely nocturnal and haunted city.

Harry and Margit have an interesting dialogue regarding the modern attraction to the act of shopping and consumerism in general. As Margit says, “It’s what people do with their time now. It’s the great cultural activity of this epoch—and it speaks volumes about the complete emptiness of modern life.” (p. 116) Could you elaborate on this particular philosophy?

Shopping has, alas, become so much of the way we define ourselves in the modern world. We are all enslaved to the idea that buying stuff will make us happier. In the novel, Harry’s impecunious state—and Margit’s lack of resources as a translator—means they are both outside of the “luxe” aspect of Paris which exists throughout so many corners of the city. Harry is very much living a grubby day-to-day existence until he begins to enter Margit’s world, which is not all that it seems.

Infidelity is a continual theme in your works. As Harry laments after his affair with Yanna, “Do we ever learn anything from our mistakes? Not when it comes to sex. That’s the one arena of bad behavior in which we are recidivists, over and over again.” (p. 157) Harry cheats on his wife, Susan; Susan cheats on Harry. Is infidelity inevitable? Is betrayal somehow sewn into the human experience?

Well, put it this way: infidelity is an essential component of the human emotional palette. As long as the notion of a committed relationship exists, there will always be infidelities because human sexuality is such an interesting minefield of desires, needs, fears, and contradictions. As such, with the promise of fidelity must come the possibility of straying, of betrayal, of seeking comfort elsewhere. Infidelity is so much the third rail vis-à-vis love and marriage—and as all novelists deal with human mess, so infidelity is such a compelling subject with which to grapple.

Another interesting conversation between Harry and Margit concerns the essential nature of American morality versus the French methodology of “compartmentalization.” “Accept that—as Dumas said—the chains of marriage are heavy and, as such, they often need to be carried by several people.” (p. 138) Margit also criticizes American morality, which she claims as “hypocritical finery.” Could you discuss the essential differences between French and American culture in regards to human relationships and marriage?

Put simply: in America we rarely compartmentalize. We also believe there is a price to be paid for bad behavior, especially as you also have to live with yourself thereafter. In France there is far greater compartmentalization—the idea that, within an individual life, there are hidden recesses which need not intermingle with each other. Granted, that’s a sweeping generalization. But one thing is very clear to me after a decade of living part time in France: sexual guilt is not the same issue in France that it is in my own country, and I play with this moral gulf throughout my novel.

The parlay between Inspector Jean-Marie Coutard and Harry Ricks is a cat-and-mouse game of information desired and withheld. There is a parallel between these characters’ verbal jousts and Raskolnikov’s and Inspector Porfiry’s interactions in the Russian classic Crime and Punishment. Did the Dostoyevsky classic influence these themes of a man wrestling with his own guilt under suspicion?

Of course, anyone who writes a novel about guilt, self-incrimination, and fear of authority must bend the knee in the direction of Crime and Punishment. It remains the benchmark work when it comes to delineating the way that the possibility of violent malfeasance is within us all—and how so much of life is lived under the existential fear of being exposed for what we really are.

In the short story “Le Horla” by Guy de Maupassant, a man is physically dominated by a creature bent on ruling over his decisions in the physical world. This is similar to Harry’s predicament, as his decisions are dominated by Margit’s schedule of meetings that he cannot break, or face the deaths of those he cares about most. Do you have an attraction to these nineteenth-century ghostly tales of men trapped by supernatural creatures? What do you believe the metaphor for these “ghosts” really are?

My interest in ghosts center around a very basic belief: more than anything, we are all haunted by ourselves.

AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPHY BY GUNTER GLÜCKLICH

Douglas Kennedy is the author of ten internationally bestselling novels, including The Moment. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages, and in 2007 he received the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has two children and now divides his time between London, Paris, Berlin, and Maine.

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COVER DESIGN BY MIN CHOI

ALSO BY DOUGLAS KENNEDY

FICTION

The Moment

Leaving the World

Temptation

State of the Union

A Special Relationship

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Job

The Big Picture

The Dead Heart

NONFICTION

Chasing Mammon

In God’s Country

Beyond the Pyramids

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Douglas Kennedy

Originally published in Great Britain in 2007 by Hutchinson.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Paperback edition July 2011

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Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennedy, Douglas, date.

The woman in the fifth / Douglas Kennedy. —1st Atria paperback ed.

p. cm.

1. Americans—France—Paris—Fiction. 2. Paris (France)—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6061.E5956W66 2011

813'.54—dc22

2011015333

ISBN 978-1-4516-0211-1

ISBN 978-1-4516-0214-2 (ebook)

Contents

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Part Two

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part Three

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Four

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Readers Club Guide

Summary

Questions and Topics For Discussion

Enhance Your Book Club

A Conversation with Douglas Kennedy

About Douglas Kennedy

For my daughter, Amelia

“The question of authority is always with us. Who is responsible for the triggers pulled, buttons pressed, the gas, the fire?”

—LEONARD MICHAELS

“Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.”

—ELIZABETH BOWEN

ON THE NIGHT of my thirteenth birthday, I made an announcement.

“I am never getting married and I am never having children.”

I can remember exactly the time and the place where this proclamation was delivered. It was around six p.m. in a restaurant on West 63rd Street and Broadway. The day in question was January 1, 1987, and I blurted out this statement shortly after my parents had started fighting with each other. Fueled by alcohol and an impressive array of deeply held resentments, it was a dispute that ended with my mother shouting out loud that my dad was a shit and storming off in tears to what she always called “the little girls’ room.” Though the other patrons in the restaurant gawked at this loud scene of marital discontent, their fight came as no great shock to me. My parents were always fighting—and they had this habit of really combusting at those junctures in the calendar (Christmas, Thanksgiving, the anniversary of their only child’s arrival in the world) when family values allegedly ruled supreme and we were supposed to feel “all warm and cuddly” toward each other.

But my parents never did warm and cuddly. They needed shared belligerence the way a certain kind of drunk needs his daily eye-opening shot of whiskey. Without it they felt destabilized, isolated, even a little lost. Once they started baiting and taunting each other, they were in a place they called home. Unhappiness isn’t simply a state of mind; it is also a habit . . . and one that my parents could never shake.

But I digress. New Year’s Day, 1987. We’d driven in from our home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, for my birthday. We’d gone to see the New York City Ballet perform the famous Balanchine production of The Nutcracker. After the matinee we adjourned to a restaurant called O’Neals’, opposite Lincoln Center. My dad had ordered a vodka martini, then downed a second, then raised his hand for a third. Mom started berating him for drinking too much. Dad, being Dad, informed Mom that she wasn’t his mother and if he wanted a goddamn third martini, he’d drink a goddamn third martini. Mom hissed at him to lower his voice. Dad said he was not going to be infantilized. Mom retorted, telling him he deserved to be infantilized because he was nothing more than a little baby who, when reprimanded, threw all his toys out of the crib. Dad, going in for the kill, called her a failed nobody who—

At which point she screamed—in her most actressy voice—“You pathetic shit!” and made a dash for “the little girls’ room,” leaving me staring down into my Shirley Temple. Dad motioned to the waiter for his third vodka martini. There was a long, awkward silence between us. Dad broke it with a non sequitur.

“So how’s school?”

I answered just as obliquely.

“I am never getting married and I am never having children.”

My father’s response to this was to light up one of the thirty Chesterfields he smoked every day and laugh one of his deep, bronchial laughs.

“Like hell you won’t,” he said. “You think you’re gonna dodge all this, you’ve got another ‘thing coming.’ ”

One thing I’ve got to say about my dad: he never spared me the truth. Nor did he think much about cosseting me from life’s manifold disappointments. Like my mom he also operated according to the principle: after a vituperative exchange, act as if nothing has happened—for a moment or two anyway. So when Mom returned from “the little girls’ room” with a fixed smile on her face, Dad returned it.

“Jane here was just telling me about her future,” Dad said, swizzling the swizzle stick in his vodka martini.

“Jane’s going to have a great future,” she said. “What did you tell Dad, dear?”

Dad answered for me.

“Our daughter informed me that she is never going to get married and never have children.”

Dad looked right at Mom as he said this, enjoying her discomfort.

“Surely you don’t mean that, dear,” she said to me.

“I do,” I said.

“But a lot of people we know are very happily married . . .” she answered. Dad cackled and threw back vodka martini number three. Mom blanched, realizing that she had spoken without thinking. (“My mouth always reacts before my brain,” she once admitted to me after blurting out that she hadn’t had sex with my father in four years.)

An awkward silence followed, which I broke.

“No one’s actually happy,” I said.

“Jane, really . . .” Mom said, “you’re far too young for such negativity.”

“No, she’s not,” said Dad. “In fact, if Jane’s figured that little salient detail out already, she’s a lot smarter than the two of us. And you’re right, kid—you want to live a happy life, don’t get married and don’t have kids. But you will . . .”

“Don, really . . .”

“Really what?” he said, half shouting in that way he did when he was drunk. “You expect me to lie to her . . . even though she’s already articulated the fucking truth?”

Several people at adjoining tables glared again at us. Dad smiled that little-boy smile that always crossed his lips whenever he misbehaved. He ordered a fourth martini. Mom strangled a napkin in her hands and said nothing except: “I’ll drive tonight.”

“Fine by me,” Dad said. Martini number four arrived. He toasted me with it.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart. And here’s to you never living a lie . . .”

I glanced over at my mother. She was in tears. I glanced back at my father. His smile had grown even wider.

We finished dinner. We drove home in silence. Later that night, my mom came into my room as I was reading in bed. She kneeled down by me and took my hand and told me I was to ignore everything my father had said.

“You will be happy, dear,” she told me. “I just know it.”

I said nothing. I simply shut my eyes and surrendered to sleep.

When I woke the next morning, my father had gone.

I discovered this when I came downstairs around eleven. School wasn’t starting for another three days—and, as a newfangled teenager, I had already started to embrace twelve-hour zone-outs as a way of coping with that prevalent adolescent belief: life sucks. As I walked into the kitchen I discovered my mother seated at the breakfast bar, her head lowered, her makeup streaked, her eyes red. There was a lit cigarette in an ashtray in front of her. There was another one between her fingers. And in her other hand was a letter.

“Your father has left us,” she said. Her tone was flat, stripped of emotion.

“What?” I asked, not taking this news in.

“He’s gone and he’s not coming back. It’s all here.”

She held up the letter.

“He can’t do that,” I said.

“Oh, yes, he can—and he has. It’s all here.”

“But this morning . . . he was here when you got up.”

She stared into the ashtray as she spoke.

“I cooked him his breakfast. I drove him to the station. I talked about going to some barn sale in Westport this Saturday. He said he’d be home on the 7:03. I asked him if he wanted lamb chops for dinner. He said: ‘Sure . . . but no broccoli.’ He gave me a peck on the cheek. I drove to the A and P. I bought the lamb chops. I came home. I found this.”

“So he left it before you went to the station?”

“When we were walking to the car, he said he forgot that Parker pen of his and dashed back inside. That’s when he must have left the note.”

“Can I see it?”

“No. It’s private. It says stuff that—”

She stopped herself and took a long drag off her cigarette. Then suddenly she looked up at me with something approaching rage.

“If only you hadn’t said . . .”

“What?” I whispered.

She raised the letter to her face. And read out loud:

“When Jane announced last night that ‘no one’s actually happy,’ the decision I had been pondering—and postponing—for years suddenly seemed no longer inconceivable. And after you went to bed I sat up in the living room, considering the fact that, at best, I will be alive for another thirty-five years—probably less the way I smoke. So I couldn’t help but think: enough of you, enough of this. Our daughter got it right: happiness doesn’t exist. But at least if I was out of this marriage, I’d be less aggrieved than I am now.”

She tossed the letter onto the counter. There was a long silence. I felt for the very first time that strange, traumatic sensation of the ground giving way beneath my feet.

“Why did you tell him that?” she asked. “Why? He’d still be here now if only . . .”

That’s when I ran upstairs and into my room, slamming the door behind me as I collapsed onto the bed. But I didn’t burst into tears. I simply found myself in free fall. Words matter. Words count. Words have lasting import. And my words had sent my dad packing. It was all my fault.

An hour or so later, Mom came upstairs and knocked on my door and asked if I could ever forgive her for what she had said. I didn’t reply. She came in and found me on my bed, curled up in a tight little ball, a pillow clutched against my midsection.

“Jane, dear . . . I’m so sorry.”

I pulled the pillow even closer to me and refused to look at her.

“My mouth always reacts before my brain.”

As you’ve told me so many times before.

“And I was so stunned, so distraught . . .”

Words matter. Words count. Words have lasting import.

“We all say things we don’t mean . . .”

But you meant exactly what you said.

“Please, Jane, please . . .”

That was the moment I put my hands over my ears, in an attempt to block her out. That was the moment when she suddenly screamed, “All right, all right, be calculating and cruel . . . just like your father . . .”

And she stormed out of the room.

The truth of the matter was: I wanted to be calculating and cruel and pay her back for that comment and for all her attendant narcissism (not that I even knew that word at the time). The problem was: I’ve never really had it in me to be calculating and cruel. Petulant, yes. Irritable, yes . . . and definitely withdrawn whenever I felt hurt or simply overwhelmed by life’s frequent inequities. But even at thirteen, acts of unkindness already struck me as abhorrent. So when I heard my mother sitting on the stairs, weeping, I forced myself up out of my defensive fetal position and onto the landing. Sitting down on the step next to her, I put my arm around her and lay my head on her shoulder. It took her ten minutes to bring her weeping under control. When she finally calmed down, she disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes, reemerging with a look of enforced cheerfulness on her face.

“How about I make us BLTs for lunch?” she asked.

We both went downstairs and, yet again, pretended that nothing had happened.

My father made good on his word: he never returned home, even sending a moving company to gather up his belongings and bring them to the small apartment he’d rented on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Within two years the divorce came through. After that I saw my dad sporadically over the ensuing years (he was usually out of the country, working). Mom never remarried and never left Old Greenwich. She found a job in the local library that kept the bills paid and gave her something to do with the day. She also rarely spoke much about my father once he vanished from her life—even though it was so painfully clear to me that, as unhappy as the marriage was, she always mourned his absence. But the Mom Code of Conduct—never articulate that which is pulling you apart—was clung to without fail, even though I could constantly sense the sadness that coursed through her life. After Dad left, Mom started drinking herself to sleep most nights, becoming increasingly reliant on vodka as a way of keeping at bay the low-lying pain that so defined her. But the few times that I danced around the subject, she would politely but firmly tell me that she was most aware of her alcohol intake—and she was well able to control it.

“Anyway, as we used to say in French class: ‘À chacun son destin.’ ”

Everyone to their own destiny.

Mom would always point out that this was one of the few phrases she remembered from her college classes—“and I was a French minor.” But I’m not surprised that she kept that expression close to mind. As someone who hated conflict—and who went out of her way to avoid observations about the mess we all make of things—it’s clear why she so embraced that French maxim. To her, we were all alone in a hostile universe and never really knew what life had in store for us. All we could do was muddle through. So why worry about drinking three vodkas too many every evening, or articulating the lasting grief and loneliness that underscores everything in daily life? À chacun son destin.

Certainly, Mom put up little resistance some years later when, at the age of sixty-one, the oncologist to whom she had been referred told her she had terminal cancer.

“It’s liver cancer,” she said calmly when I rushed down to Connecticut after she was admitted to the big regional hospital in Stamford. “And the problem with liver cancer is that it’s ninety-nine percent incurable. But maybe that’s its blessing as well.”

“How can you say that, Mom?”

“Because there is something reassuring about knowing nothing can be done to save you. It negates hope—and also stops you from submitting to horrible life-prolonging treatments that will corrode your body and destroy your will to survive, yet still won’t save you. Best to bow to the inevitable, dear.”

For Mom, the inevitable arrived shortly after her diagnosis. She was very pragmatic and systematic about her own death. Having refused all temporary stopgap measures—which might have bought her another six months—she opted for palliative care: a steady supply of intravenous morphine to keep the pain and the fear at bay.

“You think I should maybe get religion?” she asked me in one of her more lucid moments toward the end.

“Whatever makes things easier for you,” I said.

“Jessie—the nurse who looks after me most mornings—is some sort of Pentecostalist. I never knew they had people like that in Fairfield County. Anyway, she keeps talking about how if I was willing to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I’d be granted life ever after. ‘Just think, Mrs. Howard,’ she said yesterday, ‘you could be in heaven next week!’ ”

Mom flashed me a mischievous smile that then faded quickly as she asked me: “But say she turns out to be right? Say I did accept Jesus? Would it be such a bad thing? I mean, I always had comprehensive automobile insurance when I was still alive . . .”

I lowered my head and bit my lip and failed to control the sob that had just welled up in my throat.

“You’re still alive, Mom,” I whispered. “And you could be alive for even longer if only you’d allow Dr. Phillips—”

“Now let’s not go there again, dear. My mind is made up. À chacun son destin.”

But then she suddenly turned away from me and started to cry. I held on to her hand. She finally said: “You know what still gets to me? What still haunts my thoughts so damn often . . . ?”

“What?”

“Remember what you said to your father on the night of your thirteenth birthday?”

“Mom . . .”

“Now don’t take this the wrong way, but you did say—”

“I know what I said, but that was years ago and—”

“You said: ‘I’m never getting married and I’m never having children,’ and followed it up with the observation that ‘nobody’s actually happy’ . . .”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—and found myself thinking: She’s dying, she’s on severe painkillers, ignore what she’s saying, even though I knew that she was having one of her rare moments of perfect lucidity right then. We had spent years sidestepping this issue. But in her mind I was still to blame for my father’s departure.

“You did say those things, didn’t you, dear?”

“Yes, I said them.”

“And the next morning, what happened?”

“You know what happened, Mom.”

“I don’t blame you, dear. It’s just . . . well, cause and effect. And maybe . . . just maybe . . . if those things hadn’t been said at that specific moment . . . well, who knows? Maybe your father wouldn’t have packed his bags. Maybe the bad feelings he was having about the marriage might have passed. We’re so often on the verge of walking out or giving up or saying that it’s all not worth it. But without a trigger . . . that something which sends us over the edge . . .”

I hung my head. I said nothing. Mom didn’t finish the sentence, as she was racked with one of the small convulsions that seized her whenever the pain reasserted itself. She tried to reach for the morphine plunger that was attached to the IV bag by the side of her bed. But her hand was shaking so badly that I had to take it myself and press the trigger and watch her ease into the semicatatonic euphoria that the morphine induced. As she drifted into this chemical stupor, I could only think: Now you can fade away from what you just said . . . but I have to live on with it.

Words matter. Words count. Words have lasting import.

We never spoke again. I did take some comfort in the knowledge that my parents could never stand each other and that my long-vanished father would have ended it with Mom no matter what.

But—as I’ve come to discover—there is a profound, vast gulf between understanding something that completely changes the contours of your life and accepting the terrible reality of that situation. The rational side of your brain—the part that tells you: “This is what happened, it can’t be rectified, and you must now somehow grapple with the aftermath”—is always trumped by an angry, overwrought voice. It’s a voice railing at the unfairness of life, at the awful things we do to ourselves and each other; a voice which then insidiously whispers: “And maybe it’s all your fault.”

Recently, on one of the many nights when sleep is impossible—and when the ultrapotent knockout pills to which I am addicted proved defenseless against the insomnia that now dominates my life—I found myself somehow thinking back to an Introductory Physics course I took during my freshman year in college. We spent two lectures learning about a German mathematical physicist named Werner Heisenberg. In the late 1920s, he developed a theorem known as the Uncertainty Principle, the details of which I’d so forgotten that I turned to Google (at 4:27 in the morning) to refresh my memory. Lo and behold, I found the following definition: “In particle physics, the Uncertainty Principle states that it is not possible to know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time, because the act of measuring would disturb the system.”

So far so theoretical. But a little further digging and I discovered that Einstein abhorred the Uncertainty Principle, commenting, “Of course we can know where something is; we can know the position of a moving particle if we know every possible detail, and thereby by extension we can predict where it will go.”

He also noted, rather incisively, that the principle flew in the face of a sort of divine empiricism, saying, “I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe.”

But Heisenberg—and his Danish theoretical collaborator, Niels Bohr (the father of quantum mechanics)—countered Einstein with the belief that “There is no way of knowing where a moving particle is given its detail, and thereby, by extension, we can never predict where it will go.”

Bohr also added a little sardonic retort at the end, instructing his rival, “Einstein, don’t tell God what to do.”

Reading about all this (as the sun came up on another nuit blanche), I found myself siding with Heisenberg and Bohr. Though everything in life is, physically speaking, composed of elementary particles, how can we ever really know where a certain particle—or that combination of particles known as an action, an event, another person—will bring us? Einstein, don’t tell God what to do . . . because in a wholly random universe, He has no control.

But what struck me so forcibly about the Uncertainty Principle was the way it also made me trawl back to that New Year’s Day in 1987—and how, in my mother’s mind, Heisenberg was right. One launched particle—my dismissive comments about marriage—results in a logical, terrible outcome: divorce. No wonder that she embraced this empirical doctrine. Without it, she would have had to face up to her own role in the breakdown of her marriage.

But she was spot-on about one thing: had that particle not been launched on that given night, the result might have been a dissimilar one . . . and both our lives might have turned out differently because of it.

I think about that a lot these days—the idea of destiny as nothing more than a random dispatch of particles that brings you to places you never imagined finding yourself. Just as I also now understand that uncertainty governs every moment of human existence.

And when it comes to thinking that life works according to linear principles . . .

Well, another physicist back in the twenties, Felix Bloch, proposed the idea that space was a field of linear operations. Heisenberg would have none of it.

“Nonsense,” he said. “Space is blue and birds fly through it.”

But stories work best when told in a sequential, linear way. And this story—my story—needs to be told sequentially, as life can only be lived forward and understood backward. And the only way I can make sense of what has happened to me recently is by trying to find some sort of significance lurking behind the haphazardness of it all. Even though, having just written that, I know that I am articulating a contradiction.

Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things. It’s all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it.

PART One

ONE

WHERE TO START? Where to begin? That’s the big question looming over all narrative structures, and something we analyzed ceaselessly in graduate school. What is the point of departure for a story? Unless you’re writing a big cradle-to-grave saga—“To begin my life at the beginning of my life”—a story usually commences at a moment well into the life of the central character. As such, from the outset you’re traveling forward with this individual through his tale, yet you are simultaneously discovering, bit by bit, the forces and events that shaped him in the past. As David Henry, my doctoral adviser, was fond of reminding his students in his lectures on literary theory: “All novels are about a crisis and how an individual—or a set of individuals—negotiates said crisis. More than that, when we first meet a character in a narrative, we are dealing with him in the present moment. But he has a back story, just like the rest of us. Whether it’s in real life or on the page, you never understand somebody until you understand their back story.”

David Henry. Maybe that’s a good point of departure. Because the accidental set of circumstances that landed David Henry in my life sent it down a path I would never have thought possible. Then again, we can never predict where a particle will go . . .

David Henry. Back at the start of the 1970s, when he was a young professor at the university, he’d written a study of the American novel, Toward a New World, that was noted immediately for its accessibility and its critical originality. Around the same time, he also published a novel about growing up in a Minnesota backwater that immediately saw him acclaimed as a modern-day Sherwood Anderson, alive to the contradictions of small-town American life.

“Alive” was the word everyone used about David Henry back then. Toward a New World won the 1972 National Book Award for Nonfiction. His novel had been short listed that same year for the NBA in Fiction (a rare double honor) and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. The photos of him around that time show just why he was such a media star, as he had (to use a line from an Esquire profile of him) “classic square-jawed American good looks and a serious sense of cool: Clark Gable Goes to Harvard.”

He was everywhere back then: appearing on talk shows; writing learned, witty essays for the New York Review of Books; debating right-wing hawks in public forums. What’s more, though he dressed with a certain Lou Reed élan (black T-shirts, black jeans), he never jumped on the radical-chic bandwagon. Yes, he did publicly denounce “the Babbitt-like conformism that so dominates one corner of the American psyche,” but he also wrote articles in defense of America’s cultural complexity. One of them, “Our Necessary Contradictions,” became something of a talking point when published in the Atlantic in 1976, as it was one of the first critical explications of what David called “the two facets of the American psyche that rub up against each other like tectonic plates.” I first discovered this essay while a freshman in college when a friend recommended David Henry’s collection of journalist pieces, Left-Handed Writing. And I was so taken with it that I must have foisted it on half a dozen friends, telling them that it explained, with brilliant clarity, what it meant to be an American who doubted so much about the state of the country today.

So I was in love with David Henry before I was in love with David Henry. When I applied to the doctoral program at Harvard, the essay that accompanied my application talked among other things about how much his approach to American literature and thought had influenced my own nascent academic work, and how the thesis I was hoping to write—“The Infernal Duality: Obedience and Defiance in American Literature”—was so David Henry. Granted, I knew I was taking a risk in letting it be known—even before I had been accepted by Harvard—that I already had a preferred thesis adviser in my sights. But I was so determined to work with him. As I was coming out of Smith summa cum laude with very strong recommendations from my English professors there, I was willing to be assertive.

It worked. I was called down to Cambridge for an interview with the department chairman. At the last minute I was told by his secretary that the interview would be handled by someone else in the department.

And that’s how I found myself face-to-face with David Henry.

The year was 1995. He was now in his early fifties, but still retained the craggy movie-star aura—though I immediately noticed that his eyes were marked by dark crescent moons hinting at a certain sadness within. I knew that he had continued to write essays for publications like Harper’s and the New York Review of Books, though not with such prolific regularity as before. From a piece I read about him in the Boston Globe I also found out that there had been no second novel and that his long-commissioned biography of Melville remained unfinished. But the article did say that, though his profile as a writer and a public intellectual had faded, he was still a hugely respected teacher whose undergraduate classes were always oversubscribed and who was one of the most sought-after doctoral advisers in the university.

I liked him immediately because he saw how hard I was trying to mask my nervousness, and he quickly put me at my ease.

“Now why on earth would you want to go into something as archaic and badly paid as university teaching when you could be out there cashing in on all the material bounty being offered in this, our new Gilded Age?”

“Not everyone wants to be a robber baron,” I said.

David smiled. “ ‘Robber baron.’ Very Theodore Dreiser.”

“I remember your chapter on Dreiser in The American Novel and a piece you wrote on the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Sister Carrie in the Atlantic.”

“So you said in your application essay. But let me ask you something: do you rate Sister Carrie?”

“More than you do. I do take your point that there is a terrible leadenness to much of Dreiser’s prose. But that’s something he shares with Zola—a need to sledgehammer a point home and a certain psychological primitivism. And yes, I do like the point you make about Dreiser’s prolixity being bound up with the fact that he was one of the first novelists to use a typewriter. But to dismiss Dreiser as—what was the phrase you used?—‘a portentous purveyor of penny dreadfuls’ . . . With respect, you missed the point—and also used a lot of Ps in one sentence.”

As soon as I heard that line come out of my mouth, I thought: What the hell are you saying here? But David wasn’t offended or put off by my directness. On the contrary, he liked it.

“Well, Ms. Howard, it’s good to see that you are anything but a brownnose.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sure I’ve really overstepped the mark.”

“Why think that? I mean, you’re going to be in the doctoral English program at Harvard, which means that you are going to be expected to display a considerable amount of independent thinking. And as I won’t work with anyone who’s a suck-up . . .”

David didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he just smiled, enjoying the bemused look that had fixed itself on my face.

“Professor, you said: ‘You’re going to be in the doctoral English program at Harvard.’ But my application hasn’t been approved as yet.”

“Take it from me—you’re in.”

“But you do know that I will be applying for financial aid?”

“Yes, I saw that—and I spoke with our department chairman about utilizing a fund we have. It was set up by one of the Rockefellers and is granted to one incoming doctoral candidate every year. Now, I see on your application that your father is a mining executive, based in Chile.”

“Was a mining executive,” I said. “He lost his job around five years ago.”

He nodded, as if to say: So that’s why money is so tight.

I could have added how I could never, ever rely on my father for anything. But I always worried about burdening anybody (even my boyfriend) with the more unpleasant facets of my childhood. And I certainly wasn’t going to start gabbing about them during my interview with David Henry. So I simply said: “My father told his last boss to go have sex with himself. And since he refused to accept any job below that of the president of a company—and was also known as something of a hothead in his industry—his employment prospects dried up. He’s been ‘consulting’ since then but makes hardly enough to keep himself going. So . . .”

And I’d just revealed more than I intended to. David must have sensed this, as he simply smiled and nodded his head and said, “Well, your winning a full postgraduate scholarship to Harvard will surely please him.”

“I doubt it,” I said quietly.

I was wrong about that. I wrote my dad a letter two months before my graduation from Smith, telling him how much I’d like him to be at the ceremony and also informing him about my all-expenses-paid scholarship to Harvard. Usually it took him around a month to write back to me—but this time a letter arrived within ten days. Clipped to it was a hundred-dollar bill. The letter was twenty-one words long:

I am so proud of you!

Sorry I can’t be at your graduation.

Buy yourself something nice with this.

Love,

Dad

Within moments of opening it, I was in floods of tears. I had never cried when Dad left us. I had never cried when he had to cancel so many of our planned weekends in the city after he’d relocated down there. I had never cried when he moved to Chile and kept telling me that, next year, he’d fly me down for a few weeks and never got around to it. I had never cried when his response to my straight As at Smith, my election to Phi Beta Kappa—all that damn striving to please him—was silence. And in an attempt to get some sort of recognition from him I wrote that letter. All it did was make me face the looming truth I never wanted to confront: my father always distanced himself from me. Buy yourself something nice. A hundred bucks and a five-line note to assuage his guilt . . . that is, if he even had any guilt. Yet again, he was brushing me aside—but this time, I couldn’t respond by trying to shrug off his detachment. This time all I could do was cry.

Tom tried to console me. He kept telling me that my father didn’t deserve such a great daughter, that he would come to regret his dismissal of me, that my success undoubtedly unnerved him, because he himself had failed so badly in everything he had ever undertaken.

“Of course he’s going to push you away,” Tom said. “How else is he going to handle your brilliance?”

“Stop flattering me,” I told him.

“You’re resistant to flattery,” he said.

“Because I don’t merit it.”

“No—because you have convinced yourself that your idiot father is right: why should you merit your success?”

But my sadness wasn’t just bound up in my father’s brush-off of me. It was also rooted in the fact that Tom and I were about to part. The terrible thing about this split was, we didn’t want to break up. But I was heading to Harvard and Tom was off to Trinity College Dublin for postgraduate work. Though neither of us wanted to admit it, we knew that once we were separated by the Atlantic, we’d be finished. What made this knowledge even more agonizing was that Tom had been accepted by Harvard to do his master’s in History. But he had decided to take the offer of a place in Dublin—reassuring me that it would only be a year and then he’d join me at Harvard for his doctorate.

“You can come over for Thanksgiving,” he said. “I’ll come back for Christmas, we’ll spend Easter together knocking around Europe . . . and the year will pass before we both know it.”

I wanted to believe his protestations. Just as I decided that I wouldn’t force his hand or use the sort of emotional blackmail (“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t leave me”) that I had heard my mother use against my father in the years leading up to his departure.

“Of course I don’t want you to go,” I told him after he informed me that he was putting Harvard on hold and heading to Dublin. “Of course I’m not going to stop you.”

That’s when the reassurances began. The more he uttered them, the more I knew he wanted to cut and run. On the day that my dad’s five-line letter arrived—and Tom tried so hard to comfort me—I blurted out the uncomfortable truth: “As soon as you get to Dublin, we’re finished.”

“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “I’ve never intimated that—”

“But it’s going to happen, because—”

“It is not going to happen,” Tom said, getting vehement. “I value you—us—far too much. And I understand exactly why you’re feeling so vulnerable right now, but . . .”

But what you don’t understand is what I understand: men vanish when threatened.

Well, he did head off to Dublin—and we did promise each other that love would see us through and all the other usual romantic clichés. The rupture happened right before Thanksgiving. He was due to come back to the States, with me then meeting him in Paris for Christmas. Fair play to Tom—he didn’t feed me a lie or keep me dangling while he said that, to unforeseen circumstances, he wouldn’t be landing in Boston on November 21st. Instead he phoned me and came straight out with “I’ve met somebody else.”

I didn’t ask for much in the way of details—I’m no masochist—and he didn’t supply too many, except to say that she was Irish, a medical student at Trinity, and that it was “serious.” When he started saying: “It really did take me completely by surprise,” I just said, “I’m sure it did.”

A long silence followed.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“So am I.”

And that was that. The big central relationship of my life to date was suddenly no more. I took the news badly, withdrawing from everyone for around a week, cutting the lectures and thesis meetings I had at Harvard, and basically moping in my tiny studio flat in Somerville. It surprised me how deeply upset I was. We seemed so right for each other. But timing is everything and ours simply didn’t work out.

Tom never returned to the States. He married his Irish medical student. He stayed on to get his doctorate at Trinity and eventually got a job at the university in Galway. We never saw each other after we broke up. Though I presumed he came home regularly to visit his parents, he didn’t look me up during the years I was living in Cambridge. There was only one communiqué from him: a Christmas card that arrived just a few years later, showing Tom and his wife, Mairéad, and their three very young sons—Conor, Fintan, and Sean. They were standing in front of what looked like a suburban bungalow. The photo amazed me, as Tom was so adamant—like me—about never wanting children and always vowed never to live in the burbs. I didn’t feel a residual stab of sadness when I saw this photograph. Rather, all I could do was marvel at the way the narrative of life inexorably moves on—and how, having been so intensely involved with someone else, you can then simply vanish from each other’s lives. We lose things and then we choose things. Wasn’t that a fragment of a song I heard somewhere? Perhaps with Tom? Or maybe with David? And didn’t David tell me—shortly after we became lovers—that everything is just one big continual coming-and-going?

I did reply to Tom’s Christmas card by sending one of my own. I kept the message short:

You have a lovely family. I wish you every happiness for the coming year. All best . . .

Of course I wanted to ask him dozens of things: Are you happy? Do you like your work, your new country, your life? And do you ever sometimes think of me, us, and how the narrative of our now very separate lives would have been so profoundly different if . . . ?

“If.” The most charged word in the English language . . . especially when coupled with “only.”

As in: if only you hadn’t moved to Ireland, I wouldn’t have ended up for a while with David.

But I wanted to end up with David . . . even if I knew from the outset that it had no long-term future. Because ending up with David helped me end things with you.

Or, at least, that’s what I told myself at the time.

TWO

“THIS IS DANGEROUS,” David said.

“Only if we allow it to be dangerous,” I said.

“If anyone else finds out . . .”

“Is this your usual style of postcoital conversation . . . ?”

“I don’t make a habit of—”

“Sleeping with your students?”

“That’s right.”

“Never before?”

Pause. Then: “Once. Back in the early seventies when things weren’t so—”

“Politically correct?”

“I’m not totally self-destructive,” he said.

“Is this self-destructive?”

“I hope not.”

“Have a little faith in me, David. I know what I’m getting into here.”

“You sure about that?”

“So besides the one student back in the still-swinging seventies,” I said, changing the subject, “you’ve been completely faithful to Polly?”

“Hardly . . . considering that she stopped having sex with me back when Reagan was first elected president.”

“And the longest affair went on for . . . ?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I simply want to know everything about the man with whom I’m getting involved.”

“You know a lot about me already.”

That was true—as I had been working with David on my thesis for the last six months. At the outset of my time at Harvard, he showed himself to be a terrific adviser: sympathetic, but not touchy-feely; intellectually rigorous, but never pedantic; very clever, but someone who always avoided playing the bravura card. From the start, I was smitten. From the start I also knew that there was no way I would land myself in an involvement with my adviser. Nor, for that matter, did David flirt with me during those early months in Cambridge. In fact, up until Thanksgiving, our relationship was strictly student-teacher. Then I got the news from Dublin that Tom and I were no more. I vanished for a week, skipping classes, canceling my tutorials, venturing out only to buy food, and generally feeling miserable and sorry for myself. I found myself frequently bursting into tears in inappropriate places such as the supermarket or while returning library books. I’ve never been someone who has been comfortable with the idea of becoming emotional in public. Call it a reaction to that morning after my thirteenth birthday, when Mom blamed me for Dad’s departure. Though I ran upstairs and hid in my room, I couldn’t bring myself to cry at the unfairness of her accusation. Was that the moment I started thinking that to cry was to lose control? Certainly, Dad preached a doctrine of always keeping everything that was eating at you under wraps, “otherwise people will see your vulnerabilities and prey on them.” I heeded that advice—especially when it came to all ongoing emotional transactions with Mom—but still privately grappled with a huge sense of vulnerability. In the face of a setback or a loss I would always try to constrain my feelings—fearing what others might think if they saw me in such a weakened state. But inside, the wounds never really cauterized—which meant that, when Tom broke it off with me, the sense of loss was all the more acute. If your father is absent and your mother finds you wanting, you search for some sort of personal ballast in the world. And when that’s taken away . . .

Well, all I could do was hide for a while.

So when I left a message calling off a third consecutive meeting with David, he rang me at home and asked if there was anything wrong.

“Bad flu,” I said.

“Have you seen a doctor?” he asked.

“It’s not that sort of flu,” I heard myself saying.

I did make our next scheduled tutorial, in which we spent an hour discussing Frank Norris’s McTeague—which, as David noted, was an indictment not just of American cupidity, but also of early twentieth-century dentistry.

“But you didn’t need a dentist last week, did you?” he asked.

“Just sleep.”

“You sure you’re over it?”

That’s when I lowered my head and bit my lip and felt my eyes well up. David opened a drawer under his desk and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.

“When I was in graduate school,” he said, “my adviser told me that when I became a professor, I should always keep a bottle of whiskey in a filing cabinet . . . exactly for moments like this one.”

He poured us each two fingers of Scotch and handed me a glass.

“If you want to talk about it . . .” he said.

I did want to talk about it—and the story came out in a rush that took me by surprise, given my refusal to speak to anybody about such things, let alone my thesis adviser. At the end of it I heard myself saying: “. . . and I don’t really know why I’m taking it so hard, as I knew six months ago that this is how it would turn out. In fact I told him this last spring, when he decided that Dublin was his destiny. But he kept telling me—”

“Let me guess: ‘The last thing I want to do is leave you. It will only be eight months and then I’ll be back in your arms’?”

“Yes, words to that effect. And the thing is, I wanted to believe them.”

“That’s pretty damn understandable. If we don’t want to lose something . . . someone . . . we always want to believe the declarations of others, even if we privately doubt them. We all talk about how much we hate lies. Yet we prefer, so often, to be lied to . . . because it allows us to dodge all those painful truths we’d rather not hear.”

“I certainly didn’t want it to end.”

“Then why didn’t you follow him to Dublin?”

“Because I wanted to come here. And because I didn’t want to live in Dublin.”

“Or be tethered to his career?”

I felt myself tighten. David noticed this.

“Hey, there’s hardly anything wrong with not wanting to be in the shadow of someone . . . though have you ever thought about the fact that perhaps your fellow didn’t want to live in your shadow? Take it from me, men are very uncomfortable when they realize a woman is more accomplished than they are.”

I felt a blush spread across my face. “Please . . . I don’t take flattery very well.”

“I’m not trying to flatter you. I’m just pointing up the reality of the situation. Maybe everything was commensurate between you when you were both at college. But graduate school is another matter, because everyone’s looking ahead to their careers and the atmosphere gets just a little competitive and cutthroat. Though, of course, at Harvard we really disdain competitiveness . . .”

He shot me a mischievous smile, then added, “The hardest thing about a break-up is being the one who’s been left. It’s always better to do the leaving.”

He then directed the conversation back to the work at hand. In the coming weeks he made a point of not asking me anything more about the situation. Rather he simply opened our tutorials with the question: “How are things?” Though I could have told him I was still feeling extremely fragile about everything, I chose to say nothing. Because there was nothing more to say about it and I always hate sounding sorry for myself—even though it took several months before the sense of loss began to diminish.

And the very fact that my involvement with David only began around six months after Tom sent me his kiss-off letter meant that . . .

Well, what exactly did it mean? That David wasn’t an opportunistic sleaze who hit on me when I was feeling vulnerable and alone? That ours quickly became a serious relationship, as we had known each other for almost a year when we crossed that frontier between camaraderie and intimacy? Or that we both played a very long game with each other—as it was clear early on (to me anyway) that we were more than attracted to each other.

But he was my professor, he was married—and I couldn’t even contemplate entering that realm of clandestine adulterous mess, or assuming the grim role of the Other Woman. Bar that one moment when he got me talking about the break-up with Tom, we stayed on neutral ground with each other.

Until one late afternoon in mid-May—when we were in the middle of a tutorial discussion on Sherwood Anderson, and the phone rang. If the telephone started buzzing during one of our weekly sessions David would always ignore it. That day he tensed as soon as it began to ring, then reached for it, saying: “Have to take this . . .”

“Would you like me to leave?” I asked.

“No need . . .”

He reached for the phone, swiveled around in his chair so his back was to me, and started to talk in an agitated whisper.

“. . . Yeah, hi . . . look, I’ve got someone here . . . so what did the doctor say? . . . Well, he’s right, of course he’s right . . . don’t tell me I’m bullying you when I’m just . . . this is all down to you not taking the meds and then having these episodes . . . there’s no need to . . . all right, all right, I’m sorry, I’m . . . oh, Jesus, will you please . . . yes, I am getting angry, fucking angry . . . and I can’t take this, you . . .”

Suddenly he stopped talking—as if the conversation had been cut off. He sat in his chair, immobile, trying hard to keep his anger and upset in check. A good minute passed—during which David simply stared out the window. Finally I said: “Professor, maybe it’s best if I—”

“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have heard that.”

“I’ll go.”

He didn’t turn back toward me.

“OK,” he said.

When I saw him again the following week, he was all business—continuing our discussion of Sherwood Anderson. But at the end of the hour, he asked me if I was free for a beer.

Actually the “beer” turned out to be a martini in the bar of the Charles Hotel off Harvard Square. He drank his—gin, straight up, three olives—in around three gulps, and fished out a pack of cigarettes.

“Yes, I know it’s a disgusting habit—and yes, Gitanes are about as smelly and pretentious as they get—but I keep it down to ten a day, maximum.”

“Professor, I’m not a health fascist. Smoke away, please.”

“You must stop calling me professor.”

“But it’s what you are.”

“No, it’s simply my title. David is my name—and I insist that you use that in the future.”

“Fine,” I said, slightly surprised by the vehemence in his voice. So was David, as he immediately flagged down the waitress for a second martini and lit up another Gitane, even though he already had one balanced on the lip of the ashtray.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Sometimes these days I find myself—”

He stopped, then started again: “Have you ever been through a time when you found yourself so consumed with rage that—?”

Another pull on his Gitane.

“I shouldn’t be talking about all this,” he said.

“It’s OK, Professor . . . sorry, David. Talk away.”

Another long drag on his cigarette.

“My wife tried to kill herself two weeks ago. It’s the third time she’s tried to end it all this year.”

That’s when I first found out that—for all his professional accomplishment and high academic standing—David Henry had his own private hell. Her name was Polly Cooper. They’d been married over twenty years, and from the 1970s photographs of her I’d seen in his office, she’d been the quintessential thin, willowy beauty back then. When he met her, she’d just published a collection of short stories with Knopf and had also done a big Avedon photo shoot for Vogue. Back in 1971, the New York Times profiled her, calling her “impossibly beautiful and impossibly smart.” When David hooked up with her—fresh off his National Book Award triumph, fantastic reviews for his first novel, and his appointment, at the age of thirty, to a full Harvard professorship—they were deemed a golden couple, destined for further greatness.

“When I met Polly, it was such an instant coup de foudre for both of us that we were married within six months. A year after that, our son Charlie was born—and Polly went into this real tailspin within a few weeks of his arrival. She stopped sleeping, stopped eating, and eventually refused to even touch him, saying that she was certain she was going to mangle the child if she picked him up. It got so bad that, at one point, she went four straight days without sleep. That’s when I found her one night in the kitchen, prostrate on the floor, banging her head on the side of the stove.

“When the ambulance arrived, the guys on duty took one look at her and brought her straight to the psychiatric wing at Mass General. She was there for the next four months. What first seemed to be a serious case of postpartum depression was eventually diagnosed as a major bipolar disorder.”

Since then her mental health had been, at best, patchy. There was at least one major breakdown per year, followed by a period of relative calm. But she could never find the necessary creative energy to write another story, and the years of being medicated had taken their toll on her physical health and her looks.

“If it’s been that awful,” I asked, “why didn’t you hit the self-preservation button and leave her?”

“I tried to do that over a decade ago. I’d met this other woman, Anne, a violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It got serious very fast. Polly—for all her manic moments—still could whiff a lie. When I seemed to be spending several afternoons a week away from the university, she hired a detective . . . who got photographs of me going in and out of the violinist’s apartment in Back Bay and the two of us holding hands in some nearby restaurant. God, clandestine details are so banal.”

“Was it love with you and the violinist?”

“I certainly thought so. And so did Anne. But then I came home one evening to discover the detective’s eight-by-tens of me flung around the living room and Polly in the bathtub, her wrists slashed. She barely had a pulse. The medics had to give her over five pints of blood to stabilize her. She spent another three months in the psychiatric wing.

“Our son, Charlie—who was ten at the time—told me I couldn’t leave. You see, he came home from school around a minute after I had found his mother. I tried to stop him from coming into the bathroom, but he burst in anyway and saw his mother naked, floating in bloody water. After that . . .”

After that, Charlie closed down for a very long time, becoming withdrawn and gloomy. He crashed and burned at a series of schools. As he stumbled deeper into adolescence, he also discovered hallucinogenic drugs—and was ejected from one school for that perennial “bad trip” stunt: trying to set fire to his bed. They tried a more progressive school, they tried a tough-love military academy, they even tried having him tutored at home (he trashed his room). Eventually, the son of two rather brilliant people ran away on the eve of his seventeenth birthday. He wasn’t found for another two years—during which time David went through over a quarter of a million dollars (“my entire inheritance from my father”) trying to find him. He was eventually discovered living in a hostel for the destitute off Pioneer Square in Seattle.

“The good news was that he wasn’t HIV positive and hadn’t drifted into anything horrible like prostitution. The bad news was that he was quickly diagnosed as schizophrenic.”

For the last three years, he’d been living in a managed care facility near Worcester. “It’s depressing, but at least he’s in a place where he can’t harm himself.”

Meanwhile his mother had somehow managed to find a way back to a reasonably sane place. So much so that—after a fifteen-year silence—a slender book of stories was published by a small university press.

“They probably sold no more than five hundred copies—but, for her, it was a huge victory. And what was wonderful was the way Polly seemed to rally and become, once again, the smart and beautiful woman I married. But these interludes were just that—momentary respites from the full onslaught of her craziness.”

The ongoing fragility of his wife and son had a side effect, as David found it difficult to get back to his own books. The first novel had cascaded out of him “like a geyser—once I started I simply couldn’t stop. The story was my story, even though it was all heavily disguised. Every day that I sat down to write, it all came without hesitation, without a moment of doubt. It was as if I was on some sort of autopilot—and it was, without question, a six-month period when I sensed what real happiness is about.”

“What is it actually about?” I asked.

“Believing that you have been spirited away—for even just a few short hours every day—from all the crap of life, all that quotidian shit which clogs up everything and sends you hurtling toward despair.”

“Remind me not to bump into you with a hangover.”

“You can bump into me anytime.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence after this comment was uttered. I stared down into my martini, my cheeks reddening. David realized that his comment could be interpreted as provocative, and immediately tried to cover his tracks.

“What I meant by that was . . .” he said.

I covered his hand with mine.

“Shut up,” I whispered.

I left my hand there for the next half hour—as he talked more about “the Gordian Knot” that was his second novel—how it simply wouldn’t flow the way the debut book did; how he knew from the outset it was overwrought and overworked. So he turned his attention to the big Melville biography for which he had received a considerable advance from Knopf. But again, he couldn’t find the mental space he needed to get on with the work.

I listened to all this with a growing sense of amazement and privilege. After all, this was David Henry confiding in me. Not just confiding in me, but also letting me keep my hand on his. I felt like an idiotic schoolgirl—yet one who didn’t want to pull back and play by the rules of propriety. A wildly cerebral and attractive man in pain is—I was discovering—such an aphrodisiac.

“Had I been a proper novelist,” he said, “I would have found a way, despite all the domestic chaos, of still writing. Because real writers write. They find a way of somehow shoving aside all the other detritus and getting on with it. Whereas I was always trying to be the great polymath: academic, novelist, biographer, media darling, talk-show bullshit artist, crap husband, crap father . . .”

“David . . . stop,” I said, now grasping his hand tightly.

“This is what happens when I drink. I become Pagliacci—the sad, pathetic clown.”

He suddenly stood up and threw some money on the table and said he had to go. I reached again for his hand, but he pulled it away.

“Don’t you know there are rules against such things these days?” he hissed. “Don’t you know the trouble you could land me in?”

He sat down. He put his face in his hands. He said: “I’m so sorry . . .”

“Let’s get you home.”

I guided him out of the bar toward the front entrance of the hotel. He was very subdued and said nothing as he got into the cab and muttered his address. When it drove off, I returned to the bar and finished my half-drunk martini and tried to mull over what had just happened. What surprised me was that I wasn’t horrified or offended by the show that David had just put on. If anything I suddenly saw all the contradictions he was living with—the private grief behind the public face—and how it had so changed the contours of his own life. We always admire people from afar, especially those who have accomplished so much with their lives. But listening to David vent his anger and frustration also got me thinking: nobody gets away lightly in life. And the moment you think you’ve arrived is the moment that it all goes wrong.

As I downed the last drops of the martini, another thought struck me: David was everything I was looking for in a man. Brilliant, original, seductive, vulnerable. I wanted him—even though I also knew I was stupidly smitten and straying into dangerous terrain. But though I was more than willing to give in to intoxication, I was also determined not to create havoc. Just as I also knew that this would not start between us until David let it be known he wanted it to start between us.

I didn’t have to wait long for that signal. Around nine the next morning, the phone rang at my little apartment in Somerville.

“This is your shamefaced professor,” he said quietly.

“You mean you’ve decided I can no longer call you David?”

“I’ve decided I’m a horse’s ass—and I hope you won’t think I was being—”

“I thought you were just being human, David.”

That comment gave him pause.

“And I also appreciated the fact that you decided to confide in me.”

“So you’re not going to approach the head of the department—”

“And report you for harassment? You didn’t harass me, David. And I was the one who took your hand.”

“I was thinking more that you might not want to work with me again.”

“Now you do sound hungover.”

“Guilty as charged. Could I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“Why not? But as I’m finishing up some work, could you maybe stop by here?”

And I gave him the address.

When he arrived half an hour later, the cup of coffee was quickly forgotten. As soon as he was inside the door we were all over each other.

Afterward he turned to me and said, “This is dangerous.”

“Only if we allow it to be dangerous,” I said.

“If anyone else finds out . . .”

“Is this your usual style of postcoital conversation . . . ?”

“I don’t make a habit of—”

“Sleeping with your students?”

“That’s right.”

And that’s when we had our little conversation about his past flings, culminating in him telling me that I asked a lot of questions.

“There’s one thing you have to know from the outset—that is, if this thing between us is to carry on beyond today. There is no future for this as anything more than an arrangement, a little adventure. So I’m never going to play the clichéd other woman who becomes increasingly possessive and psychotic. But I will demand that you’re always straight with me. If you ever want to hit the escape button, tell me. You’re not to string me along.”

“You’ve evidently thought this out beforehand,” he said.

“So have you.”

“Are you always so rational?”

“If I was rational I wouldn’t be in this bed right now.”

“Good point,” he said.

That’s how it started. And yes, from the outset, I did take an ultrarational approach to our “adventure.” I knew that, by remaining rational, I could insulate myself against any disappointment or heartache that might attend our involvement. The thing was, I knew I’d fallen in love with David Henry, and that elated and scared me. Because the central problem with falling in love with a married man is . . .

Well, you can fill in the blank.

Of course I knew I was playing the other woman. Just as we both knew that if word ever got out about our little arrangement, it would be the end of David’s career and would possibly also result in my expulsion from the doctoral program. (“They’d probably see you as the victim,” David once noted, “and would still let you go for getting preferential treatment from your thesis adviser.”) What this meant was that I couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell anybody. Not Sara Crowe—a very patrician, somewhat grand but witty New Englander who was working on a doctorate on American Puritanism. Sara was someone who was massively well connected. She held a salon every Sunday night at her apartment off Brattle Street where a Who’s Who of Harvard (or anyone of importance visiting Cambridge that weekend) always seemed to be in attendance, and after we’d met at an on-campus symposium on Emily Dickinson she decided I was interesting enough to be asked over for dinner occasionally. But she was certainly not someone to whom I would have confided anything.

Nor did I even say anything to Christy Naylor—and she was the one truly close friend I’d made during my first year at graduate school.

Christy was from Maine—and had so goofed off in high school that she had ended up at the State University in Orono. While there she suddenly turned into this academic star (“Largely because the men were so boring”), graduating summa cum laude in English and, like me, getting the all-expenses-paid package to Harvard. Her specialty was American modernist poetry, especially Wallace Stevens, whom she considered a near-deity. She herself had also begun to get the occasional poem published in small magazines and journals. A self-proclaimed “backwoods girl” from Lewiston, Maine—“the shithole of New England”—she was someone who thought nothing about smoking forty cigarettes a day and getting drunk on cheap beer. But start her talking about the metric intricacies of one of Pound’s Cantos or the use of pentameter in Williams’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and she demonstrated an intellectual acuity that was nothing short of dazzling. Her own work also mirrored the high modernism of the poets she so admired.

“The problem with me,” she said one night when we were out drinking, “is that, when it comes to art and men, I always go after the most complicated, difficult person in the room.”

The fact that she was somewhat overweight—and that exercise or even the most marginally healthy diet were anathema to her—lent her an added allure: the redneck intellectual who looked as though she’d just walked out of a trailer park, but nevertheless managed to always have some preppy guy named Winthrop Holmes III chasing after her.

“I think they see me as rough trade, whereas the fact is: I like rough trade. Or crazies. Whereas you—the Patron Saint of Self-Restraint with your damnable inability to put on weight . . .”

“It’s not for want of trying.”

“Yeah, you’re just some goddamn ectomorph—and pretty to boot.”

“I’m hardly pretty.”

“You would say that, given your talent for self-deprecation. But take it from me, guys find you easy on the eye.”

David told me the same thing on several occasions, commenting how he often saw me frown when I looked in the mirror, as if I didn’t like what I saw there.

“I’ve always had a thing against mirrors,” I said.

“Well, you’re hardly a plain Jane,” he said. “More from the Audrey Hepburn school of—”

“Oh, please . . .”

“Even Professor Hawthorden—the chairman of the Harvard English Department—noted the resemblance.”

“My hair is longer than hers.”

“And you have the same patrician cheekbones and radiant skin and—”

“Stop, now,” I said.

“You can’t take a compliment, can you?” David said with a small smile.

I don’t trust them, I felt like telling him, but instead said: “You’re simply biased.”

“That I am. And what’s wrong with that?”

Take it from me, guys find you easy on the eye.

I looked back up at Christy and just shook my head.

“One of these days you’re going to actually start liking yourself,” she continued. “Maybe then you’ll start putting on just a little makeup and stop dressing like some tour guide in the Rockies.”

“Maybe I don’t care about style.”

“Maybe you should stop playing the rigid, self-protective card at all times. I mean, shit, Jane . . . it’s graduate school. You’re supposed to drink too much and start dressing like an intellectual slut, and be sleeping with a lot of unappetizing and inappropriate guys.”

“I wish I had your epicurean attitude to such things,” I said.

“Epicurean? I’m just a slob and a nympho. But come on, you’ve got to have some guy stashed somewhere.”

I shook my head.

“Why don’t I believe you?” she asked.

“You tell me,” I said.

“Maybe because—one—I sense you have a secret lover, but—two—you’re so damn controlled and disciplined that you’re keeping his identity secret, because—three—he’s somebody you don’t want anyone to know you’re involved with.”

I worked hard at putting on my best poker face—and concealing the fact that I was quietly terrified that she might know something about David and myself.

“You have a very vivid imagination,” I said.

“You’re seeing someone on the side.”

“But as I’m not married . . .”

“You’re the thing on the side, sweetheart.”

“Again, I admire your ability to conjure up—”

“Goddamn it, Jane—I am your friend, right? And as your friend, I think I deserve to know all the salacious details . . . just as you know all of mine.”

“But if there aren’t any salacious details to report . . .”

“You are impossible.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Told, in fact, by my very own mother on many occasions during adolescence when I wouldn’t share details of my own life with her. As Mom didn’t have much life outside of our own life she was frequently bothered by the way I didn’t tell her things, and seemed to keep so much to myself. Part of this was a reaction to her need to be all-interested in everything about me—to the point where she was downright overbearing. Now, of course, I see the very personal despair—the loneliness and isolation and sense of having been cast-off by my father—that made her turn her energies on to me as her very own Grand Project, who would achieve in life everything that had been denied to her. So, back in high school, every homework assignment, every book I read, every movie I saw, every mark I received on an exam, every guy who ever asked me out on a date (not that there were many of them) became something for her to scrutinize.

It all became too much. My mother had turned into a micromanager—trying desperately to make certain I sidestepped as many potential pitfalls and mistakes as possible. By the time I reached college, I had become so much more private, so guarded, that the landscape between us had changed irrevocably. She inquired less about my life and checked herself whenever she was about to veer into the meddlesome. On the surface, we were still pleasant enough with each other—and I did let her in on the basic superficial stuff in my life. But she knew that we were no longer close.

Yes, I felt terrible about this—especially as I knew that, for Mom, it was further proof that she could “do nothing right.”

But perhaps the most telling exchange we ever had about all this was after the break-up with Tom. It was Christmas. I was back home in Connecticut, and I hadn’t mentioned anything yet to her about the phone call I had received from him before Thanksgiving. Naturally, on my first night back, she asked me if “my future son-in-law” would be arriving on December 26th (as he always had done in the past).

“I’m afraid Tom will be spending Christmas with his future in-laws in Ireland.”

Mom looked at me as if I had just spoken to her in Serbo-Croat.

“What did you just say?”

“Tom met someone in Ireland—a medical student. They’re an item now . . . and we’re not.”

“And when did this happen?”

I told her. She turned white.

“And you waited this long to tell me.”

“I needed time.”

“Time to do what, Jane? If you haven’t forgotten, I’m your mother—and though you may have pushed me to one side—”

“I call twice, three times a week, I show up for every major holiday—”

“And you keep all the big stuff in your life hidden from me.”

Silence. Then I said: “This is the way I have to do things.”

“But why? Why?”

We can rarely tell others what we really think about them—not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves. The gentle lie is often preferable to the bleak truth. So in answer to her demand, “But why? Why?” I simply met my mother’s maimed gaze and said: “It’s my problem, Mom . . . not yours.”

“You’re just saying that to keep me quiet, to let yourself off the hook.”

“Let myself off the hook for what?”

“For being such a closed book. Just like your father.”

Dad. I so wanted his approval, his interest. But he always remained elusive, distant, beyond my reach. He was now living full-time in South America—and, from the sporadic, quarterly phone calls I received from him, I knew he was shacked up with a much younger woman, and little else beyond that. But I still adopted his closed-book way of dealing with the world. Maybe I was subliminally trying to please him—“See, Dad, I can be just like you . . .” Or maybe the distance I kept between myself and others was simply a modus vivendi, because it kept so much chaos at bay and because it meant I knew how to guard against intrusion or prying eyes or even a cross-examination by my best friend.

“You are impossible,” Christy Naylor said.

“So I’ve been told.”

“You know what the big difference between us is?”

“Enlighten me.”

“I reveal everything, you reveal nothing.”

“A secret remains a secret until you tell somebody. From that moment on, it’s in the public domain.”

“If you don’t trust anyone, don’t you end up feeling lonely?”

Ouch. That was a direct hit—a real right-to-the-jaw. But I tried not to show it and instead said: “Everything has a price.”

But the harboring of secrets also has its virtues. Not a single person ever knew of my involvement with David Henry . . . and we were together for four years. We would have probably been together longer—in fact, I often think that we might still be together right now—had he not died.

THREE

FOUR YEARS WITH David Henry.

Considered now, it all seemed to pass in a fast, heady rush. That’s the tricky thing about time. When you’re living it on a daily basis, it can seem impossibly slow—the routine grind making you believe that the distance between Monday and the weekend is a vast one, riddled with longueurs. But regarded retrospectively, it always appears hypercharged. A click of two fingers and you have left childhood and are trying to negotiate adolescence. Click—and you’re in college, pretending to be a grown-up and yet still so wildly unsure of yourself. Click—and you’re doing a doctorate and meeting your professor three afternoons a week to make love in your apartment. Click—and forty-eight months have passed. Click—and David dies. Suddenly, randomly, without premonition. A man of fifty-six, without what is known as “medical issues,” goes out for a bike ride and . . .

As David so often noted, the prosaic always forces its way into everything we do. We fool ourselves into thinking we are extraordinary. Even if we are one of the lucky ones who do extraordinary things, commonplace realities inevitably barge in. “And the most commonplace reality,” David once said, “is the one we fear the most: death.”

Four years. And because we were “operating in the arena of the clandestine” (another of my favorite David quotes), we were able to sidestep so many banalities. When you set up house with somebody you’re bound to find yourself falling into the usual petty disputes about domestic minutiae and personal idiosyncrasies. But when you’re meeting the man you love from four to seven, three times a week—and are denied access to him at all other times—the hours you spend together take on a heightened reality . . . because, of course, they’re so unreal to begin with.

“If we lived together,” I said to David a few months after it all started, “the letdown would be huge.”

“That’s a decidedly unromantic thing to say.”

“Actually, it’s a decidedly romantic thing to say. I don’t have to find out whether or not you floss your teeth, or kick dirty underwear under the bed, or only take out the garbage when cockroaches start to crawl out of—”

“ ‘No’ to all of the above.”

“Delighted to know that. Mind you, judging from your near-perfect personal hygiene when you’re over here—”

“Ah, but maybe I’m just on my best behavior during our afternoons together.”

“And if you were with me all the time . . . ?”

Pause. I could see how that question made him instantly uncomfortable.

“The thing is . . .” he finally said.

“Yes?”

“I pine for a life with you.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“But it’s the truth. I want to be with you every damn hour of the day.”

“But you can’t, for all sorts of evident reasons. So why, why? Tell me that.”

“Because I find it very difficult leaving you, leaving here, and returning to . . .”

“All that you don’t want, but refuse to walk away from. Isn’t that known as a paradox? Especially as I handle the situation. That’s my pragmatism. And it bothers you, because I make no demands on you. Would you rather an insane harpy who lies in wait for you outside your house, who threatens to report you to the dean of the faculty if you fail to meet a liaison or decide to end things?”

“I’d never end things.”

“That’s nice to hear. But I might if you keep on talking about this—us—and how painful it is to say goodbye to me after our afternoons together. It simply makes me think you’re doing the usual male thing of trying to explain away your guilt and your need to vacillate. And David, the thing is: you’re smarter than that.”

To his credit, he never brought up the subject again. Perhaps the reason why I got so harsh with him for talking about it in the first place was because I was so damn crazy about him. And knew if he continued to hint about wanting to end things with his wife and set up house with me . . .

Well, the sense of expectation would have been unbearable, coupled with the knowledge that, at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, he would have found a way of backing out of our life together. Because David could never come to terms with that which he wanted and that which he felt he couldn’t abandon.

Four years with David Henry.

We were very adept at divorcing our life outside Harvard from the one we had within the university. Whenever I came to David’s office for our weekly thesis meetings, it was business as usual between us. Though a knowing smile would occasionally pass between us, we both made it a point to treat these professional meetings as just that—and never even bring up the next rendez-vous chez moi. Similarly, if I ever saw David at a campus event, I would always call him “Professor” and behave in a relatively formal manner. Just as I was rigorous about getting him to cover his own tracks, so his wife wouldn’t get suspicious about all his absences. That’s when I suggested he tell her that he was writing in his office during our afternoons together—and invest in an answering machine that he would turn on before leaving for my place, but which he could access remotely. Having told Polly that he would be working for these hours—and that the answering machine was on—he had his alibi.

This ruse worked. After plaguing him for a couple of weeks, Polly bought the lie. He was “moving forward” on the novel he’d been threatening to write for the past decade . . .

But, on one level, he was telling the truth. In order to cover his hours with me—and to prove to Polly that he was writing—he started getting to his office most mornings by eight and turning out a page of his book (he was a very slow writer) before his first class at eleven.

It took him over two years to finish it. He never talked about its contents—except to say that it was set in the 1960s and had a somewhat experimental structure. He wouldn’t show it to me for several months after finishing the first draft. Even then, he seemed hesitant, especially as his agent was getting quite a number of passes from the major New York publishing houses to which it had been submitted.

“They’re all saying it’s too damn out-there,” he told me after the sixth rejection rolled in.

“Well, any time you want an outside opinion . . .” I said.

“I’ll let you read it after it’s accepted.”

“You know, David, it doesn’t matter to me whether some publisher has given it the thumbs-down.”

“Let’s just see what happens,” he said, sounding very much as though he didn’t want to be pressed further about it.

Finally, after months of thumbs-down, a small but highly respected publisher, the Pentameter Press, gave David’s novel the thumbs-up. He showed up at my apartment that day with champagne and a wonderful gift: a first edition of H. L. Mencken’s A Little Book in C Major, which contained one of my favorite of his aphorisms: “Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that somebody may be looking.”

“That edition must have cost you a fortune,” I said to David, after telling him just what a fantastic surprise it was.

“That’s my worry.”

“You’re far too generous.”

“No, you’re far too generous—on all levels.”

“So . . . this novel of yours. Do I get to read the damn thing now?” I asked.

He hesitated for a moment, then said: “All right . . . but you must take the whole thing with a Lot’s-wife-sized grain of salt.”

He wouldn’t elaborate on this point, but it did raise my suspicions that he’d been writing some sort of a roman à clef in which our relationship played a certain role. The very fact that he had been so tight-lipped about it heightened my concerns, as did the way he gave me the manuscript during our next afternoon together: literally pulling it out of his shoulder bag just before leaving, placing it on a kitchen counter, and saying nothing more about it except: “See you Friday.”

The novel was entitled Forty-Nine Parallels. It was quite a short book—two hundred and six pages of double-spaced manuscript—and quite a long read. Ostensibly it was the story of a man in late middle age—simply referred to as “the Writer”—who is driving across Canada (hence the play on the Forty-ninth Parallel) to see a brother who’s had a nervous breakdown while doing some property deal in Vancouver. The brother is rich. The Writer teaches in a middling university in Montreal. He has a wife—referred to always as “Wife” (no definite article)—whom he no longer loves, and who keeps talking about seeing “Visions of the Divine.” The Writer has been having an affair with a younger writer, known only as “She.” She is a young professor at McGill—brilliant, self-contained, willing to be his mistress, but unwilling to handle his “emotional dynamite.” The Writer adores her because he knows that, though he can “have” her, he still can’t have her . . .

Though the basis of the story might sound linear and conventional (adultery and disaffection among the intelligentsia), David’s narrative—or perhaps his antinarrative—completely obliterated all accessible elements in the story. Instead what we had was a sort of extended interior monologue as the Writer points his “venerable, but fading” VW Karmann Ghia in a westerly direction and negotiates the “Great Elongated Nowhere” that is the Canadian prairies. The Writer—suffering from guilt, depression, “the nihilism of the everyday, the illusory exhilaration of escape”—drives and thinks about the two women in his life in an extended stream-of-consciousness way. There was a lot of tortured imagery, not to mention three-page-long sentences describing the “mesmeric nothingness of the plains,” and (now this was interesting) “the peach-compote tang of the cunt of She.”

Working my way through it—and it was most definitely work—I didn’t have the shock of recognition that I feared. David did not reinvent our relationship per se. No, what surprised me the most about Forty-Nine Parallels was its inherent badness. It was deliberately obscurantist, making the reader struggle to maintain some sort of comprehension of the Writer’s stream of consciousness; his wild shifts in cognitive direction; his endless digressions on everything from Wittgenstein to Tim Hortons doughnuts.

To say that it was a curious experience reading David’s novel would be to engage in understatement. I was genuinely thrown by it. You think you know someone so well. Through all your conversations about life and art and the stuff that matters and the stuff that doesn’t matter—and through the intimacies of love—you think you’re pretty damn certain what is churning around in his head; how he reacts to things and sees the world. And then . . . then . . . he turns around and writes something so defiantly weird and unsettling . . . though, at least, it was somewhat of a relief to discover that She bore little relation to me.

And now I was dreading our next rendezvous. Because he would ask what I thought—and there was no way that I was going to tiptoe around this one. It was too big, too primal to avoid. I had to tell him the truth.

But when he showed up that Friday, he didn’t mention the book at all. Instead, we fell into bed. My ardor was even more intense than usual, perhaps due to the guilt I was feeling about so hating his novel. We lounged in bed afterward and he talked at length about a new biography of Emily Dickinson that he had been asked to review for Harper’s, and how Dickinson’s rigorous virginity so informed her worldview, and how “After Great Pain” remained one of the benchmark poems of American literature and . . .

“Don’t you want to know what I thought of the book, David?” I asked.

“I know that already. In fact, I knew what you were going to think of it before you even read the first page. That’s why I was so reluctant to give it to you.”

“So you wrote it knowing I would hate it?”

“Do I detect a hostile tone in your voice, Jane?”

“I’m just baffled by it, that’s all.”

“I never knew you were such a creative conservative.”

“Oh, please. Give me credit for a little more literary sophistication than that. Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury is easy to read. James Joyce’s Ulysses is hard to read. The thing that binds them together is engagement. It doesn’t matter how facile or taxing a novel is—as long as it engages the reader.”

“Which mine obviously didn’t for you.”

“Its density is overwhelming; its intentional ellipticism maddening. And then, when you write a line like ‘the peach-compote tang of the cunt of She’ . . . I mean, David, really . . .”

“You know, Polly thinks it’s a masterpiece.”

That comment landed like a slap in the face. He went on.

“And, for some time, she’d been pushing me to make a radical break with traditional narrative structure.”

“So, to her, it’s a phenomenal novel.”

“Her praise bothers you, doesn’t it?”

That’s because I didn’t trust it and because I sensed that Polly exerted pressure on David to go all hypermodern as a way of curbing his success, holding back his once-brilliant career being one of her major preoccupations. Just as I sensed that David—guilty about her depression and about having a long-standing affair with yours truly—wanted to do something to please her. Since he was telling her that he was writing this book while actually making love to me three afternoons a week, well, why not assuage the guilt by doing her bidding and by scaling the thorny edifice of high literary modernism? The wife wins on all fronts. She’s gotten her man to reject popular success for aesthetic marginality. She can call herself David’s amanuensis. Best of all, she can damage him—because I knew that, once the book came out and vanished without a trace, David would have another crisis of creative confidence and wonder if he ever had it in him to write fiction again.

This entire train of thought swirled in and out of my head in a matter of seconds. Even though I could see the ultimate denouement of this story, I felt powerless to articulate anything. To speak my mind would be to lose him. So instead I said: “David . . . as you predicted, it’s not my sort of novel. I’m pleased that Polly so rates it. And let’s face facts—I could be wrong about it.”

That was the closest we ever came to a moment of real conflict—and, typical me, I defused it before it could blow up into something terrible and honest. He left that afternoon with the manuscript. Months passed. We continued to have our three afternoons a week. As the late-January publication date approached, David finally did start communicating his nervousness about the novel’s possible reception.

“Well, one thing you must know already,” I said, “is that high modernism has always divided people. So you will undoubtedly get wildly divisive reactions to it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

As it turned out, my worst-case scenario came true. Because it was David Henry’s first novel after such a long period of silence—and because Pentameter Press was such a respected publisher—it received an extensive amount of critical attention. And with one or two exceptions, he was slaughtered. The Atlantic was the first review out—and their critic (who was a self-confessed David admirer) pronounced himself baffled as to why he had “slammed the door on his talent as a hip comic novelist with such shrewd compassion” to write such “nonsensical contortions.” The New Yorker limited its appraisal to a paragraph on its “New and Noteworthy” page: “A campus novelist decides he’s going to out-Finnegan Joyce—on a Canadian highway no less! The result is a novel that reads like a parody of the French nouveau roman . . . though it’s dubious whether any French nouveau roman had so many references to pudenda and maple-glazed doughnuts . . . which, we think, is something of a fictional first . . .”

But it was the New York Times that really trashed him. Their critic—I won’t even mention her name, I am still so enraged by her thoroughgoing vindictiveness—wasn’t simply content to damn the novel for its obvious flaws. Instead she had to use it as a platform to trawl through David’s two previous novels and proclaim that his once-touted brilliance was merely a “shabby veneer which allowed him to con a willing public into believing that he was the pumped pectoral polymath of every Radcliffe girl’s dreams . . . whereas close scrutiny of his limited and limiting oeuvre show him to be a second-rate intellect who, in true American huckster style, has conned his way into the upper echelons of the academy . . . and now has the arrogance to think that he can play antinarrative games and not get found out. If this absurd enterprise of a novel demonstrates anything, it’s that David Henry deserves to be finally found out.”

There are moments when the cruelty of others is simply breathtaking. I read the review in a little café on Brattle Street. As I worked my way through it, I found it difficult to fathom its all-out sadism. All right, David had written a bad book. But to totally decimate his reputation; to call him a fraud in all departments . . .

After putting the review down, I broke one of the long-standing rules I had with David—showing up at his office any time but the arranged hour for our weekly advisory meeting on my thesis. When I got there, the door was closed and there was a notice taped to the door in his own scrawly handwriting:

I Will Be Unavailable Today.

He was due to come by my apartment that afternoon. It was the first time he missed a rendezvous—and he left no message on my answering machine. I couldn’t ring him at home, but I did leave a very neutral, correct message for him on his office voice mail: “Professor, it’s Jane Howard. I need to speak with you about a scheduling problem this week. If you could please call me . . .” I got no reply.

Two, three days went by. His office remained shuttered, the note—I Will Be Unavailable Today—still undisturbed on his door. I was growing increasingly worried and frantic, especially as another hammer blow had landed on David in the days after the Times review. A writer with New York working for their “Intelligencer” section, their upscale gossip pages, had been tracking the acidic reception of Forty-Nine Parallels and decided to see if there were any antecedents to David’s novel. Lo and behold, he discovered that one of the benchmark works of the French nouveau roman, Michel Butor’s La Modification, was a stream-of-consciousness account of a writer traveling between Paris and Rome on some trans-Europe express and musing at length about his wife and his mistress.

“Yes, Professor Henry does make a passing reference to La Modification in his exceedingly obscurantist tome,” wrote the uncredited New York journalist, “as his narrator does talk about writing a book that ‘would out-Butor Butor.’ But this one buried reference does not really exempt Henry from the charge of essentially transposing the entire structural and thematic idea of someone else’s novel onto his own. Or perhaps the good Professor has a deconstructionist theory about this case of High Modernist Reappropriation . . . also known in plainer English as Plagiarism.”

As soon as I read this, I rushed out to the Harvard Coop to buy an English translation of Butor’s novel. Like Forty-Nine Parallels, it was dense, elliptical, and very much an “in-his-head” form of narration. But beyond the basic premise, the two books couldn’t have been more disparate. So what if they had obvious similarities in terms of the man-on-a-journey-caught-between-two-women setup. Every piece of literature is, in some form or another, a reinvention of someone else’s previous work. Only a vindictive hack journalist—out to debase and wound a talented man—would equate an evident homage with plagiarism.

I tried ringing David again at his office. I even called the department secretary, Mrs. Cathcart. Again using very neutral language I said that, if she was speaking to Professor Henry, would she please tell him that I felt the plagiarism charge was completely preposterous.

Mrs. Cathcart—who was around sixty and had been the department’s secretary since the early 1970s—cut me off.

“I’m afraid the university doesn’t think it preposterous, as Professor Henry was suspended today while a faculty committee examines the charges against—”

“But that’s ridiculous. I’ve read the other novel and there is no plagiarism charge to answer.”

“That is your interpretation, Miss Howard,” Mrs. Cathcart said. “The Faculty Affairs Committee will—”

“Crucify him, because he has so many enemies on that—”

Again she cut me off. “If you want to help Professor Henry, I wouldn’t make such statements public. It might cause people to speculate.”

“Speculate what?” I asked.

But she didn’t answer that, except to say: “I gather Professor Henry has gone to ground and left Cambridge. You could call his wife, if you so wish.”

Was there an undercurrent of malice to that comment? Was she letting me know, “I’m on to you”? But we had been so damn careful, so completely circumspect. Surely she was just being her usual devious self—as she was notorious in the department for always making others feel uncomfortable.

“Do you have his home number?” Mrs. Cathcart asked.

“No.”

“I’m surprised you don’t know it, having worked so closely with the professor for the past four years.”

“I never call him at home.”

“I see,” she said with a hint of ice. And I ended the call.

I immediately rang David’s home number. There was no reply and the answering machine wasn’t on. Had Polly gone with him to Maine? He had a little cottage there outside of Bath in which we never stayed, as it was in a very small village with “all-seeing, all-knowing neighbors.” If Polly had gone there with him and if I showed up . . .

But if he was alone in Maine . . .

Part of me wanted to rent a car and drive straight up there. But the cautious side of me counseled against such rash action—not just because Polly might be up there with him, but also because I sensed (or, at least, hoped) that David would make contact with me when he needed me.

But there was no contact, no sign from him of his whereabouts or his state of mind. A day went by, then two, then three. I called his home number three times a day. No answer. I checked in again with Mrs. Cathcart. “No one knows his whereabouts,” was all that she would say. I called Christy and met her for more than several drinks, a night out with Christy always being an excuse to get hammered. She had lots of inside departmental gossip, and told me that at least three of David’s colleagues (she had their names) had approached the dean of the faculty, demanding that David be dismissed for professional misconduct, and had been assured that, if the plagiarism charges were authenticated, the dean would be backing them.

“There is a group of very bitter shits in the department,” Christy said, “who have always wanted to bring the guy down. This resentment goes back to the seventies when they were all starting out together and Professor Henry was perceived to be too flashy and celebrated by these already-gray assholes. And they’ve also always hated his popularity with just about every student he’s worked with. So now they’re having their schadenfreude moment and are just delighted to see him fighting for his professional life.”

“I’m pretty certain he’s gone to his place in Maine.”

“If that’s the case, he’s on his own up there.”

“How do you know that?” I said, sounding just a little surprised.

“Because Mrs. Cathcart told me that, when the shit hit the fan, Henry’d had a big blowup with his wife—accused her of talking him into writing such a drecky novel, told her she’d always been doing her best to sabotage his career.”

Oh, Jesus.

“How did Cathcart hear all this?”

“Madame Henry told her. It seems that Crazy Polly frequently calls that crusty old bitch to vent about her wayward husband. And Cathcart encourages her—because, hey, information is power, right?”

“Well, why did that ‘bitch’ then tell me that I should call David’s wife to find his whereabouts?”

“Because she likes to play head games, that’s why. And because—like everyone else in the department—she suspects that you and the professor have been romantically involved for quite a long time.”

The news made me flinch. They knew. Everyone knew.

“That’s total nonsense,” I said.

“I figured that would be your response,” replied Christy. “That’s why, as much as I like you, I can’t really call you a friend. And that’s not just the booze talking. But you know this—”

“I know there’s a lot of stupid innuendo that simply isn’t true.”

“And I know that I’m outta here,” she said, throwing some money down on the table, “because I’m not going to sit here and be lied to.”

“I am not lying,” I slurred, all that vodka and beer elongating my words and emboldening me to trumpet my innocence.

“This conversation is over,” Christy said. “But do your man a favor. As soon as you wake up tomorrow, get a car and get up to him in Maine. He needs you.”

I don’t remember giving the cab driver my address, or paying him or negotiating the stairs up to my apartment, or getting out of my clothes and collapsing onto the bed. What I do remember is waking with a start around eight and cursing myself for having gotten so smashed. I didn’t even want to get into the ramifications of what Christy had said last night—not just about my untruthfulness with her (guilty as charged), but about the appalling realization that there had been much departmental speculation regarding my nonprofessional relationship with David.

I got out of the arctic shower. I put on some clothes. I made a pot of coffee and called Avis and arranged to pick up a car at their Cambridge location in half an hour. I downed two Alka-Seltzer followed by two scalding mugs of coffee. I was about to start throwing some things in an overnight bag when the intercom began to buzz.

David!

I went running downstairs. But when I yanked open the door, Christy was standing there. From the way she looked at me—a mixture of distress and fear—I could tell immediately that something was terribly wrong.

“Can we go upstairs?” she asked.

We climbed the stairs and entered my apartment. I switched off the coffeemaker, then turned back to the doorway. Christy was standing there, five fingers wrapped around the door handle, as if she was preparing to make a break for it.

That’s when I knew. From the moment her frightened face was revealed outside my front door . . . I knew.

“David?” I asked in a near-whisper.

She nodded slowly. Then: “He was knocked down and killed by a car yesterday.”

It took a moment or two to register. I found myself gripping the side of the stove. The world grew very quiet, very small. Christy continued talking, but I wasn’t aware of her anymore.

“He was on a bicycle down by a beach near his house in Maine. It was late in the afternoon. A lot of glare and shadows. He was pedaling along this back road, a truck came by, and . . .”

She paused. Then: “They think it was an accident.”

Now I was very cognizant of her again.

“What did you just say?”

“The driver of the truck—”

She broke off.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

“According to Mrs. Cathcart, the driver of the truck was on the opposite side of the road from David. He could see him cycling toward him. But then, suddenly, David seemed to swerve right into his path. And . . .”

I let go of the stove. I sank down into one of the kitchen chairs. I put the palms of my hands against my eyes and pressed hard. But the world wouldn’t black out.

Christy came over and put her arms around me. But I didn’t want to be consoled. I didn’t want someone to share my loss. In the moments of aftershock that accompanied the news, a little voice in my head cautioned me to be careful how I played all this. Get hysterical and they’ll realize the truth.

I shrugged Christy off. I said to her: “I think I need to be by myself now.”

“That’s the last thing you need,” she said.

I stood up and started heading for the bedroom.

“Thank you for coming here and telling me.”

“Jane, you don’t have to pretend.”

“Pretend what? There’s nothing to pretend here.”

“For fuck’s sake, your lover just died.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Not if you can’t even bring yourself to—”

I closed the bedroom door. I sat down on the bed. I half-expected Christy to barge in and confront me with all of my manifold shortcomings—especially the way I couldn’t even talk to her at the worst moment in my life.

But there was no such dramatic confrontation. Instead I heard the front door open and close and the apartment go silent.

What happened next surprised me. I felt as if I were operating on some sort of autopilot. I got up. I grabbed the overnight bag and threw some clothes into it. I called a cab. I went to Avis, I picked up the rental car I had reserved. I drove out of Cambridge, headed north to Route 1, branched onto Interstate 95, and sped up to Maine.

Why was I doing this? I had no idea. All I knew was that I had to see where he died.

I was in the town of Bath by one o’clock that afternoon. I stopped in a gas station and got directions to Popham Beach. The road east to the ocean passed through expansive New England terrain—green rolling fields, white clapboard houses, old red barns, a salty inlet from the ocean. I focused on every feature, every characteristic of that road that he biked down toward his death. I reached Popham about thirty minutes after leaving Bath. The parking lot was empty. I was the only beachcomber on this bleak May day, the sky the color of dirty chalk. I walked down a little pathway through some dunes and reached the water. Everything David had told me about Popham—and he often talked about it—was spot-on correct.

“Three miles of unbroken sand, unspoiled, often empty, with the best ocean vista in New England. Any time I’m up in Maine and out of sorts with the world, I take a walk on Popham and stare out at the sheer vastness of the Atlantic . . . and somehow, it always makes me feel that possibilities still exist beyond the confines of my little life, that there’s always a way out.”

I stood on the beach and gazed out at the Atlantic and heard David’s voice telling me all that. And I couldn’t help but wonder if, two days ago, he was finding things so unbearable, so beyond consolation, that the sight of Popham tipped him over the edge. Not only was it just too beautiful to bear, but say it didn’t do its restorative magic? Say its raw, epic grandeur didn’t console, but rather heightened his sense of having been trounced. Say he was at such a low point—so defeated by everything—that the majesty of the water was simply too hard to bear. Say he shut his eyes to its metronomic surf, its shimmering surface, and began to think: If I can’t bear this . . .

Personally I couldn’t bear looking at the water and simultaneously thinking about what David might have been going through in the final hour of his life. So I returned to the car and drove out of the parking lot and turned right, following the road toward the direction of a signposted summer colony of houses. Halfway there, the road narrowed, owing to traffic cones with police tape stretched between them. I stopped the car and got out. The police cones and tape were shaped into an elongated rectangle—like a long coffin, perhaps fifteen feet by four. I swallowed hard and stared down at the blacktopped road. There were noticeable skid marks across it, the wide imprint of the tire tread indicating that it was a substantial vehicle that hit him. I walked over to the police tape and peered down. The side of the road here was marked by dirt and scruffy grass. I peered closer at its surface and could see the dried remnants of blood at that frontier between the blacktop and the earth. There was one significant stain—a large blotch that seemed to have oozed out in a long, thin trickle.

I shut my eyes, unable to look at it any longer. But you came here to look at it in the first place. I straightened myself up and stood in the middle of the road and noted the narrowness of the blacktop at this point. I checked its surface, walking forward beyond the police cones, looking downward, hoping to find . . .

Yes! There, beneath my feet, was a pothole. Not a particularly big pothole—maybe a foot or so in diameter—but located in a telling spot, perhaps twelve feet or so before the skid marks and the police cones. A narrative assembled in my mind. David left the beach and was coming along the road at speed. He saw the truck moving toward him. He prudently steered himself to the edge of the blacktop. But then his front wheel hit the pothole, he lost control of his bicycle and was thrown into the path of . . .

That was it. That’s how it happened. An accident. So random, so arbitrary—an unlinked set of circumstances coming together to create disaster.

I could now tell myself that it wasn’t suicide; that, truly, David had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I walked back to the car, feeling no relief, no lightening of my sadness, no sense that this personal confirmation of his accident had made his loss easier to bear. All I could think was: Why are you here? OK, you’ve confirmed what you wanted to confirm. Now what?

Now . . . nothing. Except the drive back to Boston. And then . . . ?

But before I headed back I decided I should see his house. I’d passed it on my way out to Popham—knowing it immediately because he had talked so often about its exact location in the village of Winnegance.

Now, upon reaching it, I first stopped at the end of his driveway and got out, looking up its winding path to ascertain that no car was parked there. Then I drove the rest of the way to his house. It was exactly as he had described it—a small saltbox structure, situated on an elevated prospect looking right out on the water. I walked around the house and stopped when I saw the room that was obviously David’s study: a small, simple space, with a desk, a bookshelf, and one of the several Remington typewriters that he owned (he refused to write anything but academic stuff on a computer). The desk faced a wall, just like his office at Harvard—“Otherwise I’d look out the window and get distracted by everything that’s going on outside.” I found myself getting shaky. But I forced myself back into the car and returned to the main road, parking at the little general store just opposite David’s place to buy a bottle of water.

Or, at least, that’s what I told myself I was doing there. Once inside, the elderly, flinty-looking woman behind the counter gave me the skeptical once-over that she probably reserved for anyone who wasn’t a local during the off-season.

“Hey,” she said tonelessly. “Get you anything?”

I asked for some sparkling water and a copy of the local paper.

As I paid for them, I said: “I was just taking a walk down on Popham Beach and saw the police tape. Did something happen there?”

“A guy steered his bicycle into a truck,” she said, making change for me.

“An accident?”

“If a guy deliberately steers his bike into the direct path of a truck, it’s no accident.”

“Did you know the guy?”

“Sure did. Professor from Boston, had a place just across the road. Pleasant enough guy. Never would have thought . . .”

“But how can they be sure that it was—?”

She gave me a long, cold look.

“You’re not some kind of reporter, are you?” she asked.

“Just interested,” I said, sounding nervous.

“You know the professor?”

I shook my head.

“You know Gus?”

“Who’s Gus?”

“Gus is my second cousin—and the fella who was driving the truck. The man’s completely devastated about what happened. Been driving the same fish truck ’round here for over twenty years. Never hit anything or anyone. Poor guy’s in total shock, won’t get behind the wheel again. Says he saw the professor biking towards him and, then, right when he was almost alongside him, the Professor swerved right into his path. Completely deliberate . . . like he wanted to get hit.”

“But maybe he ran into a pothole on his bike and—”

“If Gus says he swerved into him, he swerved into him. Gus is a little slow in the head, but if there’s one thing I know about him, he never lies.”

I left. I got into my car, drove off, and hit the highway. Somewhere south of Portland I had to pull off the road because I was crying so hard.

If Gus says he swerved into him, he swerved into him.

I wanted to believe my own version—the one I created after seeing the site of the accident. But here now was contradictory information—from the one authoritative source at the scene.

Maybe that was why I was crying so hard—not just because David’s loss was finally hitting me with full-frontal force, but also because the manner of his death was so ambiguous.

When I returned to my Cambridge apartment that night, I discovered, in my mailbox, a plain white postcard. On one side, in David’s scratchy handwriting, was my address, and a Bath, Maine, postmark. On the other side were three words:

I’m sorry

David

I went up to my studio and sat down at my little dining table. I put the card down and stared at those three words for a very long time. My head was swimming. His last message to me. But what was he telling me? I’m sorry . . . and I’m going to kill myself? Or: I’m sorry for the mess I’ve caused? Or: I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you about the book? Or: I’m sorry I’ve disappeared? Or . . .

Nothing definitive. No answers. Just more ambiguity.

I’m sorry.

With the door slammed on the outside world, I broke down again, crying like an idiot. But this time my tears weren’t just a response to my sense of loss—a loss I couldn’t share with anyone. Rather, they were also bound up with real anger. I was furious with David—not just for dying, but also for trying to salve his conscience with that fucking postcard and a message that simply added another enigmatic wrinkle to an already ambiguous situation.

I’m sorry.

In the days that followed, my anger ebbed a bit, replaced by a sadness that was hard to shake. I received a call from Mrs. Cathcart—all quiet and conciliatory, telling me how everyone in the department was so distressed by Professor Henry’s death (a lie); how there was now a general backlash against the New York journalist who penned the accusations of plagiarism (another lie); and how she was thinking about me during this difficult time because “I know how close you were to the professor.”

“That’s right,” I said, trying to sound controlled. “He was a brilliant thesis adviser and a good friend.”

But before I added “Nothing more,” I stopped myself. When you protest too much you incriminate yourself.

“You should know that the Maine police ruled the whole thing an accident,” she said. “Just in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t wondering anything,” I said, while simultaneously wondering: Did they decide not to believe the testimony of Gus the Driver? Or maybe Gus was talked into a narrative explanation—“The bike hit the pothole and the next thing I knew he was thrown directly in front of my vehicle”—as a way of simplifying matters, ending ambiguity, and quashing all difficult questions. As I later heard on the departmental grapevine, the very fact that David’s death was ruled an accident meant that his wife would receive his life-insurance payout. Maybe the cops—wanting to minimize the pain suffered by the driver and by David’s family—stuck with the accident scenario.

But I knew the truth. And the truth was: There is no truth here. It’s like that line of Eliot’s from “The Hollow Men”: “Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.”

I’m sorry.

I’m sure you were, David. But it doesn’t lessen the questions, doesn’t diminish the shadows. His funeral was private. He was cremated and his ashes sprinkled on the water fronting his cottage. When I learned of this—from Mrs. Cathcart, naturally—I couldn’t help but think of something David once said to me about the transient nature of everything.

“We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we’re all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we’re gone, it’s simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive. And when they’re gone . . .

“That’s why—when I go—I’m asking that my dust gets tossed on the water. Because everything ends up floating away.”

Everyone in the department was very solicitous toward me. The chairman, Professor Hawthorden, rang me personally and asked if I would drop by his office for a chat. I steeled myself for the third degree. As it turned out, he was the very model of tact. He talked about the “accidental tragedy” of David’s death, and how the plagiarism charges were nothing more than “trial by hack journalism.” He also wanted me to know that David always spoke very highly of me as a student, and that he himself would like to take charge of my dissertation, if I was “comfortable” with this offer.

Why did the department head want to be my adviser—especially as his specialty was early American literature? Was he trying to silence any gossip about my relationship with David? Was he keeping me “on side”? I had no idea. If Professor Hawthorden preferred to keep things nice and ambiguous, I was not going to argue. As I had come to discover, ambiguity had its virtues.

I threw myself into work, writing two pages of my dissertation per day, six days per week. I kept a low profile, seeing Hawthorden twice a month for an hour-long conference, but otherwise spending most of my time at the library or at my apartment. I vanished for the next nine months. Barring Christy, my life at Harvard had been David. And with David gone . . .

But I liked the solitude. Check that: I needed the solitude . . . needed the time to . . . grieve, I suppose. But also to somehow reorder my brain and put David’s death in a box that I had already marked “Off Limits.” Though I might quietly mourn him, I had to accept the cold brutality of his demise. Just as I was determined that no one would ever be privy to the grief I actually felt.

There was a considerable amount of public hand-wringing at Harvard and in the press about whether David had been unfairly victimized by certain English department colleagues. Fair play to the Harvard Crimson—they outed the bastards who had been calling for his head. But what did it matter now? David was still dead. There was also a memorial service held at the college chapel three months after his “accident.” Naturally I attended. Afterward, as everyone spilled out of the church and Polly found herself shaking a lot of hands, I stood by the chapel door surveying the scene. At that very moment, Polly glanced around and her eyes happened to land on me. Her gaze was cold, yet level—and followed by a very fast nod of acknowledgment. Then she turned back to a group of mourners who had gathered around her. That look haunted me for a very long time. Was she telling me that she knew exactly who I was? But why follow such an arctic stare with a gesture that almost seemed to acknowledge the connection—and loss—that we both shared? Maybe I was simply trying to impose far too much interpretation on five seconds of eye contact. Perhaps the cold gaze was just the look of a woman trying to stay in control of things during a difficult public juncture, the nod nothing more than a simple “Hello to you . . . whoever you are.”

We can never really determine the truth behind the unspoken. A gesture can have any meaning you wish to impose on it. Just as the truth behind an accident will never be fully understood. Just as embracing ambiguity can shield you from so much.

That’s something David’s death taught me. If you confess to nothing, you provide those around you only with supposition . . . and no proof. That which remains hidden does, indeed, remain hidden. I took some comfort in this realization—not just because I saw it as a way of constructing the defensive shield I needed to get through the subsequent months at Harvard, but also because it somehow allowed me to compartmentalize all the rage and sadness; to control the demons within. So I went to ground. I did my work. I allowed myself little latitude when it came to a life outside of my thesis. Professor Hawthorden—who read each chapter as it came “off the press”—seemed pleased with its progress. When I completed it, he expressed his amazement that I had managed to deliver it six months before its provisional due date.

“I’ve just had an extended burst of . . . concentration,” I said.

Usually there is a four-month gap between the delivery of the thesis and your defense of it. But Hawthorden—evidently wanting to speed things along—informed me that he would be arranging the defense before all faculty members disappeared for the summer break. As it turned out, there were only three other members of the department quizzing me on the finer points of “The Infernal Duality: Obedience and Defiance in American Literature.” There were questions about whether there was any real Zola-esque leitmotif in Dreiser, and about the uses of progressive political thought in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. One professor got rather tetchy about my need to find a socioeconomic subtext in every novel under discussion (I fielded that one handily), someone else queried my own need to be “novelistic” in an academic thesis . . . and I left my defense doubting whether I was in any way credible.

Within a week I received an official letter from Hawthorden, informing me that my thesis had been approved and that I would be granted the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Harvard. At the bottom of the letter were two handwritten lines:

It has been a pleasure working with you. I wish you well.

And Hawthorden initialed this.

Was he telling me, in as polite a way as he was able: “Now please get lost”? Was this the reason he gave my thesis express service—to dispatch me from their lives as quickly as possible? Or, again, was this simply one of many interpretations that could be applied to twelve words? Was everything always so riddled with multiple meanings?

A few days after I received my letter from Hawthorden, I was also contacted by the Harvard Placement Office, asking me to drop by for a chat. The woman who saw me—an all-business type in her forties named Ms. Steele—told me that there was a last-minute job opening for an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

“It is a tenure-track appointment—and Wisconsin is pretty first-rate as state universities go.”

“I’ll take the interview.”

Two days later I was flown out to Madison. The chairman of the department—a rather harried, exhausted man named Wilson—picked me up at the airport and unburdened himself to me on the drive to the university: how this position had opened up when an assistant professor developed an unhealthy interest in one of his students and was let go; and how he was also having to fill another post, in medieval literature, as the woman who had held it for the past twenty years had finally drunk herself into the local intensive care unit, and . . .

“Well, what can I say?” Wilson told me. “It’s just your average dysfunctional English department.”

When I sat around the conference table that afternoon in some administrative building, being interviewed by Wilson and four other department members, I looked at the drabness of my future colleagues—their air of enervation and tetchiness; the way they undercut each other as they sized me up, finding out just how smart I thought myself, whether I’d be a threat to them or someone they could manage, and asking what I thought about the scandal that had engulfed one of their colleagues.

Careful here, I told myself, then said: “As I really don’t know the details of the case—”

“But what do you think in general about the rules against intimate student-faculty relationships?” this woman asked.

Does she know about me and . . . ?

“I can’t condone them,” I said, meeting her gaze. The subject wasn’t raised again.

I flew back to Boston that evening, remembering something that David once told me: “Anytime you ever think about taking a teaching post, always remember that most time-honored of clichés: the reason everyone is so bitchy in academia is because the stakes are so low.” David. My poor, wonderful David.

And the idea of now embracing the world that had helped to kill him . . .

So when the call came three days later from Wisconsin, informing me I had the job, I told the department chairman I wasn’t taking it.

“But why?” he asked, sounding genuinely shocked.

“I’ve decided to make money,” I said. “Serious money.”

PART Two

FOUR

MONEY. I NEVER gave it much thought. Until I started making real, proper, grown-up money, its existence was something that I largely ignored. As I now realize, how you deal with money—how you control it and how it controls you (and it inevitably ends up doing that)—is something you learn very early on. My adolescence was a frugal one, as Dad paid Mom a very nominal amount of alimony and child support. At high school I was always known as “the librarian’s daughter.” Unlike most other teenagers in Old Greenwich, I didn’t have my own personal car, let alone membership in a country club—Old Greenwich being the sort of place where boys get their first set of golf clubs on their eleventh birthday. As I began to understand, not having a car and not spending the weekends at some white-bread enclave was no bad thing. But I still wished I could have had some of their fringe benefits—most of all, not having to worry about asking Mom for certain things, as she was constantly embarrassed about her small salary and the fact that she couldn’t do more for me, even though I kept reassuring her that I needed no more than I had.

It’s extraordinary how patterns of behavior develop without either you or those closest to you ever realizing that they are being formed. Mom felt guilty about not having much money. I felt guilty about Mom feeling guilty, and also felt hurt and confused about my father being so parsimonious. Simultaneously I wanted to win scholarships (and hold down assorted part-time jobs) to relieve my mom of certain financial burdens and show my father that I could hold my own in the world.

So while at college, I did work fifteen hours a week in the library to earn basic pocket money. During grad school at Harvard, I taught an introductory freshman course in English composition to augment the fellowship stipend. And because everything had to be so carefully budgeted in my life, I became very adept at living on very little. After my tuition and books, the fellowship paid me $700 per month. My studio apartment cost me just over $500—and once the fee I received for teaching that freshman composition course was factored in, I was left with just under $400 a month for everything to do with the business of day-to-day life. I cooked most of my meals at home. I bought clothes at discount outlets. I could easily afford to see two movies a week. The T got me around Cambridge and into Boston. I never felt I wanted for anything . . . because I wasn’t really longing for anything.

That’s the thing about not having a great deal of money. You learn that you actually require very little to keep things interesting. It’s only when you begin to make money that you find yourself thinking you need things you never dreamed of needing before. And once you get those things, you start ruminating about everything else that you don’t have. Then aspirational despair sets in. You find yourself wondering how the hell you got so bound up in the desire to acquire. Because you know that, in feeding the consumerist urge, you’re simultaneously papering over the large fissures in your own life; bluffing yourself into believing all this stuff would quell the doubts and melancholy within.

Money. The trickiest substance in life—as it’s the way we keep score, measure our worth, and think we can control our destinies. Money: the essential lie.

But in those first crazy months when I started working at Freedom Mutual, money seemed like a great new crazy lover who was determined to show me a fresh way of looking at the world. Out with the drab, narrow economies of a frugal life. In with the pleasures of living well and not having to pay a vast amount of attention to the price tag attached.

Money. Much to my continued surprise, I found myself becoming a fast convert to its heady pleasures and the sense of possibility that it engendered.

Money. It was also a game.

Or, at least, that was how Brad Pullman looked upon it.

Brad Pullman was the CEO of Freedom Mutual. He was in his late thirties—a dentist’s son from Long Island and a self-described “one-time geek” who had been settling scores with the world from the moment he discovered Money. He went to Middlebury, then to Harvard Business School, after which he found his way into the “secure, low-stress world of mutual funds.”

“Everything I did in the first thirty years of my life was predicated on risk aversion. I tell you, Jane, fear is Life’s Big Roadblock.” (Those were his caps, by the way.) “It’s the one and only thing that will keep you from achieving all that you want to achieve, or living the life you deserve. And the truly insidious thing about fear is—it’s completely self-perpetuated. We create the dread that clogs up our lives.”

Yes, Brad Pullman did often talk in such self-help-guru outbursts. It was “part of the package,” as he put it. He saw himself as a living testament to the “Necessity of Overcoming the Negatives.” This doctrine was christened by everyone around the company as NON. “I like it,” Brad said, when he first heard the acronym, “except that it’s French—and like any reasonable American, I hate the fucking French.” Brad himself had applied the NON doctrine to just about everything in his life. He jettisoned his first wife (“the classic starter marriage”) when her “dull negativity” finally wore out his patience. He jettisoned his trapped suburban-man image, not to mention his fleshy physique. Fifty pounds were stripped from his frame courtesy of a savage diet and an equally savage personal trainer. With his newfound sleekness came his newfound need to play the sartorial dandy.

“I am happy to admit that, in my five-point-four million-dollar town house on Beacon Hill, I have fifty designer suits. Does any man need fifty suits and one hundred and fifty shirts? Don’t be absurd. Fifty suits and one hundred and fifty shirts in a five-point-four million-dollar town house is a sign of futile over-consumption . . . until, of course, you do the math. Fifty suits and one hundred and fifty shirts—let’s say the outlay was around 100k over a five-year period, so 20k per annum. Now if you are some midlevel exec pulling down one hundred and 50k per annum before taxes, 20k a year on suits . . . well, it’s virtually a crack-cocaine habit, right? But if you’re pulling down eight million per annum, as I did last year . . .”

That was another thing about Brad Pullman. He not only announced the cost of everything—“Like my new watch? Jaeger LeCoultre. Bought at European Watches on Newbury Street. Fifty-four hundred dollars—actually a steal”—but also let it be known—all the time—how much he was making, how much the firm was making, how much you, his minion, should be making, but aren’t because . . . well, “Do you have the juice to Overcome the Negatives and score the big bucks?”

I met Brad Pullman at my interview. I’d found out about the job courtesy of the Harvard Placement Office. After turning down the post in Wisconsin I asked Ms. Steele if there were any openings in the world of Big Bucks.

“Plenty, of course—but you have a Ph.D. in English, so why would you want to—?”

“It’s a career change,” I said.

“Even before your career has started,” she said.

“I’ve decided I don’t want to be an academic. So if I’m rejecting university life I might as well go after the best-paid work possible.”

“Professor Henry wouldn’t have approved,” she said drily. I managed to stay cool.

“Professor Henry hated everything about the pettiness of Harvard life—so, in fact, he definitely would have approved.”

“Well, you certainly knew him better than I did.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I did.”

Then I asked her about “money jobs.”

“Well, hedge funds are the big thing now,” she said. “And Boston has become a real hub for them over the past few years. These companies are always looking for entry-level traders, especially from Harvard. The fact that you have a doctorate in literature might baffle them a bit. However, it might also make you more interesting than the other candidates.”

Brad Pullman certainly thought that. Initially I was surprised to find myself being interviewed by the company head honcho for a mere trainee job. But Brad let it be known that, given Freedom Mutual’s deliberately small size (only thirty employees), he was “totally hands-on about every aspect of the company. So yeah, I am in on everything from the start. And I like your smarts, so why the hell shouldn’t we have an expert on Dreiser working on the trading floor? The starting salary is one hundred thousand per annum and a twenty-thousand-dollar joining bonus, payable immediately. No problem with that?”

“None at all.”

“But it could end up being ten, twenty times that if you turn out to be profitable. You play your cards right with us, you could be set up for life by the time you’re thirty. But before you start here, I’m giving you two thousand bucks and sending you out tomorrow afternoon with Trish Rosenstein—who, with a name like that, doesn’t ‘summer’ at Kennebunkport with the fucking Bushes, but is one ace fund manager and knows how to dress. She’s going to help you buy a new office wardrobe. Conservative, but classy. Right now, you look like you’ve just walked out of the Student Union and are about to eat some organic cookies with a mug of elderflower tea. It might get you hit on at the local health-food shop, but it will compete with the wallpaper here. So, if you want the job, you accept the wardrobe upgrade.”

There was a part of me which listened to this spiel and thought: This is an actor, brilliantly impersonating a sexist dick. The thing was, Brad knew that he was playing this role—and was testing you to see whether you took offense (at which point you’d be out on your ass, because he’d write you off as a prig) or could adapt to his machine-gun repartee, his delight in excessive bullshit. As I listened to him, the English Department drabbie in me found herself being curiously subverted by his patter. I’d never met anyone like Brad Pullman before—though, of course, I knew that the type existed. But what surprised me was that his bullshit came across—especially after my interview with the walking mummies at the University of Wisconsin—as both engaging and in touch with the realpolitik of the way we lived now. Yes, it was crass, but there was something weirdly refreshing about such blatant mercantilism. He was an updated version of the sort of swaggering capitalist buccaneer who peopled so many of the naturalist novels I’d studied: a wholly American construct, with a ferocious energy for the combustive engine that was pure capitalism.

“Are you ready to get into bed with the free market?” Brad asked me at the end of the interview.

At $100,000 per annum, with another twenty grand up front? Damn right I was.

“I think so,” I said, trying to sound demure.

“That’s the last hesitant statement you make around here. Our world is defined by either a definite ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ with absolutely no ambiguity in-between.”

Trish Rosenstein was the definitive embodiment of this Manichean worldview. Though her primary objective was my sartorial reorganization—and Brad had told us both to take the following afternoon off to “get the job done”—once we finished shopping we naturally ended up in the bar of the Four Seasons, trading life stories.

Brad had been spot-on about Trish. She had a voice that combined the vowels of Brooklyn with the gaseous honk of a foghorn, a voice designed to turn heads in restaurants, to scare young children and cower domesticated animals. As we set off down Newbury Street, and she escorted me into assorted emporiums of fashion, I found myself thinking: I’m not going to last more than ten minutes with this woman.

“You don’t wanna try that on,” she yelled to me as I was looking at a business suit in Banana Republic. “Gonna make you look like some anorexic twat.”

Everyone on the floor spun around after she made that pronouncement. And she immediately stared everyone down, shouting: “Something I say bother you?” That silenced the store. Then she turned to me and said: “C’mon, let’s find you something classy elsewhere.”

Once we were out on the street, I did say: “You know, there was no real need to—”

“Say what I think? Why the hell not? I didn’t insult anyone back there. I just made a comment.”

“A very loud comment.”

“So? I talk loud. It’s how I deal with the world.”

She insisted on dragging me into Armani. “The sale’s on, and we might find you something to help you lose the Crunchy Granola look.”

By the end of the afternoon, I had acquired three suits, two pairs of shoes and assorted separates—all stylish, yet simple—and even had $200 left over to blow on underwear. Trish might have had the manners of a stevedore, but she did have an eye for clothes and she certainly knew how to shop—which, as she correctly surmised, was an activity that held little interest for me.

“Brad circulated your résumé, like he does everybody’s he’s thinking of hiring,” she told me after directing us into the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel and ordering martinis—two for herself, the first of which she downed almost at once. “We all had you sized up pretty quickly: the smart girl raised in strained circumstances. Your father must be some class of creep, by the way.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Stop sounding tetchy. It is just a simple deduction. Daddy’s in the copper business, but has jettisoned you and your mother for a new life with a string of South American bimbas, right?”

“There’ve only been two—”

“To the best of your knowledge. All men are putzes at heart—even the good ones. But you know that by now, don’t you?”

I looked at her carefully.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Oh, come on, you don’t think Brad—Mr. Micromanager—didn’t dig a little bit into your past and find out about you and the professor?”

I looked at her, appalled.

“When I applied for a job as a trainee, I didn’t think my past private life would be vetted.”

“There are three of us in the company who form the vetting committee to make certain we hire someone who will fit into the Freedom Mutual culture. Do you know what we all liked about you—besides the Harvard doctorate and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and not being a snot . . . ?”

“Enlighten me.”

“The fact that you had a four-year thing with your thesis adviser and kept it completely out of the public view.”

“Who told you this?”

“Do you honestly think I’d reveal our sources? I mean, pul-eeze. But, between ourselves, Brad was also superimpressed about how you never showed your hand, never stirred the pot, and kept a dignified silence in the wake of his death. What a business, by the way. I really felt for you . . . especially with all the ambiguity surrounding—”

“I’m leaving now,” I heard myself saying.

“Have I said the wrong thing?”

“Actually you have. Just as I find it completely abhorrent that you and your colleagues have dug into my past and—”

“We all know each other’s stuff in the office,” she said. “I’m aware that Brad is cheating on his wife with a bond dealer named Samantha who has a nasty temper and frequently scratches his back during sex, causing him to wear a T-shirt in bed with his wife for a few days. Everyone knows that Brad should break it off with her, but he’s addicted to trouble. Just as Brad knows that I’ve been in a relationship with a cop named Pauline for the past two years.”

“I see,” I said, trying to sound nonplussed.

“Go on, act all blasé and inclusive. Pretend you’re not shocked to discover I’m a dyke . . .”

“It really is your own business.”

“Not at Freedom Mutual. Brad insists on total transparency. No secrets, no hidden baggage. Everything out in the open. So . . . go on, ask me any question about myself. Anything. You ask, I’ll tell.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Loosen up.”

“All right. Why do you talk so loud?”

“Good question. And here’s the answer: Because I had a mother who was always screaming at everybody and complained a lot about how life had been one big letdown, and how: ‘If you want to be really disappointed by things, then you should definitely have children.’ ”

“Charming.”

“That she wasn’t.”

“She’s dead?”

“They’re all dead. My dad, my mom, my brother, Phil . . .”

“How old was he when he died?”

“Nineteen.”

“Had he been sick?”

“It was suicide, so, yeah, he’d been sick.”

“Why did he—?”

“Hang himself in his bedroom on Christmas Eve 1979 . . . ?”

“Oh, my word.”

“Can’t you be American and use ‘fuck’?”

“That is just horrible.”

“Fucking horrible. I was twelve at the time and my big brother was just home from his sophomore year at the University of Pennsylvania. It was a big deal in my family, the first-born—the guy—getting accepted into an Ivy League university, being premed and all that. What my parents didn’t know is that, after a brilliant first year, near straight As, he had some kind of breakdown and suddenly got a C in Biochemistry. Now for anyone who’s premed, a C in Biochemistry is a huge setback. And Mom gets his report card on December 23rd. Having nothing better to do—and being fucking Mom—she begins to do this vast big number on him, saying how he’s a huge disappointment, how she’d given up everything to raise him, and this is how he repaid her. My mom ruined everything—and everyone—she touched. And if I’m sounding like a shrink, well . . . I did do nine years of the talking cure after finding my brother hanging from the clothes rail in his closet.”

“You found him?”

“That’s what I said.”

She paused and downed the martini, then put her hand up for a third one.

“Not for me,” I said when she tried to order two.

“You’re having one—like it or not. Because if there’s one thing I know about life, it’s the fact that everyone needs to get drunk from time to time—even you, Miss Propriety.”

“Your parents must have been devastated after—”

“Dad died about six months after Phil. Throat cancer—the payback for forty years of nonstop cigarettes. He was only fifty-six and I’m pretty damn sure that everything started metastasizing after Phil killed himself.”

Trish said she never wavered in dealing with her mother after that. When her mother tried to make phone contact Trish changed her number. When she had an uncle and a second cousin show up at her office to make entreaties, she refused to see them.

“ ‘Surely you’ll feel terrible if she suddenly dies on you,’ they all told me on the phone, to which I could only say: ‘No, I won’t feel a single iota of guilt.’ ”

“And when it finally happened . . . ?” I asked.

“That was around three years after my dad went. Mom was driving to the mall near our house in Morristown and had a mild coronary. The car went out of control and crossed over into the oncoming lane, and there was this motherfucker of a truck barreling down the highway—and splat. I was an orphan.”

She downed the dregs of the martini. Like anyone who was staring down into the bottom of a third martini, she was seriously smashed. So, for that matter, was I. The difference between us was that, when I spoke, I wasn’t shouting at the top of my lungs.

“You want to know if I felt guilt afterward?” she asked, sounding like she was talking through a megaphone. “Of course I felt fucking guilt. The cunt was my fucking mother and even if she was a total scumbag who drove my poor screwed-up brother to lynch himself with a fucking Boy Scout’s belt . . .”

That’s when a guy in a tux showed up at our table, informed us that he was the hotel’s duty manager, and that we were to settle the check and leave the premises immediately.

“Listen, asshole, you’re gonna have to get every fucking Mick in the Boston PD to get me out of here,” Trish said.

“Please do not force my hand,” the duty manager said.

I stood up and threw a considerable amount of money on the table.

“We’re going,” I told him.

“No, we are fucking not,” Trish said.

“I’m getting you home.”

“You are not my cunt of a maiden aunt.”

“That’s it,” the duty manager said and stormed off.

Trish sank deeper into the armchair and smiled.

“See, I won.”

“If he calls the cops you’ll be arrested. And if you’re arrested—”

“I’ll give the arresting cop a hummer on the way to the station—and I’ll be let go with a thank you.”

I could tell that every eye in the Four Seasons bar was now upon us. Just as I also knew that I had to act fast. So I hoisted Trish up by the scruff of her jacket and before she had a chance to protest too much, I yanked her left arm behind her in half-nelson style.

“You say a word,” I hissed in her ear, “and I’ll break your fucking arm.”

I frog-marched her out of the bar and into one of the cabs lined up in front of the Four Seasons, the duty manager acknowledging my avoidance of a police incident with a curt nod as we walked out. Trish once tried to struggle against my grip—letting out a torrent of invective until I yanked her arm up higher, to the point where I knew she was in real pain. She shut up then—and said nothing until we were inside the taxi.

“Give the man your address,” I told her.

She did so. The cab pulled away from the hotel. Falling to one side of the seat, she suddenly began to weep. But this was no ordinary booze-fueled crying jag. Rather, this was a full-scale lament—loud, primal, agonized. Up front the driver—a Sikh—kept glancing at us in his rearview mirror, his eyes widening. Like me, he was thrown by the desperate sorrow that was emerging from some point deep within her psyche. When I tried to reach out and steady her, she batted me away. So I simply sat there, watching helplessly as this woman fell apart.

Trish lived in that corner of the city, near South Station, which had been gentrified into a quarter for the monied classes. The cab pulled up in front of a renovated warehouse. As soon as she saw the front door, she brought herself under momentary control.

“Do you want me to come up with you?” I asked.

“Go fuck yourself,” she said, then threw open the door and staggered inside.

There was a moment of shocked silence in the cab—the driver and myself trying to absorb all that had happened here over the past ten minutes.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I said and then gave him my address in Somerville.

When I awoke early the next morning, I was pretty damn sure that, as soon as I walked into Freedom Mutual, I’d be told to vamoose—as Trish would have to get me fired to hide the events of the previous night.

Another thought also hit me: I’d left all my assorted shopping bags at the Four Seasons and no doubt the duty manager had ordered them to be thrown out, as payback for creating a scene in the bar.

But when I entered the office that morning, all the shopping bags were piled behind the reception desk. I grabbed them and entered the trading room—where Trish and eight of her colleagues were shouting into phones—and dumped them on my desk. There was an envelope on my chair, with my name written on the front. I opened it. Inside were two $100 bills and a note:

To cover the damages. Trish.

I put the money back in a new envelope and grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote:

I was happy to pick up the tab. Jane.

Then I walked over and dropped the envelope on Trish’s desk. She didn’t even look up to acknowledge me. I returned to my desk, picked up several of the shopping bags, disappeared into the ladies for a few minutes, and changed. When I turned to face myself in the mirror, the individual staring back surprised me. You put on a simple but beautifully cut black suit with a simple black silk blouse and stylish shoes, and you suddenly think: There’s a grown-up in the mirror. As I had so rarely dressed up for anything, the transformation surprised me. Clothes have a language, reflecting your sense of self, your class and education, your aspirations and the image you wish to present to the world. Maybe Trish was right: I always saw myself as something of an eternal student in hiking boots and chunky sweaters. But now, having changed into that suit, I appeared to be someone with responsibility and money. Much to my surprise, I liked the way I looked . . . even if I knew I had neither the responsibility nor the salary that the suit signified.

I returned to the desk at the far end of the trading floor. An hour passed, in which I sat there wondering what happened next. When the first hour of being ignored morphed into a second one, I stood up and crossed the floor, approaching Trish at her workstation. She was screaming into the headset at someone. After ending the call with “and fuck you too” (what I came to know as a Trish Term of Endearment), she looked up at me with undistilled contempt.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I’d like to go to work.”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day.”

I could have pointed out that this was the first thing I had said to her since walking in this morning, but thought that such pedantry might not play well. She pointed to the empty chair next to hers and said: “Sit down, shut up, and try to learn something.”

FIVE

MONEY. I STARTED to make it. And—best of all—I discovered I was good at making it.

Hedge fund managers claim that they operate according to a very simple principle: they invest in stocks and hedge their position in such a way that they cannot but make money.

Rule number one of hedge fund management: position your trade to cover your downside, and always take advantage of a company’s inefficiencies when trading its stock. By this I mean: if you buy a stock always buy, at the same time, an option on selling a stock short. How do you learn such a craft? Practice—and a gambler’s instinct when it comes to working out how to cover your downside. If you play the game shrewdly, the only loss you will accrue is the cost of buying the option. As soon as the stock goes up, you gain. Big time.

Other stuff you need to know: hedge fund companies are always investing in all sorts of publicly traded securities: stocks and commodities and foreign currencies. And managers are always talking strategies along the lines of: There’s a British infotech company that’s about to do an IPO in three months. Market indices show a strengthening pound—but not until the next quarter. So let’s put an option on sterling and clean up when it moves three cents upward come September.

“Two basic caveats,” Trish told me on that first day as her trainee. “Number one is: always have a nose for the next big opportunity, and number two: always work out strategies to lessen risk and maximize profit.”

A company like Freedom Mutual had, I learned, investment capital of over $1 billion to play with. Brad might have been something of a loose (or, perhaps, louche) cannon in private, but he certainly knew how to make big-time investors want to do business with him. The cool billion consisted of such diverse investors as Harvard University ($120 million), Wellesley College ($25 million), a consortium of German and Swedish venture capitalists ($165 million), and . . .

Well, the list was a long one—and Brad told me that he was rather choosy about whom he would get into bed with as investors.

“No Russian shtarkers. No snake-oil salesmen. No chophouse shitheads who have the SEC inspecting their sphincter every ten minutes. And definitely no goombahs who go greaseball when you don’t get them a minimum of fifteen percent return. When it comes to my investor pool, it’s strictly blue chip. Low-renters need not apply.”

Two for twenty. This was the other great rule of hedge fund life. As in: we take a 2 percent fee of everything you invest with us to cover our overheads. And then we also take another 20 percent of everything we make for you as our remuneration for generating such a big return on your investment. So say we make $200 million for you (on your initial investment of $150 million) in a given year. Are you really going to begrudge us the $40 million we keep as our fee?

Two for twenty. I quickly understood why Brad lived in a very large town house on Beacon Hill and why Trish had a 3,000-square-foot loft in the so-called Leather District near South Station. The company made absurd sums of money yet shrewdly kept its intense profitability out of the public eye.

“Do yourself a favor,” Trish said on my third day under her command. “Don’t go buying yourself a Maserati or start flashing big diamonds around the office.”

“Do you really think I’d engage in such conspicuous consumption?” I said.

“Trust you to use the big expression.”

“I’m not into ‘stuff.’ ”

“So you say—but once you start getting handed a cool million in bonuses every Christmas . . .”

“Is that what you’ve been getting?”

“At the very minimum.”

“And what do you do with it?”

“Well, I used to put a significant amount of it up my nose. But ever since I made the acquaintance of Jesus—”

“You serious?”

“You’ve just failed a vital test. In this business, people are going to relentlessly sell you a bill of goods. ‘I’m gonna be straight with you. I’m gonna cut you the most fantastic deal since . . . I am really a very moral guy who takes communion twice a week and never goes down on my wife.’ Your job—besides becoming a very big profit zone—is knowing how to detect bullshit at one hundred yards. You detect it at fifty yards, you’re screwed—because you’ve already engaged with it, which means you’ve either committed something to it or you’ve wasted valuable time getting seduced by a lie. In this business, everyone’s a liar. You want to make it here, you learn to lie. You learn how to compartmentalize, how to hide what you’re thinking, how to bluff. And—this is all-important—you call somebody when they’re bluffing. I talk to you about my personal relationship with J. C. and you tell me: ‘How nice.’ The fuck is your problem? You go stupid like that with me again and you’re outta here, get that? Around here we can tolerate mistakes—and, believe me, you’ll make plenty of them. But we can’t tolerate naïveté. Bambi does not make it as a hedge fund manager. Nor does the Big Bad Wolf, because the putz was outsmarted by a bunch of pigs. We want hardened realists here. Read Hobbes, read Machiavelli, and follow the bottom line.”

Being assigned to Trish was something akin to being dispatched to Marine Corp boot camp and handed over to a particularly vindictive drill sergeant who operated according to the principle that you build character through humiliation. Trish—like all the other managers—was wired to a desk. Her computer screen was awash with numbers. CNBC and Bloomberg played nonstop on two nearby plasma televisions. She wore a headset and speed-dialed numbers (all from memory) at breakneck pace. And she yelled. She yelled at her other colleagues. She yelled at the people on the other end of the phone. She yelled at me whenever I got something wrong or didn’t pick up on one of her riffs. But, most of all, she yelled at herself.

“Stupid fucking cunt cow.”

This was a typical Trish self-criticism—and one which she would blurt out if she missed a “sell” opportunity, if she was thirty seconds late on a trade and lost one-quarter of 1 percent, if she hadn’t been able to gauge the momentum of a currency, if she didn’t know that a major pharmaceutical company was about to release a hot new antidepressant that allegedly didn’t play havoc with the libido, if she wasn’t up to date with German car-manufacturing statistics, with Spanish inflation figures, with the state of the Norwegian krone, with the interior monologues of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with . . .

“Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Look at this clown, everybody. Harvard Ph.D. and can’t figure out a simple trading differential. Should be off teaching Jane Austen to future cheesehead housewives.”

My sin, in this instance, was to be unable to calculate—in ten seconds flat—20 percent of $2.34.

“You moron, you loser, you baby!” she screamed at me. “Forty-six-point-eight cents. You know how you calculate that in your head?”

“Double the sum and move the decimal point one number to the left?”

“The bitch has got talent, ladies and gentlemen. Too bad she hasn’t figured out how to use it yet.”

No one in the trading room was quite as appalling as Trish. There were just twelve managers, three of whom—Cheryl, Suzy, and Trish—were yellers. The men also yelled, but never with the insane vitriol of the women. Ted Franklin always had a box of pencils on his desk and seemed to chew through six of them a day. When he messed up an option purchase on some new Swiss foodstuffs company that had just beat out Nestlé for the UNICEF dried-milk concession, he actually snapped the pencil in two with his teeth. Anatoli Navransky—Tony the Russian as he was known on the floor—also had a “wooden substance in the mouth” addiction. His thing was interdental toothpicks, minted, which he bought by the case. His dexterity when it came to conducting multimillion-dollar trades while picking his teeth was mesmerizing—especially as he always shoved the interdental so deep into the gum line that blood would begin to leak out, forcing him to spit it into a mug on his desk. Tony the Russian was thirty-one, but appeared to be crowding the big five-o, largely owing to his habit (as I learned from Trish) of downing at least one bottle of Stoli every night. He worked sixteen-hour days, never took a vacation, needed serious pharmaceuticals to sleep, consistently maintained a three-day growth of beard, and always looked as though he’d sat up in some damn basement all night drinking potato hooch from a still. He also had a habit of screaming (for no more than five seconds) in an amalgamation of Russian and Hebrew whenever things didn’t play his way.

At least Tony the Russian wasn’t one of the smokers. There were three of these: Phil Ballensweig, overweight, bald, notoriously flatulent, and the biggest “rainmaker”—Brad’s expression—in the company, with over $18 million net profit tagged to him last year; Morrie Glutman, Orthodox Jewish, seven kids, ultraserious, ultrastraight, no excessive habits bar a two-pack-a-day cigarette addiction; and Ken Botros, Egyptian-American, little goatee, lots of bling—a huge gold Rolex, pharaonic cuff links—and a habit of wearing sunglasses indoors. Between the three of them, they got through seventy or so cigarettes a day. Smoking indoors in Massachusetts was definitely against the law. Considering how tar and nicotine were essential to the trading skills of Ballensweig, Glutman, and Botros, Freedom Mutual had decided they needed an “environment” in which to maintain their toxic habit, as it fueled their ridiculous profitability. According to Trish, Brad actually paid over $300,000 to build a small air-filtration plant in a custom-built cupboard next to the glassed-in room where they congregated. The filtration system sucked the tobacco cloud out of the room, managed to clean it of impurities, and then voided it through the usual outdoor vent without it giving off telltale smoke signals. Of course, this was all highly illegal. But Freedom Mutual paid out an additional $50,000 in bribes every year to keep building staff and local health inspectors on side.

“Fifty grand, just to let a couple of guys smoke?” I said when Trish first told me about the smoking-room set-up.

“Fifty minimum,” Trish said. “From what I heard, one of the health guys—a short little Irish fuck—strong-armed Brad last year, demanding a fifty percent increase. Brad told the guy to go down on himself. The guy ratted us out to his superior. The superior called Brad—who offered him the same sweetener that he’d been paying the cheezy Irish fuck. The superior accepted it and then fired the cheezy Irish fuck on the pretext that he’d never reported such illicit goings-on. And Ballensweig, Glutman, and Botros continue to smoke and make us a lot of money.”

Trish didn’t like Ballensweig, Glutman, and Botros. She didn’t like Tony the Russian. She found Ted Franklin “nothing less than depressing.” And she despised Cheryl and Suzy, whom she considered her archcompetitors.

Cheryl was from Jersey, with big hair and clawlike fingernails. Suzy, a woman in her late thirties from the San Fernando Valley, was mousy and highly strung. Her dad was a mortician. Accordingly, she’d been dubbed by Trish and the others as “the Stiff.” This also had something to do with her legendary rigidity when it came to her personal decorum. Though she was brilliantly hyperanalytical when it came to tracking a market movement, she went ballistic and abusive whenever there was a setback or if an underling displayed any human fragility. If you wanted to throw her into a rage, the worst thing you could do was to leave a document, a newspaper, even a paper clip on her desk. I made this mistake my second day as a trainee manager. Trish told me to deposit some company report on Suzy’s stand. So I placed it on her keyboard, first making certain that her computer terminal was off. Cheryl noticed this—she was at the adjoining station—but said nothing. Ten minutes later, Suzy came storming over to where I was sitting and proceeded to fling the report at me.

“You never, never interfere with my space again,” she said, her voice low, controlled, spooky.

“Having one of those bad mornings, psycho?” Trish asked.

“You put her up to this!” Suzy screamed. “You knew—knew—what would happen if she put the report directly on my desk.”

“Know what I just love about you, Suzy?” Trish said. “The fact that you make me feel relatively sane.”

“The in-tray,” she said to me, her eyes alive with danger. “You want to walk out of here alive, you leave everything in my in-tray.”

“She’s my bitch, not yours,” Trish said. “And if you can’t control your temper tantrums—”

“You don’t think I can have you fired? You don’t think—”

“I know what Brad thinks—that you are certifiable. The sort of control freak who gives anal retentives a bad name. But hey, go on and make trouble, Princess Mischkin. See how our boss decides that you aren’t the most profitable zone in the organization.”

“You cross me, you’re going to find out.”

It was like watching two kids in a playground, engrossed in that game called “I dare you to cross that line.” What I discovered very quickly was that everyone at Freedom Mutual acted out a variation on this theme. Just as everyone was also, in some way, either damaged or perennially the outsider. After a few days on the trading floor I began to understand that Brad’s employment policies were largely based on finding unhappy or awkward people with something to prove, training them into the laws of the marketplace, and then turning them loose in an unapologetically Darwinian environment. Brad himself encouraged such survival-of-the-fittest antics, just as he also had a natural sense of corporate combustion. Competitiveness wasn’t the only driving force behind all the aggression on the trading floor. Rather, it was also rooted in our boss’s instinctive eye for the troubled idiosyncrasies of others.

“You don’t get a job here,” Trish told me over the late-evening drink she insisted on every night after work, “unless you’re superbright and superdamaged; someone with a score to settle in the world.”

“But not everyone here—” I heard myself saying.

“Is as screwed up as me?” Trish said.

“That’s not what I was about to say.”

“No—what you were about to say was: ‘Not everyone here is screwy,’ the implication being that you’re Little Miss Nice and Sane. Allow me to let you in on a little secret, kiddo. Brad was onto your inadequacies, your sense of being abandoned by your asshole father and having to fend for yourself courtesy of your ineffectual mother, and still mourning the one-time big-deal professor whom you still consider the love of your life, even though he’d never leave his dreadful wife and treated you as a convenience, especially as you were happy to spread your legs for Daddy—”

That’s when I threw my drink in her face: a twelve-dollar gin and tonic that completely drenched her. Before pausing for thought, I tossed some money down on the table and said: “That’s for the drink and your dry cleaning.”

Then I stormed out.

I must have walked around for about two hours after this incident, feeling desperate and alone and very angry. The anger, I knew, was bound up in grief. David. My David. I still couldn’t wrap my brain around the brutal reality that he was no more—and no amount of pleading or cajoling could change that monolithic fact. Though the grief was constant and would catch me unawares at odd moments, I largely kept it out of the public eye. But that sense of “if only” constantly haunted my thoughts about him. If only he’d sought me out when the press started to crucify him . . . If only I’d been more up-front about how much I really cared for him, maybe he would have left his dreadful wife . . . If only I’d driven straight up to Maine after he’d been suspended from the university . . .

Is life so often about desperate missed opportunities?

So yes, the grief kicked me hard in the stomach yet again—until I fought it off with rage. Rage at the vindictiveness of Trish’s comment. Rage against the hazing to which I had been subjected all week. All right, maybe this was all a big test to see if I could cut it in their highly idiosyncratic world. But two conflicting thoughts kept gnawing at me: (a) I had turned down a safe but steady job to enter this Darwinian construct called Freedom Mutual, and (b) I really wanted to survive this baptism by bile.

This second realization surprised me because everything about Freedom Mutual continued to strike me as anathema to all that I valued in my life. The place was belligerently anti-intellectual, even though Brad would occasionally drop a literary reference in my company—just to remind me that, once upon a time, he had read books. Everyone looked on the world as nothing less than a jungle to be clawed through. Why the hell did I want to jump into such a feral playpen?

We all want to get even with the parent who has, in some way, found us wanting . . .

The thing is: getting even is so sad.

It took me two hours to walk back to Somerville. When I got inside my apartment I made two phone calls. The first was to my old friend Christy Naylor—with whom I was in occasional email contact. After finishing her doctorate a year earlier than me, she’d landed a teaching post at the University of Oregon and had just published her second collection of poems. “It was a finalist for the Pulitzer and sold eleven hundred copies,” she told me in an earlier email. She still didn’t have a guy in her life, though “when I need sex there are several reasonable redneck bars in town—and as long as you have a taste for bikers (which I have reluctantly developed), there is action aplenty.”

Good old Christy—she was still unapologetically incorrect. And when I rang her at her house and said that I needed some advice and told her about turning down the Wisconsin job for Freedom Mutual, her first comment to me was: “Well, of course you are conflicted—because you know all those mad people you now work with have figured you out as well . . . that is, if they can even look beyond their own insanities for a moment or two.”

“I’m only doing it for the money.”

“That’s bullshit—and you know it. But I’m sure as hell not criticizing you. If I had my way, I’d hit the eject button and parachute right out of this fucking job. The thing is, I’m too damn comfortable in the interminable self-importance and mediocrity that is college life.”

“Safety has its virtues.”

“But you’ve never played it safe, Jane—despite all your protestations otherwise. You need this job—because you need to punch the lights out of everyone who’s ever fucked you over. So make my night and call your asshole father and rub his nose into the fact that you’re going to be making more money than he ever even touched.”

Shortly afterward Christy ended our call, heading out to meet the Hell’s Angel of her dreams. That’s when I phoned my father. The line to Santiago was all static, and when Dad answered he sounded as if he were on the far side of the moon—and just a little drunk.

“To what do I owe this honor?” he asked.

“How are you, Dad?”

“Why would that interest you?”

“For all the usual reasons.”

“I’m breathing.”

Long pause. I should have hung up on the spot as Dad was playing his usual head games with me. Turning his own guilt about everything to do with me into a display of petulance and chilly distance.

“And besides breathing, Dad?”

“Are you calling just to bug me about something?”

“Can’t I just call you to say hello?”

As I said this I heard him drop ice into a glass, followed by a cascade of some liquid being poured over it. Then he said: “So . . . what? . . . you want me to make conversation?”

“You doing OK?”

“You’ve asked that question already. But yeah, everything’s just fine. Consuela moved out two weeks ago.”

“Oh God, that’s terrible.”

“It’s not great, yeah.”

“Do you mind me asking what happened?”

“I do mind. But I’ll tell you anyway. She says I slugged her.”

I took that in.

“Well, did you?”

“Not that I can remember, but I was a bit loaded at the time.”

“If she said you hit her—”

“You taking her side or what?”

“Hardly. I’m just—”

“You know anyone who can loan me ten thousand bucks in a hurry?”

“Why do you need ten thousand dollars, Dad?”

“That’s none of your damn business.”

“I certainly would want to have at least a hint of what you need it for before giving it to you.”

“You give me ten Gs? That’s funny.”

“I’ve got the money, Dad.”

“You’ve got shit—unless you’ve been running some illegal Girl Scout cookie scam.”

“I’ve got the money, Dad,” I said again.

“I don’t understand.”

When have you ever understood anything?

“I’ve got a job.”

“Yeah, that teaching thing at Wisconsin. Your mom told me.”

“You’ve been talking to Mom?”

“Hardly. She’s got no money, I’ve got no money. So we’ve not exactly been burning up the phone lines between Santiago and Old-fucking-Greenwich. Anyway, I have nothing to say to her. But she keeps insisting on sending me these chatty goddamn emails. Keeps thinking we’re going to somehow patch it all up, let bygones be bygones, and all that other forgiveness stuff.”

“Well, Mom doesn’t know this yet, but . . .”

That’s when I told him about the job at Freedom Mutual. He didn’t interrupt me, though I did hear more ice hit the glass after I reached the part about the $100,000 starting salary and the signing bonus. I was nervous as I spoke, because—well, I was always nervous when I talked to my father. When I finished there was a long silence. Then: “Don’t take the job,” he said.

“I’ve taken it.”

“Call Wisconsin back, tell them you still want the teaching thing.”

“I’ve already informed them I’m not coming.”

“You call them first thing tomorrow, tell them you’ve had a change of heart, you really want the job.”

“But the thing is, I really don’t want the teaching job.”

“You take the Freedom Mutual thing, you’re gonna be out on your ass in six months. I know how those hedge fund assholes work. Once they figure out you’re a lightweight who can’t cut it—”

“What makes you think I can’t cut it?” I said, suddenly angry.

“You kidding me? Thirty years punching my weight in the metals business and you think I can’t spot someone who won’t make it to the end of round two?”

“My boss thinks otherwise.”

“Your boss is probably some sadistic sonofabitch who’s decided to strip the hide off some Harvard broad who—”

I put down the phone. I walked over to the kitchen, in great need of a drink. But as soon as I picked up a wineglass, I smashed it into the sink and cursed myself for calling Dad with the foreknowledge that he would respond exactly the way he had responded.

The phone started ringing again. I ignored it. It kept ringing. I let it switch on to voice mail. I picked up another glass and decided I needed the instant kick that only vodka could provide. So I poured myself two fingers of Smirnoff. The phone sprang into life again. Against my better judgment I answered it.

“Look, you’re right to hate me,” Dad said.

I didn’t reply.

“And when I drink . . .”

He didn’t finish that sentence—and again, I maintained a very large silence.

“I’m sorry, OK?” he said.

Silence.

“Please tell me you accept my apology.”

Silence. Then I asked: “So why do you need ten thousand dollars?”

“I’m not asking you for it.”

“Why do you need it?”

My voice remained calm, but firm. On the other end of the line the clink of ice cubes returned.

“Because . . . I’m out of money, that’s why.”

“I thought you had that consulting thing.”

“I did . . . but it ended.”

“When?”

“Four years ago.”

“Four years?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And since then . . . ?”

“Nothing.”

“So how have you lived then?”

“Bit of Social Security back home—and Consuela. But as she’s a hairdresser . . .”

“So the big house with the pool and the butler and the staff and the three stallions you kept telling me I’d one day ride . . . ?”

“That all went years ago.”

And he never let on for a minute—always turning down my requests to visit him, always spinning this line about his Chilean hacienda, always getting me to write him care of a post-office box in Santiago.

“And now that Consuela’s left you . . .”

“I’ve got six hundred bucks a month to live on, courtesy of the federal government.”

“And where are you living now?”

“The same place I’ve lived for the past three years.”

“A house, an apartment?”

“Yeah, kind of an apartment . . .”

“By which you mean?”

“A studio. Nothing much, maybe two hundred square feet.”

“Jesus, Dad . . .”

“Hey, it’s just a temporary thing. Like I’m about to get into something very surefire. Young American guy—Creighton Crowley—working down here and doing this dot-com thing for Latin America. Wants to hire me as a business consultant.”

“Is he going to pay you?”

“Not exactly. He’s promised me shares in the company. Says once it goes to an IPO it will triple everything I’ve invested in twelve months.”

“Everything you’ve invested? You’ve given this guy money?”

“Not yet—because I’ve got none. But he definitely wants me to put some money into the company.”

“How much?”

“He suggested fifty grand.”

“Fifty thousand dollars? Jesus, Dad.”

“Look, if he can triple it . . .”

“And you actually believe him?”

“He’s a smart guy. Virginia Law, a couple of years with a big firm in DC.”

“Where he evidently didn’t make partner, as he’s hustling some shoddy business proposition in South America.”

“What the hell do you know about business?”

“I know how to smell a fraudster.”

“Unlike you, I’ve been in business for thirty-five years. Unlike you, I am a fucking professional with a first-rate bullshit detector when it comes to knowing someone who’s trying to con me and someone who is legitimately exploiting a gap in the marketplace.”

His anger level rose as he said this and I could hear him become flustered in the face of his own building rage.

“There I go again,” he said, catching himself.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “There you go again.”

“I need ten grand in a real hurry, Jane.”

“To ‘invest’ in this ‘operator’s’ company?”

“To pay someone back.”

“This Crowley crook?”

“Will you stop acting all goddamn superior here, Jane.”

“To whom do you owe the money, Dad?”

“Some guy.”

“What guy?”

“A guy I borrowed money from.”

“A friend?”

“I wish. He’s just a guy who lends money.”

“Oh, Jesus, you didn’t borrow money from a loan shark, did you?”

“I was desperate. I literally couldn’t pay the rent. That six grand’s kept me afloat for almost two years . . .”

“You’ve been living on one hundred and fifty bucks a month?”

“More like three hundred. Social Security pays me six, but I was handing over four-fifty to another guy who helped me out . . .”

“You’re in hock to a second loan shark?”

“No, I’ve just about paid him off.”

“Jesus Christ, Dad.”

“Go on, tell me I’m a fuck-up. You’ve been wanting to do that for years. And now that you’re the big-deal hedge fund manager—”

I’m a big deal nothing, Dad—as you’ve never tired of telling me. I’m the kid who worked every damn summer and held down every kind of part-time job to keep myself afloat in college and grad school, because you were off squandering all the money you once had south of the border. But in your more sober, rueful moments, you know all that and hate me for making you feel guilty about your own inability to be responsible.

Or, perhaps, like so many people, you’ve managed to filter the truth through the sort of distorted lens that allows you to perceive your own bad behavior as other people’s problems. After all, why accept responsibility for your own actions when it can so easily be foisted upon others?

“Will the ten grand settle the matter?”

“Yeah, it will definitely get the guy off my ass.”

“So he’s threatening you?”

“Well, what do you think?”

I think you’re a sad, angry little man.

“And once you pay off the loan shark, then what?”

“If I can come up with fifty grand, Crowley will hire me.”

And then disappear with your money.

“Tell you what. I’ll wire you the ten grand tomorrow.”

“This dot com thing is a surefire winner, Jane. And Crowley . . . the guy’s credentials are impeccable.”

“I don’t have a spare fifty thousand. But why don’t you send me the company documents anyway.”

“I don’t need your due diligence. And it gives me no fucking pleasure to beg you for—”

“Send me your bank details and I’ll transfer the money tomorrow. Once I get the documents, we’ll talk.”

I put down the phone. I poured out that much-needed vodka. I flopped into my broken-down armchair, still covered with the cheap Indian-print covers I made for it years ago. The Harvard broad needed to upgrade her furniture, not to mention her apartment. The Harvard broad should have never agreed to bail out her father—but would have hated herself for leaving him dangling in the wind. Just as she was also trying to absorb something she had suspected for years, but always sidestepped: the fact that her father had so failed at everything he’d put his hand to.

I woke the next morning feeling strangely lucid. I dressed in one of my new suits and even put on some makeup. Then I reported for work, fully expecting again to discover my termination notice on my desk. Instead, I found Trish sitting at her terminal, staring straight ahead at the raft of figures on her screen. Without looking over at me, she motioned for me to take the chair next to her.

“Find out everything you can for me about Australian zinc futures,” she said.

I did as ordered and had a report on her desk by midday. She read it in ten minutes, pronounced herself pleased with it, and then proceeded to school me in the business of following the movement of a currency—in this case, the euro versus the yen—and how to gauge the range of its current upper and lower limits. As always, Trish dazzled with her range of knowledge about everything—from German GDP figures to fluctuation in All-Nippon Airways shares. When she ordered me to work out a 7 percent commission from a $3.875 million trade and I didn’t have my calculator exactly to hand, the abuse was once again fast and robust.

“Fucking idiot, you learn nothing, do you?”

I said nothing. I simply reached for the calculator (which happened to be on the adjoining terminal), tapped in the appropriate figures, and informed her that the answer was $287,000.

“Next time, don’t keep me waiting thirty seconds,” she said.

I said nothing. I just got on with the next thing Trish asked me to do. Sometime during the course of the late morning I received an email from my father with his bank details, nothing more. No: Dear Jane. No: I do appreciate this. No: I would like us to try to patch up things between us. Just his account number, the IBAN and the SWIFT code for his bank. I called my bank and arranged for $10,000 to be sent to his account in Santiago by next-day transfer. Then I sent him an email:

Dear Dad

The money has been sent. Please let me know when it is received.

And please send me the investment documents as soon as possible.

As always I wish you well.

Your daughter,

Jane

I reread the email several times over, making certain that it had the desired effect—detached, cool, yet pointed. Knowing my dad, he’d choose to ignore it. Just as he’d choose never to thank me for this bailout.

Five minutes after I sent this email, another one bounced back at me from him:

Will be in touch.

But Dad never got in touch with me after this. Five days after the money was transferred I called my bank who confirmed that, yes, the funds had been lodged in the designated account in Santiago. I sent him a follow-up email, asking him to confirm arrival of the money. No response. Five further days passed. I sent two more emails. Still no response. I called his apartment in Santiago and got an operator recording in Spanish. Ken Botros spoke the language fluently (“ ’cause I was stupid enough once to marry a ’Rican”). I asked him to listen to it.

“The babe’s saying this number no longer works,” he said. “Says it’s been cut off. Your dad must be elsewhere.”

Another week went by. I sent an email:

I am still waiting to hear from you.

But I now knew that there would be no reply.

That same afternoon Trish was called into Brad’s office for a ten-minute meeting.

“Keep an eye on things,” she told me.

This directive terrified me, but I remained glued to the swirling numbers on the screen, trying to find order amid this statistical bombardment. Literally a minute after she had left, a notice flashed up on the MSNBC screen:

SWISS GENFEN GROUP WANTS $7 BILLION STAKE

IN NIPPON TECH

A little alarm bell went off in my head. Trish had mentioned something to me earlier that morning about how Brad was in talks with a Mumbai-based financial consortium. They were trying to purchase a controlling interest in Nippon Tech—one of Japan’s leading manufacturers of optic fibers—and Brad was just waiting for the moment when another financial group started pursuing Nippon to stage a big move on them. “We want the Jap motherfuckers to shit curry,” was the way she artfully put it, tossing out this information in typical rat-tat-tat Trish style. Then she grabbed a phone and started berating a currency dealer who’d let her down on an Aussie dollar move.

And now, three hours later, here was a flash news item in a corner of the MSNBC screen about Nippon Tech being pursued by . . .

I picked up the phone and punched in the number of Trish’s cell. She answered on the first ring.

“What?” she barked.

“Nippon Tech—” I said.

“What about them?”

“Some Swiss group is making a move on them.”

“You making this up?”

“It was on the television.”

“Holy fuck,” she said, then hung up.

What happened next was the stuff of pure theater. Trish came racing back to her workstation, shouting orders at everyone in her path, the gist of which was: “The Jap motherfuckers are shitting Swiss cheese.”

Everyone on the floor seemed to understand the metaphoric significance of this comment as all the traders dived to the phones and began dealing like mad. Brad showed up a few moments later, all smiles.

“We need to close this sucker by the sound of the bell on Wall Street,” he shouted above the din. Then turning to me he said: “Good call, Jane.”

What was going on was a long-planned attack on Nippon Tech. Orchestrated by Freedom Mutual and financed by some very wealthy Indian and Russian plutocrats, Nippon Tech became the target of a leveraged buyout, in which Genfen—the Swiss consortium who were putting together that $7 billion offer—were outgunned at the last minute by Brad and Company.

“This is General Patton territory,” he bragged to me as the afternoon wore on. Through dense, precisely executed trading maneuvers, the Freedom Mutual team managed to drive Genfen’s stock price down, thereby creating uncertainty about their ability to pony up the $7 billion offer; in turn, opening up the way for the Mumbai consortium to snap up Nippon Tech for $7.1 billion. In the midst of all this free-market frenzy, Brad disappeared into his office for three hours. When he emerged back on the floor, he called for silence. And then, with a showman’s flourish, he quietly said: “The deal is done. And Freedom Mutual is one hundred and forty-two million dollars richer this afternoon.”

The place erupted. Within five minutes three cases of chilled champagne were wheeled out by some caterers. And everyone seemed to be drinking a bottle by the neck.

“I promise not to call you a cunt for at least three days,” Trish told me after vanishing into the ladies for around ten minutes and then emerging with white crystal still adhering to both her nostrils.

“I was just the messenger,” I said.

“No, you were fucking smart. Had you not seen that news flash—”

“Someone else here would have.”

“But you saw it first, and that’s what counts.”

Actually, this era of good feeling between myself and Trish lasted all of two days. When I was ten minutes late—due to a mechanical breakdown on the T—she threatened to fire me on the spot if I was ever tardy again. I simply apologized and assured her it was a one-off mistake. Then it was business as usual. The triumph of the leveraged buyout was quickly forgotten. At Freedom Mutual there was always more money to be made.

Months passed. I got on with my job. I was still under Trish’s direct control (no one at the company was allowed to start trading independently until after half a year minimum), but her abuse seemed to be directed at me only 25 percent of our working hours together, and I took that to be a sign that I was making reasonable progress. I spoke with my mother on a regular bimonthly basis. After being initially shocked about my change in career direction (“Well, finance is the last place I ever expected to see you end up”), she told me that “making good money can’t be a bad thing . . . and I know your father’s so proud of you.”

“Oh, have you heard from him recently?”

“No, not recently. And you?”

“Not for months.”

“Maybe he’s on an extended business trip somewhere,” Mom said.

“Maybe that’s the truth,” I said, not wanting to upset her but also not knowing the truth myself.

Until, that is, two days later. It was early afternoon and I was trying to gauge derivative futures (don’t ask). The phone rang on my desk. It was Brad. I immediately tensed, as Brad never called me.

“Could you come to the boardroom straightaway.”

The line went dead. I stood up and headed down the long corridor to the boardroom. I knocked on the door and heard Brad tell me to come in. As I walked inside the first thing I saw was the strain on Brad’s face—discomfort mixed with a look of real anger that he shot me as soon as I was within his field of vision. There were two men seated next to Brad at the boardroom table—one stocky, one thin. Bland features, bad suits, hard faces. They both regarded me with cold professional interest. In front of them were assorted open dossiers. Among the papers spread out on the table, I saw a file with my father’s photograph stapled to the left-hand corner.

“This is Agent Ames from the FBI,” Brad said, pointing to the thin man, “and Mr. Fletcher, an investigating officer from the Securities and Exchange Commission. And they have been asking me a lot of questions about you for the past half an hour. Because it seems that you’ve helped your father flee from justice.”

“I what?” I said.

“You sent him ten thousand dollars,” Agent Ames said, “which allowed him to vanish from view.”

“What’s he done?” I asked.

Mr. Fletcher pointed me into a chair.

“Lots,” he said.

SIX

OVER THE NEXT hour I learned a great deal about my father. I learned that, for the past five years, he had been living off a small pension that had been arranged for him by the regime of Augusto Pinochet. And the reason why the Chilean dictator’s cohorts had been slipping him the equivalent of $10,000 per annum?

“Well, back in the seventies,” Agent Ames told me, “before the coup took place, your father was well regarded within highly conservative circles in Chile: captains of industry, fellow mining guys, the military. The fact is—and I can mention this because it’s now declassified information—he was an operative for Langley—”

“My father was a spook?” I said, sounding far too shocked and far too loud.

“The term Langley likes to use is ‘operative,’ especially as, at first, he wasn’t a paid operative for the Agency. I’m sure you remember when your father was setting up that mine in Iquique . . .”

“That was before I was born.”

“Well, I’m sure your mother might have talked about him being away at the time.”

“My father was always away, all the time.”

“As you might remember—even from just a passing acquaintance with Chilean history—the government of Salvador Allende nationalized all the copper mines in 1969, your father’s included. At that point he was approached by the Agency—knowing that he was still active, businesswise, in Chile—asking him if he would supply them with information about anyone and everyone he was meeting in the country, as he had firsthand contact with the Allende regime. They had employed him to stay on for an additional twenty-four months as a consultant, advising them on how to run the mine.

“As you can imagine, your father was an important conduit of information for Langley. He knew everyone in the Allende cabinet and was considered a ‘good’ gringo. He came home to the States for a considerable amount of time in 1972. His cover had been blown when some secret-police types tortured a Chilean operative whom they caught trying to photograph top-secret documents on Soviet plans for military installations. Your father basically made it to Santiago Airport and onto the last flight out of the country around thirty minutes before Allende’s goons raided his apartment.

“His mistress of that era—a certain Isabelle Fernandez—was the daughter of Allende’s minister for mines. She was also informing on him to Allende’s secret police. After the Pinochet coup her father fled to East Germany. It was not the most appealing of destinations, but it was a way of avoiding being ‘suicided’—the fate that befell Allende and so many of his comrades. Señorita Fernandez, on the other hand, found a different sort of escape route. Though it’s not documented, it’s been surmised that she met the same fate as so many of the thousands of ‘Disappeared’ during that era. She was packed into a military plane with around a dozen other prisoners and heavily armed soldiers. The plane took off and headed in the direction of the Pacific Ocean. Once over water, the soldiers would open a hatch and systematically toss each prisoner out—from a height of around three thousand feet. Considering that they were a good hour’s flying time from Santiago, the chances of a body being washed up onshore were virtually nonexistent. So there was no evidence of any malfeasance on the part of the junta. Dissidents were arrested, rounded up, and then—splash. They simply disappeared.

“Now all this has only come to light in the past few years, when Chile’s new socialist president ordered that all the old records be opened up—those that weren’t shredded, that is. It’s taken a long time for their people to dig up the dirt, but around three weeks ago, they uncovered an interesting nugget of evidence: your father worked as a paid informer to the Pinochet regime.”

“By ‘informer,’ ” I said, “you mean—”

“I mean exactly what is meant by the term ‘informer.’ In the early weeks after the coup, your father returned to Chile and offered his services to the Pinochet regime. They hired him immediately as a consultant on the reprivatization of the mining industry. But they also asked him for names: names of people he’d met during his years as an adviser to Allende and company. According to the documents found a few months ago, your father readily informed on people he knew to be leftists, dissidents, and/or potential troublemakers for the dictatorship. One of them happened to be his ex-lover, Isabelle Fernandez.”

“I don’t believe this . . .”

“Believe it, Miss Howard. Not only was your father paid five thousand dollars for every known enemy he named, he was also rewarded with that consulting job, which he held for ten years, and with the pension I mentioned earlier. He even got an apartment out of the junta as well.”

I stared down at the table and said nothing.

“From your silence, I presume this is all new to you,” Ames said.

“Of course it’s new. If I had known—”

“You would never have helped him flee?”

“Like I told you before, I didn’t think I was helping him flee.”

“What did he tell you exactly?”

I took him through the entire conversation about the loan shark to whom he owed money—and how Dad was allegedly being threatened with grievous bodily harm. Just as I also mentioned his alleged employment prospects with Creighton Crowley. Mr. Fletcher looked up from the papers in front of him when I mentioned that name.

“Did you have any prior knowledge of this Creighton Crowley?” he asked.

“None whatsoever—though I did tell my dad that being asked to invest fifty thousand dollars in this dot com company he was touting—”

“Yeah, we know all about Creighton Crowley and his dot com scam. Just as we also know that your dad was part of the entire thing . . .”

“In what way?”

“He sold shares in this company to twelve very foolish people who should have known better. Blocks of shares at fifty to one hundred grand a go. Your dad pocketed twenty percent of each sale.”

“Then why was he badgering me for money?”

“We estimate his net profit was around one hundred thousand dollars,” Fletcher said. “That’s what he lived on for around three years. Divided by three, it’s not exactly big bucks. But because several of the investors he tapped were in the States, it did bring him to our attention. We’ve been after Creighton Crowley for some time now. The guy’s got a history of insider trading and creating bogus investment schemes. The problem is, he’s always slipped through our radar—and eventually ended up in Chile. Your father met him through ‘mutual business associates’ and, professionally speaking, it was love at first sight.”

Ames came in here: “The only reason I mentioned your father’s colorful political past in Chile,” he continued, “is for you to understand that the man you helped flee—even if it was unwitting on your part—is nothing short of a crook. He sold shares in a company that was nonexistent. He informed his investors that he was buying shares on their behalf, even though he was ‘gifted’ these shares in his ‘contract’ with the company.”

“Not that there was a ‘contract’ of any sort between Mr. Crowley and your father,” Mr. Fletcher said. “More of a simple letter of agreement, in which Crowley gave him fifty thousand shares in this sham of a company. Your dad could have had fifty million shares. It didn’t matter. It was all a big con job. He’d been gifted the shares as part of his employment contract and he’d then sold them on. Crowley was, of course, doing the exact same thing.

“Want to hear a real lulu? Ever remember a family friend named Don Keller?”

Of course I remembered Don Keller. He worked with my dad—a geologist who dealt with all the technical stuff in the mining operations and a world-class boozer who was always going out on binges with my father.

“They were professional associates,” I said.

“According to Mr. Keller,” Fletcher said, “they were very close friends. Keller had ‘alcohol issues’ and lost his career and his marriage around ten years ago. He’s been living a very modest life in a very modest house on the outskirts of Phoenix. His entire life savings amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars—and late last year, your father convinced him to invest it in his company, promising him—in writing—that he could double it in twelve months.”

“Don Keller is now a ruined man, thanks to your father,” Agent Ames said. “He’s completely penniless—and his rage is vast. So vast that he contacted us about your father’s business activities. As it turned out our friends at the SEC were also interested in Mr. Crowley’s investment scheme. As we were monitoring all movements of money to your father, we were naturally interested when we saw your ten-thousand-dollar transfer to him.”

Again I was about to protest my innocence, but it struck me as best to say nothing further for the moment. I did look up and made eye contact with Brad. His displeasure was massive.

“We have naturally been investigating your own bank records,” Mr. Fletcher said, “and noticed a deposit of twenty thousand dollars from Freedom Mutual in the past few weeks. Mr. Pullman here informed us that this was your ‘joining bonus’ for starting work here.”

“That’s right,” I said. “That was the deal Brad offered me.”

“Why did he offer you, a graduate student in literature, such a large sum of money?” Mr. Fletcher asked.

Brad came in here.

“I’m a talent spotter—and, as I told you, it was clear that Jane had talent and that if I was going to tempt her away from academia, I had to cough up some serious money.”

“Knowing your company’s considerable turnover,” Ames said, “I don’t think twenty grand could be classified as serious money.”

“Well, do you really think I’d be paying a mere rookie more?”

Long silence.

“We’re still not entirely convinced that Miss Howard acted unknowingly when giving her father the money,” Ames said.

“Sir, my father has never been—in any way—a responsible man. Dig back into my personal history—if you haven’t done so already—and you’ll see that he never paid my tuition at college or grad school, that I had to rely on financial aid and scholarships to get through. Call my high school principal, Mr. Merritt, and get him to tell you how hard up my mother and I were. The only reason—the only damn reason—I sent that bastard ten thousand dollars was because I wanted to let him know that, unlike him, I wasn’t going to let members of my family dangle in the financial wind. So how dare you think that I was in any way in cahoots with that awful man.”

I was yelling—and judging from the alarmed looks on the faces of Ames and Fletcher, my vehemence had been noted. Brad, on the other hand, remained impassive, staring at me with chilly detachment.

There was a moment of awkward silence after I ended my rant. Then Ames and Fletcher exchanged a glance before Ames spoke.

“Be that as it may, Miss Howard—and my instinct tells me you’re being straight with us—the fact remains that the money you sent your father allowed a wanted criminal to vanish. My superiors in the Bureau will need a full accounting of your financial position, to see whether this is a one-off or a pattern of pay-offs.”

“I have never, ever given him money before.”

“Then this assertion will be borne out by a thorough inspection of your bank records and all other financial transactions over the past five years.”

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a legal form.

“We could, naturally, get a court order to run a thorough investigation on your accounts,” he said. “But I’m certain you’d prefer it if your record showed that you fully cooperated with the Bureau and the SEC in their investigations.”

“I have nothing to hide,” I said.

“Then you will not object to signing this form, which authorizes us complete access to all your accounts.”

He pushed the document toward me, laying a Bic pen on top of the page. I stole a fast glance at Brad. He gave me a very discreet but rapid nod. I picked up the pen and read quickly through the document, which essentially gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation and “any other government agency” the right to poke everywhere in my financial affairs. I picked up the pen and signed it, then pushed the document back to Agent Ames. He accepted it with a severe nod, then said: “Do you have a passport, Miss Howard?”

“Of course,” I said, thinking: He probably knows that already.

“We’d like you to surrender it to us,” he said, “just until our investigation is terminated.”

“How long will that be?” I asked.

“Three to four weeks . . . as long as there are no further queries about your involvement in the case. You weren’t planning to travel overseas in the coming weeks, were you?”

“Hardly.”

“Then I’m certain you wouldn’t mind—as another act of goodwill—turning your passport over to us. If your boss doesn’t mind, one of our agents will drive you to your apartment in Somerville to retrieve it now.”

They know where I live.

“I have no problem with that,” Brad said.

“Glad to hear it.”

Ames reached into his pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and dialed a number, then talked quickly for a few seconds before closing it with a decisive snap.

“An Agent Maduro is waiting outside in a blue unmarked Pontiac. He will bring you home and back here within an hour, traffic permitting. He’ll also give you a receipt for the passport. Once we’ve finished our investigations we’ll be in touch and will return the document to you.”

Ames stood up, followed by Fletcher. They proferred their hands. I took them, hating the fact that I had to engage in such politesse. But I had no choice here, and I knew it. Brad, meanwhile, stayed seated, staring at his fingernails, refusing to look over at me.

I went downstairs. Agent Maduro was standing by the car.

“Miss Howard?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Thirty-two Beverly Road in Somerville?”

“You’ve done your homework,” I said.

He smiled a tight smile and opened the back door for me. Once I was settled inside he climbed into the driver’s seat and we were off. He said nothing to me all the way into Cambridge. Not that I minded—as I was now seething with unadulterated rage at the monster that was my father. I’d read somewhere once that embezzlers operated in a parallel universe where they justified their malfeasance by never considering the harm they were doing to others. My dad obviously cloaked himself in a similar sort of amorality. Everything to do with that man had been predicated on falsehoods and dirty dealings. Though I had been trying to tell myself otherwise for years, I now knew what I’d never dare admit: he never loved me and I’d grown up knowing that I could count on him for nothing. My welfare, my well-being, had never interested him and I could no longer pretend otherwise. Any more than I could turn to Mom for the unconditional love I always craved. Hell, she was still telling herself that, one fine day, Dad would come back to her. Just as she would also let me know—when I revealed all that the FBI and the SEC just told me—that my father was incapable of such wrongdoing; that she knew he was the honest person she had deluded herself into believing him to be.

Out of nowhere I slammed a fist into the upholstered backseat and found myself gulping down the scream that so wanted to leap out of my mouth. In the front seat Agent Maduro studied me in the rearview mirror.

“You all right, ma’am?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, my teeth gritted.

When we reached my apartment, Agent Maduro got out and opened the car door for me, then said: “If you don’t mind I’ll come upstairs with you.”

“No problem.”

Upstairs I found my passport and handed it over to him. Maduro acknowledged its receipt with a nod and spent several minutes copying details from it onto a form. Then he handed it to me and asked me to fill in my home address, phone and work numbers, and sign below the printed declaration that I was giving this passport up without coercion; that I granted the Federal Bureau of Investigation the right to hold it “for an indefinite period”; and that I waived my rights to demand it back before the Bureau saw fit to return it to me. I pursed my lips as I read this.

Agent Maduro saw this and said: “Generally, if everything checks out, you should have the passport returned within a few weeks but, of course, that depends on whether . . .”

He let the sentence die there—because he knew he didn’t need to finish it. I took the pen and scribbled my signature. He pulled off a duplicate copy and handed it to me.

“Here’s your receipt,” he said. Then we returned to the car and said nothing to each other all the way back to Boston.

When I entered the foyer of Freedom Mutual, the temporary receptionist stopped me dead with: “Mr. Pullman wants to see you immediately.”

I’m sure he does.

“Please wait here until I call him,” she said.

She picked up the phone and whispered something into it, then looked up at me and said: “He’s waiting for you in his office.”

I had never been in Brad’s office before. As I was walked down the corridor to the big wood-paneled doors, I sensed this might be my one and only glimpse of his sanctum sanctorum. I was strangely calm as my heels rapped percussively on the parquet floor—the sort of calmness that arrives in the face of the stoic acceptance of one’s fate.

I knocked on the door. I heard Brad shout: “Come in.”

I opened the door and entered a room that had been done up to look like something out of a London gentlemen’s club—all heavy mahogany and oversized distressed burgundy armchairs, and Federalist art, and a massive fireplace currently ablaze with logs, and a huge nineteenth-century globe, and Brad sitting behind the sort of vast wooden desk that looked like the place where Admiral Nelson once plotted naval strategy. Knowing Brad’s ability to buy anything he wanted, it probably was Nelson’s original damn desk.

Brad was staring into a computer monitor as I came in, a pair of glasses (never seen in public) on the edge of his nose.

“Sit down, please,” he said, not turning away from the computer monitor.

I did as ordered, sinking into the armchair in front of his desk and doing my best to sit up straight in it. He turned away from the computer, pulled off his glasses, drummed his fingers on the desk, and said: “There is dumb and there is stupid—and you are guilty of the latter. I don’t care if the guy was your father and you’ve been spending your entire damn life trying to impress the son of a bitch. You never, never, hand over any sum over five thousand dollars to anybody if there is the slightest doubt in your mind about the probity of the individual. Courtesy of the SEC and Homeland Security, all foreign wire transactions over five grand are immediately scrutinized by assorted spooks and financial regulators. The fact that you transferred money over to a shyster—”

“I never knew.”

“In our game—and at the level we play our game—that is not a satisfactory answer. The problem here is—”

“I know what the problem is,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ve brought heat to this company and you don’t want—or need—that sort of heat. So I’m very willing to take responsibility for my actions and resign on the spot.”

“Your resignation is accepted. Your future here is finished. In fact, your future in any financial-sector industry is finished because no other company will ever touch you after this business—and also because you will now trigger a red flag whenever the SEC or the Feds are running one of their standard security sweeps of the business.

“As far as the world of money goes, you’re dead.”

I stared down into my hands and thought: My father has gotten his wish. I’ve finally followed in his footsteps and failed at something.

Brad continued talking.

“There will be a termination payment. Our lawyers will be in touch with you in the next few days to discuss this.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“Don’t be noble about this,” he said, turning back to his computer. “People get fired all the time in our world. If they are as junior as you they rarely get sent off with a golden parachute.”

“Then why are you giving me one?”

“That big deal you scored for us. It was a lucrative piece of work and it showed you had smarts. You made us money. We now have to let you go. But you will still get some compensation for that one piece of good work. End of story. Take the money or don’t take the money. The choice is yours.”

There was much I wanted to say right now. But I knew that I had betrayed an unspoken corporate code of conduct by bringing unwanted heat across the office threshold. It didn’t matter that I had been duped. According to the Brad Pullman Rules of Engagement I had screwed up royally and now had to pay the price of banishment—albeit one with a golden parachute to keep me afloat.

So I did what was expected of me. I stood up and left. As I reached the door I said two words: “Thank you.”

Brad Pullman looked up from his figures and replied with two final words: “You’re welcome.”

As soon as I was outside Brad’s office, I was greeted by Reuben Julia. He was Freedom Mutual’s “office manager”—though everyone in the firm knew that he was the de facto head of security and the man whom Brad counted on to keep all shit at bay. As I was now in the “shit” category, Reuben was here to sweep me away. He was a man in his midfifties, small, dapper.

“Miss Howard,” he said, with not a hint of menace to his voice, “I’m going to escort you out of the building now.”

“Fine,” I answered.

We said nothing to each other as he tapped a few numbers into a keypad next to a side door. It clicked open and I followed Mr. Julia down a series of long corridors to a back elevator. As we rode downstairs he said: “I’ll get someone to clear your desk today.”

“There’s not much there anyway.”

We reached the first floor. A Lincoln Town Car was waiting outside.

“Max here will be taking you home,” Mr. Julia said. “As Mr. Pullman told you, our lawyers will be in touch in a couple of days.”

With a quick nod of the head he said goodbye. The car took me home. A few minutes after I crossed the threshold the phone rang. A gentleman named Dwight Hale was on the line, informing me that he was from the firm of Bevan, Franklin and Huntington and acted as Freedom Mutual’s legal counsel. He asked me to drop by his office near Government Center tomorrow to discuss “the settlement.”

I did as ordered, showing up at ten the next morning. Dwight Hale was in his late thirties—slightly chubby, very “time is money.”

“Freedom Mutual is planning to offer you three hundred thousand dollars as part of a termination agreement,” he said.

This information took a moment or two to register.

“I see,” I finally said.

“Is that acceptable?”

“Absolutely.”

“There is one small condition to the settlement—that you sign a confidentiality agreement, stating you will never talk to anyone about your time at Freedom Mutual.”

You mean, just in case the Securities and Exchange Commission begins to nose around their books and decides to interview all employees past and present?

“I know so very little about the inner workings of the company.”

“I’m sure that’s true. This is a mere formality.”

Better known as an oath of omertà . . . yet one which was worth a cool three hundred thousand dollars.

“I need to have my own attorney look over the agreement before I sign it.”

“We have no problem with that. But if we don’t have an answer from you in forty-eight hours the settlement offer will be rescinded.”

“You’re not trying to pressure me in any way, are you?”

“We just want to get the matter settled as quickly as possible.”

“Of course you do.”

I didn’t have a lawyer but I did know how to use a phone book. And when I got home to Somerville an hour later, I picked the first name under “Attorneys” in the local Yellow Pages. It was a guy named Milton Alkan. He answered the phone himself with the voice of an aging and inveterate chain-smoker. When I explained what I needed done—and preferably before the end of the day—he informed me that he charged $200 per hour (a bargain by Boston standards) and if I could get the documents to him in the next fifteen minutes . . .

Milton Alkan was in his late sixties—diminutive, gnarly, with thick Coke-bottle glasses and an emphysemic cough. His office was a storefront off of Davis Square. Though he sounded as if he’d been working his way through two packs of cigarettes a day for the past fifty years, his manners were courtly and avuncular.

“So you worked for Freedom Mutual,” he said, scanning the first page of the confidentiality agreement. “I’m surprised you didn’t go to some white-shoe law firm downtown.”

“I’m certain you can tell me what I need to know for around a quarter of the cost.”

“That, young lady, I can do. So why don’t you go get yourself a cup of coffee somewhere and I’ll have this all done for you within an hour tops.”

Mr. Alkan kept his word. When I returned sixty minutes later he favored me with a wry smile and said: “If I’d known the size of the payoff you were getting I’d have charged you double. But feel free to go ahead and sign the papers. There’s nothing tricky or sinister contained herein. They are just covering their tukkas, like all business types. But if you don’t mind me asking you something: Why did they let you go?”

It’s curious, isn’t it, how we sometimes unburden ourselves to strangers. But Mr. Alkan had the demeanor of a Jewish Father Confessor and the story came tumbling out of me in a matter of minutes. He listened impassively, shaking his head a few times when I told him about my conversation with my dad and the revelations I learned about him from the FBI. When I finished he went silent for a few moments, then said: “Under the circumstances I think three hundred thousand dollars is the very minimum you should have received. What you did for your father by giving him the money was a mitzvah. And though he may have hated you for it, he must also feel a deep, abiding shame. You did something honorable—and even though it backfired on you, you still behaved ethically. In my book, that counts for a lot.”

Christy told me the same thing when I called her late that night in Oregon and brought her up to date on everything.

“You were conned by a con man—who also happened to be your father. And that, my friend, is awful.”

“The thing is, I helped fund his con. I looked stupid as a result of his con. But naïveté is just that: naïveté.”

“Stop berating yourself—even though I know you are genetically programmed to do so. When you’ve been duped by your own father, you have to start pondering the larger question: is anyone ever really worthy of trust?”

“And the answer to that is . . .”

“Hey, I write poetry. I have no answers, just a lot of unsolvable questions. Meanwhile, take their money and do something interesting for a while. A new perspective or two wouldn’t hurt you.”

The only perspective I had right now was the belief that life was so often a series of major and minor betrayals. Dad had been betraying everyone close to him for years. Just as my beloved David had betrayed his wife for years—and I had played a key role in this betrayal. And though the payoff from Freedom Mutual could be considered a termination agreement, I also knew that it was a way of buying my silence.

But Christy was right: I should still take their cash. After all, life so rarely pays you for actually trying to do the right thing. So I called Dwight Hale the next day and said that the signed documents were ready for collection. He informed me that he would send a courier for them straightaway and I could expect the money in my account within a week. He also asked me to phone him should the FBI be in touch with me “about any further matters.”

“I have nothing to tell them,” I said.

“That’s good to hear.”

I found myself becoming guilty about my immediate lack of occupation or industry. So I set myself up at a desk in the Wiedner Library at Harvard and forced myself to start working. My project was a straightforward one: to turn my thesis into a book which, if published, might just help me land a teaching job somewhere. I put in fourteen-hour days for a full month. The writing all came easier than I expected—perhaps because I was simply reshaping an existing manuscript and also because work, for me, was always a form of escape; a way of subsuming the furies within.

Halfway through the month-long writing marathon, I took two days off and headed to my mother’s house in Connecticut. Did I want to be doing this? Hardly. But after not paying her a visit in four months it was a duty I could no longer dodge. So I showed up with champagne and expensive truffles and insisted on taking her out to an expensive restaurant in Greenwich for dinner. Mom repeatedly worried out loud about all the money I was spending. Though I kept trying to reassure her that I was making serious money—for all sorts of obvious reasons I couldn’t tell her I had lost my job at Freedom Mutual—she kept saying that I shouldn’t be making a fuss of her, that she was doing “just fine” on the librarian’s salary she was holding down.

“So that’s why you’re driving a fifteen-year-old car and haven’t had the furnace overhauled since Reagan was president.”

“I get by.”

“ ‘Getting by’ isn’t good enough. ‘Getting by’ is half a life.”

“I’m fine, Jane. Just hunky-dory.”

“And I’m buying you a new car tomorrow.”

“You’re not to go squandering your money on me, young lady.”

“And you’re to stop sounding like a Thornton Wilder character and let me indulge you a little.”

“I’ve never been indulged in my life and I’m not going to start now.”

I didn’t point up the sad irony of that comment to her, but on the day after Thanksgiving I did drive her arthritic Toyota Corolla to a VW dealership on the Old Post Road and spent $8,000 on a new Rabbit for her. She put up a huge fuss but the salesman—a total smoothie, like all car dealers—immediately grasped the dynamic of the situation and played to her anxiety about having her only child buy her a car.

“Now when I am your age, ma’am,” he said, his Chiclet-like teeth fixed in a game-show-host grin, “I will hope two things: the first is that I am as young and lovely as you are. The second is that my daughter will think so much of me as your lovely daughter so evidently does of you—that she too will want to buy me a spanking new VW Rabbit.”

Mom, starved of overt male flattery, bought right into his shtick. Within half an hour, he’d convinced her to choose a Rabbit “in patriotic Liberty Red” (Is there such a color—and do Germans manufacture it?) and to treat herself to air conditioning as well.

“I don’t know what to say,” Mom told me as we drove away in her new vehicle.

“Say nothing. You need—deserve—a good, reliable car.”

“You’re really making that much money in this financial job?”

“I wouldn’t be spending it like this if I didn’t have it, Mom.”

“Your father would be so proud of you.”

I said nothing.

“Anything wrong, dear?” she asked me.

“No, nothing at all.”

“Heard from Dad recently?” she asked, trying to make this question sound as nonchalant as possible and not pulling it off.

I shook my head.

“He must be working very hard then.”

“No doubt about it,” I said and the matter was dropped.

Later that day I called a local heating contractor. He was having a slow afternoon and dropped by the house. Again my mother made a big fuss about having perfectly adequate heating. Again she was silenced by a man of commerce, as the heating contractor told her (after an hour-long inspection of her home’s furnace) that her system was on the brink of implosion and if she didn’t replace the furnace next week he could guarantee her burst pipes and assorted other horrors.

“How much do you think this will all cost?” I asked him.

“I can’t give you anything more than a ballpark figure,” he said.

“So what’s the ballpark?”

“Around ten thousand.”

“That’s obscene!” my mother said.

“No,” said the heating contractor, “that’s what it costs.”

I told him to call me on my cell phone after the weekend to give me a precise figure—and said I would pay eight grand if he could guarantee that he could start work on Tuesday. When he rang me promptly on Monday morning, he said he’d do it for nine grand, tax included, if I could pay him half of it by the next day.

“No problem,” I said and got my bank to transfer $4,500 that afternoon to his account. At the same time I also dispatched an additional $10,000 to Mom’s checking account. On the day it reached her I was back in Cambridge. Mom called me, sounding deeply distressed.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“Making certain you have enough money to keep yourself in a reasonable style.”

“I’ve told you before: I do just fine.”

Which is why you’ve been largely subsisting on canned goods for the past couple of years.

“Mom, I’m in the money right now.”

“You can’t buy me, you know. It’s what your father always said: You can never buy somebody’s affections—”

I snapped my phone shut and kicked a wastebasket across the room and put my palms flat against my eyes in an attempt to block out everything to do with my two parents.

Mom called back three minutes later.

“Did we get cut off?” she asked.

“No, I hung up.”

“Oh,” she said. “Did I say the wrong thing?”

“I’ll talk to you next week, Mom.”

“You really shouldn’t take what I say seriously, Jane.”

But I do, I do. Because you mean exactly what you say.

I returned to the Harvard Library and buried myself again in the book. Some weeks later—at 10:47 on a Friday evening—I typed the final sentence. I sat back in my desk chair, reeling with that mixture of elation and depression that every writer I’ve ever read about usually experiences when they have finally reached the last word . . . and with the knowledge that, with a book, writing the final word was only the beginning of the real work. But then a security guard came by and informed me that the library was closing in a few minutes, and could I please pack up and vacate the building. I bundled everything into a couple of backpacks and staggered out into Harvard Yard, awkwardly trying to balance my bundles. As I reached the street and flagged down a cab, the thought struck me: I’ll never finish another book again because I never want to write another book again.

When I got home, I emptied a bottle of red wine while printing out the manuscript. Then, around one in the morning, when I’d downed three-quarters of a liter of rotgut red, I started getting Boston-Irish maudlin, thinking: You are all alone in the world. My mother would naturally dispute this statement—but I knew it to be true. I could rely on nobody but myself. Bar a friend three thousand miles away in Oregon, who else did I have in my life? Since David’s death, I had completely closed down—removing myself entirely from any personal involvement, even one simply based on friendship. And after being duped by Dad . . .

Well, I’m certain a good Freudian would have much to say about all that and about the tears I was shedding now for my loneliness.

But then night woke up and I vowed two things: No more cheap red wine . . . and no more self-pity. Instead, I would confront my unhappiness in a predictably American way: I would go shopping.

I went out and bought a car. Nothing too fancy or extravagant. I could never see the point of dropping excessive amounts of money on four wheels and a motor. But given that I did have all that money in the bank, I decided that I could splurge in a modest sort of way and dropped $19,000 on a Mazda Miata. I’d always secretly wanted a sports car—but one that didn’t mark you out as an exponent of conspicuous consumption. The Miata was stylish, but relatively sensible (will you listen to me, always justifying, justifying). Its color was muted British Racing Green with a hood that you had to lower and hoist by hand. I loved it from the moment I got it out on I-93 with the salesman and revved it up to ninety in about eight seconds.

“You always drive this way?” the salesman asked, just a little shocked when I put the pedal to the metal and the car took off.

“Hey, it’s a test drive,” I said.

I insisted on taking the car right down to Providence, Rhode Island, and back again, breaking speed limits with impunity, knowing that this would be the last time I engaged in such a bad-girl habit (but hey, it’s a test drive). When we returned to his office, I undercut the car’s sticker price by two thousand.

“My margins are too small to accept that.”

“That’s what every salesman says,” I told him and stood up, thanking him for his time.

“I could give you a grand off . . .”

“Two grand or no sale,” I said, adding: “and I’ll pay you cash on Monday morning.”

“Fifteen hundred.”

“Thanks again for the test drive,” I said and walked out. He was behind me five seconds later.

“OK, OK. Nineteen thousand and you’ve got the car.”

As we were later signing the paperwork he said: “You’re some tough operator. What are you, a hedge fund honcho?”

“I’m looking for a job teaching English.”

“I pity your students.”

That Monday afternoon I drove out the door of the Mazda dealership with my first-ever new car.

As I sat in my apartment that night, contemplating my next move, the phone rang. It was Agent Ames. He asked if he could drop by and see me tomorrow morning.

He arrived promptly the next day at eleven. As I opened the door and let him inside I could see him taking in the grad-student style of my little studio—and being surprised by its modestness.

“I was expecting something a little more in keeping with your salary,” he said, simultaneously letting me know that he knew what I’d earned.

“I was just a trainee, sir—and tried to save most of what I made while at Freedom Mutual.”

“That’s very admirable. Then again, you did have to learn thrift early on, didn’t you? Though that’s a rather flashy car you just bought yourself.”

I smiled tightly and asked: “How can I help you, Agent Ames?”

“Here’s your passport,” he said, reaching into his briefcase and handing the document over to me. “As far as the Bureau is concerned you are no longer under suspicion—but if your father does happen to get in touch with you—”

“I promise, you will be the first to know.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said. “What are you up to right now?”

“I’ve been hiding in the Harvard Library, trying to turn my doctoral thesis into a book.”

“That’s also very admirable. Most people would have taken the Freedom Mutual payoff and headed for Mexico.”

“I couldn’t do that, because you had my passport.”

“How right you are. And we’re returning it to you now, not just because you’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing vis-à-vis your father, but also because we know you didn’t engage in any of the insider-trading scams that Freedom Mutual has been suspected of running for the past four years.”

“I wasn’t aware of such activity.”

“As I said, I believe that. But if you were willing, we’d still like to have one of our colleagues at the SEC interview you.”

“I honestly don’t know anything, sir.”

“Let the SEC be the judge of that.”

“I was just a trainee.”

“But I’m certain you saw and heard things that could be useful to their investigation.”

Play for time, play for time.

“I really need to talk to my lawyer about this.”

“People only talk to their lawyers when they are guilty of something.”

“I’m guilty of nothing, sir.”

“Then you don’t need to talk to your lawyer.”

I met his challenging gaze.

“I’m talking to my lawyer first, sir.”

“You might soon find yourself being subpoenaed, Ms. Howard.”

As soon as Ames left I was on the phone to Dwight Hale.

“You did the right thing,” Hale said after listening to me recount my conversation with the FBI man. “You know nothing—and I will make certain the Bureau understands that you are not to be bothered again.”

“How can you ensure that?”

“I have my methods. The thing is, it’s no longer your problem. On the contrary, it’s my problem now—and I’ll take care of it.”

“But say he approaches me again?”

“He won’t.”

“He said he would.”

“Trust me, that won’t happen.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’m a lawyer. My advice to you now is this: as you have gotten your passport back why don’t you take a vacation somewhere outside the country, preferably for a couple of weeks.”

“Are you telling me to go on the run?”

“I’m just telling you to take a foreign vacation.”

“Do I have to leave today?”

“I’d make yourself scarce as soon as possible. But do understand—all they can do is subpoena you to testify. Since you know nothing, there’s nothing to worry about. However, if you do happen to be out of the country they can’t easily serve you with the necessary papers. So the choice is yours: stay and find yourself being given the third degree and being put under a cloud of suspicion . . .”

“Even though I am entirely innocent of—”

“Clouds of suspicion often envelop innocent people. I’m just trying to save you some grief. Anyway, you probably have forty-eight hours before a process server shows up on your doorstep. So over to you now.”

Forty-eight hours. I went straight to work, packing a suitcase, packing up my laptop, dumping all perishables out of the refrigerator, paying some bills, and collating my manuscript and research papers. Then I carted everything down to my car and managed to squeeze my bags into the small trunk, with my books and manuscript ending up on the empty passenger seat. Climbing in behind the wheel I put the key in the ignition and heard the engine fire into life.

As I pulled away from my front door and steered the car in the direction of the highway, a thought struck me: So this is what they mean by going on the run.

But this was quickly supplanted by another thought: My romance with money is over.

PART Three

SEVEN

WITHIN AN HOUR of leaving town I crossed the border into Maine. Forty minutes after that I came to that junction on the interstate where you could turn off to coastal 295 and then on to Route 1. A quick exit at Bath, a right turn on Route 209 and I’d be at David’s cottage in Winnegance in no time, whereupon I’d tell myself that, one of these days, the constant low-level agony would abate . . . maybe when I fell in love again . . . if that were ever to come to pass . . .

Common sense kicked in as the exit to I-295 loomed. I signaled left, pulled into the fast lane, and kept zooming north-east, passing Lewiston, then Waterville, then Bangor, before veering east on a lonely stretch of road for around three hours. It traversed nothing but dense woodlands. Finally there was a clearing in the distance—an outpost called Calais (and pronounced—as I discovered in a local gas station—the same way as the hardened skin on your foot). I drove on to a narrow bridge, passing a small patch of no-man’s-land, after which was a customs post festooned with a Maple Leaf flag. There was a large woman in an olive-green uniform standing inside the booth, wearing a peaked hat that seemed more suited to the forestry service than immigration control. Courtesy of my Saskatchewan-born father I’d always had a Canadian passport (the Feds didn’t seem to know this) in addition to my American one. Not that I’d ever had an opportunity to use it before now. The immigration officer quickly scrutinized my passport, asking me where I lived in Canada. When I explained that I had never been in Canada before now and would only be visiting for a few weeks, she said: “Well, if you decide you like the place, you’ll need to get yourself a social insurance number.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said.

“You bringing in any liquor?”

I shook my head.

“Well, welcome home . . . I guess.”

I stayed the night in St. Andrews. It was a curious town—imitation English, with a slightly down-at-the-heel air. Like the guesthouse in which I was billeted, there was a fustiness to everything—what I imagined early-sixties Britain to have once been. It was ferociously cold outside—minus ten degrees centigrade. As I drank a cup of weak coffee the next morning in the ridiculously over-the-top dining room of the B&B—red velour wallpaper and one of those Axminster carpets that look like a faded Rorschach test—I found myself thinking: Only you, with a couple of hundred thousand in the bank, could decide to hide out in Atlantic Canada during the permafrost season.

An hour after leaving St. Andrews I stopped in Saint John, an old port and mill town, now ossified. Run-down red-brick buildings, depressing shops, gray people in gray clothes, an air of shabby listlessness hanging over the downtown. I grabbed a bad sandwich and pushed on farther east, stopping for the night in the town of Sackville, right on the Nova Scotian border. It was a college town—one of Canada’s best universities, Mount Allison, was located here—and I immediately felt at home amid its faux-Gothic architecture, its used bookshops, its student cafés and bars, even an old-style fifties cinema where they were screening a Kubrick festival that week. Funny, isn’t it, how we always respond to that which is cozy and familiar and fits into the way we want to look at the world. Before heading here I had this image of New Brunswick as a chocolate-boxy vision of Anglophilia in the New World. Instead, with the one small exception of Sackville, it was all blimpish, down-at-the-heel. Even the little hotel which I found on the main drag of Sackville reminded me of something out of an Edward Hopper painting—that low-rent 1940s world of the cheap and the sad, the sort of place where I could easily have imagined a retired showgirl—all peroxide hair and running mascara and wildly rouged lips—smoking filterless Chesterfields while downing her nightly fifth of Canadian Club. When I sipped my coffee the next morning in some local café I realized that I would go mad teaching in a small college town like this one. My brief flirtation with money had truly contaminated my once clearly defined worldview.

I left Sackville that morning and headed farther east, stopping for two nights in Halifax. I’d read somewhere that the city had a trendy caché. The downtown seemed chewed up by new buildings from the reinforced-concrete school of seventies brutalism. Yes, I did find a quarter-mile stretch of shops and boutiques and “we’re trying to be New York” restaurants that gave the appearance of being vaguely hip—but I wasn’t buying it. Like Saint John, Halifax dispirited me—and I would have turned tail and headed north toward Quebec if I hadn’t, by chance, discovered a beach with the very un-Canadian name of Martinique.

The discovery came courtesy of a concierge in the little hotel where I was staying. I mentioned that I might be leaving town the next morning.

“That’s earlier than expected,” he said, noting that I had booked myself in here for another three days.

“I don’t think Halifax in January was the best of ideas,” I said.

“Well, before you go, you really should take a drive out to Martinique Beach and have a walk—that is, if you don’t mind taking a hike when it’s minus fifteen.”

“I’m from New England. We all take hikes in idiotic conditions.”

Martinique Beach was a forty-five-minute drive from Halifax. I negotiated my way through a series of ugly suburbs, punctuated by gasoline alleys and the usual strip malls, until the road narrowed and I passed through little nondescript towns, most of which lacked much in the way of rustic charm. But just when I was about to write off this stretch of road as charm-free, the route narrowed. I turned a corner and, suddenly, there was water. A patch of forest, then a glimpse of the Atlantic. A small town, a bridge, another fast sighting of the sea. A house, a meadow, another patch of aquatic blue. Driving this road was like being visually teased all the time—just the most transitory sightings of sand and surf.

I followed the signs to Martinique Beach, cruising down a back road with the occasional barn or house breaking up the empty wooded landscape. Then I was suddenly driving alongside dunes, with scrubby vegetation pockmarking the sand. Though I had both windows closed up against the cold, I could still hear the roaring of the surf on the nearby beach. There was a little parking lot up ahead—absolutely empty, as only a masochist would venture out here on a January morning like this one. I parked the car and, zipping up my parka and pulling a wool hat down over my ears, I stepped out into the cold.

And, by Christ, it was cold. Though the temperature back in Halifax had been minus fifteen, here there was a boreal wind that must have lowered it by another ten degrees. But I hadn’t driven all the way here to suddenly turn tail and head back to shelter. I was going to walk the damn beach. Plunging my gloved hands into my pockets, I followed the little wooden walkway over the dune, then found myself staring straight out at the Atlantic. The beach was vast. It stretched for miles—and on this sub-arctic day, it could have passed for an outpost of the Mongolian steppe or the furthest reaches of Patagonia: the ends of the earth. The tide was out. The wind emitted a low-level but persistent howl, beyond which the percussive thump of the surf was more than discernible. That’s because the breakers were ferocious, primal—slamming down against the sand with an Old Testament vehemence. The sky was slate-gray, the world drained of color. Martinique Beach, with its harsh monochromaticism, had an elemental grandeur.

I started to walk. Fortunately the wind was to my back—but that, of course, meant that I would be facing into it on my return. The breeze propelled me forward. I held my head up, my eyes wide to the cold, my nostrils frozen, but still imbibing the deeply salted air. I was the only person on this beach—and it struck me that, were I to twist an ankle and become immobilized, I might not be found here for days. By which point . . .

But this thought didn’t trouble me. Maybe it was the endorphin rush of walking in sub-zero temperatures on an empty, limitless shingle of sand. Maybe I was having a major pantheistic moment, in which the sheer overwhelming power of the natural world gave me a sense of larger forces at work on this strangely benighted planet of ours. Or maybe it was the simple brutality of the cold—and the dark, angry majesty of this seascape—that suddenly released me from all thoughts about any life beyond here, or any of the baggage I always carried with me. Whatever the reason, for an instant or two, all external considerations melted away and I actually felt a sort of happiness. A pure, undistilled sense of just living in the here and now; of being liberated from the complex narrative that was my life. Was that all that happiness amounted to? A moment, here and there, when you could run away from yourself? When you fled the stuff that haunted your thoughts and ruined your sleep and remembered that temporal existence was pretty damn wondrous? Did it take the extremities of cold and wind—and the detonation of surf on an empty beach—to remind me that simply being here was a cause for happiness itself?

I walked on for another mile and then it began to snow. Lightly at first—a gentle cascade of hesitant flakes. But within a minute or so, it transformed itself into a minor blizzard; the downfall so dense that all visibility was curtailed and all I could see in front of me was a white void. It caught me unawares and the silent serenity of it all was instantly superseded by a larger consideration: getting off this damn beach right now.

But with limited visibility this was no simple task. I kept my head down and pushed forward, trying to retrace my steps as best I could. My progress was slow, my eyes stinging with the wind-whipped snow, my hands beginning to stiffen. The moment of clean, absolute happiness had turned into a grim trudge.

But then, out of nowhere, the snow stopped. It was as if someone had flipped a celestial switch and turned off the blizzard. The beach—now frosted by this sudden storm—was returned to me. I moved as quickly as possible back to the car. Once there, I turned the heater on full blast and stared at myself in the rearview mirror. My face was a deep shade of crimson, my lashes and eyebrows iced up. But as hot air started returning my body temperature to something approaching normal, I felt that weird exhilaration of someone who had stumbled into physical danger and then managed to stumble their way out of it again.

That’s the greatest relief in the world—knowing that you have got away with something you really shouldn’t have.

I sat in the car for a good ten minutes, waiting for myself to thoroughly thaw out. Then I stripped off my parka and gloves—it was now that warm inside—and began to drive back to Halifax. But just at the end of the beach road, I saw a sign on a mailbox, flapping in the wind. It read:

FOR RENT. CALL SUE AT: 555.3438.

The mailbox was at the end of a driveway. Intrigued, I turned in to it—and drove the hundred yards up to a modern Scandinavian-style A-frame house. It was shuttered and dark. The door wasn’t boarded up, however. Peering inside I could see a simple sitting room, nicely furnished in a country style, with an old potbellied stove in one corner.

An image passed through my head of me sitting in the rocking chair by the stove, reading Melville or Flaubert and listening to classical music on the radio. I returned to the car, drove back to the mailbox and, using my cell phone, called the woman listed on the sign.

Luck was with me. Sue Macdonald lived about five minutes away and happened to be at home.

“You really want to rent the place?” she said, sounding genuinely surprised and also wheezing that wheeze that hinted at a lifetime’s involvement with cigarettes.

“If it’s not taken,” I said.

“Not taken? It’s January in Nova Scotia—of course it’s goddamn available. Hang on, be down there in a tick.”

She showed up a few minutes later—a woman in her late fifties with short, stiff gray hair, dressed haphazardly in jeans and a mothy cardigan underneath an old army greatcoat. A cigarette was hanging out the side of her mouth. I liked her immediately, even if she did size me up with suspicion.

“So if you don’t mind me asking,” she said while opening the front door, “are you on the run or something?”

“Nothing that glamorous,” I lied. “I got fired from a job, I got a nice payoff, and I decided to hide out somewhere for a while, think things through . . .”

“Well, you sure as hell have come to the right place for being alone with your thoughts. Martinique Beach is so dead during the winter we actually had to shoot someone a couple of years ago to start a cemetery.”

The house was—as expected—simple, but with a certain degree of ascetic charm. The furnishings veered toward the Shaker. There was a very comfortable armchair, a traditional rocker, a nice four-poster double bed in the one upstairs room, a functional kitchen with pine cabinets, a large shortwave radio on a coffee table near the stove, no TV.

“Now I suppose the two biggest questions you have are: how do I heat the damn place, and how much is it going to set me back? Well, there’s an oil-fired boiler which I currently turn on once a day to make certain the pipes don’t freeze. If you decide to take the place I’ll turn it on now full-time and you’ll move into a warm house by this time tomorrow. In the utility room off the back, there’s a whole cord of chopped wood, which you can also use in the stove. And everything else is electric, so it’s not like you’ll have to stoke a fire in order to cook. What the hell did you say you did down south?”

“I didn’t say . . . but I used to work in finance. Now I’m trying to finish a book based on my doctoral dissertation.”

She looked at me warily.

“You got a Ph.D.?”

I nodded.

“From where?”

“Harvard.”

“Heard of it. And what’s the thesis on?”

I told her. She lit up a new cigarette.

“I once started a Ph.D. in English literature, just like you. ‘Jane Austen and the English Blah Blah Blah . . .’ ”

“You never finished it?”

“Came back from McGill one summer, hooked up with a local fisherman, and was stupid enough to kiss Montreal goodbye and live with the guy for the next twenty years.”

“After which . . . ?”

“After which he had the nerve to die of a sudden heart attack—and break my heart at the same time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as me.”

“When did he die?”

“Eleven years ago—and the thing is, it still feels like yesterday. Will ya listen to me, getting all self-pitying. The rent is one hundred per week and for that I’ll change the bedclothes twice a week and also get the local girl to come in here and clean the place for you every Tuesday. How long would you be thinking of hiding out here?”

“A couple of weeks, I guess, maybe three.”

“You really don’t have much of a plan, do you?”

“You mean, beyond getting this book finished? No, none at all.”

Considered now, the three weeks that followed were among the happiest of my life. What was that oft-quoted pensée of Pascal about man’s unhappiness all coming down to his inability to sit alone in a small room and do nothing? Well, I didn’t do nothing during those three weeks, but I did spend most of my time alone in a small room. And it suited me.

I moved in the afternoon after seeing the place. Not only had it been scrubbed clean of all the accumulated dust, but there was a fire roaring in the potbellied stove and fresh flowers in jugs on the dining table and on the bedside table. The fridge was full of milk and cheese. There were even two bottles of local Nova Scotian red wine on the table by the rocking chair. And there was a note:

Hope you’re comfy. I’m getting out of Dodge this afternoon to sunnier climes—as in that Yankee dump, Florida.

Marge—she’s the cleaner—will be in twice a week to change your sheets and tidy up. If you plan to stay longer than three weeks, no sweat. Just give Marge the dough.

Hope you get done what you want to get done . . .

I settled in, blaring CBC Radio 2—their classical service—as I unpacked. I used one end of the long dining table as a desk. I set the manuscript of the book to one side of my laptop, putting several well-sharpened pencils on top of it.

The next morning I was up at six. I made oatmeal and coffee. I left the house at first light and walked forty minutes up the beach, forty minutes back. It was minus five outside, according to the thermometer posted by the front door of the cottage, with no wind whatsoever: perfect walking weather. By the time I returned home it was just eight fifteen. All residual grogginess had been blown away by the morning cold, the sea air. My head was open. I was ready to work.

And work I did—five hours every morning. I ripped through the manuscript with relish, excising all digressions, sharpening up the arguments, and injecting what I hoped was a necessary vein of wit to a very academic book. The work went rapidly—especially as I maintained a diligent schedule. Up every morning before dawn. Breakfast. The eighty-minute walk on the beach (why eighty? I’ve no idea—it just worked out that way), then five hours on the book, then lunch, then another two hours grinding through the manuscript, then a further eighty-minute beach hike, then reading, then dinner, then more reading. And I was in bed every night by ten.

Why this need for such a rigid schedule? Discipline is all about the imposition of control—the belief that, by following a precise regime and avoiding distractions, you can somehow keep the disorder of life at bay. Maybe that was the reason why I was up so early every morning. The discipline allowed me to keep my mind off the worry that the Feds might now be inquiring about my whereabouts. And it also allowed me to dodge the belief that no one would ever read the book I was rewriting. But I still had to finish it—because it was the one thing in my life right now that gave me some sort of focus, some raison d’être. Was it guilt that was keeping me going? Every time I did my twice-daily walks on Martinique Beach I thought of David: how much I missed him every hour of the day; how he so loved walking the sand at Popham; how I kept seeing his body on that road, a look—I imagined—of bemusement on his face, as if to say: So this is it? And how I kept trying to tell myself that he so wanted to live; that he could never have fallen into such despair as to . . .

The lover for whom you wrote your thesis dies opposite a beach . . . and then you rent a cottage on a beach to finish the transformation of said thesis into a book.

God, how we are all prisoners of our own baggage. Why can we never really free ourselves from its malignant weight and the way it so dictates the way our lives map out?

I had no answers to such questions. I just kept working. I had no outside contact, no intrusive stimuli bar the news on the radio. Reduce everything down to certain essentials and you can live a very agreeable existence—as long as you also choose not to risk anything.

However, guilt made me phone my mother once during my time away. I began the call by breaking the news about my departure from Freedom Mutual. Her reaction was classic: “Your father will be so disappointed. He would so have liked you to have succeeded for a change.”

As per usual, I said nothing, swallowing my rage, and instead told her what I was doing up here.

“I suppose that fills the days, dear,” she said. “You will send our library a copy if it gets published?”

“You can count on that, Mom.”

A silence. Then: “I’m very cross at you about something, Jane.”

“What might that be?”

“I had two gentlemen from the FBI stop by the library asking to see me. It seems your father has been wrongly accused in some financial swindle thing . . .”

“Wrongly accused?” I heard myself saying.

“Don’t sound so suspicious. Your father is a brilliant businessman.”

“My father is a crook.”

“So you believed everything the FBI told you.”

“How did you know that—”

“An Agent Ames informed me that they interviewed you—and that you filled them in on everything you knew about your father’s business dealings.”

“Which wasn’t very much.”

“You still cooperated.”

“They were the FBI, Mom. I mean, the man cheated his friends and then cheated me out of ten thousand dollars—”

“I’m not listening to this.”

“Of course not. That would be too goddamn painful—to admit the truth. Because that would mean admitting—”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Dad’s dishonesty cost me my job.”

“Don’t you go trying to blame him for—”

“Blame him! Blame him? Didn’t the Feds tell you—?”

“They told me a lot of half-truths—and asked if I had heard from him. Now it seems he’s on the run because of your—”

That’s when I clicked my phone shut. I did what I only could do when furious with the world. I went back to work.

For the next four days I upped my daily writing hours to eight, continuing to be ruthless with the text, relentlessly working my way toward the end.

I tried to keep focused on the task at hand but, as much as I also kept trying to blank him from my mind’s eye, my father’s image continued to plague me. Since his disappearance, I had often speculated on where he might be now. Was he living under an assumed name in some South American beach dive? Might he have changed his physical identity, bought himself a Uruguayan passport and found himself some twenty-year-old puta with whom he could hide out? Or maybe he had snuck himself back into the States and—using a bogus Social Security number—was now eking out a living in some faceless sprawl of a city.

How I wanted to kill all thoughts of him. But can you ever excise a bad parent? Though you might come to terms with all that they have psychologically bequeathed you, they can never really be expunged. They’re the stubborn, permanent stain that will never entirely vanish in the wash.

However, rage can have its benefits if you can use its toxicity to propel you forward. So the eight-hour writing days extended to ten and I also found myself working half the night when insomnia started snapping me awake at three in the morning. For the rest of the week, I slept no more than five hours a night. Barring my two daily walks on the beach—and the very occasional trip to the local shop for supplies—I ground on with the rewrite.

The end came at six in the evening on the third Sunday. I typed the last sentence and stared at the laptop screen for a few dazed minutes, thinking: And after all that, it will never find its way between hard covers. But at least it was done.

The next morning, after breakfast and the usual sunset beach hike, I climbed into my car and drove into Halifax. My first port of call was an internet café on the Spring Garden Road. My email inbox was pretty damn empty—a three-line communiqué from my mother: “I do hope you have stopped holding a grudge against me. You seem to fly off the handle at everything I say. I would appreciate a call . . .” Not likely. A reassuring email from Dwight Hale: “The Bureau does not seem interested in questioning you any further about your time at Freedom Mutual, so return home whenever you feel like it.” A fast hello from Christy: “What’s with the disappearing act? A word or two about your whereabouts and well-being would be appreciated.” And the following from the Harvard Placement Office:

Dear Ms. Howard

We notice that you have recently reregistered with us as a candidate for an academic posting. Could you please call us as soon as possible to discuss a position that has just opened at the last minute in the English department at New England State University.

Sincerely yours,

Margaret Noonan

I gnawed on my lip when I read the words New England State University, as it was a third-tier place, favored by the sort of kids who either goofed off entirely in high school and/or were determined to do so in college. But . . . it was a job opening. Despite all that money in the bank, I kept telling myself I needed a job, which is why I had sent an email to Harvard a week earlier, saying I was in the market for an academic post. Because how could I do anything risky like take a year off to live in Paris—or bum my way around South America—when a job at a minor-league university (albeit in Boston) was up for grabs?

Sitting there in that internet café on a gray morning in Halifax I could see, laid out in front of me, the course of action I shouldn’t take: making the call to Margaret Noonan, arriving back in Boston, doing the interview, starting straightaway as a full-time professor, and repenting at leisure for having steered myself into a professional cul-de-sac.

Don’t make that phone call to Harvard, I told myself in that Halifax café. But I made the call. And I got the job. And as I accepted the job, I thought: The lure of safety drags us into lives we’d prefer to dodge.

EIGHT

MY OFFICE AT New England State University was in the basement of a dull concrete building. It was around eight by nine feet and had one half-window that was always streaked with dirt. Whatever low-level natural light entered the office was therefore always refracted through a prism of smudged glass. When it snowed—and it snowed a lot in Boston that winter—the window disappeared, and I was reduced to making do with the fluorescent tubes that provided most of the interior light.

“I’m afraid the new member of the department always gets the Black Hole,” Daniel Sanders told me after offering me the job.

The job was an assistant professorship in English. It had fallen open when its previous holder—a specialist in early twentieth-century American literature named Deborah Holder—had died of a fast-acting stomach cancer that had killed her just three months after its initial diagnosis.

“Debbie was genuinely loved by everyone in the department,” Sanders told me during our postinterview lunch. “She was just thirty-one, married with a young son, hugely popular with her students, and someone who genuinely had a major academic future ahead of her. She was a star—and nice on top of it. I am probably being very impolitic here by telling you all this, but I’d rather you be aware of the size of the shoes you are about to fill than find out through all the usual interdepartmental whispers just how loved she was.”

“I appreciate your directness.”

“That’s my style. That’s why I’m also going to be very direct with you right now about several other things. As you know this is a tenure-track job. But you definitely won’t be granted tenure unless you get a book published within the next four years—and with a reasonably high-level academic press. So you really must get the book between hard covers as quickly as possible.

“The second thing I have to tell you is this: everyone in this department knows that you were romantically involved with David Henry.”

“I see,” I finally said, telling myself that I was a fool to think that nobody at New England would have been tipped off about this most gossip-worthy part of my past history.

“I am not telling you this to make you feel uncomfortable, nor to pass any judgment on you. You should know that, in the course of the assessment process, I did speak to Professor Hawthorden at Harvard. He only had excellent things to say about you—but I did ask him directly if your involvement with David Henry caused problems for him or other members of the department. He informed me that you were very discreet about it.”

“It’s in the past, Professor,” I said, interrupting him. “And I hope I will not be defined within this department by something that was very private, that was never discussed with anyone, and that had no bearing whatsoever on my doctoral thesis—”

“Which was considered a first-rate piece of work,” he said, completing the sentence. “I wouldn’t be offering you this job if I didn’t know that, or if I wasn’t also aware that you consider this ‘relationship’ now historical and not to be repeated in the future.”

“What happened with Professor Henry would never be repeated again, sir.”

Yet again I was finding out one of the most fundamental rules of life: the repercussions of the past always rumble underneath everything. If you’re lucky the rumblings are only heard by yourself in that most private of realms, your conscience. But if your private life tips into the public domain, you will always be reminded of its shadow and the suspicions it tosses up about you.

Professor Sanders decided that my assurances were worth the gamble. Once I offered them, he told me I had the job—as long as I could start four days from now on Monday.

“No problem, but I do need to see everything that Professor Holder was lecturing on.”

That afternoon I was ushered into Deborah Holder’s office. It looked as though it was still fully occupied. Standing in the doorway with Professor Sanders I took in its crammed bookcases and noticed what seemed to be first editions of Emily Dickinson and Sinclair Lewis, stacks of papers, a framed poster of the Paris Métro system, and a bulletin board crammed with photographs. They were all family pictures. Deborah Holder had been a pretty woman with pulled-back black hair and an easy smile. Judging from the photos her sartorial style was Shetland sweaters and blue jeans, as was that of the bearded thirty-something man who shared so many of the photographs with her. Then there was her little boy, seen in these pictures at various stages of early development, the last of these showing him around the age of four, his arms draped around a mother now drawn and pale, her hairless head partly covered by a scarf.

I took in all the incidental office details. Everything here hinted at a life still in full swing. It was as if Deborah Holder had just stepped away from it all for a few minutes and fully expected to return to it at any moment. Professor Sanders must have been reading my thoughts as he said: “She’d checked herself out of Mass General after the last course of chemotherapy, insisting that she was well enough to teach. As it turned out, she’d only left the hospital when she was told there was nothing more they could do for her. But she was determined to go back to her students and kept the diagnosis from everyone.

“Now, we could have her husband clear everything out of here for you, I suppose, if you really didn’t want to work in the Black Hole . . . That office is not as spacious. In fact, it’s downright poky. But—”

“I’ll take it.”

Sanders nodded his approval, then motioned me to follow him out of there and into his own office. It was a large room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a venerable oak desk, framed Hogarth prints of eighteenth-century London (his area of expertise was Swift and his contemporaries), a worn Persian rug covering the institutional linoleum on the floor. He motioned for me to take the wing chair that fronted his desk.

“I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use a stiff whiskey. Going into Deborah’s office . . .”

He let the sentence drop.

“I wouldn’t say no to one,” I told him.

Sanders opened a filing cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Teacher’s and two glasses.

“Very Philip Marlowe, n’est-ce pas?” he said, pouring me two fingers.

“I didn’t know Raymond Chandler was one of your specialties,” I said, accepting the glass.

“He isn’t. I made the mistake of getting locked into the epoch of George the Third,” he said. “At least you are dealing with something more concrete, more recent, more about what we grapple with in this country.”

“Does everything have to have immediate contemporary relevance?” I asked, clinking glasses with him.

“According to the philistinic fools who sit on the board of this university . . . well, they don’t see any point in finding additional funding for the humanities, let alone those that address times past. But, sorry, I’m starting to rant.”

“There’s nothing to apologize about. Your anger sounds very justified.”

“You went to Smith and Harvard, so you must understand that your undergraduate students at New England State will largely have been C students in high school, and will not dazzle you with their insights into Sister Carrie. Having said that, given the insane competition for places in the Ivy League and the better liberal-arts colleges, we are getting a somewhat improved level of undergraduate—by which I mean uninspired, but not altogether stupid—and I think I’m starting to rant again . . .”

He opened a desk drawer and pulled out three hefty files.

“Here are Debbie Holder’s lecture notes. You are going to have quite a long weekend ahead of you if you want to be ready to face your students Monday morning.”

He was completely right about that. I went straight home after the meeting and spent the following two days burrowing into Professor Holder’s lectures. Part of me felt like a poacher as I was reading through these notes to discover the shape of her courses and the take she had on the Naturalists and Dickinson. There were times when I vehemently disagreed with her—especially when she tried to discern leitmotifs in Dreiser. But her analyses of Dickinson’s internal metric rhythms—and the metaphysic of her poetry—hugely impressed me. The passion she had for the work she was discussing was both remarkable and intimidating. I couldn’t help but feel that she was several cognitive notches above me; a true natural when it came to engaging with the flow of literary ideas. Of course I felt a stab of envy—but it was the sort of envy that arises out of seeing someone in your field raising their game and playing at a higher level. Reading her notes was both sobering and sad because, by the end of the weekend, I realized just what a major loss Deborah Holder had been.

When I returned to New England State early Monday morning I was in an advanced state of anxiety. My first day as a professor—and as I strode into the classroom, a firm smile on my face, a voice in my head kept telling me: They’re all thinking, “You’re not Deborah Holder.”

The first class was a course in American Originals, encompassing new movements in twentieth-century American poetry from Ezra Pound to Allen Ginsberg. According to her notes, Deborah Holder was about to start discussing Wallace Steven’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” When I reached the combined desk and lectern at the front of the hall, I found myself staring at seventeen students (I’d made a point of learning all their names over the weekend). They all looked bored, half awake, wishing to be anywhere but here. I wrote my name on the blackboard, and under that my office hours and the number of my telephone extension. As I scrawled this information across the board I could feel my clammy fingers failing to gain purchase on the chalk.

This was stage fright. Like all such manic jitters, it was bound up in that most commonplace of horrors: being found out. More than anything this dread permeates so much of adult life: the very private belief that a few ill-chosen words will show the world what a total fraud you know yourself to be.

As I finished writing my extension number, I shut my eyes for a nanosecond and told myself that the show must go on. Then I turned around and faced the class.

“OK,” I said, “let’s make a start.”

I took another fast steadying breath. I started to talk—a long exhalation which lasted for the next hour and during which the self-doubt was replaced by an ever-growing sense that I was pulling this off. After explaining my awkwardness about taking over Professor Holder’s classes—and my realization that I would be replacing someone who was irreplaceable—I started speaking about “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” and how, as the title implied, the poem dealt with a simultaneously simplex and complex idea.

“How you interpret all that arrives in life determines so much about how the narrative of your life is dictated. Perception is everything. We choose to see the world in a certain way. This perception can—and most certainly does—change as we grow older. But we are always conscious of the fact that, as Stevens so lucidly notes, there are thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird—and that, like so many things outside the range of empiricism, there is no one defining point of view. Like everything in life, it’s all subjective.”

I sensed I lost them a little bit with the reference to empiricism, but I was still pleased overall with this first outing and did seem to have engaged them . . . for a moment or two anyway.

The class in American Naturalism was a little shakier. It had over seventy students, many of whom seemed to be members of the jock brigade and had chosen it as a means of getting one of their English requirements out of the way. The football players—loud, show-off types—sat together in a pack and made a point of whispering loudly as I lectured, slipping notes back and forth and generally trumpeting their team-player ignorance for all to see. Interspersed among them were several cheerleader types, the sort of blond, clean-limbed women who all had names like Babs and Bobbi, probably came from white-bread suburbs, and would end up marrying the same sort of blocky men who were now showing off to them at my expense.

I was trying to talk about the trial scene in An American Tragedy where Clyde admits to “thinking” about killing his pregnant girlfriend, and how Dreiser plays with notions of culpability and the way we all want to confess something, even if it means orchestrating our own self-destruction. But as I was warming to this theme, the biggest and blockiest of the football clique turned around and started chatting loudly with one of the giggly cheerleaders. I stumbled over a sentence and then snapped.

“You . . .” I said.

The guy continued talking.

“You . . .” I said again.

The guy ignored me.

I threw down my pen and stormed right up the aisle to where he was talking. He kept chatting to the bimbette.

“You . . .”

He finally looked at me.

“You want something?” he asked.

“What’s your name?”

“What’s it to you?”

“This is my course, my classroom, and you are behaving in a rude, disruptive manner.”

He turned to his jocky cohorts and pulled a face—one that essentially said: Do you believe this nobody? My rage turned cold.

“Your name.”

He continued to pull a face. That’s when I slammed a fist on his desk.

“Your name now.”

There was shocked silence as Mr. Football realized that he had just crossed that line of scrimmage marked Danger Zone.

“Michaels,” he finally said.

“Well, Mr. Michaels, gather up your things and get out. You’re now officially on Dean’s Report.”

He looked wide-eyed at me.

“You can’t do that,” he said, suddenly little-boyish.

“Oh, yes, I can. You’re on Dean’s Report and you’re to leave this classroom now.”

“But if you put me on Dean’s Report—”

“It’s not an ‘if,’ Mr. Michaels. You’re there already.”

I turned and walked back to the lectern. Michaels didn’t move, but he did look to his pack for support. Everyone was suddenly averting their eyes from his and generally zoning him out.

“We are all waiting for you to go, Mr. Michaels,” I said. “Or do I have to call security—a call that will result in your immediate suspension from this university.”

Another long silence. Michaels again looked to his cohorts, beseeching them to back him up here. But they all stared down at their desks.

“Mr. Michaels, I am not going to say this again. There is the door. Use it.”

His face was now full of rage. He grabbed his books and his backpack and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. I let the silence in the classroom hold for a good fifteen seconds. Then, in as mild a voice as possible, I asked: “Now where were we?”

And I resumed the lecture.

After class I returned to my office and typed up a Dean’s Report that detailed the event in the classroom and the reason why Michaels was evicted. A Dean’s Report was a reasonably big deal at New England State. I had read about it in the hefty Faculty Rules book that I had received from Professor Sanders last week and noted that it was “only to be used when a student breaches all rules of classroom etiquette and/or engages in actions that are disruptive and detrimental.” I read this statement again before writing up the report and actually incorporated it into my comments on Mr. Michaels’s rude and ignorant behavior. Then I sent one copy to Alma Carew, the dean of students, and another to Professor Sanders. An hour after I had dropped them off, Sanders was knocking on the door of my office.

“You’ve had an eventful first day,” he said.

“I’m not going to be bullied by a student, Professor.”

“Word has it that you engaged in an act of physical force.”

“Did Michaels tell you that?”

“No, Michaels told his coach that. Just as he also told his coach that he was on Dean’s Report for the second time this term, which means an automatic suspension until next autumn.”

“So he won’t miss the start of the football season.”

“He’s a hockey player, Jane. The captain of the team—and a complete moron. The first Dean’s Report was for setting off firecrackers in the toilets of one of the girls’ dorms. Really classy.”

“Well, I didn’t engage in an act of physical violence.”

“But you did slam your fist down on his desk.”

“That’s right. I did just that, in an attempt to get his attention as he refused to acknowledge me when—”

“Yes, I heard all that from one of my spies in the class.”

“I didn’t know I was under surveillance, Professor.”

“Be glad that you are. This student backed you up and told me that Michaels deserved being tossed out.”

“And this student’s name is . . . ?”

“You don’t expect me to reveal my informants, now, do you? What I will say is that she . . .”

So it was a “she.”

“. . . was very impressed with the way you didn’t let him push you around. Michaels is the sort of oaf who’s always getting his own way because he understands the uses of intimidation. You called his bluff and I congratulate you for it. But there is nonetheless a problem now. Not only is Michaels the captain of the hockey team, but he is also ‘the lynchpin in their entire offensive structure’—and yes, that’s a direct quote from his coach. They have a big game against U. Mass this weekend. If the university has no choice but to enforce the second Dean’s Report then he is effectively suspended for the rest of the semester. Which means he can’t play in the game on Saturday. And if New England State loses because of this . . .”

“I will look like the villain in the piece.”

“Absolutely—and the English Department will also take the rap. According to the very jock-oriented trustees, we will have cost the university a big game, upon which hinges their ability to hoist some goddamn trophy that I don’t give two shits about. But it could be the stick they beat us with when we ask for nothing more than the maintenance of our current departmental budget next year.”

“So you want me to rescind the Dean’s Report.”

“No, that’s not what I want. That’s what the dean of students, the director of athletics, the director of giving and the university president want. Personally, I only care about this insofar as it has an impact on my—our—department.”

“If I refuse . . . ?”

“You won’t be doing me any favors. You will also be getting yourself off to a shaky start. However, I cannot influence your decision except to say that, quite frankly, I’d prefer it if you’d let the idiot off this time.”

“I’ll need an apology from Michaels,” I said. “An apology in writing.”

“I’m certain that’s possible.”

“I’ll also need an assurance that he won’t pull this sort of stunt again.”

“That won’t be a problem either. I’m very grateful for this, Jane. It saves me a huge headache.”

The apology arrived the next morning—a hastily scribbled letter, written on a half-torn piece of notebook paper and scrawled in such a way as to emphasize Michaels’s desire not to make amends. The penmanship was deliberately hard to read, but I still managed to decipher:

Dear Professor Howard

I apologize for my rude behavior in class yesterday.

It won’t happen again, OK?

Then he signed his name. I wanted to call in on Professor Sanders and toss the letter on his desk and tell him that this was the sort of payback you received when you let louts off the hook. But I decided it was best to let the entire matter drop.

The next day my course in American Moderns went smoothly, as we dissected Stevens’s “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” homing in on the lines: “You must become an ignorant man again / And see the sun again with an ignorant eye / And see it clearly in the idea of it.”

“Stevens focused his attention on that most American of beliefs,” I said. “Reinvention. Yet here he’s tempering it with the perception that, once again, how you look at something determines how it is for you. Or perhaps he is saying: the only way we can escape our given realities is by accepting that we have to somehow try to reinterpret that which we see every day.”

The students in this class remained relatively animated and asked reasonable questions. But there was one student who immediately struck me as well above the intelligence quotient for New England State. She had remained quiet during my first lecture, but when I asked for questions at the end of my talk on “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” she raised her hand cautiously and asked me in a shaky voice: “Do you think that Stevens’s ultraconservative professional life forced him into such experimental language?”

Hey, a thinking student . . .

“That’s an excellent question, Ms. . . .”

“Quastoff. Lorrie Quastoff.”

She stared down at the floor as she said this.

“Well, Lorrie, why don’t you tell me—and everyone else—what you think about that.”

“No thanks,” she said.

“I know that’s throwing the ball back at you but that’s kind of what I’m paid to do. Just as Stevens was paid to . . .”

Lorrie Quastoff continued regarding the floor, then looked up in horror at me when she realized I was waiting for her to supply me with the answer. I gave her a nod of what I hoped was encouragement, and she finally said: “Sell insurance. Wallace Stevens sold insurance. Actually, he didn’t do the selling. He was an executive in a big insurance firm in Hartford, Connecticut—and he kept his poetry very much to himself. When he won the Pulitzer Prize for ‘Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction’ it came as a total surprise to all his fellow executives. They had no idea that he did this in his spare time—just as, I guess, no one at the Charles Raymond and Co. insurance agency knew that Charles Ives also wrote music.”

Good God, the kid is knowledgeable. But why does she keep staring at the floor and rocking to and fro when she speaks?

“Does anyone here know who Charles Ives was?” I asked the class.

A big vacuous silence.

“Lorrie, would you mind . . . ?”

“Charles Ives—1874–1954,” she said in a loud demonstrative voice, standing up to speak. “American composer noted for his use of polyrhythms, polytonality, quarter tones, and aleatorical technique. Notable works include The Unanswered Question (1906) and Three Places in New England (1903–1914). Was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1947.”

It was like listening to a talking dictionary, but I was immediately intrigued. When one member of the class—a very preppy guy, dressed in a cream crew-necked Ralph Lauren jumper—snickered at the automaton style of her delivery, I shot him such an angry look that he immediately blurted out “Sorry” in her direction. Lorrie seemed oblivious to this.

“That’s incredibly impressive, Lorrie,” I said. “But besides making the connection between the fact that they both worked as insurance executives and both won the Pulitzer Prize, are there any other points in common between Stevens and Ives?”

Come on, kiddo . . . show your classmates just how smart you are and knock this one out of the park.

Again she wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Again she engaged in this swaying motion as she spoke, like an Orthodox rabbi at prayer.

“They both were responsible for extending the possibilities of language. In Ives’s case, a musical language. With Stevens, a reductive abstractionism . . .”

Reductive abstractionism! Way to go!

“. . . which allowed him to speak of large metaphysical matters in a style that, though rich in metaphors, never tempts lushness.”

Then she sat down.

“That’s really brilliant, Lorrie—and you’ve really got it in one when it comes to Stevens’s language. But I’d like to return to your first question: whether you think that Stevens’s ultraconservative business life made him even more experimental in his poetry.”

She stood up again.

“It’s not what I think,” she said. “It’s what you think, Professor.”

“But I’m throwing the question back at you again—which may be unfair, but so it goes.”

“What do I think?” she asked, sounding so automaton.

“Yes, please.”

A long pause.

“I think . . . I think . . . well, I really think that if you work at something really boring like insurance, you really need an escape hatch.”

That got a big laugh from her fellow classmates—and Lorrie Quastoff, taken aback by such support, momentarily smiled. Then she sat right down again.

I was hoping I could catch her attention at the end of class but she was gone out the door before I could motion her over for a chat. When I ran into Professor Sanders in the English Department corridor that afternoon, I mentioned how extraordinary Lorrie Quastoff was.

“Yes, I meant to talk to you about her,” he said. “She is rather special. As you can gather she is something of a savant—”

“But not an idiot savant?”

“We certainly don’t see her that way—but other people may do. You see, Lorrie Quastoff is something of a ‘special case’ for us. Because she is a very high-functioning autistic woman.”

Everything suddenly made sense: the monotone delivery, the inability to make eye contact, the rocking back and forth when she spoke.

“We accepted her after much deliberation, not so much to do with her intelligence—which, as you have seen, is formidable—but about whether she could function socially in the university environment. So far she’s done reasonably well, though some of the jock brigade have engaged in a degree of mockery from time to time, and she doesn’t really have much in the way of friends. We’ve assigned one of the proctors in her hall of residence to be her minder and make certain she’s coping. As it turns out, she’s ferociously well-organized—the proctor told me her room is immaculate—and she has a capacity for pedagogy that is simply remarkable. She’s still just a freshman, but I have recommended her for a transfer to that place across the river in Cambridge . . . and I think Harvard would be mad not to take her.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help with that, let me know. I do know the Harvard English Department inside out.”

As soon as that comment was out of my mouth, I regretted it. Professor Sanders worked hard at suppressing a smile.

“I’ve no doubt of that, Jane. No doubt at all.”

When I returned to my office and ran through the list of seventy-three students in my American Naturalism class, lo and behold Lorrie Quastoff was there. The course was so big—and held in such a large lecture hall—that I hadn’t seen her in the crowd. But when I arrived at the hall that afternoon, I scanned the rows of students and noted that she was sitting way in the back, off to the right, on her own. As I searched for her, I also saw Michaels sitting with his beefy acolytes and their blond squeezes. As I caught his eye he made a face at me, mimicking a naughty schoolboy caught by the teacher. Then the bastard actually winked at me, as if to say: “Think you could get me suspended, did you?”

I coughed to bring the class to attention, then wished everyone a good afternoon and returned to An American Tragedy, discussing the grim scene leading up to Clyde’s execution. Having gotten their attention with the details of the electrocution I asked the class if anyone had considered which major work of fiction had influenced Dreiser’s novel. No one answered. At the back of the class I could see Lorrie Quastoff wanting to raise her hand, but feeling intimidated.

“Ms. Quastoff,” I said, “you seem to want to say something.”

The moment I mentioned “Ms. Quastoff” I saw Michaels pull a monkey face at one of his chums. As he did this, Lorrie suddenly stood up. And in a far-too-loud voice she said: “Dostoevsky. That’s the answer. Dreiser loved Crime and Punishment and he used the same theme of self-recrim . . . crim . . . crim . . .”

She’d gotten stuck on that syllable and kept repeating it. The titters from Michaels and Company got louder. And when I heard him distinctly mimic her—“Crim . . . crim . . . crim . . .” he said in a loud whisper to the guy behind him—I pounced.

“Mr. Michaels,” I shouted. “On your feet right now.”

There was a long, shocked silence—and Michaels was suddenly looking very worried.

“I said: on your feet now.”

Michaels rose to his feet, his eyes boring into me—a stare meant to intimidate but which I shook off with a caustic shake of the head.

“What were you just saying?” I asked.

“I was saying nothing.”

“That’s not the truth and you know it. You were mocking Ms. Quastoff.”

“No, I wasn’t . . .”

“I heard you very distinctly, Mr. Michaels. You went ‘crim, crim, crim’ when Ms. Quastoff had trouble with the word. Did anyone else hear Mr. Michaels mock Ms. Quastoff?”

“I did,” Lorrie Quastoff said. “And he’s always doing that to me. Always calling me ‘spaz’ or ‘Rain Man.’ He’s a big bully and he always does it to show off to his friends.”

“I’m really sorry if—” Michaels said.

“You were sorry the other day as well when you insulted me during my lecture,” I said, “and I let you off with an apology, which is why you are back in this classroom today. But to then go and mock a student with developmental challenges . . . there is no way that a simple apology is going to get you out of this one. You’re back on Dean’s Report, Mr. Michaels, and this time the automatic suspension will stick. Now get the hell out of my class.”

He didn’t look to his buddies this time for support. He simply bolted for the exit, then turned and shouted at me: “You think you’re going to get away with this, you’re wrong!” and slammed the door behind him.

After the class I asked Lorrie Quastoff to stay behind. Once everyone else had left the lecture hall, she stood by my desk, rocking back and forth, her agitation showing.

“They’re gonna get me now. Really get me. Make me pay. You shouldn’t have called on me . . .”

Her rocking became so repetitive that I had to put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

“Lorrie, I promise you, they will not get you if you do exactly what I say.”

“And if I don’t do what you say?”

“Well, that won’t be the end of the world. But it might not put an end to the teasing. This will, trust me.”

“He’s going to be suspended?”

“And more—if I have my way.”

“You want me to write something?”

“You’re ahead of me.”

“Like Dostoevsky was ahead of Dreiser.”

I went back to my office and wrote up my Dean’s Report. True to her word—as I told her I needed it within an hour—Lorrie slipped her own signed affidavit underneath my office door and was gone immediately. I stuck my head out the office door but before I could say her name she had turned a corner and vanished. I picked up her report. It was written with amazing fluidity and accomplishment and it detailed, at great length, the hectoring and intimidation she had received over the past term and a half from Michaels and Company. Immediately I revised the final paragraph of my report. It read:

It is clear from Lorrie Quastoff’s signed statement that New England State University has allowed a coordinated and lengthy series of intimidations to be perpetrated on a young woman with learning difficulties. The very fact that Mr. Michaels is a star athlete, and has been allowed to get away with his campaign of intimidation against a brilliant student who also happens to be on the autistic spectrum could be interpreted in the wider arena of general public opinion as an indication that the university is more concerned with athletic success than protecting the rights and dignity of a student who is so admirably overcoming the disability with which she was born. I am certain that the university would not want to stand accused of such a charge, as I am also certain that this runs contrary to all university policy.

I knew these last couple of lines would provide the knockout punch I wanted to land, as they were veiled with the idea that this incident might turn into a media cause célèbre that could cost them dearly. I finished the report, read it through, signed it, and then called Professor Sanders to brief him.

“Oh, merde,” was his initial reply, followed by: “But if what you say in the report can’t be refuted—”

“It can’t be refuted.”

“Others will be the judge of that, because this whole business is going to end up on the desk of Ted Stevens.” He was the president of the university. “If my instincts prove me right, he will move to close the whole thing down within twenty-four hours. I doubt they’re going to side with Michaels because they don’t want reporters from the Boston Globe or the New York Times crawling around the campus. Do understand, though, after this you’re going to be regarded as Typhoid Mary around here. The administration will side with you publicly while at the same time privately despising you for costing them dearly. Hockey’s a big sport in this school.”

And the university president, Ted Stevens, was a very big hockey fan. He told me that himself when he called me into his office the next day to “discuss” the situation. He was a man in his midfifties, hyperfit, wearing a very conservative suit and rep tie, with pictures of himself and the first George Bush on a wall near his desk. He looked very much like a high-powered executive (and as a quick glance at his bookshelf informed me, he was very much an exponent of applied corporate management principles). Seated in his office were the dean of students, Alma Carew (African-American, late thirties, wiry, intense); the head of sports, Budd Hollander (short, hefty, wearing an ill-fitting brown blazer and a check shirt); and Professor Sanders.

“Now, according to Mr. Michaels’s very high-powered and expensive attorney,” Ted Stevens said, “you provoked him into mimicking Ms. Quastoff.”

“With respect, sir, that’s nonsense.”

“With respect, Professor, several other members of the class have corroborated this.”

“Were they members of Michaels’s little clique?” I asked.

Ted Stevens didn’t like this question one bit.

“Not all of them,” he said.

“Well, I’m certain if you were to interview Ms. Quastoff—”

“We have interviewed Ms. Quastoff. Or, I should say, Dean Carew has.”

Alma Carew came in here.

“Lorrie told me she didn’t have her hand in the air, but you still called on her.”

“I called on her because I had posed a question to the class and no one was offering an answer. Lorrie Quastoff had spoken brilliantly that morning in my course on American Moderns and I could see that she knew the answer to my question.”

“How could you see that?” Alma Carew asked.

“She was on the verge of raising her hand.”

“Lorrie Quastoff denies that she even moved her hand. She said you sought her out.”

“Does it really matter whether Ms. Quastoff did or did not raise her hand?” Professor Sanders asked. “The fact is, Professor Howard was perfectly within her rights to call on any student she wanted to. As she wasn’t getting a response to a general question thrown out to the class, she called on a student she knew to be bright and knowledgeable—”

“And who she also knew was on the autistic spectrum and had been subjected to alleged bullying by Michaels.”

Budd Hollander came in here: “Joey told me he never, never bullied Lorrie Quastoff.”

“Her signed statement says otherwise,” said Professor Sanders.

“But she doesn’t have witnesses.” This was Hollander.

“Are you saying that she lied about being harassed by Michaels?” I asked, sounding angry.

Ted Stevens came in at this point: “All Coach Hollander is saying . . .”

Coach?

“. . . is that it’s his word against hers.”

“And mine,” Professor Sanders said. “Because Ms. Quastoff came to the late Professor Holder last term and complained to her that Michaels and his cronies were teasing her—and Professor Holder, in turn, informed me of this.”

“Did she write this down, file a report, anything like that?” Alma Carew asked.

“No,” Professor Sanders said. “But, to repeat, she did tell me that Lorrie Quastoff was being bullied by Joseph Michaels. And if that little creep didn’t happen to be the captain of the hockey team, we wouldn’t be here now, trying to see if there’s a way out of suspending him.”

“With respect, Professor,” Alma Carew said, “the issue here is whether Michaels was provoked into saying what he said in Professor Howard’s class. We know already that she had issues with Michaels.”

“Issues,” I said, sounding outraged. “The creep was deliberately rude and obstreperous in my class two days ago and was put on report for that. I rescinded the report because I was told that if he missed the big championship game on Saturday night it would be disastrous. So I decided to give him a second chance. What does he do? He winks at me at the start of the lecture and then viciously mocks a student with developmental challenges—”

“You didn’t mention the wink in your report,” Alma Carew said.

“I felt it was irrelevant.”

“But it got you angry, didn’t it?” Budd Hollander said. “So angry that you decided to call on Lorrie Quastoff in the hope that Joey Michaels would—”

“I did nothing of the sort,” I said, now sounding very angry, “and I find it extraordinary that you are turning this discussion into a cross-examination.”

“This is not a trial, Professor,” said Ted Stevens.

“Well, it’s certainly starting to smell like one. I genuinely resent being made to feel as if I am at fault here. The fact is, this kid is a nasty piece of work and he does not play by the rules when it comes to his comportment, let alone showing decency to a young woman who has overcome so much to simply gain admission to this university.”

“Do you truly understand what you’re perpetrating if you insist on keeping him on Dean’s Report?” asked Budd Hollander. “This university hasn’t won a major national hockey tournament in over twenty years. The team is on the brink of doing this, going into the game against U. Mass heavily favored to win. But Joey Michaels is the lynchpin of the team. Without him . . . well, it will be something of an uphill struggle. He’s the highest-scoring forward in our division, the NHL are already scouting him—”

“And having been let off the hook less than thirty-six hours ago, he then plays on his ‘above the law’ perspective by belittling an autistic student. Sorry—but you can’t excuse that. His arrogance landed him in this situation.”

“I don’t think he’s the only arrogant person in this situation,” Alma Carew said.

“For the life of me I don’t know why you’re defending this kid,” I said to her. “I mean, if he had uttered a racial epithet against a person of color, would you still—”

“That is so way out of line.” Carew was suddenly furious.

“Sounds like a perfectly reasonable question to me,” Professor Sanders said.

“And that is absolutely enough from all of you,” answered Ted Stevens.

He let the silence that followed hang in the air for a good minute—no doubt a strategy he had learned from one of his management books about defusing verbal fisticuffs among his underlings.

Finally he said: “Could I have a word with Professor Howard in private? I’ll be in touch with all of you by the end of the day to inform you what course of action I plan to take next.”

They all stood up, Alma Carew and Budd Hollander saying nothing to me as they walked out the door. Professor Sanders raised his eyes slightly in my direction. Was he indicating that I should proceed with prudence or was he telling me he’d stand by me, whatever came out of this mess? Certainly the tone of his comments during this “discussion” hinted that he was in my corner, but in the ever-shifty world of university politics there was no such thing as ongoing loyalty. The default position always was public support but private subversion.

So I was suddenly alone with Ted Stevens. Having been sitting with the four of us around a conference table in one corner of his capacious office, he now stood up and moved to the equally capacious desk that covered one substantial corner of the room. As he mentioned me to sit down in the narrow straight-backed chair fronting his desk, I wondered if he had picked up this tactic from another of those management guides in a chapter titled “How to Intimidate.” But I had decided that I wouldn’t be intimidated—and in the back of my mind was the idea that if he fired me now, he’d be letting himself in for a very public fight. No doubt he’d already worked this one out, as his first comment to me was: “Do you realize what this university stands to gain if we win the ECAC championship on Saturday night? Ken Malamut . . . ever heard of him?”

“The big hedge fund guy.”

“I forgot that you did a brief stint in high finance,” he said. “Very brief, in fact.”

“I decided that I wanted to return to academic life.”

“Of course you did,” he said, tingeing the comment with just the slightest hint of sarcasm. “Which is why you left Freedom Mutual in such a hurry.”

I said nothing.

“We actually thought you were quite a catch when you were recruited to fill Deborah Holder’s post. But given the eventful first week you’ve had here—”

“Now you listen to me, sir,” I said, cutting him off. “The only damn reason I’ve had an eventful first week here is because of the antics of your star hockey player. I refuse to be made the scapegoat for his obnoxious—”

He held up his hand like a traffic cop forcing a driver into an immediate stop.

“Personally, I think Joseph Michaels is an odious little shit,” he said, “and one with a vast entitlement complex. So yes, I am in full agreement with you and have no doubt that the little bastard did everything you say he did. And as for the deliberate disrespect underscoring his alleged apology to you . . . But here’s the thing, Professor. I may concur with you, but I am, at heart, a manager, not an academic. I was brought in here to manage a third-tier university that is trying to become second-tier and simultaneously to up its national profile and its endowment base. So far, I’ve increased our overall endowment by twenty-seven million dollars in just under nineteen months. And here I have, in my sights, Ken Malamut: one of Wall Street’s major-league players, a New England State alumnus, and a genuine college hockey fanatic. And he has promised me—us—a one-time gift of ten million dollars—nothing to a guy who’s worth close to one billion dollars—but a definitive ten million dollars if we win that hockey trophy on Saturday night.”

“So I’m going to cost New England State ten million dollars if I keep Michaels on Dean’s Report?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it so bluntly . . .”

“Yes, you would.”

“All right, straight talking, no BS—yes, you would do just that.”

I lowered my head. I tried to shift around in the narrow seat, but realized it was designed for making the occupant feel very restricted and cowed by the big man in the big chair behind the big desk. Maybe it was the realization that this “management tool” chair was deliberately restricting me—and that Ted Stevens struck me as exactly the sort of smarmy executive type I so hated in American life—that made me look up at him and say: “I’m not rescinding the Dean’s Report.”

He flinched, then tried to hide the fact that he had flinched.

“That’s a foolish decision, Professor,” he said.

“Perhaps,” I said, “but it’s also the decision I can live with.”

“I want you to think very carefully about—”

I stood up.

“Nice meeting you, sir,” I said.

“You think you’re clever, occupying the emotional high ground and all that. You also think that a guaranteed cause célèbre around Lorrie Quastoff will shield you from retaliatory action from the university. Perhaps it will . . . in the short term. And no, I’m not so stupid as to fire you on the spot. But your four-year contract with us . . . it may allegedly be ‘tenure-track.’ But know this: if you cost us this ten million dollars, I can unequivocally promise you that you will never, ever get tenure. I’ll see to that.”

“I’m sure you will,” I said, then headed to the door.

“Professor—Jane—why make life difficult for yourself?”

I wanted to say: “I hate all bullies, that’s why” and make certain he understood that, by implication, I was including him. But I stopped myself. All justifications are defensive—and this afternoon, I had decided not to be defensive, even though I knew it was going to cost me big time.

So my only response was a shrug and a polite reiteration of “Very nice meeting you, sir,” as I left the room.

The Dean’s Report on Joseph Michaels was therefore not rescinded and he was suspended for the rest of the term. When, two days later, I walked into my class on American Originals, I scanned the students and caught sight of Lorrie Quastoff. She looked away and wouldn’t make eye contact with me. That afternoon, I steeled myself for dirty looks from the Michaels clique in my Naturalism course. Like everyone else in the lecture hall, they hushed themselves as soon as I entered the room and behaved immaculately throughout my one-hour lecture. Had I earned their respect? Had my refusal to give in to popular sentiment won me a certain hard-ass reputation? It was difficult to say—though I did make a point of knocking on Professor Sanders’s office door later that day to hear him say that Stevens would definitely make good on his threat to eventually deny me tenure.

“Maybe that’s no bad thing from your standpoint, Jane. You know now things are finite here for you.”

“Even though you think I’ve made a huge mistake.”

“You decided to adhere to a point of principle—and that’s admirable. But do understand that no one is going to like you for it. We all need scapegoats. And when the team loses the Big Game, you are going to be cast in that role.”

As it happened, the Big Game turned out a little different than everyone expected. I went online at eleven on Saturday night, fully expecting to see that U. Mass had emerged victorious. But on the Boston.com website, there was a short item in the Breaking Sports News department, heralding the “Sudden Death Goal” that won New England State its first ECAC Championship: “a goal scored by a certain Pete O’Mara [one of Michaels’s cohorts in my class] at 3:37 in the second overtime period.”

Playing without their star forward, Joseph Michaels, who had been controversially suspended from New England State less than forty-eight hours before the big game, New England State trailed 1–0 before leveling the score with less than ninety seconds to go in normal time. And then, out of nowhere, in the second overtime period . . .

So there are such things as happy endings—though when I ran into Ted Stevens while crossing the main campus quadrangle on Monday and wished him a good morning, he simply smiled thinly at me. It was a smile that said: You’re dead here.

On the Monday afternoon after the Big Game, I received a phone call from Professor Sanders, asking me to drop by his office.

As I walked in, he asked: “Scotch?” and poured it before settling into the chair opposite his desk.

“Is the news that bad?” I asked.

“Nothing you don’t already know. My advice to you is: get that book of yours published, write as much as you can for as many journals and magazines as possible, and hopefully find a new teaching post by sheer force of your output and ambition. Because once your contract is up here you will be packing your bags.”

After this drink Professor Sanders began to distance himself from me. He was never arctic in public—he was too smart to play that game—and he did make a point of asking for my take on things in departmental meetings. But he always referred to me as “Professor Howard” while calling all my other colleagues by their first names. The other members of the department noted this, just as they also noted the way he had dispatched me to his own genteel version of Coventry. Or as Marty Melcher put it: “Sanders is subtextually telling us you are one dangerous babe . . . And go on and report me for using the word ‘babe.’ ”

“Now why would I do a thing like that, Professor?” I asked.

“So you’re not PC, a crypto-feminist, or even an über-feminist?”

“ ‘Über’ with an umlaut?” I asked.

“Sanders said you’re fast. So fast that you refused to be threatened by Our Beloved Leader, President Stevens.”

“Might I have a vodka, please?” I asked. We were in a bar and Melcher’s smarmy banter now had me regretting the fact that I had accepted his offer of an after-work cocktail—especially as another departmental colleague, Stephanie Peltz, had warned me he was a lech. (Just as Marty had warned me that Stephanie was the departmental gossip. “And believe me, there’s quite a competition for the number one spot in that field.”)

Marty Melcher. Fiftysomething. Fleshy, messy, but with a full head of gray-black curly hair and a walrus moustache that made him look like an American Günter Grass (with the umlaut). A specialist in twentieth-century American fiction (“Not those second-tier imitation Zolas you like, but the Big Guns: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner”). A man whose face could ostensibly have been described as “lived in,” though “lived through” might be closer to the truth. Certainly, Melcher had lived through a considerable amount (according to Stephanie Peltz): three divorces, a lengthy battle with painkillers, and a near career-destroying affair with a senior colleague, Victoria Mattingly, which ended when she suffered a nervous breakdown and confessed all to her husband. He then hired two goons from Southie to kick the crap out of Melcher in the driveway of his house in Brookline.

“Might I have a vodka, please?”

“Grey Goose on the rocks?” he asked.

I nodded and he gave our order to a passing waiter.

“I’ve been trying to figure you out, Jane. From afar, that is. The mistress of the late, great David Henry—I actually did rate him, even that last crazy book of his. A brilliant thesis at Harvard. Turning down a position at Wisconsin, the sort of teaching gig most newcomers to the university game would kill to obtain. A flop in the big money game—or was there more to it than you not being able to cut it there? And then, then, after being hired as a last-minute replacement for our beloved Professor Holder—and yes, I did once hit on her, just to keep the record straight—shazam, you are responsible for the suspension of a leading knucklehead jock.

“So what I think is: you’re good, sweetheart. The original tough cookie. And you’ve kicked ass in a way that most of us lifers here can only dream about.”

“I’m glad I’ve won myself a fan.”

“You’ve got yourself a boyfriend now?”

“What a personal question.”

“Just curious.”

“No, I’m flying solo.”

“You interested in one? On a part-time basis, of course.”

I laughed. “You really do hit on everyone, don’t you.”

“Absolutely.”

“Thanks for the drink, Professor.”

Back at the apartment, I called Christy in Oregon and explained how I had squandered all chances of promotion at New England State.

“Personal morality—how to play things—is an ongoing dilemma and often agonizing,” she said. “Do the right thing and you get punished for it. Don’t do the right thing and you get punished for it—especially by yourself. Not that you’d ever engage in such self-flagellation.”

“Why is everything in my life so damn contradictory?”

“ ‘We do not what we ought / What we ought not, we do / And lean upon the thought / That chance will bring us through’ . . .”

“Browning?” I asked.

“Close, but no cigar. Matthew Arnold.”

“Who the hell quotes Matthew Arnold these days?”

“I do,” she said. “And my advice to you, madame, is to consider yourself in a form of internal exile. You go to the university, you teach your classes, you do brilliantly with—and by—your students. You make certain you’re there for anyone who needs you. You keep long office hours if students need to drop by. You get your book published. Unless called upon to attend a meeting or give an opinion, you politely ignore your departmental colleagues and the honchos in the administration. You’re there, but you’re not there—if you catch my drift.

“And the other thing I would do if I was in your position and with all that funny money in the bank—is to spend some of it. Preferably not on anything sensible.”

I took Christy’s advice. When I returned to New England State on Monday, I took my classes, did my office hours, and vanished from view. I maintained this narrow-focused approach for the rest of the week—concentrating my efforts on being accessible to my students, doing my best as a lecturer, and acknowledging my colleagues in assorted corners of the campus with a polite but distant nod.

As I was consolidating this professional modus vivendi, I was also dealt a lucky card. My book, The Infernal Duality, was accepted for publication by—wait for it—the University of Wisconsin Press. And they say that America is an irony-free zone. I kept quiet about the news. But when I attended the departmental meeting two days later, Professor Sanders kicked off the proceedings with: “I got a phone call from a colleague at the University of Wisconsin yesterday who informed me that Professor Howard’s book will be published by their press this year. I’m certain we all want to congratulate her on this achievement.”

Then he moved on to other business.

Stephanie Peltz came up to me after the meeting ended and said: “Oh, my God, your book’s been accepted! And by Wisconsin! Wisconsin . . . Oh, my God, that’s one of the top ten university presses in the country.”

Top twenty is closer to the truth. Still . . .

“Oh, this is amazing, Jane. Why on earth did you keep it all to yourself?” she asked.

I said nothing, except to thank her for her good wishes. Then Marty Melcher pulled me aside.

“You really are an operator,” he said. “Just like everyone who’s ever gone to Harvard.”

Yeah, Marty—that’s what they teach us over there in Cambridge: how to be a smarty-pants.

But I simply replied to his comment with a nod and a smile.

And that was the last time anyone in the department mentioned my book again. Life at New England State carried on. I taught my classes. I met with my students. I left the university as soon as the business of the day was done for me. I lived below the internecine radar.

I also took Christy’s second piece of advice and spent some of the money that was gaining interest in my bank account. But I didn’t use it frivolously. No, my ultrasensible side guided me in the direction of several real-estate agents in Somerville. Within four days I had agreed to pay $255,950 for a one-bedroom apartment on a leafy street right off Davis Square. The flat was located on the top two floors of an American Gothic house dating from the 1890s and very Grant Wood in its baroque flourishes. The apartment had been owned by a recently deceased professor of philosophy at Tufts, a lifelong bachelor who lived with his books and a long succession of cats (the ingrained smell of feline urine was everywhere). The kitchen was Nixon-era, the bathroom dated back to Eisenhower. But there was a huge living room with a balcony that overlooked the street. The bedroom was spacious and there was an alcove that would make an ideal study. The floorboards—though in need of painting and staining—were solid. And the surveyor who examined every damn crevice of the place let it be known that the walls were damp-free and ready to be replastered.

The entire place needed an overhaul—and one that a local builder estimated would cost me an additional fifty thousand. “Once you put the money in, the place’ll be worth four hundred and fifty K immediately,” he told me with the authority of a man who speculated in Somerville and Cambridge property all the time. I did some fast calculations and knew that I would be able to buy the place outright, but would still need to take out a loan of $75,000 to pay for the renovations and taxes. As someone who always feared debt it made me nervous borrowing this amount, even though the mortgage broker who set up the loan told me that, on my annual salary from New England State, this wasn’t an excessive amount. But say I can’t find work again after I’m shown the door in a few years’ time? Still, I comforted myself with the thought that an apartment was always a salable item and that I would now actually possess that most magical of commodities: equity. As Dad always used to say: You’re finally an adult when you’re in hock to a bank for the roof over your head.

So I called Mr. Alkan and told him I needed his services again. “No problem,” he said and took care of all the paperwork. I approved the $50,000 budget with the builder and chose kitchen cabinets and bathroom sinks and wall colors, and then dropped another $15,000 buying a bed and sofas, and a great big turn-of-the-century rolltop desk for myself, and a new stereo and plates and cutlery and . . .

I agreed to teach the summer term at New England State. By the time mid-August came and I’d submitted my grades and even managed a few days at a friend’s family place on the Cape, my apartment was ready to be occupied. It looked wonderful—freshly plastered white walls, maple-stained floorboards, a Shaker-style kitchen, a modern bathroom, tasteful light wood furniture, that wonderful desk in the alcove that would be my study, and a huge king-sized bed that suddenly felt very empty and only seemed to emphasize something I had been dodging for a very long time: I was lonely.

When you have a need, you fill it. Within a few weeks of moving into the apartment, I had someone sharing the bed with me. I told myself it was love.

And, perhaps, at the time, it was just that . . . for a little while anyway.

NINE

THEO MORGAN LOVED movies. Check that: Theo Morgan was fanatical about movies. “A certifiable cinephile” as he described himself. Since the age of thirteen—when the movie bug first hit—he’d kept a filing card for every film he’d ever seen. At the last count he had 5,765 cards—“that’s close to three hundred movies per year in the past nineteen years”—each of which contained, on the front side, the name of the film, the director, principal actors, screenwriter, etc., while the back contained his own individual commentary on the movie, all written in a spindly handwriting that only he could decipher.

Theo Morgan grew up in a bland suburb of Indianapolis (“the vanilla ice cream of American cities—anemic”), the son of an insurance executive and a mother who was something of a creative spark at college but ended up reenacting Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street by doing what was expected of her: “marrying a stiff and moving to a dull little midwestern town.” His father was an ex-Marine who preached a doctrine of God and country and tried to stamp down hard on Theo’s burgeoning interest in film.

“I spent a lot of my free adolescent time sneaking off to see movies at the Indiana University Film Society,” he told me on our second date. “In my junior year, there was a big festival of Bergman’s films and I had to tell Dad that I had gone out for the school fencing team which trained twice a week from seven to nine. When he found out that I had been seeing ‘atheistic European crap’—his exact words—he grounded me for three months after punching me in the stomach as a ‘lesson in the price to be paid for insubordination.’ My mom—being an impassive resident of the Valley of the Dolls—told me that ‘your dad only wants the best for you,’ which is why he also threatened to ‘rearrange my face’ and send me to military school if he caught me watching any more ‘ungodly pictures.’ ”

Fortunately Theo was a bright kid and he had a powerful ally at school in the form of an English teacher named Mr. Turgeon. The teacher was gay, but very closeted.

“He had a boyfriend—one of the librarians at the university—and his life was rather cozy in what he called ‘a circumscribed way.’ Outside of classical music his real passion was film, and though this was the early days of the VCR, he had this fantastic film library at his home. When he discovered that I was getting into cinema, he started asking me over to his house after school to give me a crash course in film history. I mean, the guy had something like three thousand VCR tapes and I watched everything from D. W. Griffith to Fritz Lang to Billy Wilder with him. Of course I had to keep all this quiet from my parents, and Mr. Turgeon told me on more than one occasion that, if it ever got out that we were having these movie sessions at his home, he could lose his job—even though the man never, ever came on to me. He simply recognized a fellow sufferer. That’s what cinephiles really are: people looking for an escape hatch.”

Theo’s father never found out about the afternoons at Mr. Turgeon’s—watching Truffaut and Rivette and Carl Theodor Dreyer while sipping proper Earl Grey tea that Mr. Turgeon bought in bulk during his annual summer pilgrimage to London. But when he was grounded after attending the Bergman festival at the University of Indiana, Theo told all to the one person in Indianapolis who understood him. Turgeon knew that raising the matter with the school authorities might wreak havoc so he counseled Theo to sit tight, bide his time, and work his ass off to get the best grades possible in his last three semesters before applying to college.

Theo did as instructed. He was a straight-A student for those three terms, and even impressed his father with his diligence. Then, at Turgeon’s urging, he made Columbia University his main choice. Theo’s dad would not hear of it—“over my dead body are you going to that degenerate city”—and refused to write the $75 check for the application fee. So Turgeon paid for it himself and also used inside pull there (he’d done his MA at Columbia) to secure Theo a fully paid scholarship.

“When Dad discovered that I’d applied to Columbia on the quiet, he made good on his threat and actually rearranged my face. After the assault, I went to school with two black eyes. Mr. Turgeon insisted on marching me down to the principal. Our principal was one of these flag-hugging idiots and a deacon in the local Presbyterian church. But even he was horrified by my father’s assault on me and actually called my father in to school and told him that I had earned a major scholarship to an Ivy League university, so he had absolutely no right to stand in my way of accepting it. And if he ever assaulted me again, he would be turned over to the cops.

“After this meeting, my mother cried for hours, asking me why I had to go running to the authorities and ‘play tattletale.’ My dad, on the other hand, simply told me to get out of the house and never come back.”

“And you were just eighteen?” I asked.

“It’s the right age to cut and run—especially if you’ve just been handed an all-expenses-paid scholarship. That effectively removes you from the parental sphere of influence.”

I certainly knew a thing or two about that sort of liberation through academic funding. As he spoke with dry irony of his insane family and the pain they visited on him, I also knew that I was falling for him. Don’t we often seek out someone who’s traveled through the same damaged emotional landscape as ourselves—and, as such, understands us? From the outset I was pretty certain that our shared family misery—and the way we both partially broke free of it—meant that Theo understood me, as I did him.

Once he started at Columbia he effectively cut his ties with his parents. He never returned home again. Within three months of landing in New York, he’d also found a part-time job in the film department of the Museum of Modern Art as an assistant archivist. He held on to that job for his four years at Columbia—where he also ended up as head of the Film Society, movie critic for the campus newspaper, and habitué of every small independent cinema in the city.

At twenty-two—with a magna cum laude degree in hand and a rent-controlled studio apartment on Amsterdam and 118th Street—he was poised for a big life in the Big City. In fact, Columbia offered him another full scholarship to complete a doctorate in Film Studies. UCLA also contacted him, letting it be known that they too would like him to accept a doctoral scholarship and a teaching position in their cinema department.

“I had all these offers and wanted nothing to do with them,” he said. “Call it a lack of ambition—as several of my college advisers did—but I just wanted to program movies for a cinema.”

So he accepted a gig being the chief programmer for the Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan. “One hundred and fifty dollars a week and I was happy as hell, especially as you could do anything at the Film Archives. I mean, it was the ultimate cinephile wet dream—a truly ‘out there’ place where I could organize an entire season of East German musicals and get away with it. The work absolutely suited me. I could report to the cinema at noon and work until eight or nine in the evening without hassle. And then I could stay up the rest of the night watching movies.”

For five years he happily kept his zombie hours and created strange “out there” seasons for the Film Archives: obscure Czech animators, forgotten anti-Communist B-movies from the McCarthy era, the great goofy classics of Japanese science fiction, every James M. Cain adaptation ever made . . .

Theo would reel off his film knowledge with rapid-fire delivery. He was a motor mouth, yet the spiel he spieled was always so spirited and erudite that I quickly came to accept his mile-a-minute repartee. Passionate intensity can be very seductive.

He only stood five foot six—and had a big unruly mop of black curly hair, a Frank Zappa goatee, and a slight potbelly (he abhorred all exercise). He always dressed in size 36 black Levi’s 501s, a black T-shirt, and an old black leather bomber jacket. Though he wasn’t conventionally handsome, the interest he showed in everything to do with me wowed me. Ever since David I’d always dreamed of meeting another verifiable intellectual. So what if Theo tended to eat crap food and never took vitamins and insisted on getting up to watch a movie after we made love . . . He was never less than interesting.

For such a physically unruly person, he was surprisingly fastidious about certain elements in his life. He was fanatical when it came to flossing his teeth, and showered at least three times a day. His apartment in Cambridge was small—maybe 300 square feet—yet it was amazingly orderly. The hundreds of films that dominated all the bookshelves weren’t just alphabetized, they were also organized with library-style dividers. His bed was always immaculately made and he insisted on changing the perfectly ironed sheets every other day. Just as his black jeans were always perfectly pressed, as well as the boxer shorts that he would only buy from Brooks Brothers. That was another thing about Theo—he had certain rigid consumerist choices from which he wouldn’t deviate. His black T-shirts came from the Gap, and once a year, so he told me, he’d rent a car and drive the two and a half hours to Freeport, Maine, where there was a Gap outlet. Once there he’d buy thirty size large black T-shirts for $5 a shirt and then go to the Brooks Brothers outlet in the same town and purchase eighteen pairs of boxer shorts for $155—he was very specific when it came to recalling prices. Finally he’d move on to the Levi’s outlet and buy eighteen pairs of black 501s at $25 a pair. Purchases complete he’d drive north to the village of Wiscasset and buy a lobster roll and an iced tea at a famous take-out shack called Red’s. He’d plonk himself down at a table facing the bay, look at that widescreen vision of coastal Maine at its most bucolic, eat his lobster roll, drink his iced tea, and then turn his car around and head south for Boston, arriving back to catch at least three movies that evening chez lui.

“That would take care of both my clothes shopping and my view of the Great Outdoors for another year.”

Now I know all this sounds just a little quirky—because he really didn’t buy another shred of clothing for the rest of the year and he resisted all my attempts to get him to spend a weekend somewhere outside of Boston that didn’t have a cinema. But there was something strangely compelling about his quirks, just as I liked the fact that he was outside the mad consumerist dance that characterized so much of modern life. He got his DVDs free from all the distributors he knew. He ordered any books he needed from publishers or libraries. He did all his own washing and cleaning and cooking—and largely subsisted on a diet of Cheerios and frozen lasagna and instant soups and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. And when he awoke every morning at noon, he’d start the day by writing for two straight hours before heading off to his job at the Harvard Film Archive.

Theo ended up in Cambridge after getting tossed out of the Anthology Film Archives for failing to maintain budgetary control over his programs and running up an annual deficit of over $200,000. One of his old “film geek” buddies (his term), Ronnie Black, had landed a job running the Harvard Archive and cinema and was looking for a second-in-command. “You’re the best programmer this side of Paris,” Ronnie told him, “but you like to be deliberately profligate. So here’s the deal: you get the job on the proviso that you cannot spend a penny of our money without me signing off on it. You try to play games with me on this front, you’re out on your ass and that will be the end of your career. But if you play by the rules, together we’ll be able to run the show in Cambridge and do exactly what we want to do at Harvard . . . within reason.”

I met Theo at a dinner organized by an old Harvard friend named Sara Crowe. She was the very model of a New England Brahmin, with one of those lean angular faces that put me in mind of the sort of Massachusetts grandes dames painted on commission by Whistler. She combined a certain ascetic noblesse oblige with a horror at the tawdriness of most human endeavor. She was considered perhaps the most important colonial historian since Perry Miller. Her book, American Theocrats: New Journeys into the Puritan Mind, won her considerable critical attention, not to mention a tenured professorship at Wellesley. Just to augment the manifold accomplishments of her life she had also married disgustingly well. He was a mutual fund star named Frederick Cowett: Princeton, Wharton, a big family compound in Wells, Maine, and their very own town house on Beacon Hill, where they lived in upholstered elegance with their two young sons. Sara was a marvel. The woman never put a foot wrong, never seemed to juggernaut down the wrong street, moving steadily from achievement to achievement. When I got the call at New England State to come over for dinner, she was completely warm and upbeat, telling me she’d heard from her spies all about the way I had stood up to Ted Stevens over the jock issue, and how proud she was of me for “being moral at a time when careerism takes precedent over everything else.”

“Anyway, it’s clear that New England State is nothing more than a way station for you before you find your way to grander things.”

Translation: What’s a Harvard smarty like you doing teaching at a third-tier university like that one?

Then she changed the subject by mentioning the dinner party to which she wanted to invite me two weeks from Friday.

Yes, her house was magnificent and decorated in subdued but immaculate good taste. Damn her, Frederick didn’t even turn out to be a bore. Instead he came across as charming in a well-bred preppy way, reasonably literate, and not averse to the eclectic group that Sara had assembled for the evening.

That was the other intriguing thing about Sara Crowe—for all her apparent Brahminism, she did cultivate eccentrics and people who did not dress in Brooks Brothers shirts and Bermuda shorts. Which is why, during our Harvard years, she got chummy with Christy—even if “La Poète” (as Sara always referred to her) was the antithesis of Sara’s button-down style and had this habit of shocking her friends by drinking far too robustly and then launching into a scatalogical stream of consciousness.

I often thought that Sara needed such extreme friends as a way of informing the straightlaced world in which she dwelled that she was not totally one of them; that her circle would include artists and writers and even a mad film archivist like Theo Morgan.

Sara knew Theo because she sat on the board of the Harvard Film Archive, and because she also spotted him early on as a premier cru oddball.

“Don’t think I’m trying to fix you up by seating him next to you,” Sara told me in a fast whisper in a corner of her living room, before we all entered the very formal dining room to be served by two liveried waiters. “But I promise you that you’ll have a far more entertaining evening with Theo at your side than if I sat you next to Clifford Clayton—who will trace back his lineage to the Mayflower for you and also talk at great length about the derivatives market.”

Sara was right. Though I had to readjust my thought processes to tune in to his mile-a-minute delivery, Theo Morgan proved to be excellent value.

“Know what this place reminds me of?” he said loudly as he sat down next to me. “The Magnificent Ambersons.”

“Didn’t know anyone read Booth Tarkington these days,” I said.

“The movie is better than the book—which is upmarket soap opera.”

“It’s rare that a movie betters a novel,” I said.

“You mean Mario Puzo’s The Godfather is a masterpiece and the movie is pulp?”

“Ooops.”

“And how about The Treasure of the Sierra Madre? I mean, the B. Traven novel isn’t the worst, but Huston’s film . . .”

“Remind me never to challenge you on a film question again.”

He shot me a mischievous smile.

“But I like being challenged,” he said.

As I quickly came to discover, I too liked the challenge of being with Theo. At the end of the dinner—by which time I’d barely spoken to the man on my other side—he asked me to write down my number in a small black notebook that he pulled out of his jacket pocket. I really didn’t expect him to call after this evening. But he surprised me and phoned the following Monday.

“Now I do hope that you approve of Howard Hawks.”

And he invited me to a screening of Only Angels Have Wings the next evening at the Brattle in Cambridge. We went out for a pizza afterward—and started that first-date ritual of telling each other about ourselves. So I learned about his less-than-happy childhood in Indianapolis and he heard about my less-than-happy childhood in Connecticut. When I dropped the fact that my father was currently on the run from the law, his eyes actually widened.

“Now that’s what I call classy,” he said.

“I never thought of it that way,” I said, sounding just a little defensive.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “A dad who is a fugitive. You should be writing this story, not telling it. I mean, it’s irresistible stuff—especially since he can’t have left you feeling all warm and cuddly about him.”

“You know, my mom always used that expression, ‘warm and cuddly.’ ”

“But not with the emphasis on heavy irony that I bring to it.”

We saw each other again that weekend—a Bogart double-bill, The Maltese Falcon and High Sierra—and dinner at some cheap hamburger joint. On the third date—two Rohmer talkathons and a cheap Chinese place that was rather good all the same—he invited me back to his apartment. I accepted without hesitation.

Naturally I was nervous. So too was Theo. But when he finally made the move, we both responded with a fervor that was surprising.

Afterward he put on a Miles Davis album—“Great postcoital stuff.” Fetching us a decent bottle of wine he let it be known that he was seriously falling for me.

“Now I know that, strategically, this is a dumb thing to say—because I’m supposed to play diffident and standoffish and ‘don’t crowd my space.’ But I’m not going to assume some role I don’t want to assume. I’m going to give it to you straight, Jane: you’re wonderful—and I’m a tough critic.”

When we have a need, we generally try to fill it. Theo Morgan did just that for me—and his declaration of intention didn’t push me away. On the contrary I was ready to be in love again, ready to give up the isolation and solitude that had been so much a part of my life since David’s death. For years I couldn’t even imagine the embrace of another man. I had shut down in that department (not that there were men flinging themselves in my path). But here was a guy who was singular and different and so comfortable in his own quirky skin. I loved his wit, his mental gymnastics, and the fact that he could riff wildly on any subject—from George Bush’s ineptness in the English language, to an avant-garde jazzman of the 1950s named Jimmy Giuffre, to Joseph Strick’s film versions of Joyce (of which he was a big fan), to a forgotten Miami crime writer named Charles Willeford, whom Theo considered on a par with Chandler.

The range of his interests was dazzling. I sensed he so loved and needed these private passions because they masked a terrible loneliness. A few weeks after we became lovers he admitted to me that he hadn’t had a proper girlfriend for years, and that the one big love in his life—a performance artist named Constance van der Plante—had unceremoniously dumped him after he lost his job in New York.

“You know, I almost didn’t go to that Sara Crowe dinner,” he said. “Lucky me that I did.”

Sara was more than surprised when I told her that Theo and I were now an item.

“Well, this was certainly not what I had planned when I put the two of you together.”

“Don’t sound so shocked. He’s wonderful.”

“Of course he is,” she said, not sounding as though she meant it. “The thing is, Jane . . . well, I just wouldn’t have guessed that the two of you would have hit it off like that.”

“Life is always brimming with surprises.”

“You do sound happy.”

“And you do sound genuinely unsettled by this news,” I said.

“It’s just taken me unawares.”

That reaction was pure Sara. She “loved” her eccentric friends, but had this rather Victorian view of love: you can sleep with a mad artist when you’re of a certain age . . . but you must settle down with the sort of sober, reasonable man who is going to keep up his end of the conjugal bargain and provide you with an upscale life. So the idea that I was now Theo Morgan’s lover . . .

“I really do like Theo,” she said. “And, of course, he has every opportunity of becoming a rather important writer on film. But—and this is not a heavily emphasized ‘but’—he really is not the sturdy foundation upon which . . .”

“I get your point,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to cause any offense.”

“None taken,” I said.

Christy met Theo a few weeks later when she was back in Boston to give a reading at Eliot House, and thoroughly approved of him. We went out to dinner after the reading, which, in that great tradition of most poetry readings, was only attended by around thirty interested people. It didn’t matter that Christy had been another Pulitzer finalist the previous year for her second collection of poems. Poetry in our culture didn’t have much in the way of commercial legs.

But Theo—much to my amazement—knew his stuff when it came to modern American poetry. Over dinner, he was exchanging critical comments with Christy on everyone from Hart Crane to Howard Nemerov to Auden. When he disappeared to use the toilet, Christy flashed me a knowing smile and said: “Well, I’d jump him if I was living here. But I like obsessive compulsives.”

“He’s not that obsessive,” I said.

“Oh, yes, he is. But there’s nothing wrong with being a brilliant case of arrested development. Like me, you teach writers. In some way or another, all writers are damaged—and believe me, I can spot damage in a nanosecond. But there’s ‘bad damaged,’ psycho-boy stuff. Then there’s ‘good damaged,’ out-there but interesting. Your fella falls into the second category.”

“So you approve . . . with reservations.”

“I think he’s supersmart and supercomplicated. If you can handle that, marry the guy. But just know one thing: if you are thinking in any way of changing him, forget about it. He’s got his own way of doing things, and he’s not going to ever shift away from that.”

Christy was certainly right about Theo’s rigidity. He refused to ever get up before midday. He started the day with a pot of extra-strong espresso. He would only use one specific brand of espresso coffee—Lavazza—and would only make it in one of those small old-fashioned stove-top espresso makers. While the coffee was brewing, he’d eat a bowl of a particularly sweet and unhealthy cereal called Cap’n Crunch—but he refused to do so with milk, as he completely abhorred it. Then he’d install himself at his desk and begin the two hours he passed every day working on his magnum opus, a comprehensive history of American cinema—“about the most opinionated and idiosyncratic book ever written on the movies in this country” and one that (he was sure) would instantly make him the most renowned critic in the country . . . if he ever got around to finishing the damn thing. It wasn’t that Theo lacked discipline or diligence. Rather the problem was that it was so insanely long: 2,130 pages of manuscript and he hadn’t yet reached the 1960s. I’d read the section on Orson Welles—he did allow me that privilege, after I’d promised I wouldn’t be overly critical—and I was amazed at how lucid and well-written and intelligent it was. Just as I was also dazzled by the scope of his ambition.

But when I asked to read more, he demurred, saying that he really shouldn’t have shown me anything in the first place, that I might be opening myself up for disappointment with the rest of the book, and that he could have possibly “tainted” the writing process by letting me have a glimpse. He got so agitated and downright stressed out as he told me this that I had to mask my shock at the way he talked himself into an obsessive-compulsive corner.

“I can never, never let you even touch the manuscript again,” he said, pacing up and down his studio room at a manic pace.

“Theo, there’s really no need to get so upset about—”

“No need to get upset! No need to get upset! What do you know about upset? For four years, no one—no one—has touched this manuscript.”

“But you gave it to me, Theo. You asked me to read it. So I don’t understand—”

“That’s right, you don’t understand what it means to—”

But before finishing the sentence he had grabbed his leather jacket and was out the door. I thought about following him, but decided it was best simply to let him be—especially as I was so damn thrown by this out-of-body scene that had just been perpetrated. I decided there and then that if he didn’t come back with some sort of explanation for this deeply disturbing act, I’d leave that night.

When he didn’t show up after an hour I scribbled him a note:

I waited for you. I hope you are in a better place.

And I went home.

At this point in time we’d been going out together for around six weeks, and though we had spent a few evenings at my apartment in Somerville we’d generally stayed at his place in Cambridge, as it was far more convenient for all the cinemas we attended around Harvard Square. Though we were seeing each other two to three nights a week we had an unspoken rule to never show up uninvited at the other person’s residence. Until that night . . . when, around midnight, the doorbell rang. I hesitated before answering it, thinking: Say this evening was the moment when the veneer of normality and romantic bliss finally cracked and from this moment on, I’ll be seeing all the spooky, strange stuff he’s so far kept from view?

But another voice said: And if you push him away now because of one small outburst, you’ll be alone. And you don’t want to be alone again.

So I opened the door. He stood there, looking spent, his eyes brimming with fear and shame.

“That was . . . awful,” he said in a low whisper. “And I’ll understand if you slam the door on me. But . . .”

“Is this a little secret habit you’ve been holding back on me—insane rages over nothing?”

“I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am. Can I come inside, please?”

I hesitated. He said: “Please, Jane . . .”

I nodded for him to follow me upstairs. Once in my living room he put his arms around me and told me that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, that the last time he got one of these “rages” was around two years ago. If it ever happened again he’d understand if I dropped him on the spot, and he’d do anything to make it up to me, and . . .

Though I did appreciate his contriteness, neediness is always a bit unnerving—even though I simultaneously found it reassuring. Perhaps because, at this point in time, I also needed him, and the way he made me feel wanted and central to his life. It’s that old endless tug-of-war between wanting to feel essential to someone else and concurrently fearing this dependence because of the responsibility it imposes on you.

So I put my arms around him and told him there was nothing more to say about it, except: Let’s go to bed.

Which we did. When I woke up the next morning at eight Theo had broken his “never up before noon” rule and had cooked a huge breakfast for us. When he started singing his contriteness aria I silenced it with a kiss.

“There will never be a repeat performance,” he promised me.

“I’ll hold you to that,” I said.

I went off to work, determined to try and put the entire incident behind me.

And Theo kept his word. There was no repeat performance in the months after this one-off incident. It wasn’t as if he became ultracautious around me, always on his best behavior and never showing me his complexities. On the contrary, he reverted to his vampire hours shortly thereafter—continuing to watch movies all night and never rising before noon, and steadfastly refusing my attempts to change his junk-food habits. But I wasn’t complaining. If I’d had a particularly bad day at the university—or suddenly got hit with one of those black moods that occasionally overtook me—he instinctually understood how to manage the situation: attentive, but never oppressive. Knowing when not to crowd someone is never the simplest of learned lessons, but we both seemed adept at it. Whenever he was not around I genuinely missed him, just as I also liked the fact that we were never with each other day in, day out.

Eight months passed. One afternoon I arrived home to find a delivery van from Sony outside my door. The driver approached me as I climbed the steps to my front door, asked if I was Jane Howard, and said that he was delivering a 42-inch plasma television to me. When I said: “There must be some mistake,” he showed me the dispatch order—and there, in fine print, was Theo’s name.

“I really don’t want such a big television,” I told him.

“Well then, you should have discussed this with the guy who ordered it for you.”

I asked the man to wait for five minutes while I ran upstairs and called Theo at the Harvard Film Archive.

“Are you insane?” I asked him.

“I think you know the answer to that question,” he said.

“Why would I want such a big damn television?”

“I thought we needed one.”

“We.” It was the first time he had used the first person plural to describe us.

“Trying to watch movies on that tiny little set of yours is kind of a sacrilege. So . . .”

“You should have talked this over with me first.”

“But that would have killed the surprise necessary in all surprises.”

“Don’t those sets cost a fortune?”

“Isn’t that still my problem, not ours?”

Again the use of the plural. Was this his way of telling me he was moving in?

“I don’t know what to say . . .”

“Say nothing until I show up tonight with a new DVD transfer of Pressburger and Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death. You will not believe the hallucinogenic use of early Technicolor . . .”

Theo was right: the television did fit into the corner space near the fireplace—and Pressburger and Powell’s expressionistic film on war and the hereafter did seem visually lush when viewed on such an absurdly wide screen.

“I knew you’d love it,” Theo said.

“Just don’t make a point of overwhelming me with such grand gestures again.”

“But I like overwhelming you. Anyway, we both know you’re far too rational and practical for your own good.”

Ouch—but he was speaking the truth. I did weigh every small financial decision I made, and only indulged myself with something when I was sure that it was not profligate or whimsical. Theo would watch me try on clothes in shops and then reject them because they were “too expensive” (even if it was just the Gap) or “more of the same” (my way of saying I didn’t need it).

“But you don’t have a decent leather jacket,” he said when I saw one I liked in a shop on Newbury Street.

“I can live without one.”

“But you look cool in this one.”

“It’s nearly four hundred dollars.”

“Indulge yourself.”

“I’m not comfortable indulging myself.”

“No kidding. But you should learn to do so a little more. Life is too damn short otherwise. And you don’t have to continue to prove to the world that you’re not your con-artist dad.”

“Remind me not to tell you my secrets again.”

“It’s hardly a secret if the FBI knows it. Anyway, I’m just asking you to lighten up on yourself.”

“I don’t do ‘guilt free,’ ” I said. “I wish I could, but my brain simply can’t liberate itself from the idea that there is a price to everything.”

“You should be the one writing about Puritanism, not Grande Dame Sara.”

“But I do, I do. The Naturalists were as obsessed with our Puritan guilt as Hawthorne. Only they saw it from the perspective of our hypercapitalist obsessions. Money and God and Guilt: the great all-American Trifecta. And none of us can totally shake loose from it.”

But I still bought the leather jacket, and I didn’t make any further noises about the extravagant television that now dominated a corner of my living room. Nor did I balk when he suggested we spend a week at a “groovy little retro hotel” in South Beach “on my tab.”

“You have a ‘tab’ in Miami?” I asked him.

“It’s a turn of phrase.”

“Can you really afford to plump for a week?”

“Will you stop being so damn cautious. If I say I can plump for a week I can plump for a week.”

“Because I’d certainly be happy to plump for half of everything.”

“Thank you for draining my romantic offer of all its inherent romanticism.”

“That wasn’t my intention. I was just being—OK, guilty as charged—cautious.”

But on our second night in Miami I did something incautious. After drinking far too many margaritas in some Mexican dive off Lincoln Road, we returned to our art deco room in our art deco hotel and proceeded to make very drunken love. When night woke up and I staggered into the bathroom and caught sight of the tequila aftershock in my eyes, a desperate thought hit me: I had failed to insert my diaphragm before we had collapsed onto the bed.

Counting backward on my fingers I calculated (with mounting fear) that I was just three days off the middle of my cycle. I knew that if I articulated such worry to Theo it would cast a large uneasy shadow over the rest of our time in the Floridian sun. Surely the mathematics would work in my favor.

But as the week dragged on—and the thirty-six-hour deadline passed for the use of the morning-after pill—I tried to keep my anxiety out of Theo’s sight. Bar one or two awkward moments when he sensed that I was troubled by something, I did keep my fear under wraps.

That is, until a month later, by which time I was two weeks late and vomiting every morning. I went to the local pharmacy and bought one of those home pregnancy tests. Back at my place I peed onto the touch paper. I put it in its accompanying vial. I went into the kitchen and made coffee. I returned five minutes later (even though it said to wait half an hour) to discover that it had turned pink. At this somewhat momentous—and thoroughly unwanted—juncture in my life a completely banal thought popped into my head:

Who decided that pink is the color of newfound maternity?

Another less-banal consideration followed:

Is this how destiny works?

TEN

“UNWANTED.” IT’S SUCH a big, bad word when placed in front of pregnancy. But I was certain of two things as soon as the home pregnancy test blushed into pink: I didn’t want this baby and I couldn’t bear the thought of terminating this baby.

Still, if I had been that adamant about not getting pregnant back in Miami, I would have made an excuse to slink off for a couple of hours, and found a doctor, and gulped down the morning-after pills, and then made further excuses as I dealt with two days of being absolutely ill and untouchable. But I didn’t follow this course of action. And that begs the question: Was the unwanted something that I actually wanted?

“Of course you wanted to get pregnant,” Christy said when I called her in Oregon, waking her up at seven her time. This was not a smart move, as she hated early mornings—though when she heard the fear in my voice, she ceased telling me off and said: “This must be something rather serious.” That’s when I blurted out what had happened and how I had mathematically gambled on being just a few days off the middle of my cycle.

“You mean you actually relied on the rhythm method?”

“It was just an oversight on my part. A drunken oversight. And then—”

“Bullshit. Of course you wanted to get pregnant. You may not believe that, but it’s the absolute total truth.”

“So what do I do now?”

“You either have the baby or you don’t.”

“I’m not ready for motherhood.”

“Then find the name of your nearest abortion clinic and—”

“I just can’t do that.”

“Then you have a real dilemma on your hands. What’s the thing that’s scaring you most? The lifetime commitment, the loss of personal freedom, the way this is going to permanently glue you and Theo together?”

“All of the above.”

“Well, you don’t have to make a decision today.”

“But once I tell him, he’s definitely involved in the decision.”

“Considering the mechanics of how one gets pregnant, the fact is, he’s already very much involved in the decision . . . whatever that decision is. But before you go talking to him, you’d better figure out which way you’re going to jump.”

The thing was, I’d resolved long ago in my head not to have children. But that resolution was borne out of my long-standing belief that a child would force me into a cul-de-sac of my own construction. And given that my parents had engaged in similar self-entrapment with my arrival in the world . . .

Then there was the all-encompassing question of Theo. Did I love him? I told myself that I did—just as he had made that declaration on several occasions. But underscoring these pronouncements was a deep-rooted worry: could I actually set up house with someone who kept vampire hours and needed a postcoital film fix? Would his hyperorganization make me feel as if I was living with a man whose behavior veered toward the monomaniacal, and for whom the movies were the greatest love of his life?

Rebutting these worries was my knowledge that if Theo committed to something (like his massive, still-growing book), his sense of responsibility was ferocious. Just as I also knew that ever since that bad outburst months earlier his behavior had been exemplary; that he was very conscious of keeping under control all the dark stuff lurking within.

Anyway, his heart was very much in the right place. I was “the best thing that had ever happened” to him. I was “the person who really got” him. I made him happy. How can you argue with that?

But I did fear telling him the news because it was bound to toss up so many damn questions, the biggest one being: Why the hell didn’t you tell me you might have screwed up on the contraception front? I mean, didn’t I need to know about this as well?

Theo was amazingly sanguine about all that. “Accidents do happen—especially after five margaritas. Anyway, it’s great news.”

“You sure about that?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t. I mean, you do want to have a kid with me, yes?”

“Of course, of course,” I heard myself saying. As those words came out of my mouth I thought: Here it is now. Your mind has been made up for you.

“You do understand, Theo: this will change so much for us.”

“I’m cool with that.”

“Well, that’s . . . wonderful.”

“But are you cool with all this, Jane?” he asked, catching the hesitancy in my voice.

“It’s . . . a big step.”

“But we won’t exactly be the first people who ever did it. And it’s what I want. Because I want a life with you.”

“And I with you,” I said, even though I was still not so sure of that. How can you say such a definitive thing when you’re still so tortured with doubt?

When I called Christy back and told her about Theo’s enthusiasm for fatherhood—and for a proper everyday life with me—she said: “Well, that’s what you wanted to hear, right? And it speaks volumes for the fact that the guy isn’t going to play the slacker dude and throw all the childcare responsibility your way. So this is genuinely good news.”

“I’m not so sure . . .”

“Then stop being a wuss and get a termination. You can always tell Theo that the baby miscarried. It happens all the time. I’m even happy to come back east and hold your hand and all that while you go through with it.”

“That’s a big decision . . .”

“Indeed it is. But remember this Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious: once you have the kid, you have the kid.”

As George Orwell once noted, all clichés are fundamentally true, and the one that Christy just articulated made me realize that the decision was based on something I dealt with all the time in literature: interpretation. How do you choose to perceive a moral choice? Guilt is all rooted in the interpretation of events. It’s predicated on your take on things. How willing are you to twist reality to your own version of events? What can you (or can’t you) live with?

This was the deciding factor for me—the realization that if I didn’t go through with this, it would bring me untold grief and would remain an open wound that wouldn’t cauterize. Simultaneously, I knew that I so wanted to keep this child . . . even though it would bind me to Theo in ways that still made me uneasy.

But Theo’s enthusiasm for impending fatherhood proved boundless. The guy acted like a 1950s dad-to-be—all but passing out cigars and telling just about everyone we met that I was pregnant. Unbeknownst to me he even called Sara Crowe to let her in on the good news. I received a rather tart return call from Sara who, in her best Katharine Hepburn voice, expressed bemusement at my news.

“Well, I suppose congratulations are in order.”

“I did mean to call you, but it seems Theo got there first,” I said, trying to disguise just how appalled I was that he was dispersing this news as if it belonged on Reuters.

“Theo was very touching,” she said, failing to mask the irony in her voice. “He told me that inviting you over that night had changed his life and he wanted me to know that he would be ‘ever grateful’ to me for that.”

“I see,” I said.

“No doubt you’re enormously grateful to me too.”

“There’s no need for sarcasm, Sara.”

“I didn’t realize I was being sarcastic, Jane. Ruminative yes, but . . . well, it is your life.”

“That’s right. It is my life. Thank you for your good wishes.”

That night, when Theo came over to my apartment, I raised the issue about his informing all comers that I was pregnant.

“You mean, you’re embarrassed about this, us?”

“Hardly. It’s just . . . if something went wrong, if I was to miscarry . . .”

“But that’s not going to happen.”

“I hope not.”

“Then what’s the big deal? Can I not be publicly pleased about this? And the very fact that Sara was the one who introduced us—”

“That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is the problem?”

“I’m just jumpy, that’s all.”

“We’re going to be fine,” he said, putting his arms around me.

“Of course we are,” I said.

“And we do need to start thinking about when I move in with you.”

This last comment didn’t come as a jolt. Once I told him I was pregnant, I knew it was just a matter of time before we began to discuss long-term domestic arrangements. And as I was the possessor of the far-bigger apartment . . .

“Given you’ve only got one bedroom—and your alcove office will probably double as the nursery—it’s going to be a bit hard for me to move all my stuff into your place. So why don’t I plan to sleep at your place but keep my apartment for work?”

I was actually relieved that he suggested this arrangement. It would minimize the disruption to my life and would also give us both necessary space. If my parents’ marriage had taught me anything it was that a sense of entrapment is the death knell for any long-term relationship. Fair play to Theo for sensing that we’d benefit from the safety valve of time apart.

“I think that’s very smart and grown-up . . . and thank you for suggesting it,” I said.

A few days after our conversation, Theo borrowed a friend’s van and showed up one morning with a few basic essentials: his standard collection of T-shirts and jeans, a leather jacket, two pairs of black Converse Hi-Top sneakers, some underwear, and socks. It all fit neatly into the chest of drawers I’d found for him. He also showed up with an espresso maker and a special stainless-steel vacuum-packed jug in which he kept his Lavazza coffee. Then he decided to realphabetize my entire library. And rearrange all the shelves in the kitchen. And regrout a corner of the shower tiles that had never been properly filled in. And decide that the front hallway could benefit from a resanding. And . . .

“If you start ironing my underwear,” I said, “it’s over.”

He did laugh at that, just as he also reorganized my closet and sanitized every drain.

“When did this propensity for home improvement hit you?” I asked.

“When I finally had a proper home to improve. But you’re not complaining, are you?”

No, I wasn’t complaining, as he wasn’t one of those mad anal retentives who went berserk when a bathroom towel was out of alignment. And if I happened to forget to sort out the laundry or leave dishes in the sink . . . hey presto, Mr. Clean rendered them clean.

“Be pleased you are with a guy who actually cares about such stuff,” Christy said when I phoned her from my office. “It also means he actually cares about you. On which note—are you still having that daily rendezvous with the toilet bowl?”

Actually, the chronic morning sickness had finally left me in peace. In its wake came a bout of manic itchiness. My obstetrician told me that it was a not-unusual side effect in pregnancy and gave me a cream that would relieve the sensation of bedbugs crawling beneath my skin. Theo insisted on rubbing it in every night and then we would sit down together and pore through all the baby and childcare books that I’d been able to find. And when I finally went to sleep, he would sit up until dawn, in thrall to one film after another on our big-screen television.

The itchiness disappeared after two weeks. When I hit the three-month mark and was starting to show, I decided that the moment was right to break the news of my pregnancy to the two people I was dreading telling most: my department chairman and my mother.

As I predicted, Professor Sanders was less than pleased to learn that I would be out on maternity leave in five months’ time.

“Your timing could not be better,” he said, “especially given the fact that you yourself were a last-minute replacement. Now I’m having to find a last-minute replacement for the last-minute replacement.”

“Five months’ notice is not exactly last minute.”

“In the academic world it is just that. Still, what must be done will be done. And I do suppose that congratulations are in order.”

Word naturally got around the department in three nanoseconds. Marty Melcher cornered me in the hallway and said: “So you’re not a virgin after all.”

“You know, Professor—that comment could be considered a form of sexual harassment.”

“Or mere banter. It’s all a question of interpretation, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s a question of civility—which you lack.”

“If you want to report me to the Sexual Ethics officer or whatever the hell she’s called, be my guest. And you can further your reputation as a prig.”

“Then I’ll do just that.”

“I apologize,” he said as I walked off. I stopped and turned back toward him.

“What is wrong with you?”

No comment from Marty Melcher. Just the uncomfortable look of a bully who’d been caught out.

Stephanie Peltz, meanwhile, had been researching my “beau” (she’d been at a literature conference with Sara Crowe) and as she came up to me in the university café she said: “What wonderful news! And what an interesting man as the father . . .”

I couldn’t wait until I was free of New England State. But one stupendous thing did happen during that spring semester: Lorrie Quastoff was accepted as a transfer student at Harvard. This came about after I took Lorrie out for lunch at the beginning of term and mooted the idea with her.

“Harvard won’t want a weirdo like me,” she said.

“My feeling is that they would want you very much. The big question will be: do you want them?”

“It’s kind of brainy, Harvard.”

“But so are you, Lorrie.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Well, I do—and so does everyone else in the department here. You’re our star and you need a more rigorous intellectual environment to—”

“Harvard won’t like my autism.”

“They will like you because you are supersmart and have the grades to prove it. They will like you because I will make the necessary phone calls and write the sort of recommendation that will make them realize they would be insane to turn you down. But most of all they will like you because, once they interview you, they will see just how fantastic you are.”

“Fantastic rhymes with autistic,” she said.

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

It took two further meetings before I could convince Lorrie to at least put in the application. When Harvard came back, inviting her for an interview, she told me: “I don’t want you putting in a good word for me there.”

“But it’s how the world works, Lorrie.”

“Not the way I work. If Harvard wants me it’s not because of my autism. I find out you’ve talked to them beforehand I’m turning them down.”

“Don’t worry—I promise they won’t hear from me now.”

The truth was, I’d already called the Harvard admissions office and the English department chairman and raved to them about Lorrie Quastoff, saying they had to accept her. But Lorrie didn’t need to know this. And I was very willing to follow her directive and stay silent from this point on, though (when requested by the Harvard admissions office) I did write her a forcefully argued letter of recommendation.

Her acceptance was big news at New England State, yet it was met with a muted response by the administration. Stephanie Peltz informed me that El Presidente was not pleased, stating that it would have been more prestigious for the university to have kept this gifted (read: autistic) student here. And why did that meddling damn woman Howard yet again show us up?

Right after Lorrie was accepted we went out for a celebratory lunch at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. I couldn’t drink for obvious physiological reasons, but I convinced Lorrie to have a glass of champagne. She looked a little fearful when the waiter poured it for her, and ran her finger nervously around the stem of the glass for the better part of a minute before I finally said to her: “It won’t turn you into a pumpkin.”

“But I might get drunk on it.”

“Not unless you’re the cheapest date in history.”

“That’s a joke, right?”

“Yes, that’s a joke—but you really still do merit a glass of champagne. You don’t get into Harvard every day. So come on, give it a try.”

With great care she lifted the glass to her lips, closed her eyes tightly as if expecting the liquid to melt her lips, and took the smallest of sips. Her eyes opened again. She seemed surprised that death had not befallen her, so she indulged in another small sip.

“It’s not bad,” she said, “but I think I prefer Diet Coke. You can’t drink because of the baby, right?”

I’d only mentioned once to her that I was pregnant. This was some weeks back—and her reaction at the time was to simply nod and move on to the next subject. She said nothing more about it until now.

“That’s right,” I said. “The doctors advise you not to drink during a pregnancy.”

“You happy about having a baby?”

“I think so, yes,” I said.

“So you’re not ‘over the moon’ happy?”

“There’s no such thing as ‘over the moon’ happy, except in crappy women’s magazines.”

“So you don’t want to be pregnant?”

At moments like these it was hard to tell if Lorrie’s ferocious directness was a byproduct of her autism or simply her inability ever to engage in subtle discourse (except when it came to discussing literature).

“I am pregnant,” I said.

“Bad answer.”

“I know I will love this baby when he or she arrives.”

“Everyone says your husband is a weirdo.”

“He’s not my husband—and who’s been calling him names?”

“I’m not telling.”

“He’s not weird. In fact, you’d like him a lot.”

“Is he autistic too?”

“All men are a bit autistic.”

“But is he really autistic?”

Careful here.

“No, he’s not.”

“What’s love like?”

“Complicated.”

“Really complicated?”

“It depends, I guess . . .”

“You mean, like the professor you were sleeping with at Harvard?” Lorrie’s face remained impassive. She didn’t register the effect that comment had on me.

“How did you know about that?” I asked.

“Everyone knows about that. Was that love?”

“Yes, that was definitely love.”

“And because he was married it was complicated?”

“Yes, that made it complicated.”

“He died, right?”

“Yes, he died.”

“And you were sad?”

“Sadder than I’ve ever been.”

Again this comment didn’t register on Lorrie’s face. She simply nodded a lot.

“So Emily Dickinson is right. Love is the ‘hour of lead.’ ”

“I think she was really talking about loss.”

“But love is loss, right?”

“In many cases, yes, love is just that.”

“So this new guy, the weirdo—you’re going to end up losing him too, right?”

“That’s not the plan. But you never know . . .”

“Doesn’t sound like you love him the way you loved the professor.”

“It’s . . . different, that’s all.”

“ ‘Different’ isn’t love.”

My mom did a variation on a similar theme when I brought Theo down to meet her a few weeks later. I had paved the way—correction: I had tried to pave the way—by calling her two weeks earlier and breaking the news that I was pregnant. As anticipated she took this badly—not just because I was “with child, out of wedlock,” but also because I was only telling her three months after I knew that I was to become a mother.

“You had to wait until now to tell me?” she asked, her hurt so evident.

“I wanted to be sure that the pregnancy would take.”

“No—you just didn’t want to share this with me.”

Silence.

“And the father . . . ?” she finally asked.

I told her a bit about Theo.

“He sounds . . . different.”

“Different.” That word again.

“He is very original.”

“Now you have me even more worried.”

“So do you want to meet the guy?”

“Of course I want to meet Theo.”

Two weeks later, when Theo and I got into my Miata (my ever-expanding midsection let it be known that this little sports car would soon be traded in for something that could haul a baby around) I vowed to myself that I would do everything possible to make this weekend chez Mom work. But when we arrived at the family home on Pleasant Street in Old Greenwich, I could see Mom’s visible shock when she first laid eyes on the man who had fathered her future grandchild. Just as I could see Theo take in the charmless decor, the peeling wallpaper, the furniture that hadn’t been re-covered in thirty years. Then there was the state of my mother, looking ever more withdrawn and battered by the world’s indifference to her. I felt a desperate stab of guilt when I saw how shrunken and sad she seemed—and I did put my arms around her and tell her how wonderful it was to see her. But her reaction was one of detached bemusement. She actually tensed as I held her, then pushed me away with a slight but noticeable tap on the chest, her scolding eyes informing me: “Don’t you dare think that, for the benefit of this guy, you can act like we’re close.” The fissure between us was so deeply established that our relationship had become nothing more than a mass of defensiveness and barely concealed hurt.

“So you’re the fella,” my mom said, looking Theo over in a deliberate manner.

“Yes, ma’am,” Theo said, all smiles. “I’m the fella.”

“Well, lucky you.”

Theo proved very adept at handling such comments and keeping the atmosphere light and free of potential conflict.

“You know, Jane once told her father and me that she would never get married and never have children,” Mom said over the meat loaf dinner she had made us.

I knew that Mom would bring up this damn story again, waiting for the opportune moment to salt the wound. But I had already prepared Theo by telling him all about it in advance of our arrival. He dealt with it wonderfully. After hearing her out he said: “That is a sad story, Mrs. Howard. But guess what? I told the same thing to my parents—and they didn’t break up. So I guess it really comes down to how good or bad the marriage is in the first place. Or how much guilt you want to apportion to someone else for your own problems.”

He said all this with a smile on his face. I could see that Mom was immediately disarmed by the tough talk behind the affable tone. When he excused himself to use the bathroom she leaned over and whispered: “You briefed him before he came here, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom.”

“You let him know I was bound to tell that story.”

“You don’t think that what he said had more than a grain of truth to it?”

“He doesn’t understand the entire ramifications—”

“Of something that happened sixteen years ago and about which you’ve made me feel horrible ever since? And nothing, nothing, I have ever done for you will ever change your need to continually return to that damn evening and blame me for something that was between you and Dad.”

“We were doing just fine until—”

“Oh, Jesus, will you ever stop? I am so sick of being treated like the greatest mistake in your life.”

“You dare accuse me of hating you.”

“Well, you sure as hell don’t—”

Suddenly I saw Theo standing in the doorway.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

There was an embarrassed silence that my mother broke.

“I was just informing Jane that I have so many pressing things to do tomorrow that it’s best if you leave in the morning.”

There was another embarrassed silence.

“No problem, ma’am,” Theo said, all smiles.

“Yes, there is a damn problem,” I said. “We drove all the way down here so I could introduce you to—”

“Jane . . .” Theo said calmly. “Let it be.”

“You are a very sensible young man,” my mother said, standing up. “I wish you well.”

And she went upstairs.

I sat at the kitchen table and put my head in my hands. Theo came over and put his arm around me and said: “Let’s vote with our feet and get out of here now.”

Half an hour later we were checked into a Hilton hotel on the outskirts of Stamford. It was modern and sterile, but the bed was huge and the bathtub deep and I sat immersed in very hot water for half an hour, trying to digest what had just happened. At one point Theo came in and sat on the edge of the bath and said: “Look at it this way: you’ll never need to feel guilty about not seeing her again. Being cast out does have its fringe benefits.”

“She didn’t even come downstairs and say anything when we were leaving.”

“Because she wanted you to run upstairs and beg her forgiveness and tell her you’d try to be a good little girl again and all that other guilt-trip shit she has probably been pulling on you since the year dot. But you let it be known that you were no longer playing that game—for which I congratulate you. It’s long overdue.”

“You’re wonderful,” I said, taking his hand.

“Yes,” he said. “I am.”

When we returned to Cambridge the next day I slipped into a serious funk. We all want to fix things. Just as we all believe that so much in life can be rectified. Mend fences, build bridges, reach out, engage in mutual healing. The modern American lexicon is brimming with the language of reconciliation—because, damnit, we are the “can do” nation. Surely we can sidestep tragedy and the insoluble gulfs between people, as there always has to be some solution to life’s interpersonal conundrums. The problem with this viewpoint is that it refuses to acknowledge that there are things we simply cannot solve—that, like it or not, we can never make better that which has gone so terribly wrong.

I stayed in that funk for days. It lifted when I received an advance finished copy of my book. I held it in my hand and opened it up and heard the quiet but noticeable crackle of newly bound pages being turned for the first time. As I glanced through the hundred thousand words contained within I thought to myself: I’ve actually done all this, and wondered what it all meant in the great scheme of things.

Theo was even more excited than I was at the sight of the published tome.

“You should be jumping up and down, swigging champagne from the bottle,” he said.

“Not exactly the best thing for a woman in my state.”

“At least be thrilled by the achievement.”

“I am,” I said.

“That’s why you sound so damn melancholic right now.”

“It’s just . . .”

“Jane, there’s nothing you can do to make the woman like you.”

Theo read the book in one sitting and told me it was brilliant.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

“Because you can’t handle the idea that anything you’ve done is in any way good.”

“That’s me, Ms. Self-Doubt.”

“Well, stop doubting. It’s a fantastic piece of scholarship.”

“It’s just an academic book.”

“Where did you learn to be so hard on yourself?”

“Where did you learn how to be so nice?”

“I’ve always been nice.”

I couldn’t argue with that. For all his quirks and oddities, Theo remained, fundamentally, a very good guy—and one who, I had come to recognize, could cope with my quirks, my permanent sense of doubt. Perhaps one of the greatest surprises in temporal existence is actually finding yourself outside of the uncertainty and struggle that so characterizes most of our time here. It’s a rare interlude—and at least I recognized it as such, and was able, for a while, to keep that nagging voice of inner uncertainty well and truly muzzled.

Even the birth of my daughter didn’t turn into the Götterdämmerung that I had always feared. On the contrary, there was something rather textbook about the whole process. On the morning of July 24th I got up to make tea and suddenly felt a telltale stream of liquid cascading down my leg. I didn’t panic or fall into a state of advanced fear. I simply walked back into the bedroom and told Theo: “Time to get up—my water’s just broken.”

Though he’d only fallen into bed two hours earlier after an all-night Fritz Lang marathon, he was wide awake and dressed in about sixty seconds. He grabbed a bathrobe for me and the bag that (true to his hyperorganizational needs) he had packed for me a week earlier. We made it across town to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in less than a half hour. Within sixty minutes I was checked in and wired up and being given an epidural. Four hours later, Emily arrived in the world.

It’s strange being told to push and heave when the entire lower half of your body is numb. It’s strange to glance upward at the mirror that has been strategically placed in front of your otherwise covered legs and watch as this blooded thing is slowly yanked out of you. But the strangest of all sensations is the moment after you have been freed of the baby—and the baby of you—and you are handed this tiny shriveled creature to hold for the first time . . . and you feel a mixture of unbelievable instant love and desperate fear. The love is overwhelming—because, simply put, this is your child. But the fear is also immense, vast. Fear of not being up to the task. Fear of not being able to make her happy. Fear of letting her down. Fear—quite simply—of not getting it right.

But then the baby starts to cry and you clutch her to you. Amid the elation and exhaustion of just having been delivered of a child and having entered that brave new world of being a mother, another thought takes hold: I will try to do my very best for you.

Happily, Theo didn’t video the birth as he had threatened to do. As I held Emily (we’d chosen this name long before her birth) close to me he crouched down beside us and stroked her head and clutched my hand and whispered to his new daughter: “Welcome to life.”

Then he told me again just how much he loved me. And I said how much I loved him.

Only much later did I realize that this was the last time we ever said those words to each other.

ELEVEN

SNAPSHOTS FROM EMILY’S first eighteen months.

Bringing her home from the hospital and me standing watch by her crib all the first night, out of fear that something might happen to her.

Discovering that my daughter’s toothless gums were made of reinforced steel when they snapped down on my nipple.

Emily discovering the pleasures of ice cream for the first time. When I gave her a small spoonful of vanilla at age eight weeks her reaction—after shock at the cold—was a very noticeable smile.

A bout of colic that kept her awake all night for the better part of two weeks and had me in a state of absolute despair, as I walked the floor with her from midnight to dawn every one of those fourteen days, willing her to sleep and failing miserably.

Finally getting back to work after twelve weeks’ maternity leave and having to drop Emily off in a day-care center for the first time and expecting her to cry vehemently . . . but my daughter handling the transition with absolute serenity.

Buying Emily a set of classic wooden building blocks, all engraved with letters of the alphabet. “Can you make a word?” I ask her—and she laughs and throws a block across the room.

Emily crawling across the living room for the first time to where I’m grading papers and picking up a book on the floor, holding it upside down and saying her first word: “Mommy.”

Emily picking up a pen and scrawling lines on a blank pad and saying her second word: “Word.”

Emily coming down with a virulent strain of the flu, her temperature rising to 106 degrees, the pediatrician making a middle-of-the-night house call and warning me that she might have to be admitted to the hospital if the fever doesn’t break in twenty-four hours, and my daughter wimpering as the fever makes her breathing irregular and she can’t yet articulate in language just how horrible she now feels.

The fever finally breaking and Emily taking more than a week to get back to her normal self and my exhaustion manifesting itself when I nod off in a departmental meeting.

Theo—on one of the few evenings he is at home—actually spending time with his daughter and screening for her the original 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and giving her a five-minute lecture about the “contextual importance” (yes, he actually used those words) of the film in the history of cinematic animation.

Emily’s first full sentence some weeks later: “Daddy not here.”

Because Daddy was hardly ever here.

That was the prevailing subtext of Emily’s first year and a half: her father’s increased absences. It was a gradual yet noticeable disengagement. Within the first week of Emily’s returning home—and, like all newborn babies, treating us to ongoing sleep disruption—Theo began to retreat to his apartment, saying that he had no choice but to press on with the writing of his book.

“Well, you could do that here,” I said. “We did set up a small office for you.”

“But I’ve got all my research stuff back at the apartment.”

“All of your research stuff is on the internet. And since we also installed wireless here for you . . .”

“The vibe isn’t right here for the sort of writing I have to do. And the broken nights are killing me.”

“Emily only wakes for around a half hour. And she’s such a wonderful child.”

“I need my eight hours.”

“And I don’t?”

“Of course you do. But you’re not working right now and I am. And if I don’t sleep . . .”

Why did I give in to this argument? Possibly because he was the guy going out to a job every day, while I was still staying at home, on maternity leave. So yes, I didn’t have to be as mentally alert as Theo did right now. Though I mentioned several times that I would like him to spend more time with us, I also didn’t push the issue. I was simply too damn tired to start a fight with him. But I also sensed that—with the tangible arrival of his very tangible daughter—the reality of parenthood had caught him unawares. For all his prenatal talk about so wanting to play the dad, the very fact that Emily was now omnipresent in our lives had thrown him. Could it be that we say we want something, even if we secretly doubt that we do? As I had been guilty of this same sort of behavioral pattern throughout my life, I couldn’t point an angry finger in Theo’s direction—not just now anyway, as I was hoping that his need to run away was just a temporary phase.

Once Emily began to embrace the idea of nine uninterrupted hours of sleep, Theo did return to the apartment. He even started taking Emily for walks in her stroller, to occasionally bathe and change her, to get down on the floor with her and play with her collection of toys, and generally make her laugh. But there was a concurrent detachment in his relationship with me. It was a subtle yet noticeable one. We still chatted, we still shared meals and kept each other abreast of stuff going on in our respective lives. However, a certain chill had crept into our time together—and whenever I asked Theo if anything was troubling him, he always dodged the issue.

“There’s no problem,” he said one evening after he had fallen silent for several minutes over dinner and I had commented that such Pinter-esque pauses were a tad unnerving.

“In the theater Pinter’s pauses never last more than five beats,” he countered.

“Which is why the five minutes we just spent in absolute silence strikes me as worrying.”

“I’m not worried about anything,” he said, simultaneously avoiding my gaze.

“Is something wrong, Theo?”

“Why would there be anything wrong?”

“I sense your detachment from this household, from us.”

“That’s also news to me. I mean, I’m here every night.”

“But you seem preoccupied.”

“As do you.”

“In what way?”

“Your mind is frequently elsewhere,” he said.

“It’s called juggling parenthood with a full-time career.”

“Which I’m doing as well.”

“Not as much as me.”

“Oh, please, we’re not going to play the ‘Who’s doing more around here’ game.”

“Well, you did leave me completely alone during the first eight weeks of Emily’s life.”

“That’s not true. I slept elsewhere because we agreed that, as I was the one who was still working—”

“We didn’t agree that. You simply decided to absent yourself and I was stupid enough to go along with it.”

“If you were that upset about it, you should have said something at the time.”

Checkmate. He had me on that one. And he damn well knew why I hadn’t brought up his absences at the time—because I was terrified of alienating him, because in my postnatal, sleep-deprived zombie state I had this ever-augmenting fear that he would cut us loose if I pushed him too far. Perhaps that’s what the smile now told me: We’re not married . . . we don’t own anything together . . . I could walk away any time I wanted to . . .

The smile moved from the supercilious to the reconciliatory.

“If there’s a problem between us,” he said, “don’t be shy. Just tell me. I don’t want you to feel there’s any sort of disconnection between us.”

But the disconnection continued to deepen. When I returned to work, I dropped Emily off every morning at the day-care center, as Theo was still never getting up before midday. The thing was, she had to be collected every afternoon at three p.m. As the classes I taught fell on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and continued on until four p.m., it had been agreed that Theo would pick her up from the center in Cambridge and bring her back to his office at the Harvard Film Archive until I arrived there at five thirty.

But after three weeks of this schedule he informed me one evening: “I can’t do the pick-ups any more.”

“Why not?” I said, trying to mask my surprise.

“It’s just not working out.”

“In what way is it ‘not working out’?”

“She demands a lot—which I’m happy to give, but not during work time.”

“Define ‘demands a lot.’ ”

“ ‘Demands a lot,’ as in ‘constant attention,’ as in ‘having to feed and change her,’ as in ‘crying and disturbing my coworkers,’ as in ‘not being able to duck away for the ninety minutes she’s at the office.’ ”

“Theo, the deal between us was—”

“I know what the deal was. The thing is, deals are there to be renegotiated. I need to renegotiate this one.”

“Well, it’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple. You wouldn’t bring her into one of your classes, so why should I bring her into the archive?”

“Because I’m bringing her to the day-care center five mornings a week and picking her up from the day-care center two afternoons a week. Because I look after her every evening, as you work until at least nine or ten, as well as most of the weekend. And I’m happy to have all this time with her—because she is such a fantastic kid. So the only thing I ask of you is those ninety minutes you spend with her on the three afternoons when I’m teaching. It’s a pretty good deal, Theo . . .”

“It’s unworkable. What we need to find is some nice, competent, responsible babysitter who’s willing to pick Emily up—”

“That’s going to cost us at least one hundred and fifty dollars a week.”

“We can afford that.”

“You mean, I can afford that.”

“Well, you do earn more than me—and you must still have some money in the bank.”

“Not that much money.”

“Well, you did blow all that money on an apartment.”

I stared at him, amazed at that last comment.

“Did you hear what you just said to me?” I asked.

He laughed, then walked out the door. He didn’t return for two days, during which time I had no choice but to approach a childcare agency and hire a very nice Colombian woman named Julia to help me out. It was decided between us that she would collect Emily from day care and look after her until seven p.m. every evening, during which time she’d also cook and deal with laundry. Julia was thirty-five, married with three kids, and living in Jamaica Plain; an American resident for ten years who still hadn’t thoroughly mastered the English language. She was very determined to do everything possible to please me and to get as many hours from me as she could. As she bluntly told me: “I need the money.” And I was happy to give her the extra hours—to hell with the cost—because it freed up the entire afternoon portion of my schedule and allowed me more time to deal with student papers and administrative trivia and also to start planning the next book: what I hoped would be a major critical study of Sinclair Lewis.

So we agreed on a salary of $350 for twenty hours per week and suddenly I was freed of the hassle of having to race across town to collect Emily right after my afternoon classes. In turn, Theo was completely free of any domestic responsibility whatsoever. As soon as I had hired Julia I called him at his apartment, got the answering machine, and left the message: “All right, you win, we have a nanny who will deal with all the afternoons. Whether or not you want to return to us is completely up to you.”

He was back in the apartment that night, bearing flowers, a very cute denim jacket for Emily, a bottle of champagne, and no apology for having left two days earlier. This was, I had come to discover, Theo’s style. He’d never raise his voice or hector or demand. If he didn’t like something or felt cornered by a possible domestic obligation, he’d react by simply vanishing from view or letting it be known through passive-aggressive means that it was pointless to argue with him.

So when I asked him: “Is this sort of disappearing act going to be a feature of our domestic repertoire?” he let it be known that he wouldn’t talk about it. What’s more he wasn’t going to explain his feelings on the matter. Take it or leave it.

“So why create the hassle, Jane?”

“Because this is supposed to be a partnership—and in a partnership we share responsibility.”

“No partnership is ever based on fifty-fifty shared responsibility. Anyway we had a problem with the afternoon pick-up arrangements and now they’re sorted out. And by the way, I’m happy to contribute a hundred and seventy-five bucks toward the cost of Julia. That’s fifty-fifty, if my math hasn’t failed me.”

“I won’t put up with you vanishing like that again.”

“You know, Jane, threats do not become you.”

When I tried to continue the conversation he simply walked out of the room and played with Emily in her nursery. When he returned half an hour later I said: “I can’t live this way.”

“Live what way?”

“You leaving the room every time we—”

He left the room again, returning to Emily’s nursery. I stormed in after him and shouted: “Will you please pay me the minor courtesy of at least engaging with me.”

The result of this angry comment was a squall from Emily. My loud voice had frightened her. Theo said nothing. He just scooped his daughter up in his arms and rocked her and gave me a quiet reproving look. At that moment I sensed that I would never be able to win with this man.

But what exactly was I trying to win? All domestic relationships become, in one way or another, exercises in power. Even if you tell yourself you’re not trying to control another person, you are, in some way, trying to put your imprint onto the domestic situation. The maddening thing about Theo was that he would never really meet me halfway but would use stratagems that made me seem unreasonable and eventually allowed his way of operating to prevail. If I raised objections he would simply absent himself. He was playing a game similar to the one that my father practiced throughout his life: My way or the highway. Only unlike Dad, Theo got what he wanted through silence, stealth, and cunning. Though I must admit that the end result in this case—a part-time nanny—was not entirely disagreeable for me.

Once the childcare issue was resolved, Theo was very much around again. He came home most nights about eight. He’d often make dinner and always spent some time with Emily. We’d hang out until midnight and continued to make love at least twice a week. Whether or not we had sex I’d be asleep by twelve thirty and up with Emily by six thirty. After she passed the three-month mark she did us a great ongoing service by sleeping soundly for ten hours a night. Theo was very good about dealing with her if she happened to wake up sometime in the middle of the night, and also perfected a way of crawling into bed beside me at four a.m. without stirring me. He would always sleep with earplugs, so he would miss her early morning wake-up call. All credit to our wonderful daughter, as she never wailed herself awake. Perhaps I’m reading far too much into all this, but what always impressed me from the start with Emily was the way she made her needs known, yet did so in a manner that wasn’t whiny or hyperdemanding. She was also a great smiler and greeted me every morning with a big, beaming grin. It made all other worldly concerns fall away for a few necessary moments, reminding me that, yes, parenthood was worth all its incumbent pressures and concerns.

Right before her birth I’d traded in my little Mazda for a VW Touareg. I bought a year-old model, but it still meant adding an additional $8,000 to augment the price I was getting for a trade-in. More tellingly it meant accepting that I was now an SUV-driving parent.

Theo didn’t try to dissuade me out of buying the car.

“Hey, it’s not a station wagon and it doesn’t have the ‘right-on’ prigginess of one of those Toyota hybrids. Fact is, it’s a sharp-looking car—and I sure as hell won’t be ashamed to be seen in it.”

But it was me who was driving it every day as it was me who was bringing Emily to her day-care center. Drop-off time eight thirty a.m. and no earlier—and outside this upscale day-care center off Porter Square, just across the city line into Cambridge, there were always a good two dozen professional mothers (and no more than three dads), all lined up with the kids in strollers, all dressed for work, all glancing at their watches, all ready to dash as soon as the doors opened and the children could be deposited inside. Then we could race to our respective workplaces and begin the daily, well-paid grind—all the while fretting about the dilemma of balancing career and children, and the attendant pressures of sustaining a relationship, and telling yourself that, one of these days, you’ll actually feel fulfilled by it all.

But my fretting was more bound up in the realization that I was dodging a basic truth about my relationship with Theo: I was very much out of love with him. Or maybe I should rephrase that sentence as an interrogative one: Was I ever really in love with him, and would I still be with him now if Emily hadn’t entered our lives?

Perhaps this question was predicated on another: Was he actually in love with me? As Emily approached her first birthday and I was beginning to think that Theo and I had established a decent rhythm between us, he switched course and began not showing up again for several nights in a row. What made this especially maddening was the fact that he didn’t phone me to say where he was and kept his cell phone off just to infuriate me more—or, at least, that’s the way it seemed to me. After one particular stint of seventy-two hours he did deign to answer one of my increasingly frantic calls. His reaction was deadpan: “I’m at home, writing.”

“And you couldn’t bother to simply call me and tell me where you were? I mean, I must have left you a dozen messages on your land line and your cell.”

“I turned both off. No distractions, that sort of thing.”

“I’m a distraction?”

“You sound stressed.”

“Of course I’m stressed. You went AWOL.”

“If you had bothered to look at the message I left . . .”

“I saw no message.”

“Maybe you weren’t looking in the right place.”

“I tore the house apart, seeing if you left me anything.”

Actually I’d only checked the kitchen counter and the stand in the hallway where we usually left each other notes. I hadn’t looked in . . .

“The bedroom,” Theo said. “Your side table, underneath the lamp.”

I put down the phone and walked briskly into the bedroom. As soon as I hit the doorway I looked directly at my bedside table. There, stuck halfway under the lamp in a way that left it half-hidden, was the note. I pulled it out. It read:

Going to my place to write.

That was it: no name, no signature, no further explanation.

I came back into the living room and picked up the phone again.

“All right, I found it. But is there any reason why you couldn’t have put it in a more visible place?”

“Don’t blame me for you not seeing it.”

“I blame you for nothing, Theo. I just wish you treated this relationship like a relationship—and not like a convenience station you stop by whenever you need sex or a home-cooked meal.”

But the next night he showed up before I came home from work and organized a small Thai feast from a local restaurant. A few days later, he took Emily off for a long Saturday afternoon at the zoo, then cooked me an Italian dinner while regaling me with amusing anecdotes about Welles and Huston and Ford and Hawks and all the other great directors he so admired. And when, out of nowhere, he put his arms around me and told me I was wonderful . . . well, for the remainder of the evening I had a glimpse of how good things could be between us. Until all my doubts flooded in again.

“When will you ever accept the fact that it’s all so damn flawed, and that you will always be hit with doubt?” Christy asked me one evening when she rang close to midnight and admitted that she herself was nursing a bruised heart. (“And no, it’s not another dumbshit biker—the guy had some class and some smarts, which makes it all the worse.”)

“So what you’re saying is: be happy with what you have, despite its flaws.”

“No,” Christy said, “my thought for the day is: you have an interesting career which will get more interesting once you are liberated from that university. You live with an interesting man who may not be the ideal partner but certainly can’t be described as boring. To add the maraschino cherry to the cake, you have a beautiful daughter—and you are managing to walk that tightrope between professional life and motherhood that makes you the envy of the majority of women I know, this one included.”

“Now that’s news to me. I mean, you’ve always been so adamant about not having children.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not in constant conflict about it. I mean, look at you. I know you consider Emily—”

“The best thing that ever happened to me,” I said, finishing her sentence.

“There you go. And I know full well that, fifteen years from now, if I have let the moment pass, I might well rue the fact that my independence was far more important than the gamble which is parenthood.”

“You might not rue it.”

“We all end up ruing everything. It’s the nature of this thing we call ‘our condition.’ Could, but didn’t . . . Wanted to, but stopped myself . . . All the damn statements of regret we can never dodge.”

Maybe Christy was right. Maybe it was best to embrace the ambivalence that hovered over everything. Maybe that which was flawed was also that which was always interesting.

But, as I told Christy, if there was one thing about which I was never ambivalent it was Emily. No matter how frustrated I would get with Theo, or with the inanity of university politics, my daughter would smile at me or say something completely disarming, or would simply snuggle up against me and lift me out of the pettiness and diffidences that characterize so much of life.

“Mommy . . . Daddy . . . good,” Emily said one evening as Theo and I sat chatting over the remains of our dinner and laughing at some absurdity he’d overheard in a coffee shop that afternoon.

“Yes, you’re right,” Theo said. “Mommy and Daddy are good.”

I took his hand. I smiled.

Ten days later, he came home with an announcement: He had just gone into business with a woman named Adrienne Clegg.

After that, Mommy and Daddy were never good again.

TWELVE

ADRIENNE CLEGG. FROM the moment Theo brought her home, I couldn’t stand her. Check that: I loathed her. Because, from the outset, I could see that she would bring us nothing but grief.

To admit that you loathe someone is to admit failure. Hate is such an extreme emotion. Once in its grip, you often find yourself wondering whether it’s really worth despising someone that much. My father might have cost me my job at Freedom Mutual and left me feeling betrayed, but I still couldn’t bring myself to hate him. That would have been almost like hating myself.

Adrienne Clegg was different. She wasn’t family—and in her own insidious way she helped unpick the entire fabric of the life that I had created for myself. So yes, I hated her—and in turn I loathed myself for not blocking, from the outset, her invasive attack on our little family.

Perhaps that remains the hardest thing to stomach—the fact that, as soon as I met her, I knew she was trouble. So why didn’t I fight back far earlier? What was it in me that allowed her to visit such damage on us?

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Adrienne Clegg. She was in her early forties. Tall. Rail thin. Electric-red curly hair that was worn tightly around her head. Skin that seemed perma-tanned. (“I’m one-quarter Inca Indian,” she once told me.) A woman who always wore leather and huge ostentatious earrings and chunky rings on six of her ten fingers. She came across as a cross between a biker chick and one of those relentlessly ambitious Manhattan women who are constantly on the make.

The thing was, Adrienne Clegg had struck out in Manhattan. Just as she had struck out in LA and in London. But then she landed herself in Boston. In that happenstantial way of things, she met Theo right at the moment when he had connected with a local filmmaker named Stuart Tompkins. And Stuart had just made, for around $10,000, a violent/comic “Bonnie and Clyde Go Insane” movie set in a college fraternity. It was called Delta Kappa Gangster—a terrible title. Stuart was a classic movie geek. Like Theo he was in his early thirties. Like Theo he lived in a tiny apartment and also subsisted on a diet of fast and frozen food. But there all comparisons ended. Stuart was tall. Seriously tall and seriously thin, as in six foot five and one hundred and thirty pounds. He had serious acne. (“His face is like a penicillin culture,” Theo noted.) He also had serious body odor. Fortunately I was never invited over to his apartment. Theo—being his new best friend—did get asked to drop by one evening and informed me later that night that he would never repeat the experience. There were dishes that hadn’t been washed in six months, cruddy underwear strewn across the floor, a toilet that hadn’t been cleaned since 9/11, and the pervasive stench of someone who didn’t take personal hygiene very seriously.

Given Theo’s anal obsessions with order and cleanliness, it wasn’t at all surprising that he returned from his first—and only—visit to chez Stuart looking as though he was in an advanced state of toxic shock.

“Never doing that again,” he said, actually opening a bottle of my eau de cologne—my only bottle of eau de cologne—and holding it under his nose to sniff in its cleansing floral scent. “It was like walking into a septic tank. But the guy has made a great little movie which is going to make me a considerable amount of money.”

“Make me a considerable amount of money.” As I reflected back on all this much later on, I realized that, from the outset, Theo saw this potential windfall as benefiting him and him alone.

Full credit to Theo—I would never have thought that more than ten people would ever dream of watching Delta Kappa Gangster. But he immediately saw its big potential and also considered Stuart to be a major talent, “if I can ever get him to wash.”

He’d met Stuart at the archive, where he had a part-time job in the film library and, like Theo, thought nothing of watching movies for ten hours a day. As it turned out, Stuart had used a very small inheritance from “a crazy aunt” (“I mean, she had to be crazy to leave me anything”) to finance this eighty-minute horrorfest. He’d shot it on HDV on the campus of a local community college in Marblehead. All the actors were locals, everyone worked for a $300 fee, and Stuart filmed the entire movie in ten days. He also knew a couple of budding special-effects guys who looked upon this film as a chance to try out, on a minuscule budget, some of their more outlandish ideas.

That was the first thing that struck me about Delta Kappa Gangster: its absolute outlandishness and crudity. Theo insisted on screening it for me at home. He even made a massive bowl of popcorn for us to munch while we watched the damn thing. It was, in its own strange way, riveting stuff. Behind the primitivism of much of the acting and the low-budget effects was a noticeable flair when it came to grabbing the audience by certain soft parts of the anatomy and forcing them to pay attention.

The story was a straightforward horror-cheapie idea: a homecoming weekend at a particularly moronic fraternity turns most gory when a geek and his goth girlfriend wreak havoc on the jocks who once hounded him. The geek and the goth become avenging angels and devise horrible deaths for the football-playing, beer-swigging stooges: electrocution, eye-gouging, defenestration onto a spiked fence, impromptu brain surgery with an electric drill, even yanking out a tongue with a handy pair of pliers . . .

And then they start robbing banks.

The film’s violence, though utterly extreme, was also executed with a maniacally black wit. Stuart and his colleagues poured on the gore but they did so with such brio and subversive anarchy that you couldn’t help but be amused by it all—while simultaneously feeling uncomfortable about being so taken in by such slasher stuff.

What intrigued me even more was the film’s overall subtext: how it could be viewed as an attack on the sort of rabid anti-intellectualism that has always been a component of American life. It was the ultimate Geek’s Revenge movie—the kid who had always been ridiculed and picked on turning the tables against the arrogant, vapid morons who found his bookishness a threat. As much as I was appalled by the rabid violence, the part of me that had always loathed bullies was cheering the madman on.

“Well, that certainly got my attention,” I said as the final credits rolled. “Now all I need is three steadying vodkas and a cleansing hot shower.”

“It’s a masterpiece,” Theo said.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would. You just don’t run into this sort of talent every day.”

“It’s a pretty unrefined talent.”

“Yeah, that’s what makes him so interesting. He’s a primitive—with the body odor to match.”

“Yes, it does have a decided stench to it.”

“What you also need to know is that this kind of movie sells. Properly distributed it will be a huge hit in every college town in the country. Even the fraternity types will dig it. And when it gets released on DVD . . . I’ll be driving a Porsche.”

“I can’t exactly see you in a Porsche, Theo.”

“I was being metaphoric. I promise you, this film will do gangbusters. All I need to get things rolling is about fifty grand.”

“And where do you propose to find that?”

“Well, I was hoping that you might like to invest in the project . . .”

I knew this pitch was coming, but it still made me feel desperately uneasy.

“I don’t really have fifty thousand to spend on something like that.”

“Yes, you do.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I’ve seen your bank statements.”

“You’ve been going through my papers?”

“Hey, lose the accusatory tone. Of course I haven’t been rifling through your papers. But last month, when you were doing your accounts, you did have all the bank statements on your desk . . .”

“And you just had to look them over.”

“If you leave stuff on a desk for all to see, it will get seen.”

“Only if someone decides to take a look themselves—which is what you did, Theo. I mean, you leave your journal on your desk all the time and I have never, ever opened it.”

“Well, why would you? It’s a closed book. But paperwork scattered on a desk . . .”

“Are we really going to get into a semantical debate here about what constitutes a breach of privacy?”

“The thing is, I know you have around sixty-eight thousand left in the bank.”

“That’s money I’ve saved over the years, month by month.”

“Well, it’s just sitting in some account. And if you were to go into partnership with me and Adrienne . . .”

That was the first time he ever mentioned her name.

“Who’s Adrienne?”

“Adrienne Clegg. This absolutely brilliant film distributor I’m planning to work with.”

“I see,” I said, my tone chilly. “And when exactly did you meet this ‘absolutely brilliant film distributor’?”

“Don’t worry—I’m not fucking her.”

“Well, that makes my day.”

“I met her through Stuart. He met her at this big horror festival in Bratislava last year—”

“Bratislava, New York?”

“Very funny. Stuart was in Slovakia covering the Bratislava Horror Festival for some fanzine he writes for. And the only reason he was able to get to Bratislava is because the festival agreed to fly over one fanzine journalist to cover it—all the horror distributors know that they shift a hell of a lot of DVDs through these magazines. As Stuart is considered the most knowledgeable horror-film journalist out there these days—”

“So he’s the Pauline Kael for the Driller Killer set, right?”

“Very witty.”

“I don’t like the setup, Theo.”

“Look, Adrienne is this amazingly knowledgeable woman—”

“Whom you met during an intimate dinner at Stuart’s hovel?”

“You actually sound jealous . . .”

“I’m just surprised you didn’t mention her before now.”

“Do I ask you for a detailed rundown on everyone you’re meeting, day in, day out?”

“No, but I haven’t suddenly announced that I’m going into business with someone . . .”

“Adrienne came by last week to the archive after I first saw the final cut of Stuart’s movie and told him that I wanted to distribute it. He told me he was up for that but only if I’d work with Adrienne, as he thought we’d be a great team. Which, as it turns out, is the truth. She’s got the business clout and I’ve got the passion. She figures we should do fifteen million dollars minimum, which, given that the distribution agency takes thirty-five percent, is—”

“Five hundred and something . . .”

“Five twenty-five. Your fast math is impressive.”

“You really think it can make that sort of return?”

“I don’t think . . . I know it will surpass that. And if you invest fifty grand, I can assure you that the first fifty thousand we make will be immediately refunded to you, and then you’ll receive twenty percent of our commission. So you could easily make back the principal and double your money in less than a year.”

“If the project is so surefire wouldn’t it be better to approach a bank or a finance house?”

“Banks and big-deal investors don’t touch no-budget splatter movies. It’s not exactly the sort of thing that’s in their field of vision.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll find some well-heeled cinephile who’s willing to gamble on this . . .”

“Whereas you won’t touch it—because that would mean investing in me.”

“Now that’s a lousy thing to say,” I said, trying not to sound too angry or too hurt—and failing badly.

“But it’s the truth. You have never trusted me, you have never believed I could succeed at anything.”

“How can you say that? I’m always telling you what a brilliant guy you are. I laugh at your jokes, I brag to my friends how talented and—”

“You don’t have any friends.”

That comment landed like a right to the jaw.

“That’s not true. I talk with Christy all the time . . .”

“She’s three thousand miles away. Other than that, you see no one.”

“And how about you, Mr. Solipsistic? You were living like Oblomov before I—”

“I have plenty of friends,” he said quietly. “You simply never meet them because I know you’d look down on them. Just as you have already decided to look down on Adrienne and Stuart.”

“I am simply troubled by the idea—”

“That I might actually succeed at something and then leave you.”

“That is not what this is about,” I said, even though there was an uncomfortable truth to what he had just said. Our entire relationship was predicated, in part, on my fear that he would take the door marked Exit out of our lives—and I both hated and feared that knowledge.

“I would be thrilled if you succeeded with this film. And you know I would always support you in just about anything you’d want to do . . .”

“Then you have to invest in me.”

There was so much I wanted to say here: about how couples should never mix money and business; how, by investing in his project, I would be forced to confront my own doubts about Theo’s sense of responsibility and that I would be giving him this rather substantial sum of money under duress. But I was in one of those tricky no-win situations. Refuse to plunk down the money and I would be telling him I had no faith in him. Invest the money and I would feel as if I had been strong-armed into this, with someone whose business sense was, at best, unevolved.

Trust your instincts. That is, perhaps, the best piece of advice you can ever heed, followed by: Never put money into a movie. So I decided to play for time and told him: “I’ll need to have some sort of partnership agreement. And I’ll also need to meet your associate.”

Theo smiled the smile of someone who knew he was going to get what he wanted.

“No problem,” he said. “No problem at all.”

Two days later, Adrienne came over to the apartment for dinner. Theo spent much of the day cooking an elaborate Indian meal. Though part of me was dazzled by the extent of his preparation (he’d sourced all the ingredients at a tiny Indian shop in Chelsea and even went so far as to hand-grind his spices) I couldn’t help but think that he had only cooked me three meals in the two years we had now been together. He also insisted on buying champagne and several ridiculously expensive bottles of Bordeaux.

“It’s an Indian meal,” I told him. “The food is going to smother such rarefied wine.”

“This dinner will mark the beginning of our business partnership and I want it to be as special and important as this project.”

“You’re talking about hawking a cheapie horror movie, not reprinting the Gutenberg Bible.”

“You really know how to piss all over everything.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Nor is your insinuation that I am being extravagant for no other reason than to be extravagant.”

Five minutes later, Adrienne made her entrance.

“Entrance” was the apt word, though it was actually more of a performance. She showed up at our door wearing a floor-length coat that looked like a cross between a kaftan and an Afghan rug. She was very tall—somewhere over six foot—with densely curled hair, dyed virulently red. Everything about her instantly screamed “extremity”: the coat, the hair, the capped teeth, the huge bronze sunburst earrings, the vertical musky perfume that radiated from every pore. Then there was the matter of her voice. It was loud. Wake-up-the-neighbors loud. What made it even more grating was the way it oozed specious bonhomie.

“Oh, my God, you are as beautiful as Theo said you were.”

Those were the first words out of her mouth. Followed by: “And—oh, I don’t believe it—what an awesome apartment!”

This comment came when she was still in the doorway and hadn’t yet taken in the “awesomeness” of our place. But after throwing her arms around me like a long-lost friend she rushed inside and started talking in exclamation points about everything—from the color of our sofa to the “fabulous” parquet floor to the “gorgeous” new kitchen. And when it came to Emily . . .

“Oh, you are the most absolutely beautiful little girl . . .”

As Adrienne approached her with outstretched arms, my daughter instinctively curled herself up into a ball and turned away from this towering shrike. Emily, from the outset, always figured out who to trust and who to shun.

Now I do realize that I am engaging in excessive character assassination when it comes to Adrienne Clegg. But she was one of those people who didn’t exactly provoke a neutral response. Within five minutes of her arrival, I was desperate for her to leave.

But there was no way I could say that. Instead I offered Adrienne a drink.

“A little martini-wini would go down a treat,” she said.

“And do you want your martini with gin or vodka?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t happen to have Grey Goose by any chance?”

“No—good old boring Smirnoff.”

“I guess that will have to do . . .”

I headed to the kitchen and made the drinks. Then I returned to the living room, where Adrienne was down on the floor, trying to bond with my daughter. She kept holding up building blocks and mouthing things like: “Can Emily say the letter A?” “Can Emily say the letter Z?” Being thirteen months old and unable to form words as yet, this was just a bit beyond her and Adrienne’s shrieky voice sent her into floods of tears.

“Has Auntie Adrienne upset you?” she asked, all high decibels. Emily’s response was to escalate her crying, causing me to scoop her up and whisk her off to her room.

“Guess you can see now why Auntie Adrienne is never going to be Mommy Adrienne,” she said as we left.

It didn’t take long for Emily to regain her composure. Once out of Adrienne’s range she relaxed.

“Sorry if she frightened you,” I whispered to Emily. “She frightens me too.”

When I returned to the living room Adrienne and Theo had both slurped down their drinks. Noting that the cocktail shaker was empty, Adrienne insisted on heading into the kitchen and making a fresh batch.

“There’s no need,” I said.

“Of course there’s a need,” she said brightly. “Another couple of martini-winis and we are going to be bosom buddies.”

As soon as she was out of the room Theo said: “I knew you guys would hit it off.”

“Very funny,” I said.

“Hey, don’t blame me if you have no sense of humor.”

“That woman is an irony-free zone,” I whispered.

“You just can’t stand anyone who’s flamboyant.”

“She’s a floor show.”

“And you are, as always, rushing to critical judgment.”

“That’s not fair. I only want the best for you, for us.”

Adrienne was back with the drinks.

“You lovebirds having a little spat?”

“No, I was just being cranky,” I said, downing the martini and accepting a second one. Vodka martinis are an excellent poison. After the first you’re moderately anesthetized. After the second, numbed. After the third you’re either willing to make a pass at a fire hydrant or put up with a two-hour stream-of-consciousness monologue from Adrienne Clegg.

Fortunately the martinis were augmented by all that Indian food, which Theo had so lovingly prepared, and by all that extravagant Bordeaux bought especially for the occasion. I just sat back and ate and drank, as Adrienne did all the talking. I learned about her “ultradysfunctional” childhood in Vancouver, her first brief marriage to a Hollywood set dresser who turned out to be a raving homosexual (or did she lead him to conclude that sleeping with men was a smarter option?), and her stint in some Betty Ford rehab center in British Columbia to break her Percodan habit (“At least Perc is cheaper than coke,” she noted). I also heard about how she helped discover at least three major film directors (none of whom I’d heard of) and about her previous professional lives in Paris and Berlin (“I was the first film distributor to get things moving in the old East Germany after The Wall came down”). And, of course, there were her “fabulous” years in New York, where she “knew everybody.”

Listening to her wasn’t a vast strain. My brain, deadened by the vodka and the wine, shifted into neutral. I simply let her ceaseless monologue waft over me. There was something nonetheless fascinating about her self-absorption: the sheer loud narcissism of it all, the way she dropped film-industry names (“Steven” . . . “Hugh” . . . “George” . . .) and expected you to fill in the blanks; the fact that she viewed her life as an ongoing melodrama and didn’t stop to think for a moment if it might be the least bit interesting for her audience. What did Theo see in her? Actually that wasn’t difficult to fathom, as he seemed to take perverse pleasure in her campy extremity, the way certain gay men so love over-the-top divas. Perhaps it was her wild, unbridled self-assurance that strangely impressed Theo. For someone who had a degree of intellectual arrogance—and a geeky love of pedantic detail—he often hinted that he was ill at ease in that world of pure American ambition and wondered if he would always be someone on the financial margins of life. So Adrienne—with her aura of fiscal knowingness, of being a player—was an immediate source of attraction for Theo. As the evening wore on she started to talk about how she would market Delta Kappa Gangster—and so began selling me on her ability to turn this little blood fest into a highly profitable piece of merchandise. Yes, she was extreme and narcissistic, but it was clear she could push an idea. The more she talked the more I became convinced that, yes, Adrienne could (as she and Theo promised) triple my investment in under a year. Like any canny salesman, Adrienne knew how to be persuasive and dangle the possibility of multiplying money in front of you.

“I promise you this: the fifty grand you put into the enterprise will be completely guaranteed by us. What your money will do is let us travel to the big film markets—like the American Film Market in Santa Monica—and nail down big deals. With a film like this, it’s a certainty that we can sell both theatrical and DVD. I mean, this movie is a gift. A fucking great lucrative gift. I showed it to an Italian distributor friend of mine just last week and he’s already prepared to offer a hundred and fifty thousand for Italian theatrical alone. Now I know what your next question is going to be: If we’re already being offered that sort of money, why do we initially need yours? The key here is the word ‘initially.’ As the distribution sales company we get thirty-five percent of all gross sales—but the money is only paid ten percent down and the distributors must make good on their offer within ninety days. So what we’re talking about now is a short-term bridging loan—and one which we can repay to you once we have received the first hundred grand in deals. The thing is: not only will your investment be paid off in four months, but given your twenty percent cut of our commission . . . well, do the math, hon.

“I tell you, the demand for this sort of product is endless. People want to get the shit scared out of them. People want the visceral kick of extreme violence. We’re living in a time of vapid consumerism and anemic expectations. What’s more, though everything is superficially humdrum in most people’s lives, the amount of silent rage out there is enormous. Rage at being in a dead-end job. Rage at being trapped in a sterile marriage. Rage at the fact that, for every average working stiff and middle-class office type, the money they’re now making just doesn’t cut it anymore—and they also know that there is no such thing as job security.

“So with all this rage around, how do people vent it? They need some exhaust valve: online porn, shopaholism, watching extreme stuff. This is where Delta Kappa Gangster really rings all the bells: a revenge movie in which you get the visceral kick of watching all-American assholes being mutilated. I mean, ring-a-ding-ding . . . it’s a surefire winner.

“Now, Theo told me about your time in hedge funds. Look at the apartment you got out of that. What we’re offering you here . . . yeah, it’s a risk. But you’re the ex–hedge fund gal. You know all about risk, hon. And you also know that a guaranteed return on investment in four months—coupled with the chance to easily triple your money within the year . . . and hon, when I say ‘easily’ I am being prudent here . . .”

Hon. I hated her using that term of endearment, just as I also hated so much about her excessive personality, and her need to ingratiate herself with me. After she finished her sales spiel I said little, except: “Well, I must think all this over . . .”

“Of course you must, of course,” she said. “No pressure, hon, none at all.”

Then she manically began to tell a story about someone she knew who didn’t invest in Saw and lost out on a cool million. But . . . “No pressure, hon, none at all.”

We finally got rid of her around midnight. Theo was ultra-solicitous, insisting that I go to bed while he did the dishes. When he snuggled up against me an hour later I didn’t push him away. Nor did I object when I woke the next morning at eleven—it was a Saturday—to discover the house had been even more tidied up and that (according to a note he left—in easy view this time—on the kitchen counter) he had headed out to the supermarket with Emily to do the shopping for the weekend.

I saw right through all of this. And in the somewhat clear (but rather hungover) light of day I remained more than dubious about Ms. Clegg. When I googled her, I did come across many references to her presence at assorted film markets over the years and one 2002 Hollywood Reporter item (from when she was living in New York), noting that she was “one of the real players in independent film sales.” Just as I also received, a few days after the dinner, a very thorough and very professional business plan from Adrienne, accompanied by a long and well-argued letter, explaining again the parameters of the investment and how, at the very worst, I would come out with the $50,000 I put into the company. Theo asked that evening if I was still dubious about making the commitment, also letting it be known that they were under immense pressure to sign up Stuart, as there were other better-established film sales companies now chasing him.

“Look, it would mean so damn much to me if you would take this gamble on me . . . especially as, when we make all this money, it will provide so much in the way of security for you and me and Emily.”

It was the first time he had ever spoken of the future in plural terms. That part of me that feared being abandoned again responded immediately to this articulation of commitment.

“All right,” I told Theo that night. “I’m in.”

Adrienne called me up the next day, brimming with excitement.

“I screamed and screamed and screamed when Theo told me the news,” she said. “And I promise, promise, promise we will not let you down. Of that you can be one thousand percent certain.”

She also said that it would be kind of cool if I was made an officer of the company, Fantastic Filmworks, that she and Theo were forming to distribute the film. It would mean I could come to board meetings and be kept fully abreast (and, indeed, could even influence) all the decisions they would be making about the sales of the movie.

“Why not?” I said, also thinking that it would be no bad thing to keep a watchful eye over how my investment was being handled.

A letter of general partnership arrived a few days later. It was all very straightforward—outlining my investment, a detailed schedule of repayments and bonuses, and (this was crucial to me) a clear statement indicating that, as a member of this partnership, I would have complete access to all books and corporate decisions about the sales and marketing of the film. That evening—when, as prearranged, Adrienne came by the house for a final discussion—I made it very clear that I wanted to be kept abreast of every major expenditure made in the selling of the film and had to see full accounts whenever demanded.

“No problem, hon. There will be complete transparency here.”

Then, with several scribbles of a pen, I committed myself to a $50,000 investment in Fantastic Filmworks. As soon as the document was signed Adrienne brought out a bottle of champagne to celebrate the deal. Only this was not just any old bottle of champagne. This was a Laurent-Perrier 1977.

“There was no need for such an expensive bottle,” I told Theo later as we were getting ready for bed.

“There are moments when extravagance has its place.”

During the coming months—when Adrienne and Theo veered from extravagance to extravagance—I found myself in an increasingly enraged war of words with Theo about his profligacy.

Until, as the arbitrary nature of things would have it, the extravagant expenditure turned into extravagant profitability. Adrienne and Theo were right on the money about their little film. It was a monster hit.

Success can bring stability on all fronts. Success can also precipitate chaos. As I came to learn: never underestimate the need for self-sabotage when someone has finally gotten what they’ve always wanted.

THIRTEEN

EMILY. DURING ALL that went down over the next year and a half, the one and only great constant in my life was my daughter. Everything else around me turned very wrong—and I had no one to blame but myself. After all, by signing over all that money I’d handed them an opportunity to . . .

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First . . . Emily. By the age of eighteen months she was already forming basic but interesting sentences, and seemed as devoted to me as I was to her. Maybe I was superconscious of my own complex family background—but from the outset, I vowed not to visit the same toxic guilt on my daughter, and to make Emily feel that her presence in my life was simply the best thing that ever happened to me.

Did she, as a baby, get this? Only a completely self-obsessive parent would think that. Honestly, I had no idea if I was getting it right. What I did know was that I so enjoyed every moment I had with my daughter. She never caused me trouble. Or maybe I simply decided that nothing she did was that troubling or distressing. If she knocked over the milk, if she ruined a night’s sleep, if she was grumpy and unresponsive to my attempt to cheer her up, I seemed to ride with it. That’s what surprised me the most about my response to her—the realization that nothing she asked of me was too difficult. It was revelatory, this feeling—for what it told me was the depth of my unconditional love for this little girl who also happened to be my daughter.

She coped with my absences, never putting up a fuss when she was dropped off at the day-care center. Every evening when I arrived home she came tottering (and eventually running) toward me, announcing delightedly to Julia: “Mommy home!”

Julia always went on about just what a charmer she was, and how easy it was to look after her.

“She is wonderful because you treat her wonderful,” Julia once told me in her still-shaky English.

“No,” I replied. “Emily is wonderful because she is simply wonderful.”

By the age of three she was picking up books and saying things like: “Mommy loves books—and I love Mommy.” Or she would climb into my lap when I was in my desk chair at home, grading papers, and would try to read the words I had written on the essays.

Every weekend, I made a point of bringing Emily somewhere cultural, but fun. The Science Museum, the Zoo, the Museum of Fine Arts (she actually pointed to a Rothko hanging on one of the walls and went: “Nice”), even the Wiedner Library at Harvard, where a friend named Diane who worked in the cataloging department took us on a tour of the vast array of stacks. Emily found it all a bit claustrophobic and labyrinthine, and clung to me as Diane patiently explained to her how the books found their way onto shelves and how there were shelves for books about stories and shelves for books about things that happened in the past and shelves for . . .

“I write stories,” Emily suddenly announced.

“I’m sure you do,” Diane said, beaming.

Again I was told how poised and delightful my daughter was. On one snowy day I decided against taking the car and brought her to day care by the T. During the journey she happily colored away in her Sesame Street book, occasionally stopping to show me her handiwork, and an elderly woman sitting opposite me actually leaned over and said: “I have grandchildren and they don’t know how to behave in public and are always acting up. But your daughter is just exceptional . . . and a great credit to you.”

Now I know I’m sounding just a little too fulsome here. But Emily made me feel fulsome. For the first time in my life, there was someone who was more important to me than anyone else in the world. A sweeping statement, but an accurate one. She was the great love of my life.

Meanwhile, her father was otherwise engaged. From the moment I transferred the $50,000 into the Fantastic Filmworks account, Theo was largely AWOL from our lives. With the money I gave them he rented an office with Adrienne off Harvard Square for $1,200 per month. It struck me as something of an extravagance.

“Harvard Square is the most expensive corner of Cambridge,” I told him.

“That’s why we have to be there. Adrienne says that we’ll have no street cred with the big-deal distributors if we’re operating in some second-floor walk-up elsewhere. Everyone knows Harvard Square.”

“It’s still fifteen thousand dollars a year in rent.”

“Don’t sweat it. Adrienne says we should have an easy hundred Gs in our account within four months. Then you’ll get your fifty back—and we’ll have no more cash-flow problems.”

“You already have cash-flow problems?”

“I didn’t say that.”

They flew off together to Milan for a big meeting there. Theo assured me—but only when I asked to be reassured—that they’d be sleeping in separate rooms.

“Don’t sweat it. I’m not her type, she’s not my type . . . and anyway she’s got this guy she’s seeing right now.”

“What’s his name?”

“Todd something.”

“What’s he do?”

“He’s a journalist on the Phoenix, I think.”

I checked the masthead of the Boston Phoenix. There was no one with Todd as his first name listed there. I called their editorial office and asked them if they had someone named Todd who wrote for them. The woman on the other end of the line said they didn’t divulge such information, but if I checked out all their back issues online, I might find what I was looking for. I did just that, using their search engine to check if there were any Todds with bylines. I went back two years. None whatsoever. If you were named Todd you were evidently barred from writing for the Phoenix.

I mentioned this to Theo. He got annoyed.

“What are you turning into—Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity?”

“I’m not trying to be a bloodhound,” I said, getting the reference.

“Yes, you are—otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to find out if this Todd guy wrote for the Phoenix.”

“Well, he obviously doesn’t.”

“So?”

“So she doesn’t have a boyfriend named Todd.”

“No—she definitely has a boyfriend named Todd.”

“But he doesn’t work for the Phoenix.”

“I obviously got that wrong.”

Theo did bring me back a fantastically expensive pair of black Ferragamo boots from Milan.

“They’re magnificent,” I said, “but far too indulgent.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” he said. “Anyway, it looks like we have fifteen grand up front for Italian theatrical.”

But the boots cost $1,500 (again the internet told all) and I was somewhat unnerved when I thought that he’d blown one-tenth of his first sale on me. Yet I decided not to challenge him on it as there were other more pressing concerns to be confronted.

“Hello there, thanks sooo much for calling Fantastic Filmworks.”

This voice—hippy dippy with those decidedly “out there” inflections one associates with far too many hallucinogenics—greeted me when I called Theo at his office one afternoon.

“Who was that?” I asked when Theo came on the line.

“Our assistant, Tracey-Spacey.”

“You hired an assistant?”

“She’s only part-time.”

“But she’s still an employee. And what sort of name is Tracey-Spacey?”

“We need an assistant. Between my job at the archive and Adrienne being on the road all the time . . .”

That was another thing that was grating on me—Adrienne constantly being elsewhere, flitting between London and LA and Milan and Barcelona, and me occasionally receiving a phone call from the grande dame, all specious affability and reassurance.

“Jane, hon, you would not believe how damn expensive London is right now. I mean, eight bucks for a frappuccino in a Starbucks over here. Who pays that sort of money?”

“You evidently do.”

She began to laugh that hyena laugh of hers.

“You are such a card!” she said. “But do I detect a teeny-weeny bit of worry-worry in your voice?”

“Yes, you do.”

“Look, the point of this call is . . . I’ve got goody-goody news! Ever heard of the Film Factory? One of the biggest distributors in the UK. They are ready to pony up two hundred and fifty thousand for theatrical rights in Britain.”

“And what about DVD rights?”

“They want to sell those on—but we’ll have a forty percent share in that sale.”

“And they’re thinking what sort of price?”

“Will you listen to you . . . Madame Business Head!”

“Thirty percent of two-fifty is seventy-five thousand. Not exactly riches beyond avarice, given that the UK is such a major English-language market.”

“It’s a great price,” she said, a tone of annoyance coming through.

“They got seven-fifty for the UK theatrical sale of Kill Me Now,” I said, mentioning the name of a recent supergrisly horror film that had been a box-office phenomenon in thirty countries.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know how to use a search engine. The search engine sent me to Variety, which had a story in their archive on the UK deal for Kill Me Now. Given that you’ve only been able to realize thirty-three percent of that price for UK theatrical distribution of our film—”

“You know,” she said, interrupting me, “this wasn’t the deal I agreed to when I accepted your investment.”

“You accepted my investment,” I said, sounding angry—which is exactly what I was. “You came to me with my partner, begging me—”

“I have eighteen years’ experience in the film business. I have been called the most important person in independent film distribution by the Village Voice. Anyway, two-fifty is a great price.”

“It’s a mediocre price.”

“It pays back your investment.”

“There is that, I suppose.”

Theo came home that night, emanating passive-aggressive anger.

“I never knew you had such great experience in film sales,” he said, his voice mildness itself.

“I know how to compare a good deal-maker and a bad deal-maker.”

“And do you also know that Adrienne phoned me up from London in tears?”

“Am I supposed to be affected by that? I mean, I just pointed out that her deal wasn’t up to snuff.”

“You’re not to question her judgment in the future.”

“Is that an order, sir?”

“Let her do her job—which she’s very good at.”

“Not if she got sixty-five percent less than—”

“No one knew at the time that the film-sales market would take a small dive. You’ve worked in finance, you know everything comes down to risk management, risk assessment. So why get all exercised about a good deal that isn’t a great deal? You’re getting your money back.”

But I didn’t get my money back. Four months went by. Theo and Adrienne went to Los Angeles and the American Film Market, where they rented a Mustang convertible and took a suite in a hotel on the beach. How did I know such things? Because I saw the photographs that Theo took of himself and Adrienne posing by the electric-red Mustang, and a party they threw for assorted film types in their suite—which had (also in true Hollywood style) a very nice veranda facing the beach in Santa Monica. The reason I saw the photographs is because Theo had left his spiffy new Leica camera on the kitchen counter at home, with the image of himself and Adrienne (arms around each other’s shoulders) in the digital display below the viewfinder.

Was I disconcerted by this? Just a little. As he’d left the camera out there for me to peruse I didn’t think twice about picking it up and rolling through the other photographs that had been stored within. That’s when I saw the pictures of the oceanfront suite, of the party they threw, of their carousing with assorted other partygoers on a king-sized hotel bed.

Why the hell had he left the camera out on the kitchen counter? The answer was an obvious one: he wanted me to find it. He wanted to share with me the fact that he was now sleeping with Adrienne. In that time-honored tradition of male guilt, he had to let me in on his grubby little secret—and, as such, transfer whatever guilt he was feeling onto me.

But when he arrived home that night and I confronted him about the photographs, his reaction was one of cool disdain.

“Why did you look at the pictures?” he asked.

“Because they were left out for me to see.”

“Bullshit,” he said, all calm. “The camera was simply left out. You chose to pick it up.”

“And you chose to leave it out with a picture of you and Adrienne locked in an embrace.”

“We had our arms around each other’s shoulders, that’s all.”

“That’s all? You were sprawled out on a bed in a hotel suite.”

“There were many people sprawled out on that bed.”

“But you had her head in your lap.”

“Big deal. We were all smashed.”

“You were in the same hotel suite.”

“That’s right, a suite. As in a hotel apartment with many rooms. And there were two bedrooms. One for Adrienne, one for me.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t really care if you do or don’t. It’s simply the truth of the matter.”

“Even if—as you keep alleging—you haven’t slept with the woman, it’s also very clear to me that the two of you are engaging in absurd profligacy.”

“Oh God, this song and dance again.”

“Yes—this song and dance again. Because the seed money for the convertibles and the fancy hotel suite and all the extravagant travel came from me. And I’ve yet to see a penny of it back.”

“That’s because we’ve yet to see any of the money from all the contracts signed.”

“How many territories are gone so far?”

“You’d have to talk to Adrienne. That’s her division.”

“Her division? What are you, some multinational corporation with divisions in thirty countries? Surely you know exactly how many contracts you’ve signed to date.”

“Can’t say that I do, really. A half-dozen, I think.”

“You think. And the States—the really big contract . . . ?”

“Well, I was going to come to that. New Line might be offering us a cool million.”

This stopped me short.

“When did that happen?”

“A couple of days ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it wasn’t certain. And I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

“I’m an officer of this company. Surely I should have been told.”

“All right, it was an oversight. And I’m sorry. But aren’t you pleased?”

“Of course I’m pleased. That’s three hundred thousand to us. It’s great news.”

“So you shouldn’t be worrying about the money we’ve been spending to get the film sold. If we’d gone to the American Film Market and stayed in some Motel 6 and had been driving a rented Buick, everyone would have written us off as bit players. As Adrienne says, you throw some money around to make some money. That’s the way the game works.”

“I still would like to see a full set of accounts for all the travel and all the signed contracts.”

“No problem,” he said, sounding evasive.

Evasive he remained. Every two weeks I would remind him that he still hadn’t shown me the accounts or the contracts. He would promise them in a few days. When this went on three times too many, I blew up at him and said that he was to either show me the paperwork or face questions from my lawyer. And I would really like to know why the hell my fifty grand hadn’t yet been refunded to me.

The next day I had a phone call at my office from Adrienne.

“Hon, hon, apologies, apologies. I have been very stupid-woopid . . .”

Stupid-woopid.

“. . . and I have been so fucking stressed with all the preparations for Cannes that I haven’t gotten all the paperwork together that you not only need, but deserve. But I am happy to get everything couriered over to you tonight.”

“Why spend the money on a courier when Theo can bring it all home?”

“Didn’t Theo tell you he was off to New York with Stuart to have a meeting with Focus and New Line and a couple of other mini-majors to talk about his next project?”

“No, he didn’t tell me that.”

“Ooops! Me stupid again! He asked me not to tell you this. All this came up real sudden—’cause thanks to us, Stuart is hot, hot, hot and everyone wants his new script. Of course we got in there first, giving him the money to develop it.”

“You what?”

“Oh, come on, don’t sound so surprised. Surely Theo told you that we’d put up some seed money for the script?”

“What script?”

“Dark Woods. It’s not as slasher-funny as the last movie. More Hitchcockian. A pair of homicidal adolescent twins are living in rural Maine with their trailer-trash mom and they decide to systematically take out all of her redneck lovers. Then they turn their attention to every wife-beater in their shitty little town. It’s John Steinbeck meets Death Wish.”

“So you’ve paid Stuart to write this screenplay?”

“That is correct.”

“And how much exactly did you pay him?”

“One hundred thousand dollars,” she said.

“You’re kidding me.”

“It’s a great price, considering how hot he is now.”

“It’s a great price, if you have the money.”

“We have the money.”

“Well, I know you have, on paper, a considerable amount of money in contracts. But I don’t think Stuart agreed to write for you with nothing paid upfront, right?”

“Of course not. He’s got studios circulating around him like vultures. He could command ten times that amount if he wanted.”

“So you wanted to get in there first?”

“Precisely, hon.”

“I’m not your ‘hon,’ ” I said and hung up.

When Theo arrived back three days later his first words to me were: “So you berated Adrienne about the script deal with Stuart.”

“I see your girlfriend has been keeping you up to date with our conversations.”

“She’s not my girlfriend—but I know you can’t stand her.”

“I never said that.”

“You don’t have to. It’s all over your face.”

“And that is because the woman is toxic. And like most toxic substances she’s also dangerous.”

“You haven’t a clue. She is held in such respect in the film business . . .”

“If she’s held in that much respect, then what the hell is she doing in business with you?”

As soon as that comment was out of my mouth I instantly regretted it. But that’s the problem with angry exchanges. Things get said and you can’t easily take them back.

“Fuck you,” Theo said quietly.

“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

“Yes, you did. You meant every word. Just as you have always looked upon me as a loser whom you made the mistake of sleeping with a few times too often. So be it. But know this: if I had to choose between you and Adrienne, I’d choose Adrienne in a New York minute.”

He snapped his fingers in my face as he uttered the word “minute.” Then, grabbing his coat and his Leica, he left the apartment.

I didn’t see him again for another three weeks. Nor did I hear a word either. I tried ringing his cell phone. I sent countless emails. After forty-eight hours I called the Harvard Film Archive and was informed that Theo had taken a six-month leave of absence . . . and they didn’t know where he was living right now. So I went to his apartment. It had been sublet to a Harvard graduate student from Mumbai. He too had no forwarding address for Theo—just a post-office box. Now I tried the apologetic approach, telling Theo in several emails that I let my emotions get the better of me, that I shouldn’t have reacted so fiercely, that I truly regretted the way our conversation had turned so vile . . . and that, at the very least, we should sit down with each other and try to talk things through.

No response.

I rang Adrienne. Like him she neither answered my calls nor returned my messages. I was absolutely certain that they both saw my number flash up on their LED screens and that they had agreed to freeze me out. Just as I was also certain that they were now living together—and conspiring against me.

“Of course he’s fucking her,” Christy said when she passed through Cambridge a few weeks into his vanishing act. “I mean, he’s a guy. That’s what they do with any woman who is available and willing. The thing is—how long are you going to put up with it and, for that matter, why are you putting up with it now?”

“There’s a child involved.”

“But he’s not that involved with Emily in the first place. So . . .”

“I know, I know . . .”

“If the man you’re living with vanishes out of your life for a couple of weeks and doesn’t even have the minimal courage required to tell you where he is, then you have to ask yourself why the hell you want him back.”

I hung my head and blinked and felt tears.

“There’s other, bigger stuff going on right now,” I said.

That’s when I told her about the phone call I had received last week from my mother. It was the first time we had spoken since that disastrous weekend with Theo. When Emily was born I did make the point of sending her photographs—and she replied with a polite, formal letter, telling me that, of course, Emily was a beautiful girl, and she hoped she would bring me much joy. That was it. I wrote back a proper letter (Mom refused to enter the world of email in her private life, even though she was forced to do so at work), saying that life was short and that if she wanted to visit us in Cambridge she would be most welcome. Two weeks went by and I was on the verge of calling her when I got a postcard from her:

Jane

I honestly don’t think a visit is on right now. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future. If so I’ll be in touch.

All best,

Mother

PS Please don’t try to contact me to change my mind. I know what I can—and cannot—handle.

I took her at her word, and didn’t attempt to initiate any further suggestions of visiting in person, though I was still making a point of sending her new photographs of Emily every six months, with a little card tucked in between them, on which was scribbled something neutral like: “Thought you’d like to see how rapidly your granddaughter is growing up.” Mom always sent a brief postcard in reply, commenting on Emily’s poise, prettiness, etc. But she remained steadfast in her desire to have nothing to do with me . . . until the week before Christy showed up when, out of nowhere, she phoned.

“I’ll be brief,” she said, sounding all businesslike. “There’s a growth inside me that has gone funny and the doctor wants me to go into the big hospital in Stamford for a bunch of tests. I just thought you should know.”

“How serious did he say it was?” I asked.

“Now don’t you start sounding all concerned, Jane . . .”

“That’s not fair and you know it. I’ve always remained concerned. It’s you who’ve put up the brick wall between us.”

“That’s a matter of interpretation.”

“Well, can I come down and see you while the tests are happening?”

“I don’t see the point.”

“If you don’t see the point, then why tell me about all this?”

“Because I may be dying—and as my daughter you should know that.”

She hung up. I called her back an hour later—my rage and guilt in competition with each other. She didn’t answer the phone, so I left a message. Twenty-four hours went by. Still no word from her. I called her home again, left another message, and then phoned the library and talked to one of Mom’s colleagues. Mom had been checked into the Stamford Medical Center and her colleague hinted that things looked bad.

“How come we haven’t seen you around here for a while?” she asked me.

“Long story,” I said.

I immediately phoned the Stamford, Connecticut, Medical Center and asked to be put through to her room. Mom answered on the second ring.

“I figured I’d be hearing from you, what with all the messages you left me. Feeling bad about having abandoned me all these years?”

“How are you doing?” I finally asked.

“My oncologist, Dr. Younger, keeps running these damn tests. And they all end up telling him the same thing: The cancer is everywhere.”

“I’m coming down tomorrow.”

“Now why would you want to do that?”

“You’re my mom . . .”

“It’s so nice that you finally realize this fact after all these years.”

“That’s not fair and you know it.”

“What I know is this: I don’t really need your company right now, Jane.”

I toyed with the idea of dropping everything and rushing down to see her, but my class schedule—and being without nighttime child cover—mitigated against it. Then on the morning that Christy showed up I received a call at my office from a Dr. Sandy Younger.

“Your mother gave me this number,” he said, “when she started chemotherapy a few weeks ago. She told me to only call you if things were beginning to look ‘final.’ ”

That caught me short. Even though I knew—from what little information she had imparted—that she was terminal, hearing it directly from her doctor was like having a bony, cold hand placed on the back of my neck.

“How long does she have exactly?” I asked.

“Maybe a month, no more. I would think about getting down here as soon as possible. At this stage of the cancer the situation can deteriorate very quickly. And excuse my intrusiveness, but as I gather that you are somewhat estranged from your mother—”

“Her choice, not mine,” I heard myself saying.

“There are always two sides to these stories. My one piece of advice is this: make your peace with her now. You’ll find it far easier to cope later on if you’ve achieved some sort of . . .”

I knew which word was coming next: closure. A word which drove me apoplectic—because it posited the idea that you could actually get over certain things; that the sense of damage and hurt could suddenly be put on a shelf and filed away under: “Been there, done that.” Closure was for closets, not people.

“. . . closure before she passes on.”

“All right, I’ll get down there tomorrow,” I said.

When I related all this to Christy she immediately said: “Don’t worry about having someone covering for you at night. I’ll stay with Emily until you get back.”

“I was thinking Mom might like to finally meet her granddaughter.”

“When my dad was in the last throes of his cancer he was so out of it he hardly recognized me. Anyway, if your mom hasn’t shown the slightest interest in wanting a relationship with Emily before now, why drag a little girl into the horrors of a terminal ward? That’s an early childhood memory you can definitely spare her.”

I concurred with that, and set off the next day alone to Stamford. On the three-hour drive south I felt nothing but dread—not just at having to see my mother in the last stages of terminal cancer, but also at the immense waste of all our years on the same earth. We could never make each other happy, could never cross that threshold which separated disaffection from affection. It was always wrong between us. We both knew it—always knew it—and were never able to figure out a way of making it better.

And now . . .

Mom was in a three-bed room in the oncology wing. I kept my head down as I passed by her roommates, all of whom were swamped by wires and cables and tubes and electronic monitors and all the other paraphernalia of life support. Mom, on the other hand, was relatively free of such high technology—just two lines running into each arm and one monitor blip-blip-blipping the metronomic rhythm of her still-beating heart.

Her appearance stunned me. Though I was prepared to see her in death’s clutches, nothing really readied me for the appalling changes she had been put through. Not only had she lost all her hair but she had shrunken in size, her ashen skin drawn tight across her now-tiny skull. When she opened her mouth, I could see that only a handful of teeth remained within. The cancer had triumphed, denuding all her features. But when I sat down beside her and took her still-warm, emaciated hand, I was immediately informed that her vitriol toward me had not dimmed.

“So . . . you arrive for the final curtain,” she said.

“I arrived to see you, Mom.”

“And you didn’t bring your daughter with you. My one and only chance to see her, and you deny me this . . .”

Don’t get angry, don’t get angry . . .

“You’ve never been denied access to her,” I said quietly. “You’ve denied yourself access to her.”

She withdrew her hand from mine.

“That’s a matter of interpretation,” she said.

“I simply didn’t think this would be the right moment to bring Emily into—”

“Your father called me the other day,” she suddenly said.

“What?”

“You heard me. Your father called me. Told me that walking out on me was the worst decision he ever made in his life and that he was planning to come to Stamford in a couple of days and remarry me right here in this hospital.”

“I see,” I said, trying to sound neutral. “And where did Dad call you from?”

“Manhattan. You know he’s now the CEO of a very big metals company. All that bad stuff you revealed about him—well, it was all proven to be the lies I knew it to be. Not just lies, Jane—slander. But the truth will out and your father is now top dog again. He’ll be here tomorrow to retake his vows with me.”

“How wonderful,” I said.

“Yes, it is. The ceremony is scheduled for noon.”

“And he’s going to swear undying love to you?”

“Undying . . . because he now knows that leaving was the worst mistake he ever made. He told me that on the telephone, nearly breaking down, cursing himself for listening to you all those years ago and—”

That’s when I got up and charged out of the ward and into the nearest restroom, locking myself in a stall and fighting back the need to scream and shout and pound the walls and get that woman’s voice out of my head. But this desire was subsumed by the sobs that grabbed my throat and wouldn’t let it go. My mom is about to leave this life and all she can talk about is . . .

Before the sobs could escalate into something more primal and extreme, a certain corner of my brain (the part that always argued in favor of self-preservation) said: “Enough . . .” I let myself out of the stall and negotiated my way through the maze of corridors that was this wing of the hospital. Within five minutes I was back in my car and tearing north on Interstate 95, putting as much distance as I could between myself and Mom. I drove nonstop, arriving back in Cambridge just before midnight. Christy was awake, sitting in the living room with a glass of wine, but not surprised to see me.

“I’ve been trying to ring your cell phone for the past couple of hours. But I figured—”

“I had it turned off.”

“The hospital called.”

“Has she . . . ?” I asked.

“Around two hours ago. The doctors were wondering where you were.”

“I was . . . running away.”

Christy stood up and put her arms around me. But I didn’t break down or convulse with sorrow or shake my fist at the heavens and demand to know why my mother had been such a sad, angry woman who had to take it all out on the daughter, who simply craved her love. No, I didn’t have that purgatorial moment of grief that should accompany a parent’s death.

All I felt was . . . exhaustion.

“Go to bed,” Christy said, seeing just how wrecked I was. “Get nine, ten hours—and let me worry about bringing Emily to school tomorrow.”

“You’re too nice.”

“Shut up,” she said with a smile.

I did as ordered—and actually slept ten straight hours without interruption. When I woke, there was a note from Christy.

By the time you read this, Emily will be happily ensconced at her day-care center. I hope you are a little more rested—and as OK as you can be under the circumstances. And you might want to call your beloved Theo on his cell phone. He rang here while you were sleeping and wanted you to know that they have just done an American deal for the movie . . . for three million dollars.

Congrats, I guess. You’re rich.

FOURTEEN

THE NEWS OF Theo’s windfall was subsumed by a far more pressing concern: arranging my mother’s funeral.

Upon waking up and finding the note from Christy that Theo was in the money, I immediately phoned the hospital and began to make arrangements. Within an hour not only had I organized the collection of the body by a funeral home but I had also rung the local Episcopal priest in Old Greenwich and arranged the service in two days’ time. Then I called the library and informed her colleagues that she had died. I also asked one of them to contact any friends she might have in the community to pass on the news and tell them of the service Friday morning.

Once that was all completed, Christy was back in the apartment and making coffee. I accepted the mug that she placed in front of me, drew in a deep breath, and phoned Theo. He answered on the first ring—and immediately sounded like a man who had just broken the bank at Monte Carlo.

“Well, hello there,” he said, all expansive and friendly. “Listen, real sorry about your mom. That’s tough . . .”

“Might you like to explain to me where you’ve been for the past three weeks?”

“London, Paris, Hamburg, and Cannes—and do I have news for you . . .”

“Your news is less important to me than the fact that you have vanished from our lives for nearly a month.”

“I was off making us money. Big money. Like one million dollars to Fantastic Filmworks . . .”

“Congratulations, well done. The thing is, all that money is actually secondary to the fact that—”

“Secondary? You would think that. Because it’s so you, so Jane. Piss on my parade and tell me how little value I have in your life.”

“You dare say that after telling me, if you had to choose between me and that psychotic freak you adore, you’d choose the freak in a New York minute.”

“Well, she doesn’t belittle me.”

“I am not belittling you. I am angry—justifiably angry—because you abandoned us.”

“Jane, I’m sorry that your mother is dead, even though you understandably couldn’t stomach the bitch.”

“Thank you for that sensitive observation.”

“What do want from me? Lies?”

“You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?”

“Do you have proof of that? Documented proof?”

That’s when I threw the phone across the room.

There was a moment’s shocked silence, during which Emily looked up from her coloring book and said: “Mommy threw a phone.”

“Mommy probably had very good reason to throw the phone,” Christy commented.

“Mommy needs a drink,” I said.

But I didn’t take the vodka that Christy proffered because I had to drive all the way back south to Stamford. Christy called the head of her English Department at the University of Oregon and spun some story about a family emergency and said she wouldn’t be back for seventy-two hours.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said after she hung up the phone.

“Yes, I do. And please don’t tell me that you don’t want to put me to any trouble. You’ve got more than enough on your mind right now. And if you want a piece of cheap advice, here it is: get your money back from Theo now . . . and with interest. Once you’ve been refunded your investment, inform him that he no longer has a part to play in your lives. Not that he’ll want to be a participant in Emily’s upbringing. I hate to say it but the guy is a case of arrested development.”

“But you liked him when you first met him . . .”

“Sure I did. Because he’s eclectic and original. And yeah, I encouraged you to keep the kid . . . not because Theo was destined to be named Father of the Year, but because I knew you would never live with yourself if you had—”

I put my finger to my lips.

“Oh, please . . .” Christy said. “Anyway, look at Emily and tell me that my advice—which was simply a reflection of your own instincts—wasn’t the right call.”

“You knew what I wanted, I guess.”

“No—you knew what you wanted—and you got it. And she is magnificent. Even if I still can never see myself crossing that frontier, I have to admit that whenever I lay eyes on Emily, I am very envious.”

As if on cue, my daughter looked up from her coloring book and said: “Christy talks funny.”

A half hour later they saw me off. I hugged Emily after loading my bag—packed with a black suit—into the truck of the car.

“Why Mommy goes?” she asked.

It was the one moment I almost broke down. Emily saw this.

“You’re sad!” she said.

I shook my head and blinked back tears.

“Your mom is just very tired,” Christy said. “Tired of other people making her sad.”

“I don’t make Mommy sad,” Emily said.

Now I almost completely lost it. But I somehow managed to keep myself in check and held Emily close to me and whispered to her: “You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Then, with great reluctance, I handed her back to Christy.

“You sure you’ll be all right driving?” she asked.

“I’ll be just fine,” I lied and promised to call as soon as I reached Stamford.

As it turned out I got through the drive without the requisite moments of guilt-sodden grief. Perhaps I was just too numb. Or perhaps the one-two punch of Mom and Theo had rendered me strangely defiant—as I told myself that there was no way I’d allow myself to fall apart at their expense. And yet . . . at extreme moments like this one, the regret nonetheless manages to swamp everything. Especially if it is rooted in the very simple realization that it didn’t have to be this way. Even though you also know that when it’s wrong, it remains wrong—and no amount of dialogue will ever make it right.

When I reached the hospital I was directed to the morgue. I had told the funeral director that I would be arriving around three p.m.—and sure enough he was waiting for me in the lobby of the hospital mortuary. I had expected some Dickensian stick figure in a cutaway frock coat and tall hat. But having been recommended by the hospital the firm of Sabatini Brothers, I should have realized that the funeral director awaiting me would be an Italian-American.

As it turned out, Anthony Sabatini was a short, bulky man in his early forties and dressed in the requisite black suit. He was so solicitous and decent, without being in any way oleaginous, that I took to him immediately. I sensed that, courtesy of his chosen profession, he was something of an expert when it came to sizing people up in extreme circumstances. Though I said nothing to him, he grasped right away that I was on my own here with no one to support me through the next few days.

“You can see your mom now if you like,” he said after introducing himself and insisting that I drink a cup of mediocre hospital coffee with him. “But, to be honest, the last phase of cancer really robs the person of much of their original looks. It would be better if you let us do some restorative work first.”

“I saw her yesterday—I know how she was at the end. As it’s going to be a closed coffin followed by a cremation—”

“If that’s the way you want to go, Miss Howard, no problem. I’m not trying to shill for more business here. You tell me what you want, I’ll make sure you have it. And I’ll be here from now right until the end of the cremation to make certain that everything happens as smoothly as possible.”

Once we had agreed on some basic things he approached the woman at the mortuary reception desk and informed her that we were ready for the viewing. She dialed a number. After a few minutes, she received a call back and then said: “You can go in now.”

Anthony guided me through double doors, down a series of long, chilly corridors to a frosted-glass portal marked “Viewing Room.” As he knocked on this door, he put a steadying hand on my shoulder.

“You ready, Miss Howard?”

I nodded. An attendant opened the door—and we followed him inside.

I had been preparing for this moment all the way down from Cambridge. As I had mentioned to Anthony, having seen her in the last throes of the cancer had indeed prepared me for the ravages that she had suffered. But once I was brought inside this plain, unadorned room and looked down at the tiny, shrunken figure on the hospital gurney—a blue sheet brought right up to her chin, her features so emaciated, her lips half eaten away by the cancer, her eyes closed tight, never to open again—all I could think was: here is the woman who gave me life, who brought me up, who sacrificed so much for me . . . and who could never tell me that she actually loved me, if indeed she ever did. And I, in turn, could not tell her that I loved her . . . perhaps because . . .

Well . . . I always wanted her love. But when that love wasn’t reciprocated, when it became clear to me that she saw me as the agent of her unhappiness . . .

Anthony Sabatini saw me lower my head and stifle a sob. It was the only moment that I came close to crying during the next few days. I didn’t cry when, later that afternoon, I let myself into her house and sat on the narrow single bed in what had been my room and remembered how many times I had shut myself away here during my childhood and adolescence, thinking about a way to escape all this. I didn’t cry when I saw her local lawyer and was informed that Mom had remortgaged the house twice over during the past few years as her hours in the library had been severely cut back. With no savings to act as a safety net, she had to keep borrowing against home equity in order to simply survive.

“She knew I had money,” I felt like telling the lawyer. “And I had, against her will, helped her out in the past. Why couldn’t she have asked me . . . ?”

But I knew the answer to that question.

I could have cried when the Episcopal priest who conducted her sparsely attended funeral (were there really only twelve people who cared about her?) referred to me as “her much-loved daughter, Jane.” I could have cried when the tacky curtains opened in the tacky chapel of the crematorium and the coffin moved through ceremonial flames toward the furnace. I could have cried when a box was delivered the next day to her house and I drove out to Todd’s Point Beach and scattered her ashes onto the angry waters of the Atlantic. I could have cried when I packed up two boxes of personal memorabilia—what little jewelry she possessed, some family photos, some of her prized Mel Tormé albums (she always went on about his voice being akin to a “Velvet Fog”)—and informed the lawyer that he should hire someone to pack everything else up and give it all to charity, then put the place on the market. I could have cried when the lawyer told me he doubted the house sale would actually cover all the mortgages, let alone the $23,000 in legal fees he had let ride with her over the past few years. And I could have cried when—on the way back to Cambridge—a public radio station played Mel Tormé singing “What Is This Thing Called Love?” . . .

Yes, there were ample opportunities to break down during the four days I ended up spending in Old Greenwich (Christy insisting that she could hold the fort until late Sunday morning). Though I could feel immense sadness for that which had been absent from our relationship, I found it very difficult to cry for someone who held on to a self-deception so skewed and sad that it corrupted everything to do with her one and only child. But if life teaches you anything it’s this: you can never dispel another person’s illusions. No matter how much empirical proof you have to the contrary, they will hang on to their false beliefs with a vehemence that might baffle and infuriate you, but which (you realize much later on) is their only defense against a truth that would undermine everything they hold dear. Once they have embraced the lie, nothing you can say, do, or prove will shift them away from it. The lie becomes the truth—and it can never be challenged.

Halfway home on Interstate 95, my cell phone rang. It was a voice I didn’t want to hear. Adrienne.

“Hi, partner,” she said loudly over the speakerphone, pronouncing the last word with a faux-Texas twang, as if we were characters in a western.

“Hello, Adrienne,” I said, my tone suggesting the thinnest veneer of civility imaginable.

“Well, don’t you sound bummed!” she said, following this comment with another of her hyena laughs.

“Maybe Lover Boy failed to tell you, but my mother was cremated two days ago.”

“Oh, stupid, stupid me,” she said. “What a total goof I am. No wonder you hate me.”

“Is there any point to this call, Adrienne?”

“Look, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss, OK?”

“Which loss are you talking about? The loss of my mother or of the man with whom I allegedly live?”

“Theo hasn’t left you, has he?” she said, sounding all shocked.

“You know, Adrienne, I can take a modicum of hypocrisy, but not the sort of gold-plated bullshit you hand out.”

“Think what you like, Jane. But the point of this call is to reassure you that you will be receiving a transfer of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Fantastic Filmworks within the next four weeks.”

“Can I have that in writing, please?”

“You really don’t trust me, do you?”

“You’re sleeping with my guy . . . so, yeah, I really don’t trust you at all.”

“I just wanted to bring you this good news. I hope you’re pleased.”

“I will be pleased when I see the money—and I want an email from you confirming it will be paid within the month. As for Theo . . . I don’t really care if I do—or do not—see him again. And you can pass that comment on to him. As far as I’m concerned we’re through.”

“I don’t know why you’re blaming me exactly.”

“Because you’re a ridiculous person, that’s why.”

The line went dead. Our conversation was over.

I never did receive the email from Adrienne. For several weeks after this call, I didn’t hear from Theo either, though I did run into one of his colleagues from the Film Archive on Brattle Street one afternoon. He seemed nervous in my presence and haltingly confirmed (when I pressed him) that he had recently heard from Theo by email, and that he was “chilling out” for a couple of weeks on the Amalfi coast.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where exactly on the Amalfi coast—and what hotel he might be staying at?”

“Uh . . . he didn’t, like, share that with me.”

Liar. But I didn’t feel the guy merited my anger, so I simply said that it was nice to run into him and quickly said my goodbyes. As soon as I got home, I googled “Amalfi Coast Five Star Hotels,” figuring that Adrienne’s need for extravagance would mean they wouldn’t dream of staying anywhere but something palatial. There were nine such hotels in and around Amalfi. I hit pay dirt on the fourth call and was put straight through to “Signor Morgan’s suite.” And guess who answered . . .

“Buon giorno, buon giorno,” Adrienne said after picking up the phone, her voice at least three decibels too loud.

“The smoking gun,” I said in reply, my voice reasonably calm.

“Oh, hi there, Jane,” she said, trying to mask her surprise. “I was just stopping by Theo’s room to discuss some—”

“Sure you were. And it’s a suite, not a room.”

“And it’s all being charged back to the film.”

“Well, that’s reassuring. What isn’t reassuring—besides the fact that you are now evidently an item, and don’t you dare try to suggest otherwise—is that, three weeks after our last call, I still haven’t received the initial repayment of my fifty-thousand-dollar investment in your company.”

“You haven’t? But I arranged for the transfer of that amount over ten days ago.”

“Sure you did.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“Sure you are.”

“I’ll get on to my bank straightaway and make sure you have that fifty grand in your account by the end of the week.”

“Can I have that in writing?”

“Of course, of course. I’ll send you an email right away.”

“You promised me that email weeks ago.”

“Do you have any idea how busy we’ve been? I mean, the movie’s sales have gone through the roof. And as I made very clear to you last time we spoke, not only will you be getting back your initial investment, but I can safely predict that another hundred and fifty thousand will be en route to you before—”

“Before when? The Twelfth of Never?”

A silence—during which I could actually hear her fuming.

“If you read through the letter of agreement that you signed with us, we are not bound to pay you any profits for another nine months. The very fact that I am willing to forward you the initial fifty thousand right now—”

“Please don’t tell me how bighearted and charitable you are. If that money isn’t in my account this week, I’ll be taking legal action against you.”

“I’m supposed to be scared by that? Oh, please . . .”

She concluded this sentence with a cackle. Again I had the urge to throw the phone across the room.

“You don’t want legal trouble, Adrienne . . . especially if I decided to leak it all to the entertainment press. I’m sure all your investors wouldn’t want to read about—”

“This is the film business, hon. In the film business everyone plays fast and loose. And if you think a stuck-up third-tier academic cunt is going to get away with threatening me . . .”

That’s when I did throw the phone across the room. Again Emily’s face registered shock as the cordless receiver ricocheted off a wall.

“Mommy’s angry again,” she said.

I immediately had my arms around her, my fury quickly morphing into massive guilt.

“Not at you, my love,” I said. “Never at you.”

An hour later, an email did arrive in my in-box from Fantastic Filmworks. But it wasn’t the repayment guarantee that Adrienne had promised me. Rather it was a terse three lines from Theo.

Please pack up all my things at the apartment.

Tracey will come by tomorrow to collect everything.

I want nothing more to do with you.

It was unsigned.

I shot back the following reply:

And I want nothing more to do with you.

This too was sent unsigned.

I received this kiss-off on a Saturday morning. Had it come the day before I would have had to face my students and somehow maintain a veneer of stability at a moment when I felt that everything was coming apart. But instead of giving in to sorrow, I let my anger motor me through the next two hours, during which I raced around the house, dumping all of Theo’s clothes into assorted suitcases, emptying his bookshelves, his desk, his DVD collection, and packing up his computer.

Emily watched all this with concern.

“Is Daddy going away?”

“Yes, Daddy’s going away.”

“Forever?” she said, her face falling. Again I lifted her up in my arms.

Already my daughter was being damaged by her parents’ inability to put her interests above their own. Do we ever get anything right?

“It’s not your fault. It’s just that Daddy’s very busy right now and won’t be around much. But you will be seeing lots of him.”

“Promise?” she asked quietly, as if she could see right through my weak assurances.

“Yes, I promise. And I promise not to get upset again.”

In the weeks after Theo and I ended it I actually stopped feeling permanently upset. Perhaps all my rage had been vented before the final breakup. Perhaps I was so prepared for it to be over that, when the final kiss-off came, there was no sense of shock or distress; just a resigned acceptance of that which was bound to happen. I could no longer dodge the knowledge that this had all been one huge mistake from the outset.

But whenever I looked at my daughter I also knew that the “mistake” had given me the biggest gift imaginable. Perhaps the reason I could accept all the attendant merde in our so-called relationship was because Emily was so damn wonderful.

Weeks passed, then months. I didn’t hear a word out of him. Part of me was astounded at his callousness. Surely he’d want to maintain some ongoing contact with his daughter . . . even the occasional email just to see what was going on in her life. But another part of me was actually pleased that he had so cut us off, so gone into hiding. It made it all the easier to write him off.

I taught the summer term at New England State. Emily and I spent a week in a rented cottage on the shores of Lake Champlain. Though it took a little convincing I managed to coax my daughter into the water on a particularly warm day and helped her float on her back for the first time. She was understandably nervous at first. But I assured her I wouldn’t let her go under.

“You’ll keep me up?” she asked.

“I’ll always keep you up.”

Because, truth be told, you’ll always keep me up.

It was a very low-key, pleasant week—yet it was only a week, and I promised myself that, next year, I would take the full summer off and run away with my daughter to Paris for a couple of months . . . especially if I ever got the money back from Fantastic Filmworks.

Of course Adrienne’s promise of reimbursing me the money came to nothing. I sent her a few stern emails. No reply. So I paid a visit to Mr. Alkan at his one-room office down the street from me in Somerville. He listened to my story and looked over the letter of agreement I had signed with Fantastic Filmworks.

“I wish you’d brought this to me before you’d signed it,” he said.

“I wish I had too. Is there anything you can do to get them to honor the return on the investment they promised me?”

“I could send them a letter saying that—as their success in selling the film has been widely publicized in the entertainment press—they should now reimburse you. But contractually speaking they do have until December 1st to settle up. Still, if you’d like me to send them a wake-up call . . .”

“Yes, I’d like that very much.”

The letter that Mr. Alkan sent was stern and legalistic. Not only did he demand prompt payment—especially as “Ms. Clegg had verbally promised my client the full reimbursement of her investment over three months ago”—but he also stated that, as an officer of their company, I was entitled to see their books and to monitor their expenditure to date.

Adrienne’s reply was short and not very sweet.

Dear Mr. Alkan

I do not remember promising your client any reimbursement of her investment before December 1st of this year when it is legally due. On that day I will also supply her with full company accounts. Any further attempts to demand money from Fantastic Filmworks before then will be ignored as your client has no legal right to demand anything more from the Company until the first of December.

Alkan told me he could try to tie her up in assorted writs (“There’s always a way of putting the squeeze on people”), but asked whether I really wanted to run up thousands in legal fees when the prospect was that I still wouldn’t see any money until the contractual date.

“I sort of knew it would end up like this when I handed over the money,” I said.

“I guess it’s hard not to invest in your other half.”

“He was never my other half,” I said, the anger suddenly showing.

Alkan took this in.

“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “I won’t be charging you for all this. And I’d like to keep the pressure on them to get the money to you as soon as possible.”

“Be my guest . . . and thank you.”

Good God, a moral lawyer. I wasn’t prepared for such decency—any more than I held out any hope that Alkan could strong-arm the money out of Adrienne before its official due date.

But I decided to let him play the bad cop and hope that, just maybe, he’d surprise me with good news.

Two weeks later I received a call from him at my office. He had news . . . but it was anything but good.

“Fantastic Filmworks went bust three days ago,” he said.

FIFTEEN

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” I said.

This was an understatement. I was baffled.

“The company is broke, bankrupt, dead in the water.”

“But . . . how?”

“The way all companies or individuals go broke. They run up a mountain of debt which they cannot pay.”

“But the only way they run up all that debt is if they run out of funds.”

“That’s the way it happens—and that’s the way it has happened here. Since you’ve gotten me involved in this, I’ve been using a search engine to keep an eye on Fantastic Filmworks . . . and, you know, only a couple of years ago I’d never heard of a search engine. But I digress. According to a story in Daily Variety yesterday, Fantastic Filmworks have run out of money and are now facing debts of over half a million dollars.”

“Hang on . . . Theo told me they had signed contracts for more than a million dollars in film sales.”

“The Daily Variety story said the figure was closer to a million and a half. The problem was, the film they had . . . what was it called?”

“Delta Kappa Gangster.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Not sure how I could forget a name like that. As it turns out, Fantastic Filmworks didn’t have the rights to sell the film.”

“That’s crazy.”

“It’s the truth. They had letters of agreement from the director and his producer. But a letter of agreement is just that. An agreement, not a binding contract. The director and producer got approached by a big-deal French distribution company, Continental Divide, who told them they could take over the entire film-sales end. Plus they could give them, up front, three-quarters of a million dollars in cash. The director . . . what was his name again?”

“Stuart Tompkins.”

“That’s it. Well, Tompkins was quoted in the article as saying that, given all the buzz surrounding the film a few months ago in Cannes, he and his producer were rather disappointed by the level of sales figures generated by Fantastic Filmworks and felt that Continental Divide could simply do better. Then there was the matter of Fantastic Filmwork’s expenditures . . .”

While Alkan was talking I’d managed to go online and Google the article in Daily Variety.

It was all there—exactly as he’d described it, with the additional following statement from Stuart Tompkins:

I was genuinely troubled not just by Fantastic Filmwork’s lack of transparency when it came to giving us a full financial accounting of all the sales to date, but also their refusal to disclose expenditure. It was apparent to me that Fantastic Filmworks had been spending an exorbitant amount of money selling the film—to the point where my advisers and I felt they could be accused of profligacy.

The journalist then cited several examples of Theo and Adrienne’s extravagance—throwing a party for three hundred people at Cannes, at a cost of over $100,000; renting a suite at the Petit Majestic Hotel during the festival at a cost of $27,000; Adrienne having her very own car and driver during Cannes at an estimated cost of $5,000 . . .

The Daily Variety guy had done his homework. There were at least six other examples of Fantastic Filmworks’s excessive expenditure, from “chartering a helicopter to bring a dozen prospective buyers to lunch at the Colombe D’Or in St. Paul de Vence,” to “comanaging director Adrienne Clegg ordering $800 of fresh flowers every day for their sales suite in Cannes.”

The journalist also managed to interview Clegg—and she was deeply unrepentant.

I find it unbelievable that Stuart Tompkins accuses Fantastic Filmworks of profligacy when it is thanks to our phenomenal salesmanship that his little splatter movie stands to become an international sensation.

Why does he have these people fighting over him? Because Fantastic Filmworks took this little nothing and turned him into the directorial hot property that he is now. How does he repay our hard work on his behalf? He now tries to renege on a binding Letter of Agreement that clearly states that Fantastic Filmworks holds exclusive sales rights to his film.

But Tompkins’s lawyer, a certain Bob Block of the Hollywood law firm of Block, Bascombe and Abeloff, begged to differ.

A Letter of Agreement is not a binding contract and an allegedly experienced film-sales agent like Adrienne Clegg should know this. But she evidently does not—which is not at all surprising, considering how she has treated the film sales of Delta Kappa Gangster as her own personal expense account, allowing her to live the high life and indulge in overpriced whims.

There were several more paragraphs about how Continental Divide was one of France’s best-known international film-production houses—and how the $750,000 advance to Stuart Tompkins was also being matched by an additional $150,000 for first option on his soon-to-be-completed new screenplay—which, though initially contracted by Fantastic Filmworks, had now been taken over by the French. There was another angry quote from Adrienne saying how her company had a signed agreement with Stuart for first refusal on the screenplay—and that she was planning to tie the entire film up in “the biggest damn lawsuit Stuart Tompkins has ever seen.” The Daily Variety reporter seemed to see right through such bluff, stating that he couldn’t imagine a small-beer operation like Fantastic Filmworks taking on “a major European player” like Continental Divide, “because their pockets simply aren’t deep enough . . . and they are now very empty after having their one and only ‘banker’ taken away from them.”

“Good God,” I said after quickly scanning the piece. Alkan was still on the other end of the phone.

“It is something of a mess,” he said. “And I took the liberty of calling Bob Block and explaining that I was representing you as a duped investor in Fantastic Filmworks. He told me that Fantastic Filmworks were under siege on all fronts, as all that profligacy has resulted in such substantial debts. That’s what’s worrying me here, vis-à-vis you. The company was never incorporated or made limited liability. You are an officer of a partnership. From what I can gather, you are also the only member of said partnership who has anything in the way of assets or equity . . . unless I’m mistaken . . .”

“Theo’s only asset is a vast collection of DVDs.”

“Are there any valuable collectors’ items among them?”

“I doubt they’re worth half a million.”

“And Ms. Clegg . . . ?”

“Maybe she has Cayman Islands accounts . . . but I tend to doubt it.” I could have added that the woman always struck me as something of a vagabond, always fleeing the last place in which she screwed up and setting up shop in the next city that would be taken in by her lies . . . for a while.

“I did check into Ms. Clegg’s background . . . and the reason why, perhaps, she was so reluctant to incorporate the company was because she already has three previous bankruptcies behind her. Had she asked for incorporation, checks would have been made—”

“And I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in right now.”

“It’s sometimes very difficult,” he said quietly, “to think in a cold, pragmatic way about an investment when you are also investing in the person with whom you are sharing your life.”

“You don’t need to make excuses for me. I knew what I was doing and I let neediness get in the way of clear thinking. The thing now, Mr. Alkan, is to limit my liability as much as possible. So tell me this—what’s the worst-case scenario?”

“The absolutely worst case?”

“That’s what I said.”

“The creditors of Fantastic Filmworks commence legal proceedings to seize all your assets up to the amount of debt owing.”

“Jesus,” I said—even though I’d known this was coming.

“Now let me reassure you—that is absolutely the worst-case scenario and one that I will fight like hell to avoid . . . if, that is, you want to engage me to fight this.”

“Oh, you’ve got the job, Mr. Alkan.”

“You don’t have to decide this today, Ms. Howard.”

“Yes, I do. We need to fight this immediately.”

“That’s fine by me. And I do understand you are a college professor without bottomless pockets . . .”

“How much do you think this could cost?”

“At this point, without really knowing the extent to which the creditors might be pursuing you, that’s difficult to say. I would probably need a retainer of, say, five thousand dollars.”

“Jesus,” I heard myself say again.

“Might that prove difficult for you to raise?” he asked.

“No, I have it,” I said. That was a half truth. I had $9,352 (I dug the statement out of my desk as I was talking to Alkan) in a money market account at Fleet Bank, the result of saving a steady $300 a month for the past . . . well, I wasn’t going to do the math right now, though I did know that this account was the start of a college savings fund for Emily—and that what little money I had left over from the Freedom Mutual days (around $16,000) was my emergency stash, to be touched only if I was absolutely destitute.

“I’ll send you a check tomorrow,” I said. “But if the legal costs run higher . . .”

“Let’s not worry about that for the moment,” he said, the translation of which could be: actually the fees could run to five times that amount because, contractually speaking, you could lose everything you own.

“My one and only major asset in the world is my apartment in Somerville. Were I to lose all that . . .”

“I’m going to make certain you don’t.”

Even though it may cost me $50,000 to hold on to it.

“There are many loopholes we can use, like the fact that Clegg refused to provide you with up-to-date accounts as a way of shielding you.”

“But the worst-case scenario still is . . .”

“I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t say that, yes, there are great concerns here. And I’m not trying to slap you on the wrist, but you should never sign a business agreement without having a lawyer read through it first.”

“I was dumb.”

“No—your intentions were good ones . . .”

“But naive. And now I’m going to be asset-stripped for my naïveté.”

“I believe I can save you from that.”

“But you can’t be definitive about that.”

“Ms. Howard, my position here is akin to that of an oncologist. If an oncologist feels the situation is hopeless, then it is truly hopeless. If a lawyer believes the case is discouraging he also says so. I’m not saying that here. But like any cancer specialist I cannot give you a definitive answer to the question anyone in your situation wants to know: Will I unequivocally defeat the bastards? More than likely, yes . . . but I can’t say more than that. Because life is never definitive, is it?”

After I concluded this call I sat in my office very quietly for around twenty minutes, trying to absorb all that I had just heard. Part of me was furious with myself for not having taken the necessary protective steps in the first place. Part of me simultaneously wondered whether I had subconsciously set myself up—as we all do so often despite our protests to the contrary. After all, I hated Adrienne Clegg on sight. And yet, I still—still!—signed over all that money and also allowed myself to be named an officer of the company. What was I thinking?

I was thinking: I deserve all the bad stuff that is going to come down from this. Because . . .

Because there is a part of me that always believes I deserve disaster.

And if the next few weeks proved anything it was the discovery that, when people want to get even, they always get vindictive.

I was in daily contact with Mr. Alkan—as he was almost in daily contact with the long list of people and companies to whom Fantastic Filmworks owed money. Their landlord in Cambridge was still chasing for his $19,000 in back rent. The helicopter charter people in Nice were not responding well to two unpaid bills for over $17,000. A caterer in LA was still trying to chase them down for $9,400 that they dropped on a big bash when they were swanning around the American Film Market. And then there was—

No, you don’t need to hear every last extravagance and frill and ridiculously irresponsible outlay Adrienne and Theo made in pursuit of . . .

That was a point which often vexed me—her need to spend in such a lavish and excessive way and Theo’s ready compliance when it came to buying into her profligacy. What compulsive need was she fulfilling? What terrible damage was she trying to set right? Or was she simply one of those malignant people who couldn’t help but wreak havoc wherever she landed? I had my theories (and like all such speculations they changed hourly) but what I did understand now was that—whether it was intentional or not—there was some trigger in the woman that made her want to fail. How else could you explain turning a $1.5 million windfall into financial catastrophe? And with Theo—my Theo—she found a willing accomplice.

For the biggest betrayal here was the one that Theo perpetrated on himself. By allying himself with such a psychotic loser he made me realize: he wants the failure too. It was something akin to an amateur poker player who—with beginner’s luck—wins a vast pot. Then, terrified of this financial godsend, let alone the success, he doesn’t bank a large portion of his money. Instead he decides to remain at the table and gamble recklessly with his good fortune until, of course, it’s all been blown. He finds himself not only broke but in serious debt to boot.

And then, like my father, he had to vanish into that geographic place called nowhere, leaving others to deal with the mess he’d left behind.

“Vanished” was the operative word here. A few days after I read that Variety story online and sent a flurry of emails to Theo and Adrienne, demanding they speak to me (there was, of course, no response—nor any to the dozen messages I left on their respective cell phones) there was a new article in Daily Variety.

Mr. Alkan saw it before me and phoned me at the university to tell me its content.

“According to the journalist who’s been investigating all this, Ms. Clegg and Mr. Morgan have gone to ground. As in disappeared without a trace.”

I was online and on to the Daily Variety website within moments. There it was—replete with the headline:

Fantastic Filmworks Duo Disappear Owing Half a Million

The story went on to explain that only days after threatening lawsuits against their defecting star director, Stuart Tompkins, “Fantastic Filmworks duo, Adrienne Clegg and Theo Morgan, have literally gone AWOL, with a bevy of creditors and lawyers trying to trace their whereabouts.”

The journalist stated that the “duo”—last seen in London, staying at the “minimalist chic Metropolitan Hotel”—were due to board a flight from London Heathrow to Los Angeles, where they were planning to meet their own legal team—as well as have a thrash-out session with Stuart Tompkins’s lawyers. But at the very last minute, they no-showed the flight.

Evidently smelling a great story, the journalist also explained how he spoke to the concierge of the Metropolitan in London, who confirmed that the couple did leave on the day in question and asked him to make reservations for them on a mid-morning Eurostar train to Paris. The couple spent one night in a Paris hotel—the George V (and he pointed out the $780 price tag they paid)—but then checked out with no forwarding address. They hadn’t been heard of since.

“As you can imagine,” Mr. Alkan told me in the first of many phone calls that day, “all the creditors are swarming around us as you are the only accessible ‘partner’ in the company. Now—a couple of ground rules here. I note that you don’t have an unlisted phone number. What I want you to do is not answer your landline—or, at least, buy one of those old-fashioned answering machines where you can hear the message being left for you, so you can screen all calls. And if an unknown number pops up on your cell phone, don’t answer it.”

“What happens if people start calling me at the university?”

“Again, I’d get one of those answering machines.”

“Everything comes through a central switchboard.”

“Then tell anyone who needs to contact you to use your cell—and simply don’t pick up the phone. Sorry to sound dramatic but there are a lot of angry creditors desperate to find someone to cover the money they’re owed. Never underestimate the awfulness of people when money is involved and the individuals in question take offense at being cheated. The fact that you are the innocent party here is, I’m afraid, secondary to it all. You are the only alleged representative of the company so you will be the focus of their anger. But it will pass—especially as I plan to contact every creditor and inform them that my client was simply an investor in the company and cannot be held legally responsible for their debts.”

I started calculating just how much this exercise would cost me. There were over thirty creditors. Say Mr. Alkan spent ten minutes emailing and/or phoning each of them. That would be three hundred minutes. Or five hours . . . at two hundred dollars per hour. And then there were all the phone calls with me, and all the discussions with Bob Block at Block, Bascombe and Abeloff, and all the other attendant business to do with keeping me from being swamped by this mess.

“How much have you billed me for to date?” I asked.

“Let’s worry about that later.”

“I need to know.”

“Around four thousand dollars. But look—all going well, this round of emails and phone calls to all the creditors will hopefully get them off your back and then we can get a court judgment stating that you are not responsible for Fantastic Filmworks’s accrued debts, and that will be the end of it.”

“In other words, around another five thousand dollars on top of the five I’ve already paid over.”

A pause.

“I wish this could be cheaper for you,” he finally said. “But all I can promise you is that I will try to end this all as quickly as possible. I’m very conscious of the fact that your resources are limited.”

“Is there any sign of the two outlaws?”

“None at all. Interpol are now involved, given that there are now allegations of fraud. I could, of course, engage a private investigator on our behalf, but the cost would be—”

“Forget it. Just keep the vultures away from me and I’ll tough things out until everything dies down.”

“Toughing things out” turned out to be exactly right. For the next two weeks I was the subject of a frequently intense and vituperative campaign of intimidation by several of Fantastic Filmworks’s creditors. According to Alkan, 75 percent of the creditors accepted his explanation that, as the sole investor in the company, I couldn’t be held responsible for their financial mismanagement—but these were the big organizations (the hotels, car and helicopter rental companies, and financial services groups) who could absorb a bad debt, and probably decided that it wasn’t worth harassing a low-paid academic who was stupid enough to invest in a splatter movie. But then there were a handful of creditors who wouldn’t buy this explanation—and made it their business to frighten me into settling up with them.

The caterer in California—Vicky Smatherson—was one of the more aggressive ones. From the sound of her voice she was in her early forties—and she was very “take no shit” in her tone. I was at home, playing on the floor with Emily, when she first rang. As soon as I heard the phone begin to chime I stiffened. As it continued to ring, Emily asked me: “Why you don’t answer the phone, Mommy?”

“Because I’m playing with you,” I said with a tight smile. Then the message kicked in, followed by: “This is Vicky Smatherson—and your associates owe me over ninety-four hundred dollars for a big party they threw out here. Now maybe ninety-four hundred dollars isn’t much to a bunch of big shots like you, but it’s a goddamn fortune to me and I’m damned if I am going to let you get away with not paying me. If you think I’m being a little extreme here, tough shit. You will find out just how fucking difficult and relentless I can be if—”

I made a dive for the answering machine and turned the volume way down. Emily looked both bemused and unnerved by the call.

“That woman is angry at you,” she said.

“She’s just upset.”

Then the cell phone sounded. I checked the screen. I didn’t answer it. A moment later, the landline blared back into life. I double-checked that the answering machine volume was well and truly off. As it rang and rang, the cell also rang and rang. Emily smiled in the midst of all this cacophony and said: “Lots of people want Mommy.”

I was so popular that the two phones kept ringing off and on for the next ten minutes until I had the good sense to unplug the landline and turn off the cell. After that I got Emily to bed, poured myself a double vodka, and phoned Christy in Oregon—where I managed to catch her in her office.

“As always,” I said, “I have something of a story to tell you.”

As always, the story came rushing out in one long rant.

“Jesus Christ,” she said when I reached the part about Theo and Adrienne vanishing to the ends of the earth or wherever the hell they were right now.

“My guess would be Morocco,” Christy said. “A good place to go to ground—and handy for the south of France, should they want to sneak back across the Mediterranean for a decent meal.”

“I think you can eat pretty well in Morocco,” I said. “Especially with other people’s money.”

“You mean, especially with your money.”

“I’m absolutely certain that the funds are well and truly spent. Now their creditors are going to take my apartment away from me.”

“No, they won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I won’t let them. Anyway, I’m certain you’ll get the favorable court judgment that your lawyer is promising you, and then everyone will be off your back.”

“And if that doesn’t happen? If it goes the other way . . . ?”

“Then you’ll survive somehow—which is what we all do. If you lose the apartment you’ll get another apartment. If you have to declare bankruptcy to meet all the debts, then you’ll eventually recover from that. It’s all very unfair, I know. But life is so often like that. Unfair, unjust, and more than a little cruel.”

Cruelty was something of a specialty of one Morton Bubriski. He was Fantastic Filmworks’s landlord in Cambridge and he was very determined to collect the $19,000 in back rent that they owed him. Having found my phone number in the local directory he began a campaign of harassment that made Vicky Smatherson’s angry phone calls seem like the height of politesse. He first phoned me around eleven one night at home—and thinking that Christy was about to ring me back (I’d left a message at her home earlier that evening), I grabbed the phone without thinking.

“This is Morton Bubriski and you owe me nineteen thousand, seven hundred and fifty-six dollars. I know you’ve got it because I know you’re a professor at New England State. Just as I know where you live in Somerville and the fact that you own your apartment. I even know what day care you drop your daughter into every morning—”

That’s when I hung up. Thirty seconds later the phone rang again. When the answering machine kicked in he went vicious.

“Now you listen to me, you little bitch, you hang up on me again and I will not only fuck with your career but I’ll also destroy the rest of your life. Your associates completely screwed me around. And now I’m going to collect. And if you don’t pay me—”

I grabbed the phone and shouted: “Threaten me like that again and you’ll have the police on the doorstep.”

Then I slammed down the receiver and pulled the cord from the wall.

“More yelling!” Emily said.

“That’s the last of it.”

I kept both phones off for the rest of the night—but I couldn’t sleep. My exhausted yet hyperactive brain began to picture all the legal proceedings I would be facing, and the very public disgrace of being evicted from my home and having it sold from under me. No doubt the university would soon learn about my financial disgrace and that, in turn, would be another black mark against me, further proof (as if that was needed) that I was trouble.

As it turned out I didn’t have to wait that long for the university to discover that I was the target of a very angry group of creditors—the charming Morton Bubriski phoned the English Department the next morning and spent ten minutes haranguing Professor Sanders’s secretary. He got so vehement and scatological that she too put down the phone—but only after having taped the entire conversation. (“It’s a new university regulation,” she explained later. “If someone starts going postal I hit the record button and we have his nastiness on tape.”)

In turn, the record of Morton Bubriski’s nastiness was played for everyone from the chairman of my department to the dean of the faculty to the university president himself. When the dean of the faculty demanded that I present myself in his office at three o’clock that afternoon I made an emergency call to Mr. Alkan and begged him to drop whatever he was doing and accompany me to the dean’s office. To his credit he said immediately: “No problem,” and was there just before three p.m.

The dean was disconcerted when I walked into his office accompanied by “my lawyer.”

“This is not a trial, Professor,” he said.

“I just thought it best to have counsel present,” I said.

“And it was me who insisted that she have counsel present,” Alkan lied, “because she is a completely innocent party here.”

The dean played us the call from Morton Bubriski. It wasn’t pleasant listening—and when I was about to say something in my defense, Alkan put two restraining fingers on my arm right before I was able to open my mouth. (Did they teach him that move in law school?) Once the tape was finished Alkan informed the dean that he was planning to have a restraining order issued against Bubriski by the close of business today—and “the man will find himself in jail if he contacts you or my client in the future.”

Before the dean could get another word out, Alkan kicked in with a detailed explanation about why I was being chased by assorted creditors, how I wasn’t responsible for these bad debts, and how the two principal officers of the company had “gone to ground.”

“Isn’t Mr. Morgan the father of your child?” the dean asked me.

“I’m afraid so.”

“The problem for us—and I have actually spoken to the university president himself about this—is the perception that Professor Howard may have engaged in some sort of bad financial speculation. Were this to be made public—to end up in the press, for example—and were someone to start digging around in her background, they’d discover that her father also went on the run after being exposed for financial chicanery . . .”

“I’m not going on the run,” I said, sounding angry. “And I resent the sins of the father being visited upon—”

Again Alkan put two restraining fingers on my arm.

“There will be no publicity surrounding this case,” Alkan said, “because there is no case for Professor Howard to answer. As to your assertion that she is in any way following in the footsteps of her father when it comes to financial dishonesty—”

“If you both would allow me to complete the sentence I was attempting to finish . . . of course we knew when we hired Professor Howard that her father was a fugitive from justice. Of course we accept your assurances that she is not to blame for her partner’s bad business management. And yes, as long as we do not have further threatening phone calls or any publicity about the case we foresee no problems . . .”

I asked: “But if something is made public—or some angry lunatic phones you here . . . ?”

“Then we will have to reassess our position.”

“No, you won’t,” Alkan said. “Because I know all about the statutory clause in every university contract. Maybe you remember the Gibson versus Boston College case last year . . .”

I could see the dean turn a little pale. Gibson versus Boston College involved a professor who had written a rather scandalous book about her extracurricular sex life. Even though she published the book under a pseudonym (but was outed by that right-wing blogger Matt Drudge) the university tried to fire her on the grounds that her account of having had over four hundred lovers in the past three decades (not to mention picking up a recently ordained Jesuit outside the men’s room at Boston’s South Station) brought the university into disrepute. Not only did Boston College end up having to reinstate her and issue her with an apology, they were also forced to pay all her legal fees and offer her a year’s paid sabbatical to make up for the unfair dismissal.

“Now, we’re hardly dealing with a case like that here,” the dean said.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” replied Alkan. “Because if you do try to dismiss my completely innocent client over bringing New England State into disrepute—”

“I can assure you we won’t be taking such action.”

“Excellent,” Alkan said. “Then I think we’re done here.”

Outside the dean’s office I said: “You were brilliant.”

Alkan just shrugged.

“Well, that’s the university dealt with—for the moment anyway. And don’t worry about Bubriski. I’ll have him muzzled by nightfall.”

Even though Alkan later emailed me, enclosing the details of the restraining order that had been placed on Bubriski, the man filed a countersuit against me the next morning, demanding the $19,000 in back rent plus another $20,000 in assorted nonsensical damages, “psychological stress” and the like.

“It’s easily defendable,” Alkan said. “Don’t sweat it.”

But I did sweat it—and suffered another sleepless night.

Two days later Vicky Smatherson also filed a similar suit against me—as did six other Fantastic Filmworks creditors.

“The good news,” Alkan said, “is that the sum total of all the demands is just under eighty thousand dollars, which means, at the very worst, that’s all you’ll be liable for. But that’s the absolutely worst-case scenario. The truth is, once we go into court next week it will all be cleared up.”

“Until then . . .”

“I will send the requisite letters keeping all the vultures at bay. And I’m sorry to say this, but I will need another five thousand from you as a further retainer. All going well this will be the last payment.”

“And if things don’t go well?”

“Try not to think that.”

But I did think that.

Again I didn’t sleep that night—my third in a row. The next day I found myself increasingly unable to concentrate, to focus, to make it through a lecture without having a “dead zone” moment when, out of nowhere, I would zonk out for a few seconds—much to the amusement of my students, one of whom trenchantly noted out loud: “I think the professor was wasted last night.”

When I snapped back into consciousness and scanned the classroom to see who out of the fifty students had made that comment, everything in front of me was a blur.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I haven’t been sleeping . . .”

This comment got back to Professor Sanders who made a point of stopping by my office and catching me with the door open and in the midst of a doze at my desk.

“I hope I’m not interrupting you?” he asked, stepping inside.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just—”

“You haven’t been sleeping. And you fell asleep in your class this morning.”

“I am just coping with a great deal right now.”

“Of course you are,” he said, all coolness. “I really do advise you to get some sleep, Professor. The university might not be able to take action against you because of your association with deadbeats. But dereliction of duty while on the job, hinting at a larger psychological instability . . . that’s another matter entirely.”

That evening—when I changed at Park Street for the Red Line train back to Somerville, I felt myself getting so shaky that I actually had to grip the platform bench when the train rattled into the station. Did I feel like throwing myself under the Red Line? I couldn’t make sense of anything right now.

But I did manage to negotiate myself onto the train. I got off at Davis Square and went into a local pharmacy where I bought some over-the-counter sleeping aid that the druggist assured me would send me out for eight hours that night.

Emily was always able to read my moods—and when I came home that night she turned to her nanny and said: “My mommy needs to go to bed!”

“How right you are,” I said, picking her up. But she stiffened as I held her.

“You’re upset with me,” she said.

“No, I’m not.”

“You are.” Then to Julia: “Mommy’s cranky.”

“I’ve just got some stuff I’ve been dealing with.”

“Mommy’s getting angry calls from people . . .”

“Emily, that is enough.”

My tone was far too sharp, far too “end of my rope.” My daughter’s face fell, she burst into tears, and she ran off into her room. I turned to Julia and said: “Sorry . . . there’s a lot going on right now.”

“It’s no worry, it’s no worry. I go to Emily . . .”

“No, no, you go home. I’ll calm her down.”

“You OK, Mrs. Howard?”

“I just need one night’s sleep.”

When I went into Emily’s room I found my daughter curled up on the top of her bunk bed, her thumb in her mouth. As soon as I came in, she pulled her thumb out and guiltily shoved her hand under her pillow (I’d started trying to break her of the thumb-sucking habit). I sat down next to her and stroked her hair and said: “I am so sorry for getting angry at you.”

“What did I do?”

“Nothing. I just overreacted.”

“What’s that?”

“Getting angry unnecessarily.”

“Why are you angry?”

“Because I’m overtired. I haven’t been sleeping.”

“Because Daddy isn’t here?”

“That’s part of it.”

“You won’t run away too?”

“And leave you? Never. Never in a million years.”

“You promise?”

“Of course I do. And I promise not to get angry again.”

“That’s a big promise,” she said with a small laugh. At that moment I couldn’t help but think: This daughter of mine gets it all so damn fast.

I took two sleeping pills that night, chased with a mug of chamomile tea. They knocked me out for around two hours, but then I was up again, staring at the ceiling, feeling as if my brain had been cleaved. I swallowed another two pills. I got up. I read through some papers. I waited for the pills to kick in. Nothing happened. I looked at the clock. It was now just one-thirty in the morning. I picked up the phone and called Christy. She too was up late, grading papers.

“You have me worried,” she said.

“I have me worried too.”

“It’s not just insomnia you’re suffering, it’s depression.”

“I’m functioning just fine. A good night’s sleep—”

“Bullshit. You’re in a dark wood. My advice to you is to get to a doctor tomorrow and get some help. Otherwise . . .”

“OK, OK.”

“Stop dodging the obvious. Depression is a serious business. If you don’t deal with it now—”

“I’ll deal with it, OK?”

But the next morning I dropped Emily at nursery school and dozed off on the T. Later I caught sight of myself in the mirror in my office and saw just how strained and netherworldly I looked. I drank three large mugs of coffee and got through my lectures, constantly sensing that I was a bad actor inhabiting the body of this alleged professor of English, trying to sound erudite and engaged with her subject matter while simultaneously knowing that I was nothing less than a sham . . . and that life as I knew it was nothing but a series of misadventures and setbacks, in which people disappointed you hugely and—worst of all—you kept disappointing yourself. And had it not been for Emily I might just now—

No, no, don’t go there. But do go to a doctor. Now.

However, another voice in my head—the voice that didn’t want to begin to face up to what I needed to accept, that, yes, I was in something akin to free fall—told me: “You’ll sleep tonight and all will seem better tomorrow. Why add another goddamn wrinkle to your life by deciding you’re depressed? Get home, go to bed. Show the bastards this won’t bring you down.”

So even though the faculty doctor was on duty that afternoon and I could easily have seen him and begged for some pharmaceutical way out of this sleepless hell, something in me forced me back across Boston on the T, and to Cambridge to pick up Emily. (Julia herself had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon.)

“Mommy, Mommy!” Emily said as she saw me in the doorway of the nursery. “Can we go get a treat?”

“No problem, my love.”

“You tired, Mommy?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

And I helped her on with her coat and led her by the hand out the door.

“I think there’s a coffee shop near here that does great sundaes,” I said. “But first you’ll have to eat something nutritious . . . like a hamburger.”

“Are hamburgers good for you?”

“They’re better than ice-cream sundaes.”

Suddenly, in front of us, there was a commotion. An elderly woman had been walking her terrier. The lead had broken and the terrier was running free, heading toward us. The woman was yelling its name. Emily, all wide-eyed, broke free of my grip and chased right after it. I lunged for my daughter, screaming at her to stop. But she was already off the curb . . .

And at that precise moment, out of nowhere, a taxi came barreling around the corner.

Again I screamed my daughter’s name. Again I lunged for her.

But I was too late.

PART Four

SIXTEEN

THEY FOUND ME in a snowdrift. It was around two in the morning—so they told me later. Had they arrived an hour later I would have been dead.

But that was the idea of driving into that snowdrift—and turning the engine off and taking the two dozen Zopiclones that I had in my pocket, and waiting for the moment when I could finally summon up the necessary . . .

Courage? No, that wasn’t the right word, because there was nothing courageous about what I was going to do. Rather, the actual word here was “finality.” After all those weeks of an agony that was so unendurable, I was finally going to yield to the only bearable solution. And so, when I turned the corner of that backwoods road and saw the snow banked up on the edge of a dark wood, I suddenly braked. Digging the pills out of my pocket and flipping open the top of the bottle, I emptied all the Zopiclones into my mouth. I nearly choked as I chased them with water, the clustered tablets scraping my esophagus as they went down. Then I turned off the car’s heater, unbuckled my seat belt, disengaged the airbag, and hit the accelerator.

All this was accomplished in under thirty seconds. It was a fast, instinctual decision, done without pause for thought. Maybe that’s how many suicides work. Weeks, months, years of consideration and hesitation. Then, one morning, you’re on a subway platform, you hear the approach of an express train rattling through the station, and . . .

Heater off. Seat belt off. Twenty-four heavy-duty sleeping tablets still burning my throat. Without further thought I slammed my foot down on the accelerator. The car shot forward, plunging deep into the snow before crashing into something solid. I was thrown forward. The world went dark. And . . .

That should have been it. The end—with either the crash, the pills, the cold (or a combination of all three) killing me.

But that wasn’t the end. Because . . .

I woke up. And found myself on a narrow gurneylike bed. As the room came into focus I could see that the walls were painted some institutional color and the ceiling tiles were chipped and crusted with mold. I tried to raise my arms but couldn’t. They were being held in place by straps. I blinked and realized that one eye was covered by a bandage. I touched my lips with my tongue. A mistake. There was a railroad track of stitches on both lips. My mouth was parched. When I squinted to my left I could see tubes attached to my immobile arms and assorted monitoring devices next to the gurney. I could also feel something sharp and unpleasant coming out of me. Even in this fogged-in, back-from-the-dead state I knew immediately that a catheter has been inserted into my bladder.

Oh God, I’m alive.

“Well, hello there. You’re back.”

The voice was flat. Prairie flat. Plain, unadorned, dry. I tried to sit up. I failed. I blinked with my one good eye—and could make out the outline of a woman standing in front of me. Another blink and she came into better focus. She was rail thin with a lined face and sharply delineated features. But it was her eyes that unnerved me. They were eyes that tolerated no artifice, no self-pity. They were eyes that looked out on the world with a ruthless clarity. They were eyes that—even in my semiconscious state—told me immediately: She knows everything.

“Guess you weren’t expecting this, now were you?”

“Where am I?” I asked.

“Mountain Falls Regional Hospital.”

“Mountain Falls?”

“That’s right. Mountain Falls, Montana. You had your ‘accident’ just outside Mountain Falls, on Route 202, around two days ago. Do you remember that?”

“Uh . . . sort of. I lost control . . .”

I let the sentence die.

“You lost control of your car after ingesting a near-fatal amount of sleeping pills and driving right into a snowbank without a seat belt. And I suppose the fact that the airbag was disengaged and you didn’t have any heat on in the car was also an ‘accident,’ even though it was minus five the other night.”

“I lost control . . .”

“I know that,” she said, the tough tone slightly softening. “We all know that. And we also know why . . .”

“How can you . . . ?”

Again I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Know why? You had a wallet on you. The wallet told the cops who found you who you were. They did a little investigating, being cops and all that. They found out what they needed to find out—and let us know about your situation. That’s why you’re strapped down right now. A precaution—in case you feel like doing yourself some serious harm again.”

I shut my eye, taking this all in. They know. They know everything.

“Name’s Nurse Rainier, by the way. Rainier like the mountain in Washington State. Janet Rainier. I’m the matron on the ward here. Do you know what ward this is?”

“The psych ward . . .”

“Got it in one. You are in the psych ward—on suicide watch. My guess is that you kind of made a last-minute decision to end it all. Like you could have checked into a motel with all those Zopiclone pills and a bottle of whiskey and done it in a bit of comfort. But you chose something kind of instantaneous, didn’t you?”

I closed my eye and turned away.

“I’m being just a little gruff, right? That’s kind of how I run things around here. Now I can completely understand why you might think I’ve got all the sensitivity of a car crash—and yeah, I know that is probably not the most opportune thing to say right now—but there you go. As long as you’re on my ward you’re gonna have to get used to my no-crap approach to things. ’Cause the goal is to send you out of here not wanting to drive into another snowbank again. You hear me?”

I stayed turned away.

“You hear me?”

She hadn’t raised her voice a decibel, but she still unnerved me.

I nodded.

“Good. Now let me ask you another question: If I remove the restraining straps from your arms, are you going to play ball with me and not do anything rash, stupid, and/or self-harming?”

I nodded again.

“I’d love to hear you express that thought.”

It took me a moment to summon up the ability to talk again. When I did speak, the mere movement of my lips was agony.

“I promise.”

“We are on the same page—and I am very pleased, Professor, to hear your voice.”

Professor.

“Now, the next question I have for you is: Would you like to try to drink something with a straw? That tube sticking out of your right arm is keeping you alive but IV feeding is no substitute for the real thing, now, is it? You’ve got the entire ward to yourself—things are surprisingly slow, considering how everyone in Montana loses a screw or two every winter—so I could easily whip you up something nice and bland like a vanilla milk shake. That sound good?”

I nodded.

“Words, please.”

“Yes, thank you,” I said.

“Three more words. I am impressed.”

“Can you take out the catheter?” I asked.

“Six more words. You are earning Brownie points by the minute. And yes, I can get that catheter removed—but only when we’re certain you can walk again.”

“What?” I said, suddenly terrified.

“You fractured the tibia in your left leg. That’s why it’s in plaster. The resident orthopedist thinks you should be out of the cast in about four weeks tops. But we can’t have you trying to make it to the ladies until we’re sure you can stay upright. ’Course, we could put a bedpan under you . . .”

I became aware again of my left leg. The heaviness I had first felt in it turned out to be the cast.

“I can cope with a bedpan.”

“Then we can relieve you of the catheter.”

She came over to the bed and unbuckled each of the restraints. Though I had been out of it for two days I must have been struggling against the straps while unconscious, as there were deep red welts on both arms. Nurse Rainier caught me staring at these markings.

“They’ll disappear in a day or two . . . unless you go postal on me and force me to chain you back down. But you’re not going to do that, are you?”

“No.”

“That’s my girl. Now I want you to very gently roll over on your right side—and, for obvious reasons, take it very slow.”

I did as ordered, but was unable to put my plastered leg on top of my good one.

“Now all you’ve got to do is take a deep breath and hold it until I tell you to let go.”

I could feel her lifting up the back of the green hospital gown into which I had been placed.

“Ready now?” she asked. “One, two, three, deep breath—and don’t you dare move.”

Again I did as ordered. I felt immense relief as the catheter was pulled free of me—followed by a cascade of urine.

“Shit,” I muttered through stitched lips.

“Don’t sweat it. It’s what always happens when the catheter is finally retracted. Anyway, it’s about time we got you off that gurney before bedsores set in. Hey, nurse . . .”

A large shaven-headed man—with tree trunks for biceps, all adorned with tattoos—came through the swing doors.

“This here is Ray,” Nurse Rainier said. “And he tends to be real pleasant unless one of our guests tries to engage in self-harm or leaves before they’re given their walking papers. But you’re not going to do that, are you, Professor?”

“No,” I whispered.

“I think we’ve got a real nice customer here, Ray. What do you think?”

Ray looked at his sneakers.

“We’ll see,” he finally said.

“Well, how about getting the professor out of bed and wheeling her down to the bathroom. I’ll get Nurse Pepper to give her a bit of a sponge bath and get that disgusting nightdress off her. You up for that, Professor?”

I nodded.

“Language, language. I have got to hear you speak.”

“Yes, I would like to be cleaned up.”

“An entire sentence! This is progress! OK, Ray, she’s all yours. I’ll see you later.”

“My eye . . .” I said.

“What about it?” Nurse Rainier asked.

“How bad . . . ?”

“You mean, will you lose it?”

I nodded, but just as Nurse Rainier was about to reprimand me for that, I managed to ask: “Yes, will I lose it?”

“Not according to our ace ophthalmological surgeon, who spent around five hours pulling shards of windshield out of your cornea and everywhere else. But you won’t be able to use it for a while.”

“What else did I do to myself?”

“What did you do to yourself?” Nurse Rainier said. “I like it, I like it. The woman takes responsibility for her actions. You like that, Ray?”

“Can I move her now?” he asked.

“Sure thing. But be real careful of all those tubes and cables and everything else. We’ve got to keep her monitored.”

Ray may have looked like the sort of biker who had once possibly eaten a raw steer but he was a deft hand at disconnecting me from all my monitors, and hooking up my feed bag to a stand on wheels. Then—without asking if I was ready—he shoved his tree-trunk arms under me and hoisted me down into the wheelchair with surprising finesse and gentleness. As he was engaged in all this, Nurse Rainier kept talking.

“So besides fracturing your tibia, and doing a real number on your eye, you were severely concussed, and you’ve also got one big welt across your forehead. Then there was all the glass in your lips—but I’ve seen you running your tongue across the stitches, so I’m sure you’re aware of that by now. What else? The concussion caused your brain to swell for around twenty-four hours—but the neurologist stabilized that one. You also had severe bruising around the chest and pelvis. Neat trick, unstrapping the seat beat and disengaging the airbag. Oh, you hit a tree, by the way. And when this Native American—name of Mr. Big John Lightfoot—came down the road and saw your taillights sticking out of the snowbank, not only did he stop to see what was going on, but he called the cops on his cell phone and even used a rope to attach his back bumper up to his rig and pulled you right out.

“I tell you, you’ve really got to thank Mr. Big John Lightfoot for saving your life. The guy was right on the ball. As soon as he’d yanked you out of the woods, he opened the one car door that wasn’t crushed and saw that you were suffering from hypothermia—the cops figured you’d been there around ninety minutes before Big John found you—and the guy sees that the car heater’s off so he cranks it right up and starts warming you up. Then he finds the empty bottle of pills on the car floor, puts two and two together, and—now this qualifies as heroic in my book—sticks his fingers right down your throat and makes you upchuck everything. Mind you, we had to pump your stomach all out when we got you here. You took that many Zopiclone, you’re lucky you didn’t wake up with major brain damage. But Big John’s quick thinking probably saved you from that fate.

“So if I was you I’d write Mr. Big John Lightfoot one major thank-you letter . . . if, that is, you feel like thanking him for your life.

“Anyway, that’s all the news that’s fit to print on the physical stuff you did to yourself. You’re going to be in here for a spell—because though physically you could probably hobble out of here on crutches in around a week, well, it’s the head stuff that’s gonna want us to keep you hanging around. You’ll hear more about that from our resident shrink, Dr. Ireland, but only when she gets here in two days’ time. We are the only psych ward in this corner of Montana, but with such slow business we don’t merit a full-time shrink. Still, you’ll like Dr. Ireland. Woman about your age, from somewhere back East. Came out here to change her life and all that. Never met a patient who didn’t rate her—except those whose cognitive faculties couldn’t stretch to rating a candy bar. But I guess you’re tired of listening to me. So let’s get Nurse Pepper to clean you up . . . and we’ll talk later.”

Nurse Ray wheeled me out of the empty ward and down a short corridor. I tried to take in my surroundings, but found that all visual perspective proved difficult. I could see everything and everyone who came close to me. Beyond that, nothing. Though Nurse Rainier had forced me to speak, I still found it difficult to articulate anything but the responses she demanded. I put my hands to my face. I want to be dead. Because being dead means the absence of thought. And the absence of thought means . . .

I was wheeled into a bathroom that had been specially equipped to handle the infirm. A young, stout woman in her mid-twenties was awaiting me. She introduced herself as Nurse Pepper. From her accent she sounded like she was from somewhere below the Mason-Dixon Line. She immediately thanked Ray for “delivering” me, then offered me a large, soft smile.

“I am so glad that you are back with us,” she said, all enthusiasm.

“And I hope you don’t mind me telling you this, but I really was praying so hard that you’d make it. You’re not offended by that now, I hope?”

I shook my head.

“Well, I am a great believer in the power of modern medicine—but I also know that Jesus can heal as well. But I bet you don’t want to hear about that now.”

I started to sob. Within moments the crying was out of control—the same sense of drowning that overcame me in the hours, days, weeks after the . . .

It was just a desperate accident, they all kept telling me. Terrible, random—like all accidents. And there was nothing you could have done about it.

I wouldn’t accept a syllable of their consoling words. It was my fault . . . all my fault . . .

But the sobs now so intensified that I found myself no longer able to think one simple irrational thought. The grief had, as before, submerged me. Nurse Pepper kept trying to comfort me, putting her arms around me and saying she “understood.” But when I veered into out-of-control territory, she suddenly let go of me and charged off. Moments later she was back with Nurse Rainier.

“What the hell did you say to her?” Nurse Rainier hissed. “You pull that Jesus shit with her?”

Nurse Pepper started to whimper.

“Look at you, all pious and helpless,” Nurse Rainier said. “You run right now and get me a syringe with five mgs of Sodium Pentothal. You get back here in less than one minute—or I will have your Christian ass suspended indefinitely. Now move.”

As Nurse Pepper raced off, Rainier crouched down beside me and locked her hands around both my arms.

“Professor . . . Jane . . . this is not the way to go. You hear me? I know how bad it is, how desperate and unlivable it all seems. But this is not going to do you any good. I’ll say it again—you have got to cut this out now. Because you are going to—”

That’s when I lashed out and caught her on the side of the head with my open hand. As soon as the blow was struck, she came right back at me, slapping me across the face. The smack was very precise—missing my damaged lips and landing on the cheek opposite my bandaged eye. But it still hurt like hell—and shook me out of my crying jag.

There was a moment of shocked silence between us. Then she stood up and smoothed out her uniform and stared down at me.

“You could have my job for that,” she said. “But I don’t think you want to go there, do you?”

I shook my head. Nurse Rainier was about to automatically say: “Language!” but checked herself.

“Your face OK?”

I nodded, then managed to mutter: “Your head?”

“I’ll live,” she said. Nurse Pepper came running back with the syringe and a glass vial, handing them both to her senior colleague.

“She OK?” Nurse Pepper asked.

“I got her calmed down.”

Nurse Rainier held up the syringe in front of me.

“You think you need this, Jane?”

I nodded.

“You sure? I mean, it’s guaranteed to knock you out for the next twelve hours.”

I nodded again.

“Have it your way.”

The needle pricked my arm—and I went under.

When I came to I was back in the gurney-bed, my arms again tied down, though somewhat looser than before. Everything still hurt—and my re-entry into consciousness was accompanied by the thick chemical fog that strong sedatives leave behind. I immediately felt the tubes and catheter back in place. Nurse Rainier was standing at my bedside, peering at me over her reading glasses.

“With us again,” she said.

I nodded.

“Language, Professor.”

“Yes, I’m here,” I muttered, my lips still in agony.

“Good. Very good. Shall we agree to deep-six everything that happened yesterday and start again?”

“Fine.”

“Then I’ll get that catheter out of you and arrange for Ray to bring you back for that long-overdue bath. Trust me, Nurse Pepper won’t try to ‘save’ you this time. She’ll just make certain you’re nice and clean.”

It was exactly the same drill as yesterday. I rolled over on my side. I was told to hold my breath. The catheter was slipped out of me. Ray arrived, as silent and sullen as the last time—and as deft and gentle as before when it came to getting me into the wheelchair. Nurse Pepper was awaiting me in the bathroom, looking very nervous when I arrived.

“So good to see you better,” she whispered after Ray had deposited me with her. “And I’m so sorry if I upset you yesterday . . .”

“It’s OK.”

“Well, let’s get you into a nice hot bath.”

It was quite an operation getting me into said bath. Nurse Pepper had to first wrap my cast in a waterproof casing—even though, as she explained, she would be keeping the leg suspended above the bath. Then she had to gently remove the bandages encasing my damaged eye so she could wash my hair.

“Don’t worry about the eye being exposed to the light,” she said while cutting the bandages and trying her best not to take too much hair off with them. “There’s a separate internal bandage covering the eye. But I won’t be able to wash your hair if I don’t get the big bandage off. And your hair really needs a good washing.”

She ran the water in the bathtub, mentioning that she was putting in some salts to allow me a very good long soak. The bath was kitted out with a special clear-plastic seat that allowed the aged and the infirm to be electronically lowered into the water. Getting me into it took some work. So did taking off the sweat-and-urine-stained hospital gown, as the very act of raising my left arm upward caused me immense pain in my midsection. Once she had me positioned in the seat she swung it around so I was directly over the bathtub. She wheeled a metal trolley over to the side of the bath. On it was a plastic sling, long enough to handle a leg. She winched the sling down so it was level with the bath. Then she gently lifted up my plastered leg and negotiated it into the sling.

“OK now, the seat’s about to be lowered—so be prepared. And if the water’s too hot, do tell me.”

But my attention was elsewhere. As I lay back in the bath seat—preparing for immersion like a Baptist convert—I caught sight of myself in a mirror on the right-hand wall of the room. For the first time I had full visual evidence of the damage done. The left eye wasn’t just bandaged, but was also grotesquely puffed up. My forehead remained so deeply bruised that it appeared to have been smudged with black ink. The same sort of bruising covered my midsection below my breasts, while my stitched-up lips looked as if they had been encased in bloodstained barbed wire.

Nurse Pepper saw what I was seeing. She raced over and pulled a set of rolling hospital screens in front of the mirror.

“You don’t need to be looking at that,” she said. “And honestly, Jane, I know it all appears terrible now. But I’ve read your chart and I know that everything will heal just fine.”

“No,” I said. “Everything won’t heal.”

“You’ve just got to take every day—”

“Stop,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I just can’t . . .”

Words vanished before I could get them out. I felt my eyes welling up again. Nurse Pepper put a steadying hand on my shoulder and said: “Truth be told I would have done what you did—even though my church calls it a sin. But what happened to you . . . it’s unspeakable.”

With that she pushed a button and I descended into the warm, lavender-scented water. I shuddered again as my skin was submerged. But the water was balming—and I felt so grubby, so toxic, that I gave in to its aromatic pleasures. After ascertaining I was comfortable—or as comfortable as I could be with a leg suspended above me and a battered body—she let me soak for almost a half hour, sitting away from me in a corner of the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts—all of which were blacker than black.

Let them get me better. Let them help mend all the reminders of my botched suicide. Let them tell me I have to cope, that I have to be strong, that I must not let this destroy me—all the same platitudinous shit I heard in the weeks afterward. Let them get me back on my feet—and let them check me out of here. As soon as I am out of their grasp I will check into the nearest hotel and do the job cleanly this time.

“Would you mind if I soaped you up now?” Nurse Pepper asked.

“I’d like that.”

Still wearing the surgical gloves she had on while lowering me into the bath, she took a bar of soap and gently worked her way across my skin, handing me the bar at one point and asking if I wouldn’t mind soaping up “down there.” Once my genitals and bottom were clean she used a shower hose to wet my hair and then lathered it up using Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. The very sight of the curved bottle with its traditional yellow label provoked another long-suppressed sob. It was the shampoo I used to wash Emily’s hair. Nurse Pepper gauged my reaction and again put a forceful hand on my left shoulder while continuing to massage my scalp with her free fingers.

She rinsed off all the soap and used the electronic machinery to raise me up out of the now-scummy water. Then she disengaged my leg from the sling and sat me up and dried me off. After fitting me into a fresh hospital gown she spent a good ten minutes brushing out my hair.

“Thank you,” I said when she had finally finished.

“No,” she said. “Thank you. I really do hope I haven’t in any way upset you.”

“You’ve been very kind,” I said.

“And you will get better. Trust me.”

I was wheeled back to the ward. Nurse Rainier was there to greet me.

“Well, look at you,” she said. “Almost human.”

As soon as I was settled back into bed again, Nurse Rainier said: “Now we can chain you down again and hook you up to a feed bag. Or we can agree that you are going to play ball with us, and we can avoid the restraints and actually offer you something solid to eat. What’s it going to be?”

“The latter, please.”

“You got it—but before we feed you, I’m afraid you’ve got to spend a couple minutes with one of our administrators. He’s got a bunch of paperwork he needs to fill out.”

The administrator was a short, flinty little man with a name tag on his gray suit jacket that let it be known his last name was Spender.

“Miss Howard,” he said, greeting me with a curt nod, then introduced himself as the accounts officer for the hospital.

“This will only take a few minutes,” he said. “I just have some basic questions, if it’s all right to talk now.”

“Fine,” I said.

“When you were admitted we didn’t have a chance to get some pertinent information on you, due to your . . . uhm . . . medical state. So, to begin with, we need your home address. Is it the same as found on your Massachusetts driver’s license?”

“I don’t live there anymore,” I said.

“So what is your new home address?”

“I’m in the process of finding one.”

“We need a definitive mailing address, Miss Howard.”

“Use the one on the license then.”

“Fine. Now . . . marital status?”

“Single.”

“Dependents?”

I shut my one good eye. I felt myself seizing up again.

“None,” I finally said.

“Profession?”

“I was a professor.”

“Was.”

“I left my job.”

“But New England State University informed me—”

“If you’ve been talking to my employers, why do you have to ask me what I do . . . did?”

“It’s just the way the procedure works.”

“Procedure? This is a procedure?”

Spender was visibly uncomfortable.

“I’m certain this is not an easy time for you, Miss Howard. But I would appreciate it if—”

“Yes, I’m a professor at New England State University.”

“Thank you. And do you have any next of kin who need to be contacted now?”

“None.”

“Really?”

“That’s what I said.”

A pause. Then: “Now we did find the Blue Cross/Blue Shield card in your wallet—and we did discover that you are part of the New England State University health plan. However, under the terms of the HMO, your hospitalization for a psychologically related accident is limited to twenty-eight days maximum, and does require the patient to pay for the first two thousand dollars in costs. As I’m certain you can appreciate, the nature of your injuries required extensive medical treatment—including ophthalmological surgery. So the two thousand deductible has long been surpassed. Now I noticed you have a Fleet Boston MasterCard and an American Express card in your wallet. Which card should I debit for the deductible?”

Welcome back to the United States of There Is No Free Lunch. But what does it matter, considering that I will be dead in less than a month?

“Either will work,” I said.

“I now need you to sign a few consent forms. I also know that a Professor Sanders from New England State was trying to get in touch with you, as well as a Mr. Alkan, who informed me he was your lawyer.”

“I’m not obligated to talk to them, am I?”

“Of course not.”

“Can I ask that no outside calls are put through to me?”

Again Mr. Spender wasn’t happy about this—and his disapproving look made it known that he had sized me up as a liability.

“Wouldn’t you want the people who care about you to know that you are OK?”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I wouldn’t.”

Another awkward silence.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Just your signature on all the lines I’ve marked.”

I didn’t even bother looking at the documents even though—the thought struck me—I could be inadvertently signing a document committing myself to the local loony bin. But that would cost the state of Montana money—and as they had probably assessed I was only a liability to myself . . .

Keep her for another twenty-six days, then: hasta la vista, baby . . .

After signing the documents I handed them all back to Spender.

“Thank you,” he said. “And I honestly do hope you get better soon.”

After he had gone, Nurse Rainier returned with a breakfast tray—a watery omelette, toast, tea.

“So Moneybags Spender tells me you’re playing Greta Garbo—saying you want to be all by yourself and won’t talk to anybody.”

I looked away, the way Emily would look away if I reproached her for anything. That thought made me shudder again. Nurse Rainier took that in.

“It always hits you,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“It. The event which cannot be discussed—because if you start to talk about it, you will fall apart. Believe me, I know.”

“How do you know?”

“My son, Jack, wrapped his motorcycle around a tree when he was eighteen. That was twenty-four years ago. My only child.”

Her voice was steady, firm—a reporting of the facts, devoid of evident emotion. I took this in.

“How do you get over it?” I asked.

She stared at me straight-on—a gaze I had no choice but to meet. Finally she said: “You don’t.”

SEVENTEEN

THEY KEPT ME in the hospital for exactly twenty-six more days. During that time I remained the only resident of the psych ward. Business—as Nurse Rainier kept noting—was indeed slow. I had daily physical therapy. After the orthopedic resident discovered, during one of my weekly MRIs, that the fractured tibia had quickly healed, it was time for me to try to start walking on it again.

This was around fourteen days into my stay, by which time I had gotten to know the full range of Mountain Falls Regional’s residents. The orthopedist was named Dr. Hill. The ophthalmological surgeon, Dr. Menzel. And the resident shrink, Dr. Ireland.

Dr. Menzel was a man in his late fifties. He told me he had emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Canada in the midseventies and still had a considerable Eastern European accent. But he had gone native by wearing a string tie and cowboy boots. He was reasonably chatty, saying that he’d worked in Calgary for a decade, but drove down to Montana for a vacation in 1989 and was immediately smitten with the space, the light, the emptiness, the sheer epic grandeur of the place.

“Will I be able to eventually see Montana with my left eye?” I asked him.

“It will take at least four to six months to fully heal. We did have to do intensive microsurgery after you were admitted, but we managed to remove absolutely all shards. Now it is simply a matter of time. The eye is a most regenerative organ. I am reasonably confident that you will regain eighty percent of its use, if not one hundred percent. Doctors have to be cautious. We can never promise miracles. But in your case, eighty percent retention of vision is a miracle.”

Dr. Menzel arranged to see me twice a week. I was wheeled down to his office, the bandage was removed, and I put my head into a viselike structure as he peered into the depths of my left eye to survey the impairments I had wrought on it. He was always chatty and didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t do much to maintain the conversation. So I heard all about the small ranch he had near Mountain Falls. And how he was breeding stallions as a pastime. And how his second wife used to be one of his nurses at the hospital, but now had a flourishing massage therapy business. And how their daughter was a freshman at Stanford, and was considered such a math genius that she had been given a full scholarship. And how he himself was a part-time painter—“mainly abstracts, very derivative of Rothko, but I sense you might like Rothko . . .”

Why? Because he too tried to kill himself . . . but actually managed to succeed?

“Once you feel up to it, perhaps you might like to come out to our ranch one evening for dinner. I must tell you, Professor, that we get few Harvard Ph.D.s in these parts, let alone published authors.”

“It was an academic book that nobody read.”

“You do yourself a disservice. It was a book. It appeared between hard covers. It was reviewed in serious academic journals. This is nothing to be modest about. It is a fantastic achievement. You should be proud of it.”

Again I said nothing. Dr. Menzel looked deeper into my eye. And asked: “Who, Professor, is the greatest Czech writer?”

“Living or dead?”

“Let’s say dead . . . as Kundera would win the ‘living’ award.”

“Kafka, I suppose.”

“Kafka! Exactly! But try not to blink when you talk.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t talk.”

“Oh, you can talk . . . but you cannot move your mouth as that simultaneously contorts the eye. Language, you see, is inextricably linked to sight. That which is seen is expressed. That which is expressed is also seen.”

“Unless the person is blind.”

“But the blind also see with . . . how did Shakespeare put it . . . ?”

“The mind’s eye?”

“Exactly. The mind’s eye sees everything, even if it cannot see everything. What is actually perceived through the act of seeing—and what is seen through the act of perception—well, therein lies a great human conundrum, would you not agree?”

“Everything is perception.”

“True—but who can actually ever see the internal workings of another human being? I look deep into your damaged cornea and what do I see?”

“Damage?”

“Scarring. Bad scarring . . . and the gradual development of scar tissue. The eye will adjust to this residue of harm. However, the fact remains that the lens itself has been inexorably changed by the damage done to it. It can never perceive the world in the same way again. Because the source of perception—the source of vision itself—has been completely altered by what has been inflicted on it.”

“And how does this relate to Kafka?”

“Well, what’s the most quoted sentence of Kafka?”

“ ‘One morning Gregor Samsor woke up to find himself transformed into a giant roach’?”

Dr. Menzel laughed.

“How about the second-most quoted line of Kafka?”

“You tell me.”

“ ‘When we look at each other, do we even begin to see the pain we both carry?’ ”

Ouch. I bit down on my lip.

“So . . . when you look into this damaged eye,” I asked, “is the pain visible?”

“Absolutely. The ‘accident’ came about because of pain. Desperate, terrible pain. That sort of damage . . . it will always be there. The scar tissue may mask it, may make it eventually tolerable. But still, trauma like that . . . well, how can you expect it to ever fully heal? All is changed afterward. The sense of perception is irrevocably altered. The world is a new and desperate place: implacable, random, pitiless. And we can never trust it again.”

It was the one and only time that Dr. Menzel spoke to me this way. Afterward, sensing my reticence on this subject, he restricted our conversations to my general ocular health and his increasing optimism that the bandages would come off soon. He understood that I no longer wanted to talk about what had happened—let alone explore its attendant metaphors. So he became strictly business, for which I was grateful.

Dr. Ireland was also strictly business. She was a diminutive woman in her mid-forties, with a lean athletic frame and long red hair that was carefully braided. She always dressed smartly in black suits and never wore the white coat favored by the other residents. Only once did she mention that we shared the same alma mater, as she had done her undergraduate work at Harvard before going on to Dartmouth Medical School. Unlike Dr. Menzel, she never spoke of her life outside of her “drop-ins” twice a week at Mountain Falls Regional. But she was very tenacious when it came to getting me to talk about my current state of play . . . even though I fought her hard every step of the way.

During our first session she informed me that she was very well briefed on my “case”; that she had been in contact with New England State, with my lawyer, even with Christy (Professor Sanders told her where I was).

“I do hope you understand that what happened to your daughter was in no way your fault.”

“Think that if you wish,” I said.

“It’s the truth. I requisitioned the police report, the autopsy report, the eyewitness accounts. Nothing, nothing you did caused this.”

“And nothing I did stopped this.”

“Accidents happen, Jane. The circumstances that cause them are inherently irregular and unselective. Try as we might we cannot control their trajectory. They just are . . . and we have to live with the consequences, as terrible as that might be. But it doesn’t mean that we should crucify ourselves for that over which we have little control.”

“Think that if you wish.”

“That’s the second time you’ve used that phrase.”

“I often repeat myself.”

“Even if it causes you agony to hold on to such guilty feelings?”

“My guilt is my own business.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more. The problem is, ‘your own business’ turned so toxic and lethal that you saw no way out but to try to kill yourself. Now does that strike you as a sensible way out of hell?”

“Actually, yes, it does.”

“Do you still think that ending it all is the only solution to the grief you feel?”

Careful here.

“No . . . I feel somewhat . . . OK. Not totally OK, given all the injuries I suffered . . . but certainly OK about having made it through.”

“So . . . you want to live.”

“Yes. I want to live.”

“You are one terrible liar.”

“Think that if you wish.”

“That’s the third time you’ve used that phrase.”

“Then I really am even more repetitive than I thought.”

“You haven’t known much in the way of happiness in your life, have you?”

This stopped me short.

“There have been moments . . .” I eventually said.

“With Emily. That was her name, wasn’t it? Emily?”

“I don’t want to—”

“I’m sure you don’t. But this is exactly what we do need to talk about. Emily. The one person in your life who—”

“You know shit.”

“Do I? All right then. Tell me who ever brought you happiness in your life? The father who was always absent and abandoned you, and then cost you your career in financial services? Or the mother who was hypercritical and could not help but undermine you at every step along the way? Or maybe it was the first great love of your life, a married man who happened to be your thesis adviser and—”

“Who told you all this?” I shouted.

“Is that important?”

“I don’t like being betrayed.”

“Quite. Knowing what I have found out about your background, I don’t blame you. Your life has been one long sequence of betrayals, culminating in your partner Theo running off with—”

“That’s it,” I said, grabbing the spokes of my wheelchair and steering myself around in a 180-degree turn toward the door. “This conversation is finished.”

“Not until you tell me about your drive out here.”

“Trying to change the subject, are we?”

“You were found in a snowbank on Route 202 just over five days ago. Before that . . . what?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Why?”

“Because I could easily have you committed as someone who is a danger to the community.”

“I’ve harmed nobody.”

“Not this time. But say we let you go and you suddenly get the same suicidal urge again—only this time you decide to cross the central median on a highway and plow into a family of four . . .”

“I’d never do that.”

“So you say. But what proof do I have of that? None actually. Which makes you a suitable case for incarceration unless you are willing to—”

“I ended up in Montana because I ended up in Montana.”

“I need to know more than that.”

“I walked out on my job, my apartment, my life—and I started to drive.”

“This was how long after the . . . accident?”

“Three, four weeks.”

“And at the time had you been prescribed any medication to help you deal with—”

“Zopiclone . . . to help me sleep. Because I wasn’t sleeping. Because I couldn’t sleep.”

“The same Zopiclone found in your car?”

“That’s right.”

“Prescribed by a Dr. Dean Staunton—who also happens to be the staff doctor at New England State University?”

“No doubt you’ve already spoken to him.”

“He said that when you came to see him—in the wake of the accident—you were in a very bad place, but trying desperately hard not to show it. You insisted on returning to work just five days after the funeral and would not listen to his recommendation that you take compassionate leave. What disturbed him the most was how controlled you were. Your colleagues were also astounded by this—and by the steely insistence you had about carrying on as normal.

“Until, that is, you attacked a certain Adrienne Clegg. Would you mind explaining to me what happened?”

“You know what happened—because no doubt somebody at New England State told you what happened.”

“I need to hear it from you.”

“I don’t feel like talking about it.”

“Because . . . ?”

“Because I don’t feel like talking about it.”

“You don’t have to worry. Your lawyer, Mr. Alkan, informed us that Ms. Clegg decided not to press charges against you.”

“Lucky me.”

“Was there good cause why you attacked Adrienne Clegg?”

“I think so. The woman was my partner’s business associate. Then she became his lover. Then they ran through a large financial windfall—and landed me with all the debt, then conveniently vanished from view. I was hyperstressed because of this. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t thinking too clearly. The insomnia was making me vertiginous. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t negotiate even the simplest things. Which is why . . .”

The sentence fell away. Dr. Ireland completed it.

“Which is why you blame yourself for what happened?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you also blame Adrienne Clegg?”

“Cause and effect.”

“And that’s why—when she did come back to Boston—you attacked her?”

“Cause and effect.”

“You said that already.”

“I’m saying it again. And now I’m not saying anything more.”

There was a pause—and I could see the doctor sizing me up, wondering just how hard she could push me.

“We’ll continue this again in three days’ time. Meanwhile, don’t you think it’s important to contact your department chairman, your lawyer, your friends . . .”

“No.”

“We could contact them for you.”

“No.”

“Is that definitive?”

“Yes.”

“Depression is a normal response after—”

“Being clumsy enough not to kill yourself?”

Dr. Ireland tapped her pencil against her clipboard.

“I’d like to put you on an antidepressant called Mirtazapine. It’s largely to ensure that you sleep.”

“Will it stop me looking in the mirror and seeing the catastrophe that is my face?”

“All that will heal.”

“And then . . . What? . . . I’ll eventually learn to come to terms with my ‘loss,’ and will find a way out of the ‘grieving process’? Is that the crap you’re going to hit me with?”

Dr. Ireland stood up and began to gather her things.

“I can be consoling when asked to be consoling,” she said. “And I can be brutal when I need to be brutal.”

“I don’t need consoling, Doctor.”

“Then here’s the brutal truth of the matter: you are going to have to live with this every day for the rest of your life. Which is why you’re planning to kill yourself as soon as you are out of our clutches.”

“You don’t know that.”

“We’ll continue this at the same time on Thursday.”

I was started on the Mirtazapine that night. Nurse Rainier told me that she was giving me 15 milligrams of the stuff (“Doctor’s orders”) because they wanted to ensure that I went under.

“Dr. Ireland told me you attacked a woman with a sharp object. Then she told me the circumstances why. Can’t say I blame you. Can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.”

Oh, stop trying to humor me . . . to make me feel that everything that transpired wasn’t my fault. I won’t give in to the great new American tradition of refusing to accept the blame. I am guilty. Guilty of so much.

The Mirtazapine did help me sleep and I informed Nurse Rainier that I did feel the pills were smoothing out some edges.

“By which you mean you’re actually feeling better?” she asked around a week after I had been started on the pills.

I knew this was a trick question. Antidepressants take weeks to gain purchase within the brain and the metabolism. Though they did knock me out I realized that they wouldn’t begin to have any serious effect for some time to come. Best therefore not to raise their suspicions by saying I was feeling “at one with myself” or some such pharmaceutical Pollyanna crap. Best just to say: “They knock me out. They don’t deaden anything.”

Nurse Rainier bought that one. Just as she also approved of the way I was starting to use a wheeled Zimmer frame to negotiate my way around the ward, and to my various appointments. I remained the only patient in the psych wing and though I was offered a television to keep me company I rejected it in favor of a radio on which I could listen to the local NPR station. I also discovered the limited resources of the Mountain Falls Hospital library. Still, the hundred or so books on their shelves did turn up some surprises—like a dog-eared copy of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, a novel that had greatly impressed me on my first reading around eight years ago, but whose themes of personal loss and the ongoing sentient echoes of the dead I now found hard to negotiate. Still I pressed on with rereading it, trying to concentrate more on the precision of Greene’s language, his immense readability, his understanding that we are all doomed by our impulses and the human need for emotional possession at all costs. It reassured me in the way that all good literature reassures—by showing me that everything is flawed, damaged, transient, and that we are all prisoners of our need to impose order on the chaotic business of life.

“Could we return to the accident in Cambridge?” Dr. Ireland asked at the start of our next session.

“I’d rather not.”

“I’m certain you wouldn’t. But it would be useful—for our work together—if I could hear from you exactly what happened.”

I hesitated.

“It’s too early,” I finally said.

“Will there ever be the right moment? I don’t need a big, long story. Just a very simple recounting of what happened on that January afternoon five weeks ago.”

I stared at the floor. This was not me pausing for effect. I could hardly bring myself to replay all the events in my head, even though my brain did that for me ceaselessly. But to speak about them? To verbalize them, to give them narrative shape? That was too much.

“Please . . .” I whispered.

“Make it as fast as you want. Just tell me.”

So I sucked in a deep lungful of air and exhaled and spoke. I must have spoken for only around two or three minutes. But I got through it all, right up to the moment in the hospital when they told me . . .

“And then . . . ?” Dr. Ireland asked.

“Then I came apart.”

“Even though everyone spoke about how controlled and brave you were in the weeks that followed.”

“I was operating on autopilot. I was trying to pretend . . .”

“What?”

“Pretend that I could cope.”

“When did you realize you couldn’t?”

“I knew it all along. But I kept telling myself: you somehow stick to your normal routine. You go to work. You give your classes. You grade your papers. You maintain your office hours for your students. And eventually—eventually . . .”

“Eventually . . . what?”

“Eventually . . . you’ll be able to somehow manage.”

“Why this need to ‘manage’?”

“Why the hell do you think? I felt if I could manage I could somehow stay afloat.”

“Even though you knew you were coming apart?”

“Even though . . . all the while I felt as if my head was splitting open and the thought gradually began to overtake me that I couldn’t endure the agony anymore.”

“But you weren’t thinking of killing yourself at that time?”

“Yes, I was starting to think about that.”

“What stopped you?”

“Cowardice.”

“But when this Adrienne Clegg suddenly showed up again with your ex . . .”

“That incident . . . it was all rage.”

“I’m sure. Would you mind taking me through it, please?”

“Yes, I would mind.”

“I know it’s probably not something you want to revisit. Nonetheless, it would be useful if—” I raised my hand, like a traffic cop stopping traffic. Then I started to talk. Again I kept to the facts, determined to get through all this as quickly as possible. She only stopped me when I spoke about running off into the night after the attack.

“Did you have any idea what you were going to do next?” she asked.

“No. Like the attack itself, it was completely spontaneous. Afterward I raced into the street. The next thing I knew I was in a cab. We made my apartment in Somerville in ten minutes. I raced around the apartment, throwing stuff into a suitcase . . .”

“Including all those Zopiclone . . .”

“Including my passport, my laptop, as many changes of clothes as I could squeeze into a bag . . . and yes, my pills. I tossed everything into my car. I cranked up the engine. I roared away. Actually, ‘roared’ is an inappropriate verb. I stuck to the speed limits. I drove in a very steady, inconspicuous manner . . .”

“Because you thought . . .”

“I thought there’d be an all-points bulletin out for me. I thought that if I stopped anywhere to spend the night, I’d be traced there. So . . . I just drove.”

“Tell me exactly where you drove.”

“I drove everywhere.”

“What was the first road?”

“The 90.”

“Interstate 90?”

“That’s right. I would only drive Interstates. I would only stay in mom-and-pop hotels—paying with cash, registering under an assumed name, not sleeping much.”

“By not much you mean . . . ?”

“One, two hours a night.”

“The rest of the time?”

“I would sit in a grubby bathtub, soaking in scalding water. I’d watch crap all-night TV. I’d think about hanging myself from the shower rail . . .”

“What stopped you?”

“I was just so exhausted, so deranged, so not here . . . and so terrified of the prospect, even though I was determined to leave the world. And when you are dead set on doing this you don’t want to make contact with anyone who might convince you to do otherwise . . .”

“ ‘Leaving the world,’ ” she repeated, trying out the expression. “I like it. It’s almost romantic.”

“Suicide is often romantic.”

“Except for the individual who actually commits it.”

“Literature is riddled with romantic suicides.”

“Was your attempt romantic?”

“Look at my face and tell me if this is your idea of romanticism.”

“I was being ironic.”

“I know you were. But the road is romantic . . . especially for an American.”

“And all roads eventually come to an end. Yours did in Montana. Why here?”

“It’s all random, isn’t it? I must have clocked twenty-five hundred miles in all those days on the road and the one snowbank I chose is—was—here. Just think about that. Had I not decided, out of nowhere, to end my life at that one curve on Route 202 between Columbia Falls and Evergreen, Montana, you would never have known of my existence.”

“There’s an old theory about people who get into their cars and head west. On one level they’re fleeing their past lives. On another level they’re heading towards a geographic extreme. The problem is, once they get to LA or San Francisco or Seattle, the only thing left for them to do is drive right off the edge.”

“It’s a nice metaphor, hitting the Pacific Rim and having no other recourse but to fall off the precipice of the continent. Too bad Margaret Atwood already used it in one of her novels.”

“Am I being accused of plagiarism?” Dr. Ireland asked mildly.

“No—I’m just something of a fussy academic when it comes to sources.”

“Remind me never to take one of your classes, Professor.”

“There’s no chance of that. I’m never teaching another class again.”

“That’s a rather definitive statement.”

“Because I’m rather definitive about it. My academic career is over.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do—and that probably disappoints you. No doubt, you want me to find a way back to my old life . . . as that would mean accepting loss and all that.”

“Is it an ‘old life’? I mean, you were teaching classes up until two weeks ago.”

“Everything to do with that part of my existence is now ‘old.’ I won’t be visiting it again.”

“Even though the chairman of your department informed me just a few days ago that he would like you back?”

“I don’t want to say: ‘How dare you.’ But . . . how dare you?”

“How dare I what?”

“How dare you contact my employer and—”

“He actually contacted me.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“The police had to call the university when they discovered your New England State ID in your wallet. They spoke with Professor Sanders. He, in turn, actually went to the trouble to contact us here to see how you were faring.”

“The man always considered me a liability.”

“That’s not what he said. Even the president of the university called the hospital administrator to find out your condition.”

“He’s the type who wouldn’t even dream of speaking to anyone below the CEO level.”

“And you are understandably bitter because . . .”

“I now hate the world.”

There was a long pause as Dr. Ireland took that in.

“As I said to you the other day, you will not put this behind you. You will, in time, reach some sort of accommodation with it. But I will not attempt to sweeten that which is totally appalling. Your daughter is—”

“Shut up,” I hissed.

“The thing is, you tried to silence that thought forever. You failed. You are back here among the living. You again have to deal with that terrible reality. Or you can repeat history and kill yourself the moment your insurance runs out and the hospital administrators decide that, as you are able enough to walk out of here, off you go . . . even though I will do everything possible to keep you here. Because I would prefer to save your life. But I can’t do that if you are so determined to end it. And you can reassure me all you want, or act receptive to what I say, or even pretend that you’re getting better. But I won’t believe a word of it.”

I hung my head. I tried to think of a response, but the words wouldn’t come. I felt that drowning sensation overtaking me again.

“I remember when I was a resident in Chicago, the leading psychiatrist emeritus at the hospital was this elderly Germanic woman. I’m pretty sure she was Viennese, but that goes with the territory, right? Anyway, she was also a survivor of Dachau—and I learned that her husband and two sons had died in the camp. Not only that, but she had been subjected to medical experiments while incarcerated. But the woman I met was this formidable, steely clinician who’d emigrated to the States after the war and had made a new life for herself, marrying a very big noise in the U. Chicago philosophy department. Once I heard her give a lecture on guilt—specifically, survivor guilt. Someone asked her: Given all that she had endured—the absolute sheer horror of it all—how had she been able to not go under? Her reply was extraordinary. She quoted Samuel Beckett: ‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on.’ ”

“It’s from The Unnamable,” I said.

“That’s right. The Unnamable.”

We fell silent. Then I said: “I can’t go on, Doctor.”

“I know. But that’s now. Perhaps in time . . .”

“I can’t go on. I won’t go on.”

EIGHTEEN

I SHOULDN’T HAVE MADE that comment. I shouldn’t have spoken without thinking. But I was thinking. I knew what I was saying. I knew I was articulating the truth. By doing so I had confirmed Dr. Ireland’s worst suspicions. I was a hopeless case.

To her credit Dr. Ireland didn’t bring up this comment again. She simply increased my dose of Mirtazapine by fifteen milligrams. They did knock me out, but they did nothing to alleviate the unalloyed grief that seemed to permeate every waking hour. Courtesy of the pharmaceuticals, I was managing to sleep nine hours a night. When I woke there was always a minute or so of pleasant befuddlement, during which I would wonder where I was. Then my tongue would touch my stitched lips and everything would instantly rush back. How I wish I could have preserved that moment between sleep and consciousness when my brain seemed to be devoid of a memory; when I was just living in a woolly moment. Because once the mental trigger was pulled—and all retained thought was returned to me—I simply wanted to die.

Nurse Rainier was always on duty first thing in the morning and she seemed well aware of the processes by which the post–wake-up gloom would descend upon me. Within five minutes of me opening my eyes she’d be handing me a glass of orange juice and ordering me to get it into my system as soon as possible.

“It’ll push your blood sugar up,” she’d say.

Nurse Rainier never spoke again about the child she lost, nor did she ever mention my failed suicide or the sorrow that haunted every waking hour. “Sorrow.” It was too controlled a word for what I was feeling right now. There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never, ever recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony . . .

Though I tried my best to hide this incessant despair, Nurse Rainier let it be known she was on to me. If she found me curled up in a ball in my bed, she’d tap me hard on the shoulder and say: “I’m sending you to physical therapy now.” If she sensed that I was lost in gloom, she insisted on turning on the radio by my bed and getting me listening to NPR. If I was uncommunicative she would force me to talk with her.

Every morning she managed to drop a New York Times on my bed, telling me she’d found the one shop in Mountain Falls that sold it and commanding me to “read about the world.” Even though the leg was still encased in a cast, she made me walk around the hospital for at least a half hour twice a day, initially with a walker, but after a week or so with a cane. And when the bandage came off my eye, she brought a television to my bedside and forced me to watch an hour of news every day.

I knew why she was getting me to read a proper newspaper and listen to NPR and see what was happening in the world at large. It wasn’t merely to distract me and fill up time, but also to somehow make me engage with something beyond my anguish.

Dr. Ireland was also trying to push me toward some sort of acknowledgment that there was life beyond this hospital and all that it represented. She didn’t return to my statement that I couldn’t live with the grief. But she did insist that I talk about my daughter, recalling as much as I could bear to talk about—which wasn’t much because every time her name crossed my lips, it was as if I had been seized by an impossible sadness. But she kept pressing me—just as she also wanted to know everything about my relationship with Theo and how my heightened anxiety in the final weeks had made me distracted for that crucial moment when the dog broke free in front of us and . . .

“Do you blame Theo for what happened?”

“He wasn’t there. I blame myself.”

“But his business failure—the debt he ran up with that woman, the angry creditors, the very real fear you had that your home might be taken away from you . . . surely you must somehow feel that if these pressures hadn’t been piled up on you . . .”

“I take responsibility for what happened.”

“But don’t you hate him for it?”

“ ‘Hate’ is a terrible word.”

“You’ve been through a terrible experience—and his irresponsibility, his complete disregard for your feelings, your welfare . . .”

“Stop attempting to make me feel better about what happened. I know the game: ‘when bad things happen to good people’ and all that self-denial crap. I won’t buy into that.”

“Or maybe you’d simply see that the accident was just that—an accident. And that you yourself were, at the time, coping with terrible pressures, terrible—”

“I despise Theo Morgan, OK?”

“And I’m here to tell you that everything you feel is valid and—”

“Oh, please. Everything I feel is awful. Maybe when I’m watching the nightly news that Nurse Rainier insists I watch I have a half hour when I am distracted from it all. And thanks to your high-powered pharmaceuticals I do manage to sleep. But that’s it. Otherwise it’s there, day in, day out. Omnipresent. Hanging over every thought, every action.”

“Your lawyer called yesterday,” she said, changing the subject. “The switchboard, acting on your instructions, didn’t put the call through. But he did speak to me.”

“You mean, you asked to speak to him.”

“No, I mean he called me at my private practice in Mountain Falls. We had spoken twice before. I don’t sense it’s anything that dire. But he does need to talk through some things with you.”

“You evidently feel that, clinically speaking, this would be a good thing for me to do,” I said.

“I feel . . . he’s your lawyer and you simply should speak with him.”

So I accepted a call from Alkan the next day.

“I’m glad to hear you survived your accident. After everything you’ve been through . . .”

“It wasn’t an accident, Mr. Alkan. It was an attempt to kill myself. Botched like everything else I do.”

“I’m certain that’s an overly harsh statement.”

“To what do I owe this call, Mr. Alkan?”

“You may have heard from Dr. Ireland that Adrienne Clegg decided to drop all charges against you . . .”

“Yeah, I heard that. And what caused this Pauline conversion?”

“I had a talk with her lawyer—and made it very clear that I would eviscerate her if she dared take action against you.”

“So she completely backed off?”

“Better than that . . . she signed a document drafted by me, saying that she would never take any legal action against you and that all debts accrued by Fantastic Filmworks were not your responsibility.”

“Well . . . thank you.”

“You are most welcome. But there are a couple of other things to discuss. The cab company . . . their insurers phoned me with an offer.”

“An offer?”

“A compensation offer.”

“I don’t want their money.”

“Be that as it may, they still offered—”

“I don’t care what they offered.”

“In situations like this one—and given the age of your daughter—the amount is never—”

“Did you hear what I said, Mr. Alkan? I don’t want their money.”

“It’s one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“Give it back to them.”

“Surely you’re being a little rash here . . .”

“Don’t tell me what I am—or am not—being. I don’t want their damn money. Period.”

“I’ll give you a few days to consider that.”

“Tell you what—accept their offer, but give the money away.”

“Miss Howard . . .”

“You heard what I said: give it all away.”

“To whom?”

“Is there a charity for parents who lost a child?”

“I’m sure there is. I’d have to do a little digging around . . .”

“Well, that’s who it goes to.”

“I really wish you’d consider this for a few days.”

“Why? I might change my mind.”

“All right then.”

“By the way, what do I owe you for your services for all this?”

“Nothing. As you’re making a charitable donation here I’m waiving my fee.”

“You’re just doing that because you feel sorry for me.”

“That’s right—I do feel sorry for you. As anyone would.”

“Anything else we need to discuss here?”

“Your life in Boston. When are you planning to come back here?”

“I’m not.”

“Isn’t that a slightly premature decision? I mean, New England State has been in touch with me. They do want you to return as soon as possible. They consider you a most valued member of the department. Of course, I can’t force you to do one thing or another. But I do know, from my discussions with your department chairman, that the university is willing to put you on fully paid compassionate leave for the rest of the year.”

“I don’t want their money either.”

“It’s being paid to you as we speak. Not only are they being very understanding, they’re also showing real concern for you.”

“My mind is made up. And there’s something else I want you to do for me. I want you to find a Realtor and sell my apartment. Get rid of everything. Give away all the furniture, the electronics stuff, the books, the CDs. The lot. And then sell the place.”

“Where do you want the money to go?”

“Your call. Just give it away.”

“Jane . . .”

“Don’t try to reason with me, Mr. Alkan. Don’t try to tell me I need more time to figure out my next move and all that blah, blah, blah. Sell the apartment and do whatever you want with the money.”

“I simply can’t do that.”

“Get me the necessary paperwork and you can.”

A silence. Then: “All right, Jane. As you are the client I have no choice but to follow your instructions. I’ll send all the relevant papers to the hospital.”

“Thank you.”

“One last thing. Your friend, Christy, has been in touch with me regularly, trying to find your whereabouts. She seems genuinely concerned about your welfare. Will you speak to her?”

“No.”

“She did tell me she was your closest friend.”

“That’s right. She is my closest friend. But I won’t speak with her.”

“Mightn’t it be worth your while to—?”

“My decision is final, sir.”

“Very good then. I’ll FedEx everything in the next few days.”

“Please get them to me as soon as possible. They’ll be kicking me out of here in fourteen days.”

“And then?”

“We’ll see.”

The documents arrived forty-eight hours later. An extended form from Standard Life Insurance, in which I agreed to accept $150,000 from the company in exchange for never making another claim against them “in this matter” again. There was also a document agreeing to the transfer of said $150,000 to the Samaritans. (“After some research I decided that they were the best of the organizations dealing with the bereaved and anyone else thinking about taking their life.”) And there was a power-of-attorney form, granting Mr. Alkan the full legal right to do whatever the hell he wanted to do with all the proceeds from my apartment . . . and anything else to do with my financial life.

I signed both forms and gave Nurse Rainier thirty dollars in cash and asked her to FedEx it all back to him.

Having signed my life away I felt a strange sort of calm. I knew what all my next steps would be. Just as I knew that, with only twelve days to go before the insurance ran out, Dr. Ireland would be doing her best to make certain I was on the straight and narrow in time for my release.

“I must come clean about this and tell you that I telephoned your lawyer in Boston,” she said. “He did inform me about the contribution you made to the Samaritans. That’s most admirable.”

“Glad you think so.”

“He also told me you asked him to sell your apartment and give everything away.”

“Bet you find that less ‘admirable.’ ”

“Just troubling, to tell the truth. I mean, say you decide to return to the Boston area and recommence your job at the university?”

“I’m not certain what my next step will be. But fear not, I won’t be buying another car just to ram it into another snowbank.”

“Glad to hear that. Your friend, Christy, called me. She’s incredibly concerned about you and actually wanted to come out here to see you.”

“But you talked her out of it?”

“I said that, given your somewhat fragile state—and your refusal to have any contact with the outside world—it mightn’t be advisable.”

“Thank you for that.”

“She told me she lives in Oregon—which is less than a day’s drive from here.”

“I’m not ready to see her.”

“But she told me she was with you in the weeks after Emily—”

“Correct,” I said, cutting her off. “But that was then. And now . . .”

“Are you afraid of seeing her because of your failed suicide?”

“Yes, absolutely. But also because . . .”

“Yes?”

“Because I don’t want . . . need . . . the kindness of others.”

“You mean, you think you don’t deserve the kindness of others because you still wrongfully blame yourself for—”

“You’re not going to convince me otherwise. I know what happened . . . and I have no alibi against that.”

She reached under her chair and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. She uncapped the pen and starting drawing on it. Then she showed me her handiwork—a small blackened dot surrounded by a large circle.

“Know what this is?” she asked.

“Haven’t a clue,” I said.

“The black dot . . . that’s the world. And the circle . . . that’s the grief you are suffering. In other words, your grief makes the rest of the world appear minute.”

She flipped a page and started drawing again, then showed me this new diagram: the same-sized circle, but a black dot that had tripled in size.

“Now, in time—and, as I have said during so many of these sessions, it will take a considerable amount of time—your grief will remain the same, but the world will get bigger. And when that happens—”

“I’ll be a happy camper again?”

“You’ll never be that. What will happen is that life will reimpose itself and force you to reengage with it. The world will seem larger.”

Bullshit.

But I said nothing. I just shrugged.

“In the meantime,” Dr. Ireland said, “you would benefit from as much support as you are willing to accept.”

“You mean, once the insurance company kicks me out of here.”

“Your physical condition is very much on the mend. Dr. Menzel tells me your eye is going to be near fully functional in a few weeks—and the orthopedist is also very pleased with your progress. But I do worry that, if you are left on your own, you could psychologically regress . . .”

“As you said, it’s not a simple ‘fix.’ ”

“But say your friend Christy took you in for a while . . . ?”

“No sale,” I said.

“Hear me out, please. Christy told me she has plenty of room at her house in Eugene, Oregon. She is more than willing to drive out here, pick you up, and put you up at her place for as long as—”

“I don’t want to be beholden to anyone.”

“This is not a matter of being ‘beholden’ to anyone. This is—put baldly—trying to save you from yourself.”

“Good luck,” I said.

I dug my heels in on this one. Though Christy tried ringing me every day, I refused to take her calls. I also informed Nurse Rainier that if she was to show up at the hospital I wouldn’t “receive” her.

“Because Your Majesty is otherwise engaged,” Nurse Rainier said. “Feeling sorry for herself.”

“Think what you like.”

“Believe me, I will. Especially as I know exactly what you’re going through—and how easy it is to think that isolation is the only solution. But, as I learned, if you find yourself in hell, the only thing you can do is keep going.”

“I’ll always be in hell.”

Nurse Rainier just shrugged.

“You can think that—and if you want easy answers, I can get five different men of God in here within the next half hour and they’ll sell you a bill of goods about the paradise to which you’re bound if you accept that telephone call from Jesus. They’ll probably tell you that once you get to the other side, you’ll meet up with—”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Been there, done that—that’s why. I can’t give you bromides, Professor. I can’t give you much in the way of hope. Except what I told you before: if you’re going through hell, just keep going. Though if I were you, I’d also think about staying with my friend in Oregon for a while.”

Christy continued to ring the hospital on a daily basis—I continued to refuse her calls. Just as I also wouldn’t speak again with Mr. Alkan—though he too phoned regularly.

If you’re going through hell, just keep going . . .

Until you decide simply to reject the act of self-persuasion—of telling yourself the agony will, in time, be manageable—and bow to the inevitable.

So I counted off the days. I took my pharmaceuticals and had my sessions with Dr. Ireland and did even more intensive physical therapy once the cast came off, and readjusted my damaged eye to life without a bandage. All the while I prepared myself for the denouement that could not be sidestepped.

And so it came to pass—exactly twenty-eight days after my “accident”—that I was turned loose from my convalescence. On the morning of my departure I had one last talk-fest with Dr. Ireland. It was clear that she feared for me.

“I regret having to discharge you, Jane. Should you feel at any time, day or night, that you cannot cope, you must call me and talk things through.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I wish I could believe you . . .”

“Believe what?”

“Believe that you won’t give in to despair. We all have to travel hopefully . . . even when events dictate otherwise.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

I organized a taxi to pick me up at the hospital. Nurse Pepper insisted on giving me one last bath—and telling me that she hoped I would find “the benevolent hand of a higher power” guiding me wherever I went.

I organized a taxi to pick me up at the hospital. Nurse Pepper insisted on giving me one last bath—and telling me that she hoped I would find “the benevolent hand of a higher power” guiding me wherever I went. Nurse Rainier insisted on escorting me out to the waiting taxi. As the driver loaded up my suitcase and helped me into the backseat, she thrust a plain wooden cane on me.

“Brought this along as a little goodbye gift. Something to lean on.”

“Thank you . . . for everything,” I said.

“I don’t want your thanks. I just want you to survive.”

I asked the cab driver to take me to a Holiday Inn on the edge of Mountain Falls. En route to the motel, I asked the driver to stop at a pharmacy. There I bought a bottle of one hundred and twenty Tylenol PM tablets. Then we continued on to a liquor store, where I scored a fifth of vodka.

The guy insisted on helping me in with my bag, even holding my arm as I leaned on the cane and hobbled toward the hotel reception.

“How many nights are you planning to stay?” the woman behind the desk asked me.

“Just the one,” I said.

“You don’t have a vehicle?”

“No.”

The Holiday Inn was a motel arrangement—you drove right up to the door of your rented room. The cabbie—a guy in his forties with thinning hair, wearing a check hunting shirt—again insisted on bringing me to its portals and helping me inside. It was a classic Holiday Inn with shit wallpaper, shit carpet, shit bedspread. I peeled off two twenties from my small wad of cash and handed it to him.

“The fare’s only twenty,” he said.

“Well, you deserve forty.”

He looked unsettled as he said goodbye to me—as if he had a premonition of what I intended to do and was fearful on my behalf. As soon as he was gone I called the front desk and asked them if they might have a roll of duct tape behind the counter, as I needed something to repair a torn handle on my suitcase.

“You’re in luck,” the woman said. “We had an electrician doing a job for us here a couple of days ago and he left a roll behind.”

Using my cane I limped back to reception and picked it up.

“Can you get it back to me before you check out tomorrow?” she asked. “Just in case the guy comes back looking for it.”

“No problem,” I said.

I returned to the room. I put the pills and the tape in a bedside drawer. I found a plastic laundry bag in a shelf in the closet. I pulled out the pills and the plastic bag and the tape.

Do it fast before you can think about it. Pour yourself three fingers of vodka to steady your nerves, then take the pills—ten at a time, all chased with more vodka. Once they’re all ingested, place the plastic bag over your head. Seal it tightly around your neck with duct tape—by which time the Tylenol/vodka cocktail will have done its chemical work and you will begin to drift off into . . .

I found a plastic cup in the bathroom. I returned to the bed. I spread all the pills out on the bedside table. I half filled the cup with vodka. I took a long sip. The alcohol burned as it slipped down. I raised the cup again and downed its contents. The vodka went straight to my head. I grabbed a notepad by the bed and scraped half the pills into my left hand. But just as I was raising them to my mouth, I heard a woman’s voice. A shrill woman’s voice, raised in anger.

“You little bitch . . . you ever fucking sass me again . . .”

Then I heard the distinctive sound of a slap, followed by a howl from a little girl.

“No, Momma, no . . .”

Another slap, another howl. Then: “You get that look off your face, you little . . .”

Suddenly I was on my feet, throwing the pills to the ground and hobbling to the door. As I yanked it open I saw the shrill woman—large, overweight, a shock of black hair—slapping a little girl across the side of the head. The girl couldn’t have been more than five—and, like her mother, she was already oversized. Without thinking what I was doing I grabbed the woman’s hand just as it was about to land again on her daughter’s head.

“You stop that,” I heard myself yell.

“Who the hell are you?” the woman screamed back at me, struggling against my grip.

“You stop that right now.”

With her free hand she punched me right in the abdomen. It landed with full force, doubling me over, making me retch up vodka.

“You’ve got some nerve, lady,” she said, pulling the little girl into a car. I tried to get up. I couldn’t.

“You can’t do that to a child.”

The woman doubled back on me.

“You tellin’ me how to treat my daughter?” she screamed. “You givin’ me parent lessons, Miss Fancy Pants?”

With that she kicked me right in the rib cage. I fell to the pavement and was sick again. There was the sound of an engine starting up. Over this: “See what you caused, you little bitch?”

The girl begged her mother to forgive her. Then, with a shriek of rubber, the car pulled away and they were gone.

The entire incident couldn’t have lasted more than a minute and it was witnessed by no one. I spat out the toxic bile that was now swimming around my mouth. Picking myself up I staggered back into the room. As I walked inside, my shoe landed on top of all the pills I had scattered on the floor. All at once I was crying and sweeping the remaining pills off the bedside table and crushing them with the heels of my shoes, and grabbing the bottle of vodka and racing into the bathroom and smashing it in the tub, and finally collapsing on the bed, sobbing wildly, feeling beyond lost.

When the sobbing eventually subsided I lifted myself up off the bed and went into the bathroom and picked up every shard of glass in the bathtub. Then I found a dustpan and brush in the closet and swept up all that now-powdered Tylenol, thinking: Even when you’ve been assaulted and have botched another attempt at suicide, you have to tidy up. Because you’re a bad girl. And bad girls who want to be good girls always try to clean up the mess they’ve made, even though they know that they still won’t feel better about themselves. Because . . .

How could that woman do that to a child? Her child.

I felt another sob lodging in my throat. But I caught it and wouldn’t let it escape. No more of that. Nurse Rainier was right: crying in the face of hell was just crying in the face of hell. And another failed suicide was just . . . pathetic.

I stood up. I went into the bathroom. My rib cage hurt and my mouth was noxious. Before splashing water on my face, I stared at my red eyes, the small, lingering abrasion across my forehead, the lips now free of stitches but still marked by scars. As I turned away in disgust, a question formed in my addled brain.

When you can’t self-destruct, what is the only other option open to you?

The answer arrived without much in the way of rumination . . . because it was so damn obvious.

You leave the world.

NINETEEN

IT TOOK AROUND twelve hours to divest myself of myself. It was fast work. After telling the woman at the front desk of the Holiday Inn that I would be staying there for the next two nights I used my cane to limp across the road to a grim little strip mall. There I bought a twenty-dollar telephone card, some cold cuts and bread, scissors, and a few bottles of water.

Back in the room I started to work the phone. I called American Express, Visa, Discovery, and MasterCard and canceled all my accounts. All four of the “customer services agents” I spoke with professed horror at my decision to end business with their companies, the Amex woman actually asking me: “Have we done anything to upset you?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve just decided I don’t need your card anymore.”

“But we’d hate to lose you.”

“I’m sure you’ll get over it.”

I phoned the telephone service of my bank in Boston to transfer the necessary funds to clear what remained on these accounts, then cut the cards in half. I did keep one piece of plastic: the debit card for my checking account, which, at close of business today, had a balance of $23,863.84. Enough to keep me going for a while—especially as my salary from New England State was still being paid into it monthly.

New England State. That was, so to speak, my next port of call. Opening my laptop, I found the wireless connection for the hotel and went online. I hadn’t opened my inbox since running away from Boston over five weeks ago. There were 338 messages. I deleted them all without reading a single one, even though I noticed many from Christy and from colleagues and even from old classmates, someone evidently having supplied my email address to everyone in the wake of . . .

But I couldn’t bear reading words of condolence now, any more than I could deal with my best friend and her tough-love stance about getting me installed at her house. I counted eighteen emails from her. Click, click, click . . . and they were consigned to oblivion.

After also emptying the Recently Deleted folder of my server, I wrote Professor Sanders an email. It was short and to the point: in the wake of recent events in my life, I felt I had no choice but to resign my position at the university, effective immediately. And I thanked him for the support he showed me after . . .

Fifteen minutes after sending this, a reply came bouncing back to me.

Dear Jane

I’m online right now—hence the immediate response to your email. Everyone here has been naturally worried about you and was very relieved to hear that your automobile accident, though horrendous, didn’t prove life-threatening or crippling. As to your letter of resignation, the university is very much committed to keeping you on staff. Your post is currently being covered by a graduate student, Tim Burroughs, who is talented, but is not you. The president himself wants you to know that you are a valued member of our department—and has assured me you will remain on full pay until, hopefully, you return for the fall semester. That “hope” is shared by all your colleagues in the department—especially by me.

Given what you’ve been through I can fully understand why you might want to sever ties with everything to do with the recent past. But do know this: for all the complexities of your time at New England State—and I do appreciate that it often hasn’t been easy for you—you are much respected here and enormously liked by your students. In short, we don’t want to lose you.

I don’t know if you read the letter I wrote to you after the accident. When my sister lost her nine-year-old son to cancer some years ago she couldn’t bear to read a single letter of condolence. But I want to re-emphasize what I said in that note: a tragedy like the one you have suffered is so awful that you must give yourself the necessary time to somehow find a way forward. So—for the time being—I will not accept your letter of resignation. We have three or four months in hand before having to act on filling your position, should you not change your mind. But I sincerely hope that you will return to us in the autumn.

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss any of this—or simply feel like talking—please call me at any time.

Sincerely

Without pausing to reconsider I clicked the Reply button at the end of this email and wrote:

Dear Professor Sanders

I greatly appreciate your kind words and your support. However, my decision is final. I will not be returning to New England State in the autumn as I am resigning my post with immediate effect. There is no need to continue to pay me for this term.

Sincerely yours

Around a minute after sending this, there was an instant reply from Sanders. I deleted it before it could be opened. Then I sent an email to Mr. Alkan.

I presume the insurance payment has been handed over to the nominated charity. I presume the contents of the apartment have been given away and that the apartment itself is on the market. There will possibly be an insurance payout for my totaled car. Please also give this sum away. I don’t want it.

In closing, this will be my last email to you. I am now vanishing from view. As you have power of attorney over my assets I leave you to administer their disbursement and deduct any fees that you incur in doing so.

I thank you for all the good counsel and kindness you have afforded me.

Over the next few hours I also canceled all health insurance premiums, all pension plans, all monthly saving schemes. Then I spent over two hours stripping the hard drive of my laptop computer of every file, email, and software program. Before doing so I also canceled my email account with AOL. I wouldn’t be using email again for a very long time.

By the time I had completed all these tasks it was midnight. I took a long bath. I climbed into the stiff, rough Holiday Inn sheets. I popped a Mirtazapine and turned on the television and watched crap until the pill did its work and I faded into nocturnal limbo.

I slept straight through until nine the next morning and woke with a curious sense of disengagement. The dreaded instant still arrived when sleep gave way to consciousness and the world rushed in. But today, accompanying that “each dawn I die” moment was a grim resolution to get through the day . . . and to do so with the knowledge that my former life was just that: a part of a now-eradicated past. The laptop had been stripped clean. I had no instruments of credit, no debt, no material possessions, a modest sum of money in the bank, $2,000 in cash, $1,800 in traveler’s checks, no job, no family, no dependents, no obligations. Had I been of a philosophical bent I could have described my current condition as one approaching existential purity—a state of complete individual freedom, devoid of responsibility to anyone bar myself. But I knew better. I was engaged in the act of wiping out the material hard drive of my life—with the bleak cognizance of the fact that I would never erase its emotional content.

Still . . . keep busy, keep busy. So I rang the front desk and asked them if they knew the number for the bus depot in town. They did. I called them up and found that there was a bus that left Mountain Falls tomorrow morning at nine a.m., crossing the frontier into Canada at one p.m. and then continuing nonstop to Calgary, arriving there around four p.m. One-way, forty-seven dollars—payable at the depot in town.

Why Calgary? It was the nearest city that was not in the United States. And if I was in the process of deleting the past, then the act of geographically detaching myself from my country had a certain logic to it. Had I been in Texas, I would have headed south to Mexico. As I had crash-landed myself in the higher reaches of Montana, there was only one place to go from here: up. Calgary was the first metropolis due north of where I now found myself. There was the extra bonus of having a Canadian passport (courtesy of dear old Dad). So Calgary was the obvious destination. I didn’t care what it turned out to be. It was there—and there was where I was heading.

But before I caught that bus over the border there were a few final pieces of business to which I needed to attend. So I showered and changed into clean clothes and found a housekeeper doing the room next to mine and asked her for a large plastic bag. Then I went back to my room and opened my suitcase and dumped every item of clothing I owned into the bag. I also added the three pairs of shoes I’d thrown in and the extra coat that I’d grabbed as I fled my Somerville apartment.

If you’re going to purge the past, everything connected with it must go.

Then I called a cab. When it arrived I told the driver to take me downtown. He looked warily at the large plastic bag I was toting with me.

“Know of a charity shop in town?” I asked. “I want to make a donation.”

He dropped me in front of an American Cancer Society storefront. I paid him off and went inside and handed the bag to the large, cheery woman behind the counter.

“Well, gosh . . . this is most generous of you,” she said.

Being a university town Mountain Falls had plenty of clothing shops. Within two hours I had bought two corduroy skirts, three pairs of jeans, three sweaters, half a dozen T-shirts, a pair of winter boots, a parka, a week’s worth of underwear and socks, a duffel bag with wheels, and a new leather jacket, which was on sale for ninety-five dollars. In all I dropped around seven hundred bucks—but I was now outfitted for the rest of the winter.

The saleswoman who helped me buy the jacket told me that there was a “real fine hairdresser named January” at a salon called Fine Cuts just two streets away. The woman even insisted on phoning January for me and telling her that I was en route to her: “You look after my new friend and be real nice to her.”

Though I was touched by her neighborliness, all the questions she bombarded me with—“New in Mountain Falls?” “What do you do for a living?” “Got a fella?”—re-emphasized all the reasons why I couldn’t inflict a small town on myself. Before I had unpacked my small suitcase, they’d be on to me. Google tells all—and they would know all. Granted, they might be on to me in a big city as well, but at least there I could choose anonymity.

January turned out to be twenty-two or thereabouts. She was short and hyperthin. She snapped gum and had a stud in the left side of her nose and purple painted nails. As I sat down in her chair and she mussed my straight brown hair that fell somewhere south of my shoulders and asked: “So what are we going to do with this?” my reply caused her to smile.

“Cut it all off.”

“You want me to, like, shave your head?”

“Nothing so radical. But I would like it short.”

“Like short and spiky?”

“Like Joan of Arc short.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. Have you ever seen an Audrey Hepburn movie?”

“Who?”

“Pageboy style?”

Working at the next chair was a hairdresser in her midfifties. This was Estelle—who owned the place. She heard our little exchange and nudged January.

“Winona Ryder.”

The penny dropped and January said: “Oh, right, yeah, cool.”

An hour or so later I was most definitely the owner of a new look. January hadn’t gone so extreme as to give me short back and sides, but my hair was now tightly cut around my head, though not to the point of rendering me androgynous.

“Didn’t want to make it too mannish,” January said as she gave me the final blow-dry. “But didn’t want it to be too girlie either. You cool with it?”

I looked at myself in the mirror. The lips were still marked. Ditto the forehead. But January’s handiwork had, indeed, altered my appearance. I had lost the severe New England–professor look. I now seemed . . . well, different.

“You’ve just lost five years—not that you looked that old to begin with.”

My eyes—hooded, ringed with dark circles—said otherwise.

“Mind me asking, but were you in some kind of accident?” January asked as she brushed out my hair, her left hand touching the still-bruised forehead.

“Yes. I had an accident.”

“At least you walked away from it.”

“Sort of.”

“And at least it wasn’t some guy who did that to you.”

After handing over fifty dollars—and giving January another ten dollars for herself (she was genuinely chuffed by such a large tip)—I thanked her and left. There was a bookshop a few doors down from the salon. It had a café, a good selection of magazines, and a very well-stocked literature section. I picked up several long books: Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, Thomas Pynchon’s V (which I had always meant to read), the collected stories of John Cheever, and assorted magazines. Then I found a small diner that did stylish food. I had a plate of pasta and a glass of wine. I was back at the Holiday Inn by three. I read my magazines. Afternoon passed into evening. I listened to a Chicago Symphony concert on the local NPR station. I read one of the Cheever stories, marveling at his ability to find the elegiac amid all that suburban sadness and frustration. The Mirtazapine did its chemical magic. The radio alarm woke me at seven. I showered and changed into a new pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a black turtleneck sweater.

Forward momentum, forward momentum. It was the only solution.

So I balled up the last of my old clothes and put them in the trash can by the desk. I picked up my laptop and went outside. The maid—a Hispanic woman in her mid-thirties—was pushing her housekeeping cart between units.

“Hi there,” I said.

The maid looked up at me with a questioning look on her face.

“You want something?” she asked.

“I was just wondering . . . might you need a computer?”

The questioning look now turned to downright puzzlement as I explained that I wanted to get rid of this laptop and was wondering if she’d like to take it off my hands.

“You want to sell it to me?”

“No, it’s a gift.”

“Something wrong with it?”

“Not at all—and I’ve even stripped the hard disk of all old files, so it will be like a new computer for you.”

“Something bad inside it?”

“Like I said, I just don’t need it anymore.”

“Everyone needs a computer.”

“I agree. However . . .”

I realized some fast thinking was necessary to convince her I wasn’t a crank or dangerous or a combination thereof.

“I’m starting a new job next week and they’re giving me a new computer so I won’t have a use for this one. If you’d like it . . .”

“You trying to stick me with something?”

“Tell you what. Take it off me now. Bring it home. Open it up. Check it out. You’ll see there’s nothing dark or dangerous contained within. But if you still don’t want it, take it to a pawnshop and get some money for it.”

Again she sized me up with suspicious eyes.

“You crazy, lady?”

“I’m just offering you something for nothing.”

“That makes you totally crazy.”

I held out the computer. The maid hesitated, but then reached out and accepted the laptop.

“You do this often?” she asked.

“It’s a first for me. I hope you get some use out of it.”

That was the last vestige of my past. I returned to my room, zipped up my new duffel on wheels, rolled it over to the reception area, and settled my bill for three nights. The receptionist looked at me quizzically.

“You get a haircut or something?”

She called me a cab. Ten minutes later I was at the bus depot. Half an hour after that, I was on a Trailways bus heading toward the border. I read another couple of Cheever stories on the way north, trying not to look out the window. The sight of such wild beauty was too much to bear. It spoke of natural splendor, of the pantheistic belief that God is the universe. But I knew better than to buy into that absurd notion of God being everywhere . . . and, as such, very busy. If the past few weeks had taught me anything, it was that we were all alone in a hostile universe—and that destiny had no logic, no plan, no grand intelligent design.

So I kept my head down and in my book as we traversed the edge of Glacier National Park and then headed into bleak open prairies. I was one of the few non–Native Americans on the bus. I looked up once to see that we had crossed into a First People’s Reservation. Everything here was frozen and empty, the roads narrow and switchbacked, the terrain what I imagined the steppes of Central Asia to be: a bleak, ever-wintry void.

Most of the passengers got off at the town of Jefferson, a dispiriting collection of fast-food joints and a huge jerry-built casino that was undoubtedly owned and operated by the First People’s tribe, but was still a testament to all-American bad taste. There were only four of us left for the drive into Canada. The road to the customs post was even more treacherous than the one we had already negotiated, as the winds suddenly began to gust and the bus was enveloped in thick, blowing snow. The driver was doing his best to manage the hairpin turns, the torturous steep descents, the complete lack of visibility. I put my book down as it began to dawn on me that I might be heading for another accident. But then I raised it again with the thought: So what?

The driver was a total pro and somehow managed to get us out of this slalom course and land us in Canada. The last few hundred yards were a lesson in modern Realpolitik—signs informing all comers that they were about to leave the United States (as if this were akin to falling off the edge of the world), then concrete barricades narrowing the road as you passed by the American customs post and continued right on into Canadian terrain.

The bus pulled up in front of a squat institutional building with a large maple-leaf flag blowing in the wind.

“All off, please,” the driver said.

It was minus something outside, and we had to wait as the lone immigration inspector in the glass booth interviewed each of the four passengers. I was last off the bus and last to be questioned. I handed over my Canadian passport.

“How long have you been out of Canada?” the officer asked me.

Here we go again, I thought.

“I’ve never lived here, but I did visit Nova Scotia a couple of years ago.”

That was the truthful answer, but not the smart one as it led to him bombarding me with questions about how I claimed my Canadian citizenship, why I hadn’t resided in the country before now, why I was returning, blah, blah, blah. Rule number one with officialdom: give them simple answers. Had I said I’d been out of the country for a week he would have waved me through. As it turned out he still waved me through—but only after a pointless third degree that (I sensed) had more to do with his general sense of boredom than his worries that I might be a subversive traveling on false papers.

Once approved for entry I reboarded the bus, fell back into my seat, tried to read, surrendered to sleep, and only woke when we jolted to a halt and the driver announced that we had, indeed, arrived in Calgary.

I opened my eyes—and within half an hour wished that I hadn’t.

Maybe it was the paucity of the light, the gray tire-treaded snow everywhere, or the reinforced concrete that seemed to characterize every corner of the cityscape. But from the moment I first laid eyes on Calgary I loathed it. Loathed it on first sight.

In that initial first half hour when I left the bus depot and got into a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the nearest hotel, I kept telling myself: It will have to get better. This corner of the city—with its faceless tower blocks, its wide nondescript streets, its strip malls, its brutalist style of architecture that seemed to be lifted right out of some Polish communist-era film—all conspired to make me wonder what had possessed me to decide on Calgary as a destination . . . and to simultaneously consider it apt for my current state of affairs. Just when you thought you couldn’t travel further down into the abyss, you landed yourself here.

The driver—a Sikh, wrapped up against the chill—asked me what sort of hotel I was after.

“Something cheap.”

Another bad mistake. He brought me to a place on what seemed to be the edge of the city—an in-town motel of the sort used by working girls and retirees very much down on their luck. A room was just forty five Canadian dollars a night—and it lived up to its price. A dump. Painted breezeblock walls, yellowing linoleum floors, a double bed with a stained bedspread and a mattress that sagged everywhere, a kitchenette with rust stains, a toilet that hadn’t been properly cleaned in . . .

I wanted to leave immediately. But a snowstorm inconveniently began to kick up right after I checked in. I was tired and disoriented and veering into that shaky realm that always hinted that I was heading into the “It’s all unmanageable” zone. So I did what I had taken to doing whenever I felt myself tipping over the edge. I went to bed—this time taking double the dose of Mirtazapine to make certain that consciousness did not arrive for at least twelve hours.

As it turned out I managed eleven, and woke at six in the morning, stuporous and confused. The world rushed in. The grief hit—and, just to augment things, I was in the most joyless of surroundings.

I had checked out by six forty five, stepping out into the snowbound streets, a boreal wind howling down the empty boulevard. According to a street sign I was on 16th Avenue NW—and in a place called Motel Village. There were ugly motels to the north, south, east, and west of me, a 7-Eleven, a Red Lobster, a McDonald’s, and a Tim Hortons doughnut joint. The sky was the color of cold porridge. The cold was so pronounced and severe that the skin on my face felt grated within a minute of leaving the motel. I passed by a newspaper box. Taking off my gloves to dig out a couple of quarters risked frostbite—but I still managed to buy a copy of the Calgary Herald before dashing into the safety of the Tim Hortons.

Inside, the atmosphere was fast-food depressing. Truckers and sanitation workers (judging by the vehicles parked outside) and the urban poor all eating thick clumps of frosted dough, washed down with indifferent coffee. You Ivy League snob. You’re no longer in Cambridge. You’re in a High North shithole.

I ordered two maple-glazed doughnuts and a cappuccino. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t eaten in over sixteen hours, but they all tasted pretty damn good. I opened the newspaper, turned to the property pages, and scanned the Apartments for Rent ads. One of the fundamental problems of coming into a city about which you know absolutely nothing is that street coordinates and neighborhood references make absolutely no sense: Eau Claire: superb 1-bed exec with magnificent Bow River views. Or: Best of 17th SW—stylishly furn 2-bed unit, walk to CBD, $1750. References. Or: Magnolia Heights—sparkling clean home in the friendly neighborhood of Saddle Ridge!

Even though I knew nothing at this point about Calgary I still sensed that any area named Saddle Ridge was probably stuck out in the burbs.

I checked my watch. It was seven thirty. There were a couple of beefy guys at an adjoining table.

“Morning,” I said. “I just arrived in town last night . . .”

“And you ended up here?” one of them said, causing the other two to laugh. “Lady, you’ve got a nose for the wrong side of the tracks.”

“It’s a mistake I won’t make again. But listen, what’s a decent hotel in Calgary?”

“ ‘A decent hotel in Calgary?’ ” the same guy said again, repeating my question with a certain mordancy. “You really think we know stuff like that?”

“Sorry to have troubled you.”

“Hey,” one of his colleagues said to the guy, “show the lady some respect.”

“I wasn’t being disrespectful.”

“The Palliser,” the third man said. “Was in there once when there was a fire in the kitchen.”

“Was that back in 1934?” the first guy asked.

“You got to excuse our friend here,” the third man said. “He thinks he’s a comedian, but no one at the station house ever laughs at his jokes. You want a good hotel, you go to the Palliser. But it’ll cost ya.”

I did a very fast calculation of the money in my jacket pocket—between my cash and my traveler’s checks I had close to $4,000 Canadian. I could afford a few nights in a decent hotel. Check that: I needed to be in reasonable surroundings while I got my bearings.

“Do you know if there’s a phone around here?” I asked him.

“Who you wanna call?”

“A taxi.”

He pulled out a cell phone.

“Consider it done.”

The cab arrived in minutes. It took nearly half an hour to reach the Palliser.

“I didn’t realize I was so far from downtown,” I said to the driver.

“Calgary’s a sprawl.”

Calgary was also a nonstop construction site: condos, bedroom communities, new developments, new strip malls. There were few extant historic buildings . . . bar the Palliser. It was located on 8th Avenue in what appeared to be the downtown. From all my years teaching the literature of America’s Gilded Age, I immediately responded to the Palliser. Its facade was Robber Baron. Its interior was updated faded glitz—an accurate oxymoron (which, in itself, is an oxymoron). It was an old railroad hotel that a century ago catered to the leisure class who had somehow managed to find themselves in this isolated outpost—arriving by the Canadian Pacific from the East, laden down with steamer trunks that were carried by a manservant who probably slept in cramped downstairs quarters while his oil-magnate master and his overfed wife retired to a vast suite on a higher floor.

All right, all right—I was mentally riffing. But it was rare to come across such a relic from the era in which (academically speaking) I had lived for so long. This was a hotel out of a novel by Dreiser or Frank Norris. It was also exactly the sort of place about which my father spoke so often back in the days when he spoke about such things—waxing lyrical about his long-vanished Canadian childhood, when his father once brought his then ten-year-old son on a trans-Canadian trip, during which Granddad was drunk from eleven in the morning onward. I’m certain he once mentioned staying in “some big old pile” in Calgary, how it was right after Christmas and he’d never been colder in his life . . . until, a couple of days later, they ended up in Edmonton.

“You should’ve seen winter back then,” he told me.

You should see winter now, Dad. And you should see where life’s random cruelties have landed me.

“Can I help you?”

It was the woman at the front desk. In her twenties, black-haired with a decided Eastern European accent. How had she landed herself in Calgary?

“I was looking for a room for a couple of nights.”

She explained that they had rooms from $275 to $800 per night. I blanched—and she noticed that.

“It’s a bit beyond my budget,” I said.

“How many nights would you be with us?”

“Maybe four or five. I’m new in town and will be hunting for a place to live.”

“When did you arrive?”

“Just last night.”

“You have a job here?”

I shook my head.

“Family? Friends?”

Again I shook my head.

“Why Calgary?” she asked.

“Random selection.”

“Like evolution,” she said with a smile, then added: “I studied biology back in Poland.”

“And here?”

“I still study biology at the university—and do this to pay my bills.”

“But why Calgary?”

“Random selection.”

She tapped away at her computer terminal for several minutes, then picked up the phone and spoke in a low voice to someone. When she ended the call she was all smiles.

“Things are a bit slow at the hotel this week—so if you are willing to commit to five nights here I can offer you a special employee’s rate of a hundred and fifty per night. It won’t be one of our larger rooms, but it’s still pretty nice.”

“Thank you,” I said, handing over my debit card.

“Jane Howard,” she said, reading my embossed name. “Any thoughts on what you’ll be doing in Calgary?”

“None,” I said.

“That’s a start.”

As described, the room wasn’t big—maybe two hundred square feet. But after the nightmare motel, it was more than adequate. There was a queen-sized bed, a good armchair, a desk, a very clean functioning bathroom. I unpacked my bag, turned on my radio, found the classical music station of the CBC, ran a hot bath, undressed, and sat in it for the better part of an hour, contemplating my next move, trying to grapple with the daily gloom. But “to grapple” is to attempt to come to terms with a set of circumstances. There was no antidote to all this. There was just the matter of trying to get through the day.

So, after my bath, I picked up the phone and called the concierge—and explained that I was moving to Calgary and wanted to rent an apartment, but knew nothing of the city. The concierge was named Gary—a very friendly type, eager to help.

“You in the oil business?” he asked.

“Uh, no . . .” I said, just a little bemused.

“Calgary’s a big oil town—the Dallas of the North—so most of the relocating executives we get staying in the hotel are in petroleum.”

“I’m a teacher.”

“Then I guess you’re not going to be after some big executive pad.”

“My budget’s pretty modest.”

“Any idea where you want to live in town?”

“None.”

“Do you have a car?”

“No.”

“Will you have a car?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And you teach what?”

“Literature.”

“In high school?”

“I was a professor.”

“Right—then you’ll probably want to be near some bookshops and decent cafés and not far from the art cinemas in town.”

“There are art-house cinemas in Calgary?”

“Don’t sound that surprised. There are three—and even a couple of very good theaters and not a bad symphony orchestra.”

Well, this was news.

“Anyway,” he continued, “my advice to you would be to look either in an area called Kensington or somewhere around 17th Avenue SW—and I do know a Realtor who might be able to help you. How fast are you wanting to move?”

“I need a place in a couple of days.”

“OK—I’m on the job . . .”

Within fifteen minutes he called back to say that a Realtor named Helen Ross would be calling momentarily. This she did.

“Understand you’re looking for a rental unit in either Kensington or Mount Royal. What’s your budget?”

“I really couldn’t spend more than seven hundred a month.”

“Furnished or unfurnished?”

“Furnished would be preferable.”

“Then we’re probably talking a studio, if that’s OK with you.”

“That’s fine.”

“Mind me asking what you do?”

I knew this was coming—and had a straightforward answer prepared. I had taught at a university. The contract had ended. I was now looking for work.

“So no gainful employment right now?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not if you can show you have adequate funds to cover the year’s lease.”

Damn. That would mean contacting my bank in Boston—as she would probably need a reference as well. By getting in touch with the bank I’d be informing someone of my whereabouts . . . unless my guy there could be trusted to stay shtum about this. Are bankers like priests?

“I can provide you with anything you need,” I said.

“Very good then. I have a viewing this morning, but say I came by the hotel at three this afternoon?”

I was waiting for her in the lobby when she drove up in a silver Lexus. Helen Ross was in her fifties. Well preserved. Well dressed. Two serious diamond rings on her left hand. A hint of Botox around the eyes. Direct, pleasant, and evidently not wanting to spend too much time on such a small-beer renting, but still determined to be professional and courteous. I could see her looking me over, sizing me up, probably categorizing me as an eternal-student type . . . which wasn’t too off the truth. In a very casual way she asked me about my background. I provided her with just enough to satisfy her curiosity, mentioning my Canadian father, my doctorate from Harvard (that made her glance at me with care—gauging whether I was being straight with her or was some fantasist) and how I was now “between jobs” and had decided on “a change of life, a change of scene.”

“Divorced?” she asked.

“We weren’t officially married, but . . .”

She nodded grimly.

“My husband left me last year—after twenty-three years together. I got the big house and the Lexus and a lot of grief that doesn’t seem to want to go away. You know about that too?”

“I know about grief.”

Helen Ross took that in—and correctly sensed from my tone that I didn’t want to pursue this subject. Instead, she changed course, telling me that Calgary was now booming. House prices had doubled in the last eighteen months. Biggest growth of any Canadian city. Some of the best restaurants in the country. Cool arts scene, the city having finally gotten wise to the idea that fostering a “creative community” was a boon to business. And, of course, with the Rockies just forty minutes away by car . . .

It was like being with a one-person chamber of commerce. But I liked Helen Ross—and her forthrightness with me about her postdivorce emotional injuries immediately made me realize that I was wrong to judge her simply on the material evidence of her well-upholstered life. She bled like the rest of us and she wanted me to know that as well . . . which, coming from a complete stranger, had an honest poignancy.

“Now I have only three places I can show you—and the first is the best.”

It was located in an area called Mount Royal, right off 17th Avenue SW.

“This is one of the trendiest parts of town.”

At one end of 17th Avenue SW were some ugly apartment blocks (they seemed to be a Calgary specialty) and a 7-Eleven. As the avenue progressed I did note some cafés, some boutiques, a collection of renovated brick buildings, a few bookshops, and quite a number of restaurants. All right, it wasn’t Harvard Square. But after my initial shell-shocked impressions of Calgary . . . well, this wasn’t bad at all.

We turned into a side street and pulled up in front of one of the few old buildings in the area. By old I’m talking 1930s—and judging by its institutional girth, it had started life as an educational establishment.

“This was an old schoolhouse,” Helen Ross said, “but is now a very nice apartment building.”

The “unit” that Helen had earmarked for me was located on the second floor, right in the back of the building. (“But it still gets great morning sunlight.”) As promised it was a studio—maybe 250 square feet at most—but nicely renovated. Plain off-white walls. Stained hardwood floors. A modern alcove kitchen with all the basic equipment. A modern neutral bathroom. A sofa in gray fabric. A matching armchair with an ottoman. A floor-to-ceiling set of doors that opened to reveal a queen-sized Murphy bed with a reasonably hard mattress. A Paris-style café table and two mahogany bentwood chairs.

“There’s one very decent walk-in closet. There’s a communal laundry in the basement. There’s room for a desk on that wall over there by the window. It’s wired for cable and broadband . . .”

“I don’t watch television and I don’t have a computer anymore,” I was going to tell her, but decided not to sound like a Luddite crank.

“And if you’re willing to sign a two-year lease I can get the price down by a hundred a month to six twenty-five.”

“Sold,” I said.

But I still needed to provide references. So the following morning, I called Laurence Phillips, the manager at the local branch of Fleet Bank in Somerville, where I deposited my money. We’d had few dealings with each other—and though he took my call immediately, he seemed genuinely surprised to hear from me.

“I was aware of the fact that you had left the Boston area . . . just as I had also heard about your dreadful loss. I am so sorry. I don’t know if you received our letter of condolence . . .”

“I couldn’t read any of them.”

“Of course you couldn’t. How can I help?”

“Are you good at keeping a secret, Mr. Phillips?”

“As long as it doesn’t entail anything illegal.”

“It’s nothing illegal. It just has to do with my whereabouts.”

Then I explained about how I had landed in Calgary, leaving out the failed suicide attempt. . . .

“I simply need you to fax the Realtor my bank statement and a letter from you stating that I’m a client in good standing etc. . . .”

“I’m happy to do that.”

“I also need you to promise me that you will not mention my new location to anybody.”

“You have my word.”

Later that afternoon Helen Ross phoned me at the hotel to inform me she had received the necessary bona fides from Laurence Phillips and the lease would be ready to sign tomorrow. I would have to provide one month’s rent in advance and an additional one month’s deposit.

“No problem,” I said.

We met at the apartment the next day. I signed the lease. I handed over $1,250 in cash. I went shopping. At Helen’s suggestion I also rented a car for a couple of days—she had a friend at the downtown branch of Alamo who gave me a subcompact for three days for $100, all taxes and insurances included (I was conscious of every dollar I spent). She also pointed me in the direction of a mall called Chinook just fifteen minutes from my house, where she told me I could buy everything I needed.

Before we parted she put a hand on my shoulder and said: “We naturally had to run basic background checks on you. And I did use a search engine to find out about your academic career. That’s when I also read about your tragedy.”

I suddenly stiffened . . . and wanted to be anywhere but here.

“I’m so sorry,” she continued. “I don’t know how—”

“Stop, please,” I said.

She withdrew her hand.

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to seem like I was prying.”

“You weren’t prying. It’s just . . .”

So this is how the world now worked. You met someone, you discovered they might have a credential or two, you googled them, and you found out . . .

But this knowledge simply made me resolve to limit all human contacts to an absolute minimum. I just couldn’t bear any form of decency or kindness right now. People always asked questions about you. Even though they were usually well-meaning questions they were still questions. And questions led to answers. And answers led to . . .

So I would withdraw completely.

But before that, I needed to buy some essential items for my new 250-square-foot world.

The Chinook Mall was like all other malls—all those brand names and designer emporiums tempting you to purchase all sorts of things you didn’t need. Still, I did find a household goods place where I bought two sets of dark gray sheets, two pillows, a duvet and two gray covers, bathroom towels, a coffee maker, basic pots and pans, a set of white plates, cutlery, glassware. All in, I dropped just under $1,000—but for that money the apartment was completely set up, bar a small stereo, which cost me an additional $200.

I returned home. I unpacked everything. I plugged in the stereo. I found CBC Radio 2—the classical service. I sat down in the armchair. Out of nowhere, it all hit me again, and I found that I simply couldn’t stop weeping until I was so wrung out there was no choice but to stagger into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face and grab my coat and car keys and . . .

Drive.

As I had the car for another two and a half days I decided to take advantage of it and . . . drive.

So I spent the time exploring as many parts of Calgary as possible. And what did I discover . . . ?

That cab driver I met on my first morning in Calgary was right—the city was a sprawl. Like all sprawls—especially those set on prairies—it often had the feeling of being jerry-built, thrown up in a hurry, half thought out. There was no sense of a past, a heritage, a coherent urban identity. In a used bookshop on 17th Avenue SW I came across some 1920s photographs of Calgary, all of which showed a bustling North American cityscape of the type that mixed frontier architecture with certain turn-of-the-century Chicago flourishes. Bar the occasional remnant in the downtown core, it had all been detonated away, replaced by towers of glass and steel. There were some interesting neighborhoods. Kensington—which fronted the Bow River—had an excellent bookshop, an old-style picture house that showed art films, a couple of terrific coffee places, and a general Cambridge-style atmosphere. There was also a nearby area called Mission with similar trendy shops and restaurants, and Inglewood, a warehouse district just beyond the “downtown core” (as Calgarians seemed to always call it) with a burgeoning attempt at what design magazines call “a loft scene.”

Then there were the millionaire-oilmen houses in Mount Royal, the expensive bachelor pads around Eau Claire, and the endless burbs—track after track of the same ranch-style house or bungalow, stretching into near-infinity on the prairie. All these subdivisions and estates had fanciful names: Killarney, Sweetwater, Sunridge, Westhills. All were grouped around shopping centers and strip malls. All had the sort of uniformity one associates with military housing. All represented so much of the prosaic and the stifling in modern life. As I toured their byways, the sight of a mother loading up her daughter into the family SUV would detonate a sorrow that still seemed limitless. This was accompanied by the knowledge that, no matter where I turned, I would always see children. They would be in shops, in malls, being pushed in strollers, getting off school buses, being guided through museums, walking home with parents after school. It wasn’t just the three-year-olds who cut me to the quick. From this time onward, every child at every stage of life—right up through adolescence and beyond—would remind me of all those stages we would have gone through together . . . what could have been, what now never would be.

So I decided to steer clear of these suburban enclaves because they had a higher density of children than the area around my neighborhood. I did a little more shopping for the apartment—a desk lamp, a floor lamp, a rug for the floor—and then returned the car, vowing not to venture outside the central core of the city again.

Once I had the apartment set up, a routine developed. I would wake most days around noon. Then I would walk down to 17th and 9th—and my morning haunt, Caffè Beano. It was a 1950s retro coffee joint. They knew how to make excellent espresso. They served proper bagels and muffins. They sold that morning’s edition of the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. They left you alone . . . though, after I had shown up every morning for a while, the barista on duty asked me my name.

“Nice to meet you, Jane,” he said. “I’m Stu.”

“Nice to meet you, Stu.”

End of conversation.

I would spend over an hour and a half in Caffè Beano, then I would haunt the two or three used bookshops on 17th. Here too the staff got to know me, especially at Prism Books, where I scored a complete hardcover edition of Remembrance of Things Past and a 1902 English edition of the complete Dickens. I could have kept buying more, except that my small apartment would only take so many books and I was very conscious about curbing my expenditure.

Jan was the girl behind the counter at the bookshop. She was somewhat punky—her hair had been dyed the color of cotton candy—and she told me she’d already had a couple of “out there” stories published in small magazines. She also tried to engage me in a dialogue.

“You’re in here every afternoon,” she said.

“I’m a person of routine.”

“And a good customer. You wouldn’t happen to be a writer?”

“Just a reader.”

“You mind me asking you your name?”

We introduced ourselves.

“Well, if you’re not a writer—and you’re in here every day—what do you do?”

“I’m just taking a little time out from everything right now,” I said.

“And you chose Calgary to do that?”

“I kind of fell into the place.”

“Tell me about it. I was raised in Regina—a dump—and came here to the U. of C., and kind of never left. And, like, half of me thinks that the city is an ugly shithole—but one with these little pockets of cool which just about counterbalance the fact that the place looks like the set of one of those Kieslowski movies located in some Warsaw housing estate. You ever see The Decalogue?”

“Yes, I know all ten fun-filled episodes.”

“Well, there are a bunch of us who get together every Thursday night in a room above here—and we show a couple of interesting movies and drink a bit too much and pretend we’re in Paris or Prague or Berlin. If you were interested . . .”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. My tone hinted that I wasn’t in a sociable place right now.

Jan seemed to understand as she said: “Anyway, if you’re ever up for hanging out with some like-minded souls, consider this an open invitation. We all think of ourselves as being in internal exile here.”

But I didn’t take Jan up on her offer. Because that would have meant actually talking with other people. Which, in turn, would lead to questions. And the questions would lead to . . .

Still, Jan seemed to grasp that I needed to play the solipsistic card right now, as she never pushed me for any further details about myself. I would drop in, browse, occasionally make a big purchase, and otherwise would pick up a book or two a week—and our talk would be limited to literature, something in the news, a new movie that just opened at the Uptown or the Globe or the Plaza: the three decent cinemas in town.

I had this sort of genial but distant relationship with every shopkeeper I got to know in my area. The guy at International News (where I could buy the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books), the woman at Reid’s stationers, where I purchased ink and notebooks, the guy in the wine and cheese place on 11th Avenue, where I dropped by twice a week to stock up on drink and comfort food . . . they all knew my name. They all exchanged pleasantries with me. They never tried to engage with me—because the signal I sent out to the world was: Please don’t come too close. This may have been a small city, but it was still a city. As such, if you chose a certain form of anonymity, people would accept it. Because that was the urban code . . . even in Calgary.

Time. I suddenly had a great deal of it on my hands. With no employment, no ties, no responsibilities, no clear need to do anything other than get through the day, I found myself still looking for ways to keep busy. The café. The bookshop. Home to read for three hours. A longish walk, during which I’d also buy groceries. Home again to do ninety minutes’ worth of French (I bought grammar books and some basic texts, determined to finally crack the language . . . but also knowing that it filled a gap during the day). Then I would force myself out most nights—to a movie, a concert, a talk at a bookshop, anything that could divert me.

Time. Time. Time. By the end of April the temperature was gradually heading north. I bought a secondhand bicycle with a decent set of baskets large enough to fit in several days’ worth of groceries. It also brought me around town. With the exception of events at the University of Calgary, the bike would get me pretty much everywhere I wanted to go: to the cinemas, to a coffee place in Kensington that roasted its own beans, to the biweekly literary readings at the McNally bookshop on 8th, to the occasional classical concert at the Jack Singer Hall . . .

Had I wanted to, I could have rented a car and headed out of town in the direction of Banff and the Rockies. But I knew I still couldn’t bear the idea of looking at anything scenic, dramatic, momentous. Best to stick to Calgary’s concrete mundanity. Its habitable bleakness perfectly reflected the inside of my head.

Time. Time. Time. I broke down and bought a small television and a DVD player. Though I never signed up for the cable television service in the building, I did start to make use of a very good film library a few streets away from me. It proved useful on those nights when the pills didn’t do their chemical magic and I jolted awake and had to read or watch something to keep the darkness at bay. I found that, in the middle of the night, I couldn’t handle anything life-affirming or consoling. No Frank Capra movies, no re-viewings of ET. I worked my way through Dickens’s Bleak House, fascinated by the way he could write a social novel that also grappled with melancholia. I watched Carl Theodore Dreyer’s Day of Wrath—about witch burning in seventeenth-century Denmark—and all of Bergman’s island films. When I found myself in the film-rental place reaching for Klimov’s Come and See (about the Nazi massacre of a Belarus village) I actually had a manic fit of the giggles and wondered: Will there ever come a moment when I can get through a night again without a medicinal dose of desolation?

The problem was compounded by the amount of booze I was putting away. I’d get home from a film or a concert. I’d down three glasses of wine and then take my pills. Sleep would hit. Four hours later I would be wide awake again. So I’d open Dickens or pop on Bergman’s The Passion of Anna and down another three glasses of something red—and maybe surrender to sleep sometime just before seven, staying in bed until noon. But after around three months of broken nights I woke up yet again with another hangover and thought: Maybe I do need to take this in hand.

This meant going to a doctor. In turn this also meant finally dealing with officialdom. After four months in Calgary I was finally informing Canada that I was residing in their country. So I went to the pay phone I used outside the Shopper’s Drugstore, called Information, and asked the woman on the line: “How do I register for Social Security?”

“You mean Social Insurance?”

“Is that what they call it?”

“Yes, that’s what they call it,” she said, polite but just a little tetchy. “Here’s the number . . .”

That afternoon I presented myself at a government building. I filled out the requisite forms. I proffered my passport. I was interviewed by a courteous if chilly woman who asked me a lot of questions about why I had only now, at the age of thirty-three, registered for a Social Insurance number.

“I’ve never lived in Canada.”

“And why was that?” she asked, her tone officious.

“Because I was brought up in the United States.”

“So how do you have a Canadian passport?”

“My father was a Canadian.”

“And what made you decide to suddenly move to Canada?”

“Is that relevant to me receiving a Social Insurance number?”

“I have to follow procedures here. I have to ensure that you are legitimately entitled to a SIN.”

“You have my passport. You can, no doubt, check with Ottawa to ensure that it is valid. What else do you need from me?”

“I have asked you a question. I now expect an answer. What made you leave the United States for Canada?”

Without a moment’s hesitation I blurted out: “My three-year-old daughter was knocked down and killed by a car. Happy now?”

My voice was so angry and loud that it silenced the room. All the other clerks, all the waiting citizens, seemed to freeze. In the shocked moment that followed, the clerk’s eyes filled with fear—as if she instinctually knew what was coming next.

I remember something David once told me when a waitress in a restaurant was rude to us for no apparent reason.

“You never know what sort of day she was having before she got here—so don’t think it was about you.”

Behind where the clerks sat at their windows was an office, its door open, a besuited man working behind a desk. He too must have heard what I said, as he was instantly on his feet, hurrying toward us. The woman clerk nervously glanced in his direction. That’s when I realized this was not the first time she had seriously overstepped a boundary . . . though this observation was secondary to the anger I was still feeling after my outburst.

“Mr. Russell,” the clerk said, “if I could just explain—”

“That won’t be necessary—as you can go home now for the rest of the day.”

“But I was only trying to carry out—”

“I heard exactly what you were doing—and you’ve been darn well warned about this before.”

“I just thought—”

“Go home, Mildred. You will hear from us tomorrow.”

Mildred didn’t look like she wanted to move. But realizing she had no other option she quickly got up and left, running off and appearing to burst into tears at the same time. Mr. Russell picked up my file off her desk and glanced at it.

“She should have had the good grace to apologize, Ms. Howard. But as I’m her supervisor I’ll do it for her—and for this department. I’m truly sorry about all that. I’m afraid it’s her style—and she’s been warned before to amend it. Now, if I have my way, she’ll be amending it in Medicine Hat.”

He opened my file and said: “I’ll have your SIN in five minutes.”

Which indeed he did—again apologizing as he handed me my passport and my new Social Insurance card.

“I hope this experience won’t make you think all civil servants here are so graceless,” he said before wishing me goodbye.

Graceless? Passive-aggressive was the true Canadian style—and it didn’t just apply to the bureaucrats. Everyone up here was, by nature, polite. It was part of the social makeup—something that was expected of you. But the politeness was tinged with a testy petulance; civility through gritted teeth. Mildred was a case in point. She never raised her voice once when pressing me for an answer. But, in a fusty, schoolmarmish way, she played the passive-aggressive card firmly: If you want what I can give you, you heed my command. Until my very American outburst sabotaged her strategy.

In the aftermath of it all I was strangely grateful to Mildred. By angering me she had provoked me into doing something I had refused to do, even during all my sessions with Dr. Ireland . . . actually spitting out the appalling but undeniable truth: my daughter is dead.

I articulated this verity a few days later when I showed up at the medical practice to which I had been assigned. My doctor was named Sally Goodchild; a woman in her forties, quiet, straightforward, and, as I discovered, a quick diagnostician. As soon as I came into her consulting room I could see her sizing me up.

“So, Jane,” she said, reading through my health questionnaire, “you’re new to our practice. New to Calgary as well, I see. And you’re having trouble sleeping—even though you’re on thirty mgs of Mirtazapine per day. So, to cut to the chase, how bad is the depression?”

“I just can’t sleep.”

“If you can’t sleep while taking Mirtazapine, you are seriously depressed. And the doctor who first prescribed you the pills, she was in the States, yes?”

I nodded.

“And was there something causal—as we medical types like to call it—which brought about your depression?”

Again I said it.

“My daughter Emily . . .”

I got through the sentence, staring down at my hands. Dr. Goodchild was evidently unsettled by this revelation—and, to her credit, did not try to hide it.

“That’s terrible,” she said. “I’m not surprised the dosage of Mirtazapine isn’t proving effective anymore.”

“I need to sleep, Doctor.”

She asked if I would like to speak to a therapist.

“Been there, done that,” I said. “And it did no damn good.”

“Are you working right now?”

I shook my head. She thought that over for a moment, then said: “All right, I’m going to up your intake of Mirtazapine by a further fifteen mg—and I’m going to also ask you to consider the idea of finding a job. It would give some focus and shape to your day.”

“I don’t want focus and shape.”

“So what do you want, Jane? What would help you here?”

“What would help me here? My daughter. Alive.”

“But that can’t be.”

“And as I can’t kill myself . . . as much as I want to every hour of every day . . .”

“You think yourself a coward because of that?”

“Actually, I do.”

“Whereas I think choosing to live when you realize there is no solution . . . well, it’s almost heroic.”

“No, it’s not heroic at all.”

“Think what you like. You have chosen now to live. But with that choice comes a realization: there is no solution. There is only one antidote to all this—an antidote which won’t drain any or all of the poison away, but which might prove temporarily palliative.”

“And what’s the antidote?”

“Go back to work.”

TWENTY

THERE WERE PLENTY of jobs in Calgary. Every week there was a story in the Herald about the labor shortage—how Boomtown lacked enough workers to serve up fast food and mop offices and even teach their children.

I scanned the employment pages in the newspaper. I nosed around a few job agencies. It was true—there were job openings for teachers. With my qualifications I sensed it would be reasonably easy to land something. But then I’d have to get up in front of a group of kids and talk. That would mean having to be with children. Even if they were precollege adolescents, they’d still be children. And that would be too much to bear.

Then, by accident, I discovered the city’s Central Public Library. I was heading on my bicycle to an afternoon movie at a multiplex located in the Eau Claire marketplace and decided to stop en route in Chinatown for a fast plate of dim sum. This meant taking a different route, turning left down the McLeod Trail (many thoroughfares in Calgary were called trails) and passing an ugly cluster of municipal buildings. I’d cycled this way many times before—but never really took much notice of these administrative edifices, all of which were straight out of the Stalinist School of Architecture. Today I happened to look up and see a sign that said: Central Public Library. I braked and pulled over. The library was all reinforced concrete and prison-style slitted windows. What were the municipal authorities thinking when they approved this monstrosity? Still, I locked up my cycle and went inside. There—on the bulletin board in the lobby—was a notice:

CALGARY CENTRAL PUBLIC LIBRARY SEEKS ASSISTANT LIBRARIANS

They were offering a forty-hour week at twelve dollars per hour. Though they would prefer candidates with “some knowledge of library science,” it was not essential. There were three posts open right now and candidates should submit their résumés to . . .

And they gave the name of a Mrs. Geraldine Woods, Chief Librarian.

I walked into the library and asked if they had a computer room.

“Ground floor, turn left. But it costs two dollars for an hour’s internet access.”

I didn’t want to go online. I just wanted to use a word processor and a printer. Over the course of the next hour I sat and wrote my résumé, along with a cover letter to Mrs. Woods. When I finished and was about to hand it in, the thought struck me: How will she get back in touch with me if I don’t have a telephone? As much as I didn’t want this rather essential instrument of communication I knew that a résumé without a telephone number would raise suspicions—and probably make her wonder if I was living a life like the Unibomber. Best to bow to the inevitable and get a cell phone.

So I printed up the résumé and the letter, leaving a space blank for the phone number. Then I went outside and cycled over to Chinatown and found around eight different shops selling electronic goods. The one I chose was run by a nervy man in his thirties who was chain-smoking and simultaneously shouting down a cell phone that was so petite he had to hold it between his thumb and forefinger. He ignored me for around five minutes—not an easy trick in a shop that was nothing more than an eight-by-eight space. When I finally got fed up with waiting and turned to leave, he immediately ended his call.

“You stay, you stay . . .” he shouted. “I get you nice phone, nice price.”

Half an hour later, having been relieved of $75, I left with a pay-as-you-go phone, topped up with $20 worth of calls. More important, I had my very own number—which I hand-wrote at the bottom of the cover letter. Then I cycled back to the library and handed in my application at the front desk, thinking to myself: She’ll probably look at the résumé and think I’m a crank . . .

The next day, I received a phone call around nine thirty from Mrs. Woods. She sounded pleasant and brisk.

“Any chance you could come by the library today for an interview?”

I showed up, as requested, at three p.m. I dressed soberly: a black corduroy skirt, black tights, sensible shoes, a V-neck sweater beneath which was a white T-shirt. Mrs. Woods, on the other hand, wore a beige pantsuit with a floral blouse. She was large and, like just about every librarian I’d ever met, only semicomfortable with other people. But as she was the head honcho here she obviously had more advanced social skills than her colleagues. (Something else I learned during all my years in academia—the chief librarian in any institution was usually chosen for that role not just because of their experience, but also because she could actually maintain eye contact with someone else.)

“Now, to be honest with you, Ms. Howard, when I read through your résumé I did think to myself: Are we dealing with an imposter here? Because, quite honestly, I’ve never had anyone with your credentials apply for a job with us. Then I did do a little background check . . . and discovered that you do have a doctorate from Harvard, and you really did publish that book on American Naturalism. And you really were a professor at New England State. So, my question to you is an obvious one: Why take a low-paying job with us in Calgary?”

“How far did you research my background, Mrs. Woods?”

“I googled you, of course.”

“Then you must have read about my daughter.”

She met my gaze. “Yes, I did see that.”

“Then you have your answer why I’m here.”

“I have to level with you—I also saw an article online about an assault you committed in the wake of the . . . accident.”

“Did you read the circumstances of the attack?”

“Indeed . . . and part of me sympathized. But another part of me . . .”

“Worried you might be hiring a sociopath?”

“Hardly. I emailed your Professor Sanders at New England State. He wrote back a glowing recommendation—and asked you to get in touch with him.”

This was the double-edged sword of applying for this job: knowing full damn well that I would have to supply references. And knowing this meant revealing to my former colleagues back East where I was right now. In turn this could mean Christy finding out my whereabouts . . . though I gambled that she wouldn’t be in further touch with Sanders and I also had a plan of action to make certain he didn’t give out my new address.

Mrs. Woods continued: “He also explained the events surrounding the incident. And he reassured me that it was a one-off, brought about due to the extraordinary circumstances you were coping with. I am so sorry. I can’t begin to imagine how—”

“I am not in the habit of attacking people,” I said, cutting her off. “But I do like books. And having spent so much of my life in libraries . . .”

Ten minutes later I had the job. $480 per week gross pay, with 27 percent deducted for federal tax and an additional 10 percent to the provincial government of Alberta—which meant I’d be taking home $350 dollars per week. That was fine by me as my monthly outgoings were around $1,300. Though my salary from New England State continued to be paid into my Boston account (Professor Sanders evidently ignoring my directive to stop it), I decided not to touch what cash reserves I had. Instead, I lived on a tight budget—but one that never left me feeling constrained or impoverished. On the contrary it became something of an interesting challenge bringing expenditure down to the essentials; deciding that, in exchange for the hour or so I spent in a café every day, I would forgo eating out a couple of nights a week. More important, the job meant there would now be eight hours a day when I would be preoccupied with something other than the inside of my head. With a little bit of strategizing I was certain I could be a model colleague to everyone else in the library, while also politely slamming the door on any contact outside polite staffroom chat.

And if anyone at the library ever asked me about my past . . .

But nobody at the library did that. On the contrary all my new colleagues were pleasant, but also just a little distant from me. They wanted to make me feel welcome but I could see they were also handling me like a fragile china doll who might easily break. After getting the overall library tour from Mrs. Woods, I was handed over to a sinewy, flinty woman named Babs Milford: the chief cataloger.

“Figured with your background you might want to be doing something a little more cerebral than stacking books, so you’ve been assigned to me. A lot of people find cataloging tedious. I’m not one of them—and I’m gambling on the fact you might find it interesting as well.”

Babs was from the prairies. A small farm near Saskatoon. She had this dry, reedy voice, tobacco cured (at every break she always dashed outside for a smoke), with a somewhat sardonic edge that seemed to define her worldview. She was in her late fifties—widowed, with two grown girls who both lived in Toronto and (from what I could gather) weren’t in close contact with their mother. Information from Babs only rarely seeped out, like the occasional drop of moisture on a concrete plinth. But she still indicated that her marriage had not been a particularly happy one, and her husband’s sudden death from a heart attack six years ago came just when they had decided to separate.

Babs only revealed this fact to me after we’d been working together for four months. Even then it was mentioned in a side-of-the-mouth way, when I was re-cataloging all the John Updike novels we had in the library, and Babs asked me if he was “the guy who always writes about unhappy marriages.” This style of “plain speak” belied a real intelligence and knowledge of books . . . but she maintained what I came to see as a certain Canadian prairie style, in which overt displays of the highbrow had to be undercut with a certain backwoods naivety.

When I confirmed that, yes, Updike often wrote about domestic unhappiness, she smiled a rueful smile and said: “Maybe I should read one of his, find out what went wrong in my own marriage.” That’s when she let drop the fact that she’d been on the verge of divorcing her husband—“on the grounds of his endless grumpiness”—when he happened to keel over on a trail somewhere near Lake Louise while returning from a fishing trip with “another of his taciturn friends.”

That was the only moment I got a glimpse of Babs Milford’s interior life—except for a mention that she hadn’t had a visit from either of her daughters in over two years. Other than that, we simply made small talk when we worked. Babs was quite the political junkie. She taught me massive amounts about Canadian politics. For someone who had lived so long in ultraconservative Alberta—which always fancied itself as the Texas du Nord of Canada—she was surprisingly liberal on all social issues, from women’s rights (especially when it came to abortion), to the legalization of gay marriage, even to the idea that most drugs should be available in state-run liquor stores.

“Of course, I don’t articulate such things publicly,” she said in that mordant tone from which she never varied, “especially because every second person you meet in Alberta is either a Bible-thumper or someone who really does espouse a Marie Antoinette doctrine when it comes to the less fortunate members of our society.”

Babs rarely asked me anything about myself—though she did make a point of ordering my one and only book for the library and showing it to everyone in the staffroom during a coffee break, and even taking it home to read.

“You’ve got one big brain,” she told me a few days later.

“Don’t be so sure of that,” I said.

“You don’t get into Harvard and write a book like that without serious smarts. You ever think you might go back into teaching?”

“Not at the moment.”

She acknowledged this comment with the briefest of nods. That’s when I knew that she knew . . . even though, from the moment I started work at the Central Library, I realized that Mrs. Woods had briefed everyone on “my background” and they had all collectively and individually decided to steer clear of any subject to do with children whenever I was in the room.

There were over fifty employees in the Central Library but I only had ongoing contact with four of them. Besides Babs, there was Dee Montgomery, a woman in her mid-thirties who had pronounced buck teeth and was endlessly enthusiastic about everything and everyone.

Dee was the reference librarian—and when she found out the subject of my book she made a point of taking me to “the crypt” (librarian slang for the room in which all the old bound periodicals and major source books were kept) and showing me a complete collection of Munsey’s Magazines (a key muckraking journal during the early twentieth century), a first edition of Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, and even several signed volumes of Mencken.

“This is your era, isn’t it?” Dee asked me.

“That it is . . . and I didn’t realize how much you had here.”

Actually, this was a lie. On one of my first days working at the library, I started rummaging around their computer files and discovered that they had very substantial research resources when it came to American Naturalism and the Progressive Era. But I stopped myself from getting too interested in their collection. That would mean revisiting the past. And revisiting the past would mean . . .

“If you’re thinking about writing another book,” Dee said, “I sure would like to help you. We can requisition so much from other libraries around Canada. And then there’s an entire database of—”

“My book-writing days are over,” I said.

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You never know. In time, when things are—”

But she cut herself off, saying: “Oh, Lord, listen to me. I just never know when to keep my big trap shut. I mean, I don’t even know you and already I’m saying . . .”

“It’s OK,” I said. “No offense taken.”

“Well, I am truly sorry. I just wanted to help.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

From that moment Dee assiduously steered away from that subject . . . but could never shake off the tendency to put herself down or always point up her inadequacies.

“Dee can’t get through the day without beating herself up,” Ruth Fowler said. “That’s why her husband eventually ran off with her best friend. I think he got fed up with listening to his wife tell him what a screwup she was. Eventually he decided she might be on to something—and sought refuge elsewhere. Poor Dee. She’s ace at what she does and she’s probably the nicest person working here. But talk about self-esteem issues . . .”

Ruth Fowler was the wittiest person working at the Central Public Library. She was tiny—around five feet tall—with round rimless glasses and a predilection for tweed suits. At times I thought she resembled something out of a 1920s English drawing-room comedy—the herringbone-clad favorite aunt of some bounder named Sebastian, and the woman who—throughout the play—dispersed genuine words of wisdom through a veil of sarcasm. She was head of reception, which meant she manned the front desk and—as such—was the public face of the library. She also dealt with all information queries regarding the resources of the library, organizing school visits, open days, public events. She was the ideal person for such a public job. Along with Geraldine Woods she was also the only member of the staff I met who could be described as externally comfortable in her own skin.

In private she had a wicked sense of humor. And when it came to the “thing” that everyone else on the staff danced around she let it be known that she was very much in my corner.

“You probably know that I function as the staff chaplain. You’ve got a personal problem or a peeve against another member of staff, you come to me and I’ll try to sort it out. So I’ll be straight with you. Mrs. Woods briefed everyone on the death of your daughter. The fact is, no one really knows how to deal with it—because it’s so damn awful, and because, people being people, they don’t want to say the wrong thing and upset you. More to the point, we’re all terrified of other people’s tragedies, because they point up the fragility of everything.

“Anyway . . . I just want you to know that Dee came to me horrified about that little exchange she had with you about maybe writing another book.”

“I did tell her I wasn’t upset.”

“Yes, she related that back to me. But Dee being Dee, your exchange gave her the excuse to indulge in a self-criticism that hasn’t abated for seven goddamn days. That’s her problem—and I just wanted you to be aware of a certain awkwardness people have with you. Just as I also want you to understand that if there is any moment in the future when you’re having one of those days . . . or one of those weeks. . . . when you are in a dark wood, when you just can’t cope, whatever, all you have to do is call me and I will arrange compassionate leave for however long you need—”

“That won’t be necessary,” I said, interrupting her.

“Fine, Jane . . .”

“I do appreciate the thought.”

“I’ll say no more about it.”

“Thank you.”

She did say some more about Vernon Byrne—the music librarian and perhaps the most taciturn of any member of the staff.

“I think his problems began with his name,” Ruth said. “I mean, everyone calls him Vern. And who the hell could go through life with a name like Vern Byrne?”

Vern was in his late fifties. He was a thin, reedlike man who always dressed in identical clothes: a dark gray jacket, gray flannels, a tattersall shirt and dark blue knit tie, well-polished heavy cordovan brogues. The tattersall shirts showed occasional variety. One day the pattern would be blue, the next day green.

“I think he has three of everything: the same jacket, pants, shoes, and so on,” Ruth said. “It’s very Vern. He doesn’t care much for externals. But get him talking about music and everything changes.”

Vern sported a military-style haircut—short back and sides with a precisely groomed flat top.

“He must use a serious pomade and the stiffest brush on the market to keep it so perfectly planed,” Ruth said. “I keep wondering if, at home, Vern has a small bird that sits atop his crewcut and keeps the man company. God knows, he could use some sort of companionship.”

That was the other known thing about Vern—the fact that he was an inveterate loner who had always lived by himself in the house he had inherited from his late mother in an inner suburb of the city. He had no known interests outside of classical music.

“He’s so closed off, so closed down,” Ruth said, “that he strikes everyone as seriously weird, seriously damaged; the sort of guy you wouldn’t want to go near young children. But I’ve been working with him for sixteen years—and I must say I’m fond of the man. We all have our weirdnesses. His are just a little more on display than the rest of us.”

Vern’s domain was the collection of compact disks, and music texts—all grouped in a quarter-acre of the library’s third floor. When I was first introduced to him in the staffroom he proffered a dead right hand lacking in any reassuring grip. Then he stared down at the tips of his shiny shoes.

“Nice to meet you,” he mumbled.

A week later I was trying to track down a missing volume from the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and had to venture over to his “lair” (Ruth’s term). As I approached him he was huddled over one of the CD players that allowed browsers to listen to a disk before taking it away for a few days. A large set of headphones covered his ears. He had his eyes closed and he was engaged in a moment of such intense musical concentration that, from a distance, he almost seemed to be experiencing some sort of religious rapture. But when he realized I was standing nearby, watching him enthralled by the music, he jumped up as if I’d caught him in an obscene act and wrestled the headphones off his ears. From the dislodged headset I could hear booming strings followed by a wall of brass—at an exceptionally loud volume.

“Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, “I was just . . .”

“What’s the piece?”

“Bruckner Nine. The scherzo.”

“The one with the heavy use of the double bass and then the länder theme coming in as a counterpoint to all the forward momentum?”

“Uh . . . yes . . . absolutely,” he said, genuinely surprised by what I had just said. “You know your music, do you?”

“A bit. Whose version were you listening to?”

“Günter Wand with the Berlin Philharmonic. It was released before Wand’s death in 2002.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Do you approve of it?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely. He understands the architecture of the symphony which . . . uh . . . is absolutely key to any reading of Bruckner. But he also has this kappellmeister control when it comes to metronomic markings and a refusal to—”

He suddenly cut himself off.

“Is this of any interest to you?” he asked.

“Sure. But I’m hardly in your league when it comes to—”

“So who do you like when it comes to Bruckner?”

“Well . . . I always had the Karajan set. But I sense the interpretations were all a bit like thick-pile carpet—easy on the toes, but lacking a certain edge.”

Vern Byrne smiled a nervous smile.

“That was Karajan all right—everything plush and beautiful, but no sense of the . . . uh . . . metaphysical, I guess. Kind of a pretentious word, I’m sure.”

“Not at all,” I said. “Anyway, with Bruckner, the metaphysical is all-encompassing.”

“A kind of Catholic metaphysic. He was a little too devout for his own good.”

Another shy smile from Vern Byrne.

“So if you were to recommend me a lean, nonupholstered version of Bruckner Nine . . . ?” I asked.

He raised a finger and went over to the top shelf of the “Symphonic” shelves, pinpointed the Bruckner section instantly, ran his finger along the tightly stored CDs, stopped at precisely the disk he wanted, pulled it out, and handed it to me.

“Harnoncourt—also with Berlin. Period-instrument technique but with a modern orchestral sound. As I’m sure you know, Harnoncourt was one of the early pioneers of the ‘authentic performance’ school, and he did really innovative things with baroque and classical repertoire. His Beethoven symphonies were an absolute revelation—and better than John Eliot Gardiner, who has always struck me as a bit up himself. Anyway, give it a listen and let me know what you think.”

I brought the disk home, sat down in my easy chair, and listened to the entire symphony without interruption. I had heard Bruckner 9 before—and even remember a live performance with the Boston Symphony under Ozawa that I attended with David, and which he wrote off as “classic Ozawa: all flash, no depth in the outfield.” (Trust my David to wonderfully integrate a baseballism into a discussion of a Bruckner symphony.) But I had never truly listened to the Ninth before now. And what did I discover in this unadorned but still very dynamic reading by one Nikolaus Harnoncourt? That Bruckner didn’t simply write music, but cathedrals of sound that sucked you into their vortex and made you consider worlds beyond your own. There was an epic struggle going on in this symphony. Unlike Mahler, however, the fight wasn’t between the individual and life’s remorseless march toward mortality. Rather, Bruckner seemed to be aiming at something altogether more incorporeal: the search for the divine amid the whirligig of the quotidian; the notion that there are large, ethereal forces at work in the universe.

Listening to the symphony, how I so wished I could be a believer at that moment. How I wanted to think that Emily was there in some soft-focus afterlife, forever three years old, forever playing with her dolls, humming the songs she so loved, not afraid of being on her own because heaven is a place where fear and loneliness never exist; where even those taken so early from this life are in the most celestial of day-care centers. And since time no longer matters, it’s just a flick of an eye to them before sixty years have passed and the parent who never got over their loss has suddenly succumbed to some horrible cancer, and there is this reunion with their ever-adored, ever-mourned child, and they all live happily ever after under God’s benign hand. But they’re not really living because this is not life, this is heaven: a place where nothing really happens . . .

How can people buy into such pathetic nonsense? How can they try to convince you that such a fatuous construct exists, in the well-meaning but wretched hope that it will somehow ease the agony? You want to find a notion of the celestial—listen to Bruckner or a Bach cantata. Go take a hike on a high-altitude pass (if, that is, you can stand to look at all that beauty). Hop on a plane and walk around Chartres. But don’t . . . don’t . . . try to tell me that the next life is babysitting my beautiful daughter for me while I sit here in torment, knowing that I will never get over it.

I had to drink myself to sleep that night—the first time I had done so since the doctor had upped my dose of Mirtazapine. The next morning I felt fogged in and low. Staring at myself in the mirror was not a pleasant experience. I looked like I’d been on a bender. At work Ruth asked me: “Rough night?” To which I simply nodded, ending all further discussion on the matter. When I returned the disk to Vern I could see he too was disconcerted by my appearance, but said nothing.

“Good recording,” I said, handing it back to him.

“Glad you liked it,” he muttered, staring down at his shoes.

“I’ll come back soon for another recommendation,” I said, then left.

But I didn’t return to his lair for a couple of weeks—because I was fearful about getting sideswiped by Vern’s next musical offering; because Vern sensed a sympathetic ear for his musicological monologues; and because I didn’t want to feel beholden to him to play nice and interested and . . .

God, how hateful I sounded. But the Bruckner had seriously thrown me, opening up a new rich seam of grief. It was like a cancer that constantly metastasized. Every time you thought you could zap it and keep it in one specific locale, shazam, it attacked another part of your psyche. And it was so tricky, so ruthless, that—even if you were distracted away from it for several hours—suddenly there it was again, reasserting itself, letting you know that this sort of torment was ceaseless, terminal.

I certainly couldn’t blame Vern for all that, but, even so, from that moment on I maintained a polite distance from him.

“You know,” Ruth told me one afternoon, “when I found out the truth about Vern Byrne . . . well, I vowed never to make presuppositions about other people—even though that resolution lasted about ten minutes. Vern Byrne. Here I was typecasting him as something out of a Southern Gothic. As it turned out I was so damn wrong. The man was a music teacher back East. His wife ran off with some RCMP guy and hit him with a nasty divorce which wiped him clean. Meanwhile, their only daughter was diagnosed as severely schizophrenic in her early teens and has essentially been in institutions since the late eighties. That’s around the time poor Vern started to drink heavily—and lost his job because of it. Had no choice but to move back in with his widowed mom in Calgary. But you got to give the man credit. When he got back here, he completely sobered up—joined AA and all that—and got himself this job at the library. According to what I hear, he was kind of a quiet man before all this happened to him. Since then he’s become real quiet. And when he got hit with prostate cancer five years ago . . .”

“Good God.”

“You can say that again. But that’s the thing about other people’s lives. You scratch the surface, you discover all this dark stuff. We’ve all got it. Anyway, since the cancer surgery, which was successful, I gather he’s started drinking again, but he seems to have it under control. And he is sitting on a nice piece of equity with his mom’s house. It isn’t much—one of those bungalows they put up here in the early sixties. But ‘isn’t much’ in Calgary still means four to five hundred thousand these days. Anyway, that’s the Vern Byrne story. And now you know why they call me ‘The Stasi’ around here. Because I know everything about everybody. But that’s the thing with a library—you’ve got to do something to make the hours go by. But hey, I may be a gossip, but I’m not a malignant one. I actually like most of my coworkers, even if I do talk about them all the time.”

“You mean, you even like Marlene Tucker?” I asked.

“Nobody likes Marlene Tucker,” she replied.

Marlene Tucker. She was the head of acquisitions—which gave her a certain amount of power in our small world, and which she didn’t mind wielding to everybody’s annoyance.

“The Decider,” Ruth called her, because Marlene was always telling you that she would, “in time,” make “an informed decision” on whether a book you felt had to be in the library’s collection would, in fact, be approved by her.

She was a very average-looking woman in her midforties who favored the sort of floral dresses that went out of fashion after Laura Ashley took that fatal dive down the stairs. She was always superpolite and superformal—a hint of noblesse oblige always leaking out whenever she played “the Decider” card.

“It is a wonderful attribute for the library to have someone with your credentials on the staff,” she told me just after I joined. “And perhaps you could advise me on our new literature additions.”

Some months later—when, on her directive, I ran up thirty hours of overtime compiling a lengthy list of gaps in the library’s fiction collection—she immediately stiffened when she saw the more than four hundred books I felt must be added to our shelves.

“Four hundred books!” she said, the tone suggesting that I had way overstepped my assigned undertaking.

“Well, you did ask . . .” I said.

“Yes, but I certainly didn’t expect you to come up with such an impossibly long list of titles.”

“Four hundred and eleven books is pretty modest.”

“Not if you are trying to work them into a tight annual acquisition budget.”

“Didn’t the provincial government allocate another four hundred thousand dollars to this library for new acquisitions? Isn’t that why you commissioned this list from me?”

“I did think that you would be the best-equipped member of staff to deal with it. But honestly . . . the purchase of a complete first edition of Stephen Leacock. That must cost . . .”

“There’s a rare-book dealer in Victoria who could get us a complete set for around nine thousand.”

“Why would the Calgary Central Library want to spend nine thousand dollars on a first edition of Stephen Leacock?”

“Two reasons. The first is: he’s the Canadian Mark Twain—”

“I know who Stephen Leacock is.”

“And the second reason is: your investment will probably double in five years.”

That caught her unawares.

“How do you know that?”

“I did some research on the internet. I also found out that there are only four complete Stephen Leacocks in the original 1903 first edition on sale in Canada. Three of them are with Toronto dealers, which means they’re charging anywhere from seventeen to twenty-four for the same edition.”

“Why is the one in Victoria so much cheaper?”

“It’s an independent dealer. He operates from a garage next to his house, so the overheads are considerably lower. More to the point, he bought this first edition in an estate sale—and wants to shift it quickly.”

“Have you checked out his bona fides as a dealer?”

“Absolutely,” I said, reaching into my desk and handing her a file. “It’s amazing what you can find on the net. I’ve also asked him for photocopies of the frontispieces of all the books and have even found a retired Leacock scholar who lives in Victoria and—for an agreed fee of two hundred and fifty dollars—is most happy to go over and vet our investment before we pay the nine thousand.”

“Is that his best price?”

“Considering that I got him down from thirteen, yes.”

That also made her tense up.

“How can you be sure that the edition will double in value in the next five years?”

“Read the documents I’ve printed up for you—including one from the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada, which talks about the rarity of this set and how its value is going to exponentially grow in the next decade. You’ll win Brownie points with the board for this purchase, believe me.”

One thing I was learning about Marlene Tucker was that she distrusted the intelligence of other people—unless it could be used to flatter her own image. So when she told me that: “In time I’ll make an informed decision about this”—and I countered that the dealer would only guarantee us this price for the next seven days—she smiled another tight smile and said: “I might just give Mr. Henderson a ring tonight.”

Stockton Henderson was the chairman of the library’s board—a big-deal corporate lawyer in town with a very high opinion of himself. He treated the library as if it were his own personal fiefdom and marched around the place like Charles Foster Kane on an inspection tour. When the Leacocks arrived seven days after my conversation with Marlene Tucker, he came by personally to inspect the merchandise. They were laid out on display in the boardroom—and I was summoned by Mrs. Woods to personally meet the “great man.”

Everyone had told me that Stockton Henderson was a latter-day Babbitt—bumptious, arrogant, and lacking in social niceties. But nothing prepared me or Mrs. Woods or Marlene Tucker for his first comment: “So you’re the Harvard woman with the dead child . . .”

The silence that followed was immense. Stockton Henderson registered it.

“Did I say the wrong thing?” he asked Marlene Tucker.

“Not at all,” I said, deciding to play along. “You’re right on both counts: I do have a doctorate from Harvard and my daughter was knocked down and killed by a car.”

Stockton Henderson didn’t even flinch when I addressed this directly to him. That’s when I realized the bastard hadn’t made the comment in an offhand, unthinking manner; that it was completely calculating and designed to get a rise out of me. The very fact that I answered it coolly impressed him.

After acknowledging my answer with a quick nod of the head, he then said: “I read through both your research into and your report on the purchase of the Leacock. Your Harvard pedigree comes shining through—but also the fact that you have a nose for a good deal; that you are actually looking in a forward direction when it comes to increasing the value of the library’s collection. Wouldn’t you agree with that, Mrs. Woods?”

“No doubt about it. It was first-rate work on Jane’s part.”

“And what would you say, Mrs. Woods, if I were to negotiate with the legislator up in Edmonton about finding a fund of, say, half a million dollars to augment the library’s collection?”

“You mean, in addition to the four hundred thousand that the legislator has already allocated to us?” Marlene Tucker asked.

“I don’t remember asking for your opinion on this, Mrs. Tucker,” Henderson said.

Marlene Tucker stared at the floor, suddenly cowed and sensing what was coming next.

“Mrs. Woods . . . ?” he prompted.

“I believe that the half a million, if properly invested in rare and highly collectible books, could be the beginning of a small but genuine endowment for the library.”

“That’s exactly the answer I was hoping to hear,” he said. “Now I understand you’re a published author, Miss Howard.”

“I just wrote one book, sir.”

“It’s still a book. And we certainly have no one on the staff of the library with your literary credentials, let alone your degrees. So say I was to offer you the job of head of acquisitions—with simultaneous responsibility for creating a rare-books department in the library?”

The pause that followed only lasted around three seconds. Any longer and Henderson would have written me off as weak. If my time in finance had taught me anything it was that men like Stockton Henderson took comfort in decisiveness. It allowed them to believe that people saw the world in the same Manichean, free-of-doubt way they chose to perceive things . . . doubt being a sign of spinelessness in their eyes.

“I’d say yes,” I answered.

“Excellent. Then that’s how it will be. You have no objections to that, Mrs. Woods?”

Geraldine Woods—who always considered Marlene Tucker to be a liability (and someone who was not-so-secretly gunning for her job)—fought hard to suppress a very large grin.

“None whatsoever, sir.”

“That’s settled then.”

“But Mr. Henderson . . .” Marlene Tucker said. “It was agreed between us that I would remain head of acquisitions until—”

“That agreement, Mrs. Tucker, was made on the basis that you would succeed at the job. But what have you achieved to date, except the maintenance of a certain bureaucratic status quo?”

“I don’t think that’s a fair assessment—” she said.

“I’m sure you don’t,” Henderson countered. “But the truth is often unpalatable. Any further questions, Miss Howard?”

“Would you like me to draw up a list of possible ‘investments’ we could make in the rare-book field in advance of your discussion with the powers that be in the legislature? I could completely research how best to allocate the half a million dollars and what the return on this investment could be.”

“Now this is the sort of forward thinking I like. Yes, I would very much appreciate such a document. Might you have it to me within seven days?”

“No problem, sir.”

“Then we’re all on the same page—pun intended!”

And we all laughed at this lame joke.

As soon as Henderson left the room, Marlene Tucker turned to Geraldine Woods and said: “I will not be accepting this decision. I will be contesting it—and if that means having to take legal action or go to the board . . .”

“You are more than welcome to do that, Marlene,” Geraldine Woods said. “But that will mean coming up against our chairman—a man who hates to be contradicted. But if you want to do that, be my guest. I can promise you he will insist you be demoted down to the sorting division, rather than the nice, comfortable job in cataloging . . .”

“Cataloging! I started in cataloging twenty-three years ago.”

“Then there’s something rather elegant about your returning to your professional roots.”

“You haven’t heard the end of this,” Marlene said, then stormed out.

As soon as she had left the room, Geraldine Woods let out a long exhalation.

“Well, bless you for coming into our lives and ridding us of that woman.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“Believe me, I know that. And Stockton Henderson knows that too. You were darn impressive when it came to fielding that snarky comment by our chairman. It’s his style, I’m afraid.”

“You forget, I spent a little time in the business world.”

“Oh, I’m well aware that you are a woman of many parts, Jane. I also know that you will do this job wonderfully. You’ll be on a salary of thirty-eight thousand thanks to this promotion. Once we get that half a million from the legislature, I will want to go public with the job you’re doing, building up our collection.”

“Count me out of that,” I said.

“But it would be incredibly important for us to have you—a published author, a serious academic—be the public face of this new project.”

“Sorry, I can’t . . . won’t . . . do it.”

“Would you, at least, sleep on it for a couple of days?”

“I’m happy to do all the research, all the negotiations, all the buying . . . and to take on the duties of head of acquisitions. Just don’t make me do anything in public. I’m certain you can find someone else to be the front man for all this.”

Stockton Henderson wasn’t too pleased when Mrs. Woods informed him I wouldn’t do any press in my role as the head of acquisitions, until she suggested that Henderson himself announce this “new initiative” and simply say that the library was working with several rare-books experts who were personally advising him on the best investments to be made . . . but that the final decision was made by himself.

Being both pompous and massively self-important, Stockton Henderson relished this idea. Within two months he had convinced the provincial legislature to part with a further $500,000 to start this new collection.

“They’re largely such a bunch of Philistines,” Ruth Fowler noted after the money came through, “that it takes a fellow oaf like Henderson to muscle the extra funding through.”

“I’m not complaining,” I said, knowing that between the two grants I now had close to $1 million to spend on books. And spend I did. On the general-collection side I took on board every recommendation made to me by all the heads of divisions when it came to where their collections were lacking. We had a part-time graduate student from the University of Calgary working in the fiction section—a smart guy named Ron, who seemed to be something of a whiz when it came to identifying our deficits. I commissioned him to see how he could bump up our literature holding—and gave him a budget of $50,000 to work with. He was like a kid in a candy store. Within two weeks he came back with all sorts of ideas—an entire section devoted to the Beats, to Québécois writers (in French and in translation), to forgotten Albertan novelists, to the French nouveau roman.

Mrs. Woods had to defend many of these purchases to a board of directors who—fueled by a nasty-letter campaign by Marlene Tucker (who simply refused to speak to me in the wake of her demotion)—were appalled that we were spending “good taxpayers’ money” on “beatniks” and “Francophones” and “books that nobody will ever read” (exact quotes from the meeting). Shrewdly, Mrs. Woods had contacted several sympathetic journalists in Calgary—from both the Herald and FastForward—both of whom wrote glowing pieces about the vast improvement in the Central Public Library’s collection and how (according to FastForward) it was “a tribute to the Library’s Board of Directors” that they had “approved such an impressive overhaul of the CPL’s collections—and one which, with both its eclecticism and depth, makes it one of the best metropolitan libraries in Canada.”

The board loved this flattery—and Mrs. Woods threatened Marlene Tucker with summary dismissal if she continued her poison-pen campaign. But the person who most adored all the good press was Stockton Henderson. When I scored a rare edition of Dickens’s Dombey and Son in the original parts for a bargain $14,000 from a dealer in London and a numbered Shakespeare and Co. first edition of Joyce’s Ulysses for $58,000, Henderson invited a few journalists over to the library to inspect the goods. He also informed everyone that he himself had tracked these finds down. He basked in the journalistic copy that followed: how this big-deal oilman lawyer was, in private, a rarefied bibliophile.

“Jesus, I nearly gagged when I read that,” Ruth said the next day. “The guy thinks he’s a Medici, when he’s nothing more than a Borgia Pope—of the provincial Canadian variety. ‘Rarefied bibliophile.’ Yeah, and he’s also Pierre Trudeau.”

I smiled a weak smile. Ruth noted it.

“How’re you doing today?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

I could hear the defensiveness in my voice, just as I also realized: She knows.

“You didn’t have to come to work today, Jane.”

“But I wanted to come to work. I needed to come to work.”

“Well, as long as you’re OK.”

Of course I’m not OK. How can I be OK on the first anniversary of my child’s death?

“You know, if you don’t feel like being here,” Ruth continued, “you should just go home. Everyone will understand.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Ruth. No one will ever understand. Nor do I really expect them to. And now if you’ll excuse me I’m going back to work.”

I shut myself in my office for the rest of the day. Ruth was right. I shouldn’t have come in. I had been fretting about this day for weeks. Everyone says that the first anniversary of a bereavement is excruciating—not simply because you realize that a whole year has gone by since your world collapsed, but also because time heals nothing. So I kept the office door closed and I stared into my computer screen and tried to concentrate on tracking down a first edition of The Scarlet Letter. I found a dealer in Cape Town (of all places) who had one copy. But he was demanding an exorbitant $30,000. I tried to gauge whether this was a fair market price, and whether it was worth committing so much of my budget on one volume (I decided against it), while also knowing that all this first-edition detective work was nothing more than a series of diversionary tactics, allowing me to sidestep, for a few minutes at a time, the terrible reality that still, twelve months later, haunted every hour of every day.

Finally it was six p.m., and I could get on my down coat, my hat, my scarf, my gloves—all the layers one needs against a Canadian winter—and abandon ship for the night.

It was a cold night—the mercury in the minus teens, with snow beginning to cascade down. There were two films playing at the Uptown which I wanted to see. It was a twenty-minute walk down 8th Avenue from the library, and I figured I could time it to stop in a wine bar called Escoba a few doors down from the cinema and have a plate of pasta and several glasses of something red and hearty, then duck into the cinema and kill the evening staring at projected shadows in a darkened room. But as soon as I walked out of the library, I did something rather strange. I sat down on the pavement outside its main entrance and just remained there, oblivious to the cold, the snow, the passersby who glanced at me as if I were mad . . . which, perhaps, I was.

A cop came by—a middle-aged man wearing a furry hat with ear flaps, the badge of the Calgary police pinned across its front.

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

I didn’t look up at him, but turned and stared into the gutter.

He crouched down beside me.

“Ma’am, I asked you a question. Are you all right?”

“I’ll never be all right,” I heard myself saying.

“Ma’am, have you had an accident? Are you hurt?”

“I did this last year.”

“Did what, ma’am?”

“The night after my daughter died, I sat down in the street.”

“I’m not following this . . .”

“I went back to where the accident happened and I sat down in the street, and I couldn’t get up again until the police came and . . .”

“Ma’am, I need to know your name, please?”

I turned away. I felt his gloved hand on my shoulder.

“Ma’am, do you have any identification on you?”

I still refused to look at him.

“OK, ma’am. I’m calling for back-up and getting you somewhere safe for the night.”

But as I heard him reach for his walkie-talkie, a man came hurrying over.

“I know her,” he told the officer.

I glanced up and saw Vern Byrne. He crouched down by me.

“Did something happen, Jane?”

“A year ago . . .”

“I know, I know,” he said quietly.

“How do you know this woman?” the cop asked.

“We work together.”

“Is she always like this?”

Vern tapped him on the shoulder. They both stood up and spoke in low voices for a few moments. Then the cop crouched down again beside me and said: “Your colleague has assured me he’s going to get you home. He told me what you said about your daughter is true. And that’s really hard—and I’m sorry for you. But this is my beat—and if I find you again in the street like this I am going to have to get you admitted to the psych wing at Foothills Hospital . . . and, believe me, that would give me no pleasure.”

“This won’t happen again,” Vern said.

“All right,” the cop said, “but you promise you will get her home?”

“You have my word.”

The cop left. Vern helped me to my feet, putting a protective and steadying arm around me.

“Let’s get you home,” he said.

“I’m not going home.”

“You’ve got to go home. You heard what the officer said.”

“I am not going home.”

My body stiffened. I was suddenly determined to be immobile.

“Please, Jane,” he whispered. “If the officer comes back and finds us still here . . .”

“A drink,” I said.

“What?”

“Buy me a drink.”

TWENTY-ONE

VERN HUSTLED ME into the first bar he could find. It was located diagonally across the road from the Central Public Library. The wind was scalpel sharp and the blowing snow made visibility difficult. Vern grasped my left arm with the force of a lifeguard pulling a half-drowned swimmer out of deep water. We all but fell into the bar.

“Jeez,” Vern said under his breath as he looked around. “Kind of fancy.”

The bar was actually a restaurant called Julliard. There were booths. Vern steered me into one. A waitress approached us, all smiles.

“You guys look like you need some antifreeze! So what’s it going to be?”

“What’s your pleasure?” Vern asked me.

I just shrugged.

“You like rye?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Two Crown Royals, straight up, water back,” he told the waitress.

When she was out of earshot he leaned over and asked: “You OK now?”

“Thank you for getting me here.”

The drinks arrived. I picked up the glass and downed the rye in one go. It didn’t burn the way so many whiskeys do when they hit the esophagus. It had a slight sweetness and a hint of honey that was immediately warming. I put the glass down and turned to the waitress who still hadn’t removed our glasses of water from her tray.

“Could I have another, please?”

“No problem,” she said, then added: “You sure as heck must have been cold.”

“Know what I can’t stand about Canada?” I suddenly said to Vern. “All the goddamn politeness—and the way everyone uses namby-pamby language. Heck . . . jeez . . . sugar . . . freaking. Can’t you people swear in this country? Do you all have to be so inanely polite? Know what I think? You all sit on your hands so much you can’t come out swinging. I mean, they broadcast all that politically correct Inuit Throat Singing shit on the CBC . . . and you don’t fucking object. Not ‘freaking’ object. Fucking object. That’s right, fuck. I’m from South of the Border and I say fuck . . .”

This rant was delivered in a very loud voice. It silenced everyone around us. All eyes were upon me. Before I knew what was happening, Vern was throwing some money on the table and hustling me out the door. Again he steered me by the arm as we hit the cold. He said nothing, but the lifeguard grip had become that of a cop making an arrest. We turned left up 8th Avenue.

“There’s always a taxi outside the Palliser,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I’m really . . .”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“I messed up in there. I . . .”

“Stop, please,” he said, the tone more worried than angry.

“All right, all right. Just get me home and . . .”

“I don’t think you should be left alone.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“That’s not my reading of the situation.”

“I can handle things.”

Vern said nothing. He just gripped me tighter and pushed me forward. The wind was now cruel, grating any exposed skin. We made it to the Palliser in five minutes, by which point my fingers had so stiffened that it pained me to bend them. There were three cabs outside the hotel. Vern bundled us into one of them and gave the driver an address on 29th Street NW.

“I live just off 17th Avenue SW,” I said.

“We’re not going there.”

“You hijacking me?” I asked.

Vern said nothing, but leaned over and locked the door beside me.

“Trust me: I’m not going to jump out of a moving vehicle,” I said.

“I did once.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Why?”

He stared down at his hands and spoke slowly.

“My daughter had just been committed. More to the point, I had signed the papers committing her. After that I went on a seven-day bender. It ended with me jumping out of a moving car. I was hospitalized for three weeks. I broke my left leg. I cracked three ribs. I fractured my jaw. They also put me in a psych ward. I ended up losing my job. It was awful—and I’d rather not see you go through something like that.”

“I’ve done the psych ward already.”

He registered that with a quiet nod—and we said nothing until we reached 29th Street NW. The cab pulled up in front of a modest split-level bungalow. Vern paid the driver and got me inside. As we crossed the threshold he hit a light. We were in a hallway—and one that looked like it was last decorated in 1965. There was faded brown floral wallpaper, an old antique coat rack, a side table covered with two lace doilies. (Does anyone still use doilies?) He took my coat and hung it up and told me to make myself at home in the front room.

“You want to stay with rye?” he asked.

“Rye works,” I said.

The front room was decorated with the same wallpaper and had heavy mahogany-toned furniture similar to the coatrack and the table in the hallway. Again lace covered the headrests on the oversized armchair and the sofa. There was a venerable baby grand piano covered with sheet music and a pair of Tiffany lamps on two end tables. But most conspicuous were the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, all heaving with music texts and thousands of CDs. The CDs were all alphabetized, with little dividers noting major composers. There was also a serious stereo system covering two shelves and two large floor-standing speakers.

Vern came in carrying a tray, on which stood two crystal whiskey glasses, a bottle of Crown Royal, an ice bucket, and a small water pitcher. He set the tray down on the coffee table.

“This room is amazing,” I said.

“Always strikes me as rather ordinary.”

“But the CD collection. There must be over a thousand disks here.”

“Around eleven hundred,” he said. “The rest are in the basement.”

“You have more?”

“Yes. A few.”

“Can I see?”

Vern shrugged, then pointed his thumb toward a doorway off the living room. He opened it, flipped a switch, and I followed him down a narrow set of stairs into . . .

What I saw completely threw me. Because there, in this completely finished basement, was shelf after shelf of CDs, again meticulously organized in library style, with a high-end stereo system connected to two massive speakers. One oversized leather armchair faced these speakers. There was also a large trestle table and a high-back swivel chair, strewn across which were papers, books, a laptop computer—and behind which was a shelf on which rested the entire Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. The basement felt like both a serious musicological shrine and something of a command center. If Dr. Strangelove had been a classical music fiend he would have felt most at home in this subterranean cavern.

“Good God,” I said. “It’s extraordinary.”

“Uhm . . . thanks,” Vern said.

“Did you buy all the CDs?”

“Uhm . . . around a quarter of them. The rest . . . well, ever heard of the British magazine Gramophone? Or Stereo Review in the States? I’ve been reviewing for both of them for around fifteen years.”

“And this is where you write your reviews?”

“Yes . . . and also work on . . .”

Again he broke off, not sure if he wanted to share another piece of information with me.

“Go on,” I said.

“I’m writing a textbook.”

“But that’s fantastic. Is it commissioned?”

He nodded.

“Who’s the publisher?”

“McGraw-Hill.”

“The biggest textbook publisher in the States. I presume it’s a music textbook?”

“It’s sort of like the Oxford Dictionary of Music—but aimed at high-school students. Potted histories of major composers from Hildegard of Bingen right up to Philip Glass.”

“How did you land such an amazing gig?”

“I wrote them a long letter, explaining my background, my teaching experience, my degrees, my writings for various magazines—and also included a pretty extensive outline. Never expected to hear anything from them but, out of the blue, I got this call from an editor there named Campbell Hart. Asked me if I would come to New York to meet him. Even offered me a plane ticket and a hotel room for one night if I’d make the trip. Hadn’t been in New York since . . . Jeez, since I was a university student back in the late sixties.”

“Where did you go to university?”

“Toronto—and the Royal College of Music in London. But that was a long time ago.”

Now it was my turn to look at him carefully to see if he was being on the level with me.

“What were you studying at the Royal College?”

“Piano.”

“You were accepted there as a pianist?”

“It’s ancient history.”

“But . . . the Royal College of Music in London. You must have been some pianist.”

“Let’s go back upstairs,” he said.

He started turning off all the lights, then escorted me back into the living room.

“You ready for that rye?” he asked.

“Please.”

“You want water back or some ice?”

“No—I’ll take it neat.”

As he poured out two fingers for me I noticed just the slightest tremble in his hands. He handed me the glass, then slowly measured out a small amount for himself, fussing over its size, making certain it didn’t exceed a specific amount.

“I like your house,” I said.

“I haven’t done much to it.”

“But it’s very solid—and the furniture is so late nineteenth century . . .”

“My mom would have liked to have heard you say that. She picked it all out.”

“What did she do?”

“She was a music teacher in a high school here in Calgary.”

“Was she your piano teacher?” I asked.

He nodded slowly, then followed this with a small sip of his rye.

“She must have been so proud of you when you got into the Royal College of Music.”

He fell silent and downed the rest of the whiskey in one go. Then he stared down into his glass for a very long time.

“Have I said the wrong thing?” I asked.

He shook his head and started fingering his glass while furtively glancing at the bottle of Crown Royal. It was clear he so wanted another drink—but had to limit himself to just one.

Finally: “I had a full music scholarship to the University of Toronto. While there I studied with Andrei Pietowski. Polish émigré. Brilliant and very demanding. He thought I had ‘it,’ that I was going to be the next Glenn Gould. He even had me play for this Austrian pianist named Brendel when he came through Toronto. Brendel was living in London. He had connections at the Royal College. I got a full scholarship there. That was 1972.”

“And then?”

“I arrived in London. I started at the Royal College. And . . .”

Another of his fall-silent moments.

“You want another rye?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I said, holding out my glass. He splashed a few more fingers of whiskey in it. Then, with two distinct globules of sweat rolling down his face, he poured out another finger of rye into his own glass. As soon as he’d done that he stood up and disappeared into the kitchen with the bottle.

When he returned he said to me: “If you want another top-up it’s by the sink. If I start going for it, tell me not to, OK?”

“Sure,” I said.

There was a slight quiver to his lips as he raised the glass. Once he had downed the shot in one go, he shut his eyes tightly, an anxious glow of relief filling his face. He put the glass down.

“In London I had a breakdown,” he said. “It happened around a month after I got there. I’d been assigned by the Royal College to this big-cheese Viennese guy name Zimmermann. Tyrannical, exacting, never kind. I was his star pupil. He told me that two weeks into our ‘collaboration,’ as he called it. He thought I was so good he insisted we ‘immediately try to scale Everest.’ ‘So what if you fall, Canadian,’ he said in this thick Viennese accent. ‘I will be the one with the rope to pull you back up again. So come now, we scale Everest.’ ”

“What did he mean by that?”

“The Hammerklavier sonata by Beethoven. It’s number twenty-nine—and the most taxing. You can’t approach it lightly. It’s fiendish—and perhaps the greatest exploration of the infinite musicalness of the piano that has ever been composed. I went to the library. I got the score. We started to work on it during our three one-hour sessions each week. Zimmermann was—as always—scathing. But that was part of his strategy as a teacher, and I always responded to it. I aimed to please.”

“And he was pleased?”

“By the end of the second week, he told me: ‘You will be playing the Hammerklavier on the concert platform within eighteen months. You will scale Everest.’

“The next day I was working alone on the scherzo in one of the soundproof rooms at the Royal College. Third movement, bars three to eight. Suddenly my fingers froze. They literally stopped dead over the keys. I couldn’t move them, I couldn’t move myself. I don’t know what happened. It was like someone flipped a switch in my brain and rendered me immobile. Another student found me there an hour later, catatonic, unresponsive to anything he said. They called an ambulance. I was admitted to a hospital. I stayed in that unresponsive state for about four weeks. Finally, my mom—who flew over to be with me—agreed to let them try electric-shock treatments to bring me back. The shocks worked. I came back.”

He fingered the whiskey glass again, so wanting another drink.

“But I never played the piano again,” he finally said. “No, that’s a lie. I played the piano all the time. Because once Mom got me repatriated to Canada and I started to function again, I did start teaching piano . . . in Hamilton, Ontario.”

“Why Hamilton?”

“I spent around six months in a psychiatric hospital there when I got back. There was a shrink in residence who specialized in my sort of manic depression, and my consultant in London had once worked with the guy, so it was decided to send me to him. That’s where I met my wife, Jessica. She was a nurse on my ward.”

I really didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. We fell silent for a few moments. Vern kept fingering his empty whiskey glass.

“I’ve talked too much,” he said.

“Not at all.”

“I don’t have much in the way of company, so . . .”

“How did you and Jessica get together?”

“Not tonight. I’ve already bored you with the half story of my life.”

“It’s hardly boring. Anyway, you shouldn’t be apologizing to me, when I’m the one who caused the scene on the street, in the bar, in the cab . . .”

“You had just cause to do that, given that it was a year ago today.”

Now it was my turn to stare down into my whiskey glass.

“You’re well briefed,” I said.

“It’s a small place, the Central Public Library.”

“You saved my ass tonight.”

“There was no choice in the matter.”

“Still . . . you did that. For me. And I’m very grateful.”

“I just know what that first anniversary is like. When I had to commit my daughter, Lois . . . it was April 18th, 1989. And since then . . .”

Silence.

“Her schizophrenia is of a type that never seems to be cured. Even if she wanted to be let out of the institution where she’s lived since then, the state wouldn’t let her. She’s considered a danger to society. And that’s that.”

Again his index finger began to rub incessantly against the whiskey glass.

“What sort of meds do they have you on?” he asked.

“Ever heard of Mirtazapine?”

“It’s been my constant companion for the past five years.”

“That’s a long time on one drug.”

“I sleep because of it. That’s something I didn’t do for years.”

“Oh, it does make you sleep.”

“How many milligrams are you on?”

“Forty-five.”

“I’ve got a spare room top of the stairs to the right. It’s even got its own en suite bathroom.”

“I’d rather go home.”

“And I’d rather you not hurt yourself tonight.”

“I’m OK now.”

“I jumped out of that moving car an hour after I assured a friend I was OK. You wait here until I get the pills, then you go upstairs and sleep. There’s a radio by the bed and some books. But the pills should do their stuff—and when you wake up tomorrow, that anniversary will be behind you.”

“I’ll still feel terrible.”

“That’s right, you will. But at least you won’t be obsessing about the day in question.”

He returned a few moments later with the pills, a glass of water, and some towels. Part of me told myself: This is all too weird. Another part of me wanted to simply bolt out the door and into the night. But there was a small rational voice still operative inside my jangled brain that counseled: Take the drugs and go to sleep. You just don’t know what might happen if left to your own pitch-dark thoughts.

So I accepted all that he offered and went upstairs. The room had the same sepia floral wallpaper and a sleigh-style bed, decorated with dolls. There were several framed portraits of a young girl, taken when she was a baby, a young girl, a teenager. Was this Lois? Were these her dolls? Was I about to sleep in the room of his lost daughter, a room she herself had never slept in, as Vern had only moved here after she was committed . . . ?

Again I wanted to flee. Again I told myself: It’s just one night and—unless I’ve misjudged all this entirely—he’s not the type who’s going to strut in here naked at three a.m. I downed the pills, thinking: That’s decided the matter. I used the bathroom. I climbed into the elderly pink floral sheets. I switched off the light. My watch glowed in the dark. It was only eight p.m. The bedtime of a child. But tonight I was a child sent to bed early in the room of a child who never lay in this bed, and whose presence hovered above me as the pills did their magic and . . .

It was five thirty a.m. That’s what my watch told me. Nine and a half hours of sleep. I couldn’t complain—even if it was disorienting to wake up in this strange bed in this strange house, wondering if the loud rasping sound I could discern nearby was Vern snoring.

I got up and used the bathroom, then dressed and remade the bed with great care. Once downstairs I found a phone in the kitchen and called a taxi company and asked them to send a cab to . . .

I actually remembered the address and told the dispatcher to inform the driver that he shouldn’t ring the doorbell when he pulled up. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was from another era. The fridge must have been thirty years old. There was a linoleum table with photographic placemats depicting “Great Canadian Scenes of Natural Beauty.” There was no dishwasher, no microwave, no fancy espresso machine, and the front-loading toaster was one of those lost-in-time jobs that was made from tin. Vern spent thousands on the most up-to-date stereophonic equipment, but ignored all mod cons elsewhere. We all have our priorities, I suppose.

I scribbled a note on a pad that he had picked up from a local Realtor’s.

I slept so well I was up before the dawn. You were extraordinarily kind and decent to me at a moment in time when I didn’t merit such decency. I hope you will now consider me your friend—as I do you.

See you later today at the House of Mirth.

My best

I got into the cab. It headed up 29th Street, passing the Cancer Center of the Foothills Hospital. Was this where Vern was treated?

The driver must have been reading my thoughts. As we passed it, he said: “Every time I drive by that place and see the words ‘Cancer Center,’ it gives me the willies. ‘There but for the grace’ and all that stuff.”

“Know what you mean.”

Back in my little apartment I took a hot shower and changed my clothes, then went to Caffè Beano for breakfast. When I reached the library at my usual start time of ten Ruth greeted me with a look of concern.

“You had me worried yesterday. I was going to suggest taking you out last night, but you were gone by the time I came looking for you.”

“I just went home.”

“You shouldn’t have been alone last night.”

I said nothing.

Later that day, Babs came up to me in the staffroom and also asked how I was doing.

“Just fine,” I said quietly.

“Well, if you ever feel in any way like you want a shoulder to cry on—”

“Thanks,” I said, then quickly changed the subject. People want to be kind. People don’t know what to say. In turn, you don’t know what to say to them. What can you say? What can be said? Just the usual bereavement banalities—and the acknowledgment that it’s all still so awful. After that . . .

There was no solution. There was just work—and I threw myself into it. I chased down a Bodley Head edition of the complete Graham Greene for a bargain $2,300. I asked Marlene—now functioning as head of children’s books (and endlessly grumpy)—if she would like to spend $20,000 on updating her collection.

“Will I have carte blanche to do what I want with it?”

“Did you ever give anyone else carte blanche when you were in charge of acquisitions?”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“And you’re evading mine. But I’ll cut to the chase. Yes, you can have virtual carte blanche—insofar as you can draw up your dream list of how you plan to spend the twenty thousand. Unless I seriously object to anything on the list, you can go ahead and order all that’s there. Fair enough?”

“What exactly would you ‘object’ to?”

I sighed a long sigh—and stopped myself from saying something genuinely angry, like: Why do you have to be so goddamn contrary? Why is everything a problem in the making for you? And I could have added to this the thought: Why is every workplace a minefield of petty politics and smoldering resentments? It’s as if people need to turn their own insecurities and boredom into something malignant and displacing. Internal politics are all bound up in the ennui of the quotidian—and the terrible realization that there is only a finite amount of interest to be found in what you do from nine to five every day; that, like it or not, it’s meaningless. So why not turn the banal into the melodramatic by finding people to dislike, by sniping at your coworkers, or by getting paranoid about what they might be saying about you . . .

Vern had the right idea. He came to work and rendered himself invisible. He did his job. He did it well. He remained cordial but distant from his fellow workers. He went home—and immersed himself in the music writing that, I sensed, gave his life the passion it otherwise lacked . . . or that he no longer wanted.

Vern. After that night at his house, he simply greeted me with a courteous nod in the hallway or a fast “Hello, Jane” the few times I saw him in the staffroom. He seemed to be avoiding me, as if he had said too much about himself that evening, revealing more than he wanted to. Though it struck me that all that stuff about his secret writing life should be known and celebrated, I also understood why he kept it to himself. In a small world like our little library, everything can be taken down and used against you—especially if you show initiative above and beyond our own prosaic horizons.

“And he really thinks himself a music critic? . . . Who in their right mind would commission a textbook from him?”

No wonder Vern lived in a sort of internal exile. When life has so conspired against you—and you find a little something that re-establishes your sense of wonder—you have to guard it fiercely. Because malignancy is all around you, and kindness is not as commonplace as we so want to believe.

Vern. A week went by—and still nothing more than a monosyllabic greeting. Fair enough. A second week went by—and I had a request from him, via email, about purchasing the Complete Mozart, a one-hundred-and-fifty-disk set on Philips. He wrote:

If I had my way, I’d buy each work individually—but that would be bad waste of public funds. The set is on special offer for $400. It strikes me as great value—and an essential addition to our collection. They’re all very credible readings of the Mozart oeuvre.

I hope you will approve this.

Vernon.

I wrote back:

Approved. Aren’t there also complete Bach and Beethoven and Schubert sets? At the price you mentioned it strikes me as a steal. Please investigate and get back to me.

You well, by the way?

He wrote back:

The Bach and Beethoven and Schubert are also $400 each and, as such, excellent value. The Beethoven and Schubert piano sonatas, for example, are performed by Brendel, Kovacevich, Lupu and Uchida . . . the major league of contemporary pianists, so to speak. So yes, these would be ideal recordings for us.

PS. I have two seats for the Angela Hewitt concert next Thursday night. Might you be free?

My God, Vernon Byrne was inviting me out. I didn’t know how to take this, except to think that Angela Hewitt was the greatest Canadian pianist since Glenn Gould. And she was going to be here in Calgary and Vern had an extra seat, so . . . why the hell not?

I wrote back:

The Bach and Beethoven and Schubert Collected Works are approved for purchase. And yes, I’d be delighted to go to the Hewitt concert with you. But let me buy dinner.

He wrote back:

No, I’m buying dinner. I’ve reserved Teatro at six p.m. on the night. See you then.

I must have bumped into Vern half a dozen times between his invitation and the dinner itself. Every time I saw him he tensed and simply nodded hello. I felt like telling him: It’s just a dinner and a concert. Stop acting like we’re having an affair and I’m married to a trigger-happy, alcoholic, wildly jealous Marine . . .

“You know, I believe that Vern is intimidated by you,” Ruth said to me on the day before the concert.

“What makes you think that?” I asked.

“The way he averts his eyes every time you come into his field of vision.”

“Maybe he has better things to be looking at.”

“Maybe he has a crush on you.”

“Maybe you should stop acting like we’re all still in high school. He’s a shy man, end of story.”

He was a very nervous man, fingering an already-poured shot of whiskey as I entered Teatro. It was one of Calgary’s big-deal restaurants—located only a block from the library and opposite the Jack Singer Concert Hall, where Ms. Hewitt was to play tonight. I’d passed by it a few times and never looked inside or glanced at its menu—big-deal restaurants not being something that was ever part of my life, even in those brief Freedom Mutual days when I was making stupid money. But I had dressed nicely for the evening out—a longish black skirt and a black turtleneck and black boots. The fact that I had come to work in these clothes made Babs and Ruth immediately quiz me if I had a “heavy date” that night.

I just smiled and said nothing. But as the restaurant’s maître d’ escorted me down past the very swish Manhattan-style bar and into a dining room that looked like a design-magazine spread, all I could think was that my “date” tonight could easily pass for my father. Vern was dressed in the same tweed jacket, tattersall shirt, and knit tie he wore every day, and was nursing a small measure of whiskey.

“I bet that’s Crown Royal,” I said as he stood up to greet me. He shook my hand shyly, then held my chair for me as I sat down.

“You want one yourself?”

“I was thinking about a gin martini.”

“I used to specialize in gin martinis. What kind of gin?”

“I’m not that picky.”

“Bombay’s the best.”

He lifted a finger and a waiter showed up.

“Straight up, with olives?” Vern asked me. I nodded. He ordered the martini.

“You’re not having another?” I asked, knowing that I was venturing into tricky territory.

“I can’t. Two drinks a night is my limit. Granted, sometimes I exceed that. But when I do . . .”

He opened his hands flatward, like someone trying to ward off a deluge.

“Were you in AA and all that?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Four years of AA. My sponsor still calls me regularly to see how I’m bearing up. He doesn’t like the idea that I drink at all. They’re all a bit doctrinaire and Jansenist, the AA. But as I had basically lost my career to the booze—and was also on the road to cirrhosis—I decided I could put up with all their Higher Power stuff. But Charlie—that’s my sponsor—worries I’m going to backslide if I keep having the two every night.”

“Abstinence is an overrated virtue.”

“My thinking exactly—but only if you don’t exceed the limits you’ve set for yourself. So . . . two drinks are better than no drinks. But three drinks . . .”

“You said you were teaching music back East. When did that start?”

“Around a year after I was finally allowed out of the hospital. But you don’t want to hear about my little life . . .”

“Actually I do.”

“Because it’s so messy?”

“Whose life isn’t?”

“True.”

“I’m just interested . . .”

“Let’s order first.”

He pointed to the menus that had been placed beside us. I opened mine and was shocked to discover that a main course cost anywhere between twenty-eight and forty-two dollars.

“We have to split this,” I said. “It’s far too expensive.”

“I just got a check in from the Gramophone yesterday. It will cover the entire evening—especially as the pound is still two-to-one to the Canadian dollar.”

“But I’m sure you could use that money for something more important than—”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

My martini arrived. We ordered. I took a sip and shivered pleasantly as the superchilled gin numbed the back of my throat. Opposite me, Vern started fingering his whiskey glass, clearly debating whether to order another one now or wait until the food arrived.

“Your wife . . . Jessica, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“You have a good memory. Yeah, she was the ward sister in the hospital where I was . . . placed.”

Over the next hour and a half, I heard the second part of the Vernon Byrne story. As he talked, the narrative details took shape. The breakdown in London brought about by manic depression—but which was diagnosed wrongly as “causal” rather than chemical. The three years of incarceration in a series of bleak Canadian hospitals. The electric shocks and mind-numbing cocktails of Librium that neutralized him, but also killed any ambition to ever reattempt a concert career. The bland music-teacher job in a bland second-tier city. The nurse who wanted to mother him—and became a shrewish wife. The daughter he adored—but who, from an early age, was also showing signs of instability. The drinking that he and his wife engaged in—and the ferocious drunken fights that became a staple of their marriage. His wife finally running off with a local cop and never seeing their daughter again. Vern being determined to steer Lois out of the schizophrenia that had begun to claim her when she was eleven years old. The way this “dementia praecox” (he used the actual clinical name) led Lois into attacking a teacher with a pair of scissors and then cutting her wrists after breaking a windowpane in the police station where she was first brought after the attack (“and she was only thirteen at the time”). Vern having no choice but to commit her. His escalating drinking. His leap from the car. The termination of his teaching job. Having to move back to Calgary. His mother taking him in—and in her own quiet, tough way, forcing him back into the land of the functioning. His landing the job at the library. The gradual return to some sort of equilibrium—to the point where, when the doctors told him his daughter was never going to have a life again outside a supervised living facility, he managed to handle it. The way he made a point of flying East four times a year to spend four weekends with her. How, before she died, his mother made him promise that he would try to play the piano again. How . . .

When the bill arrived, Vern glanced at his watch and said that he felt shame for “having spoiled a lovely dinner with all this talk about me.”

“I wanted to hear the story,” I countered, “because you are an interesting man.”

He fingered the now-empty glass of Shiraz that he had ordered with his main course.

“No one has called me interesting in . . . well, not since my professor at the Royal College.”

“Well, you are interesting. Know that.”

The bill arrived and when I again offered to pay half of it, he said: “After all that you had to listen to?”

We then crossed the street and entered Calgary’s very spacious, very modern concert hall. It was obviously a big event as the lobby was buzzing and everyone seemed ever so slightly overdressed . . . the way people in cities with not much in the way of High Culture reach for the cocktail dress and the far-too-designer suit whenever they are about to attend something that has been tagged “serious.” Our seats were wonderful: sixth row, just off-center enough to give us a perfect view of the keyboard.

Then the house lights dimmed, the stage lights came up, and Angela Hewitt walked out on stage. She was a woman in her early fifties—not conventionally beautiful, but handsome in a sort of Simone de Beauvoir way, and dressed in a shiny royal-blue dress. But within moments of her settling herself behind the keyboard, waiting for the audience to fall completely silent, and raising her hands to play the first bars of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, I wasn’t thinking at all about her strange sartorial sense or the way she was probably the bookish, cerebral girl who never got a date in high school. Once Hewitt launched into the first meditative aria of Bach’s extraordinarily dense and profound keyboard universe, she held me rapt. For the next seventy-five minutes—as she essayed the manifold variations of this massive work—I began to hear it as an encapsulation of the human emotional palate: from severe introspection, to giddy optimism, to careful cogitation, to middle-of-the-night despair, to ebullient dazzle, to the sad, pervasive knowledge that life is but a collection of fleeting ephemera . . .

I had never heard a performance quite like this one—and was astonished by Hewitt’s ability to shift emotional and dynamic gears so brilliantly, and weave Bach’s complex and detailed musical variants into such a cohesively argued whole. I didn’t move my eyes from her for the entire hour and fifteen minutes. When the final bars of the repeated aria drifted away into a resigned, plaintive silence there was a moment of complete, dense hush. Then the entire concert hall erupted. Everyone was immediately on their feet, cheering. When I looked over at Vern I could see that he was crying.

Once outside the hall I took Vern’s arm and said: “I cannot thank you enough for that.”

His response was a shy smile, a nod of the head, and a slight shift of his arm to free it from my grasp.

“Can I offer you a lift home?” he asked.

Vern’s car was a ten-year-old Toyota Corolla—its color best described as rusted cream, its passenger seat thick with compact disks that he hastily dispatched to the back. He asked for my address, told me he knew the building, and said nothing more all the way back there. I could have tried to make conversation. But the two times I stole a glance at him I could see that something had happened to him during that concert; that the sadness still so present in his eyes spoke volumes about so much that simply could not be articulated. When we reached my front door I again thanked him for a wonderful evening—and made a point of leaning over and giving him a peck on the cheek. I could see his shoulders tense as the kiss landed. Then, with a quiet “See you in the morning,” he waited for me to get out and drove off into the night.

I went upstairs. I sat down in my armchair, still dressed in my overcoat. I reflected on what I had just heard—and how grateful I was to Vern for having given me the opportunity to experience something so rich and luminous and forceful that—and it only now hit me—allowed me, for its entire seventy-five-minute duration, to vanish from the grief that had so wracked my life.

Of course, the moment I reflected on this was the moment it came rushing back. But still, Bach’s long dark night of the pianistic soul had made me detach for a while. And I couldn’t help but wonder—given all the children of his own that he lost—whether Bach himself hadn’t found consolation in the contrapuntal immensity of this aria and variations.

The next morning, however, Emily loomed large over everything. I tried to bargain with the grief—to tell myself that I simply had to live with it. The problem was, I couldn’t live with it. My daughter was forever gone. I couldn’t reconcile myself to such an appalling reality—and yet that was the finite, inflexible heart of the matter. There it is. What can you do about it? Nothing . . . except get through another day.

I made coffee in my apartment while listening to the Morning Show on CBC Radio 2. The announcer, as always, was a mixture of cheeriness and erudition. At nine there was a break for international and provincial news—and the big story of the day was the disappearance of a local girl in the prairie town of Townsend, one hundred kilometers south of Calgary. It seems that Ivy MacIntyre, aged thirteen, had been heading to a medical appointment after school. Her part-time unemployed father, George, had been due to pick her up at a local dentist’s office near the school but she never showed up there. Nor, as it turned out, had she actually arrived at school that day, though her father saw her off in the morning while her mother—who did the early shift at a local supermarket—was already at work. According to the CBC reporter, the RCMP were “investigating all lines of inquiry” and had as yet to call this disappearance an abduction or something even more sinister.

I snapped off the radio. I didn’t need—or want—to hear any more about this.

Later that morning, when I entered the staffroom during coffee break, Babs and Mrs. Woods were having a most engaged conversation about the disappearance of Ivy MacIntyre.

“I heard that the father is a notorious drunk and that he’d attacked Ivy and her mom on two occasions,” Mrs. Woods said.

“And there’s an older son—Michael—who’s eighteen and working the oil fields up at Fort McMurray. According to him, his sister was always worried about being alone with her dad, because . . .”

The door swung shut behind me and—upon seeing who it was—they instantly changed the subject. Later that morning I happened to pass Vern on my way out for lunch.

“Thank you again for such an amazing night,” I said.

His response was a diffident nod and then he walked right by me.

The next few days the media was full of Ivy MacIntyre.

Though everyone in the staffroom seemed to be preoccupied with the case—and all the newspapers regarded Ivy’s suspicious disappearance as a commercial godsend—I was determined to block it out as much as possible.

A week went by. Vern sent me an email, asking if he could purchase a new edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians—all twenty-nine volumes for an alarming $8,500. He wrote:

It is an essential reference tool, and one which no library should be without.

I wrote back:

It’s also a small fortune—and don’t we already have an entire Grove’s Dictionary on your floor?

He wrote back:

Yes, we do have a Grove’s but it’s twenty years out of date. Could I convince you over brunch on Sunday to approve the purchase of the new edition?

I didn’t answer immediately, my reluctance having to do with the question of whether I really wanted to go out on another date with Vern. Had it taken him almost two weeks to get the courage up to ask me out again? If so, why on earth would I want to give him any hope of a future beyond an occasional concert or movie or dinner? The notion of an “involvement” with Vern Byrne . . . well, I simply couldn’t imagine it.

But this was the strident, defensive part of me talking. The other part—a little more rational and attune to the solitude in which I had decided to dwell—told me: What’s a brunch anyway, but a brunch? You have no contact with anyone outside of work. All right, that’s your choice—but surely you can’t live this way forever, so why not accept the offer of company for a weekend afternoon?

So I wrote back:

Brunch would be fine this Sunday . . . but only if you let me pay.

He wrote back:

Agreed, with reluctance. But let me choose the place. I’ll pick you up at 12 noon.

That Sunday—like every Sunday—I got up early and dropped by the magazine shop around the corner from Caffè Beano that actually sold copies of the Sunday New York Times and now always had one put aside for me. I paid for the paper and brought it around to Beano, where I drank a cappuccino and began to regret that I had agreed to this brunch, as the idea of having to make conversation with anyone outside of my workaday reality filled me with serious dread. Worse yet, having told me his story in full a few weeks ago, he might now be expecting to hear mine. But there was absolutely no way I’d ever share that with anyone. Anyway, what the hell was I doing going out to eat with this guy in the first place? It was a mistake, a stupid mistake. And if anyone at work learned about it . . .

I glanced at my watch. It was eleven thirty a.m. With any luck I could catch him at home right before he left, and inform him that I just couldn’t make it today. Scooping up my paper, I left the café and was back in my apartment within three minutes. Walking in the front door a thought struck me: You don’t have his phone number. I grabbed my phone and dialed 411. “Do you have the number of a V. Byrne, 29th Street NW in Calgary? . . . Yes, it’s a residence . . . Yes, I would like to be connected, please . . .”

Then the number started to ring and ring and ring. No reply. No answering machine. I started pacing the floor of my apartment, nervous, frightened, and simultaneously telling myself this was a wild over-reaction. But this was how the grief often worked—the urge to sit down on a street, to blow up in a bar, to refuse to see anyone socially, to tell myself that seventy-five minutes of transcendent Bach would suddenly alleviate . . .

I got out of my sweatsuit and I dived into the shower. I dried off and threw on some clothes and ran a brush through my hair and put on my boots and my parka. The intercom rang. I grabbed my wallet and my keys and went downstairs.

Vern was standing by his elderly Corolla, trying to wear a grin on his face. He was dressed for the weekend: gray flannels, the usual tattersall shirt, a green crewneck sweater, one of those old-fashioned brown car coats, brown boots. He nodded shyly and held the car door open as I climbed inside.

The motor was running and the heater was on full blast, as it was minus fifteen today, even though it was still mid-March.

“Does winter ever end here?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “In June.”

We drove off.

“Where are we eating?”

“You’ll see.”

“That sounds mysterious.”

“It’s a bit of a drive, but . . . I think you’ll like it.”

We set off down 17th Avenue, turning right on 9, and then proceeded to the river, whereupon we crossed the Louise Bridge and connected to the highway system that led to the northern suburbs and beyond. During all this time we said nothing to each other—the dead space taken up by the Choral Concert program on CBC Radio 2. The presenter played excerpts from a new recording of Handel’s Esther—specifically, one of the big tunes from the oratorio: “My Heart Is Inditing.”

“I only found out recently that Handel got the idea for the oratorio after seeing a play by Racine,” Vern said.

As attempts to make conversation go, it was . . .

“I never knew that,” I said.

Another dead zone of silence.

“Where are we going exactly?” I asked.

“Let me surprise you.”

Silence. Then, around three minutes later . . .

“Good weekend?” he asked.

“Low-key. And you?”

“Wrote an article for the Gramophone.”

“On what?”

“A new recording of Handel’s Esther.”

“You mean this recording . . . the one we’re hearing now?”

“That’s right.”

“Ah.”

Another silence. We turned off on the ramp leading to 16th Avenue NW, marked “Banff.”

“We’re not heading out of town, are we?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” he said.

More silence. We continued along a gasoline alley, then past an artificial ski slope, marked “Canada Ski Park.”

“That was the site of the ski jump when Calgary hosted the ’84 Olympics.”

“I see.”

“Now there’s skiing there around eight months a year . . . if you ski, that is.”

“I don’t.”

“Nor do I.”

We pressed on. Within moments the city literally fell away. We were in open prairie—vast, endless plains, stretching to the limits of the horizon.

I suddenly felt a chill hit me; a chill that was undercut by a growing panic. It was the same panic that seized me on the bus ride north out of Montana when I made the mistake of looking up at all that epic grandeur and felt as if I was about to come unstuck.

I turned my eyes away from all that oceanic space laid out before us. I kneaded my hands together with such force that I felt as if I was trying to strangle my fingers. I felt my breathing become irregular. Next to me Vern could tell that something was seriously wrong.

“Jane, are you OK?”

“Where the hell are we going, Vern?”

“A nice place. A real nice place. But if, for some reason, all this is making you uncomfortable . . .”

I looked up in front of me and saw what we were heading for: the Rockies, now silhouetted on the horizon. Their fierce beauty—all jagged peaks, cliffed with snow that gleamed under harsh winter sunlight—was impossible to endure. I let out a stifled cry, put my head in my hands, and started to weep. Immediately Vern pulled the car off the road. As soon as we reached a full stop, I threw open the door and began to bolt. I didn’t run far—the cold put a quick end to my crazed reverie of escape. But after maybe twenty yards I did buckle down on my knees into the thick snow and pressed my gloved hands into my eyes and willed the world to go away.

Then I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders. Vern kept them there for a few moments, steadying me. Without saying a word, he slid them down to the sides of my arms and lifted me to my feet—and then got me back into the car.

“I’ll take you home,” he said in a near whisper.

“I don’t want to go home. I want to . . .”

I fell silent. The motor hummed, the heater blasted warm air. I hung my head.

“Talk,” I said, finally completing the sentence. “I want to talk. About what happened. That day.”

I stared up at Vern. He said nothing. He just nodded to me.

And I began to talk.

TWENTY-TWO

“I WAS FURIOUS AT the world. I hadn’t slept for several nights because Theo, my alleged ‘partner’—I hate that word, it’s so PC, but what else to call him?—was on the verge of bankrupting me. And he’d run off with this absurd freak of a woman. I had several of their creditors chasing me for money. I was being threatened daily. I was talking to lawyers—and Theo was nowhere to be found. The thing was, my lawyer kept telling me to try to ignore all the vicious phone calls and my obsession that Theo’s creditors would seize my apartment. My best friend Christy also said that I sounded seriously depressed and that I had to find something to help me sleep.

“She was right, of course. But I wouldn’t accept that I was in a bad place. I kept telling myself: I can handle it, even though it was so apparent that I was coming apart.

“The next day . . . the day before it happened . . . the staff doctor at New England State actually called me. I’ve never admitted that to anyone until now. It seems that my department chairman had spoken with him and stated that he was worried about my mental health. Several colleagues and students had mentioned to him that I seemed to be tottering on the brink of something. The doctor was very direct with me and asked if I was overly anxious, suffering panic attacks, or not sleeping. The answer was ‘yes’ to all the above. But I refused to admit this. Just as I told him, in a stupid knee-jerk sort of way, that I was just under a bit of strain due to ‘domestic difficulties’ and that it was manageable.

“ ‘Well, if your students and colleagues are making noises to the contrary,’ he said, ‘then the outward signs are showing that you aren’t handling things terribly well. Lack of sleep due to stress is a key cause of depression and also can lead to bad coordination which can put yourself and others in danger.’ He actually said that to me: ‘put yourself and others in danger.’ He then told me that he had a free appointment at the end of the afternoon.

“ ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed about here, Professor,’ he told me. ‘You’re obviously in a dark wood. I would just like to help you out of it before it gets far darker.’

“What was my reply to this? ‘I’ll get back to you if I need you, sir.’ What complete arrogance on my part. Had I seen him that afternoon he would have given me something stronger that would truly knock me out. And I would have taken the pills that night and would have had the first eight hours of sleep in weeks. Which meant that my responses would have been far sharper than . . .”

I broke off and said nothing for what seemed like a few minutes. Vern just sat there, not making eye contact with me, staring out the windshield at the endless snow-covered prairie and the mountains to the west, which I could not bear to lay eyes on.

“That will haunt me till the day I die . . . the fact that I was offered medical help which would have avoided the accident, but I turned it down. The next day, while making Emily breakfast, I actually had a five-second blackout—which my daughter registered, as she turned to me and said: ‘Mommy’s tired. Mommy needs to go to bed.’

“But instead of following my daughter’s advice and spending the day with the covers over my head—advice that would have saved her life—I got us both dressed and dropped Emily at day care, then nodded off on the T and almost missed the stop for New England State. Once I had dragged myself off the train and into my office, I glanced at myself in the mirror and saw just how strained and netherworldly I looked. So I drank three large mugs of coffee and got through my lectures, constantly sensing that I was a bad actor inhabiting the body of this alleged professor of English, trying to sound erudite and engaged with her subject matter while simultaneously knowing that I was nothing less than a sham . . .

“And yes, at that moment I did realize just how depressed I was, how fast I was sinking. The faculty doctor was back on duty that afternoon—I know this because he phoned me again that day to see how I was. That’s something I’ve also not told anybody, not even admitted to myself until now . . . the fact that he called me again and said I really needed to come in and see him.

“ ‘I have to pick my daughter up at school now,’ I informed him. Know what his reply was? ‘Not in your current state. Call a parent you know whose child is also at the nursery. Tell him or her that you’ve got an emergency at work and get them to bring your daughter home. Then come in and see me straightaway.’

“Did I heed this advice? No. I just said: ‘I’m fine, Doctor.’ Then I put down the phone and grabbed my coat and hat and jumped the T back to Cambridge to pick up Emily.

“That was the other insane variable in that afternoon. I never picked my daughter up at school during the week, as I had office hours until five. But on this one day, the nanny had asked if she could have the afternoon off, as she had some appointment at a podiatrist about her bad feet.

“Had Julia been there that day . . . had I not given her the time off . . .”

I stopped speaking again and put my hand on the door handle of the car and was about to press it and throw the door open and run off into the absolute nothingness of the Alberta plains. But I found myself thinking: And then what? The story can’t be avoided.

I started speaking again.

“ ‘Mommy, Mommy!’ Emily said as she saw me in the doorway of the nursery. ‘Can we go get a treat?’

“ ‘No problem, my love.’

“ ‘You tired, Mommy?’

“ ‘Don’t worry about it.’

“And I helped her on with her coat and led her by the hand out the door.

“I think there’s a coffee shop near here that does great sundaes,” I said. “But first you’ll have to eat something nutritious . . . like a hamburger.”

“ ‘Are hamburgers good for you?’

“ ‘They’re better than ice-cream sundaes.’

“Suddenly, in front of us, there was this commotion. An elderly woman—fat, heavy makeup, a stupid cigarette between her lips—was walking her terrier. The lead had broken and the terrier was running free, heading toward us. The woman was yelling its name. And then . . .

“What I told the police afterward was that Emily, all wide-eyed, broke free of my grip and chased right after it. I lunged for my daughter, screaming at her to stop. But she was already off the curb . . .

“That’s not the precise truth. Just as we saw the woman with the dog, I had another of those momentary blackouts I’d been suffering. It couldn’t have been more than two seconds. But in that time, Emily went off the curb and . . .

“Suddenly I came to. And saw my daughter two steps behind the dog, and a taxi barreling around the corner. The cabbie was going too fast and didn’t see Emily until . . .

“That’s when I screamed my daughter’s name. That’s when I lunged for her.

“But the cab hit her directly—and the impact sent her flying.”

I put my fists in my eyes. Black it out. Black it out.

Eventually I pulled my fists away. I steadied myself. Vern sat there, hushed, silent.

“What happened next . . . I was screaming and scooping up my daughter from the ground where she lay crumpled, and the woman with the fucking dog was screaming, and the cabbie—who turned out to be Armenian—was hovering over us, hysterical, saying it wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t seen her . . . ‘She suddenly there! She there! She there! She there!’ He kept repeating that, along with: ‘No chance! No chance! I have no chance!’

“Someone dialed 911. The cops came. The cabbie by this point was screaming at me to let him save her. ‘I bring her back . . . I bring her back.’ But I kept holding her against me, my head buried in her still-warm body, her neck totally limp, no breathing, no reaction to all this madness around her. Nothing . . .

“One of the cops gently tried to get me to let go of her. But I shrieked at him to go away. Then there were more sirens. An ambulance. The paramedic somehow managed to separate me from Emily. When I was coerced into letting her go and I saw one of the ambulance guys checking for vital signs and looking up at one of the cops and shaking his head . . . that’s when I lunged for the driver, screaming at him, calling him a murderer and . . .

“Two cops had to pull me off him. The cabbie was now so distraught that one of the paramedics had to hold him down. And then . . . then . . . I don’t remember much of then. Emily was placed on a stretcher and put into the ambulance. One of the cops—a woman—sat in the back of the cop car with me as we raced after it. She had her arm around me so tightly I couldn’t move, and told her colleague in the front seat to call for backup when we reached the hospital.

“ ‘Backup’ was a huge male nurse. He was waiting for me with a white-coated doctor. The doctor—a young guy—spoke quietly to me, and said they were going to give me something that would calm me down for a few hours. I somehow managed to promise I would stay calm. But as the woman cop helped me out of the car I made a break for it, screaming that I had to see Emily. That’s when the male nurse grabbed me and got me into a wrestler’s grip, and the doctor approached with a hypodermic and . . .

“When I awoke I discovered it was the next morning. I was in a bed—and I was being held down by restraints. A young nurse was on duty. She looked visibly pained when she saw I had come out of whatever they’d hit me with.

“ ‘I’ll be right back in a couple of minutes,’ she whispered. I sat there, staring up at the ceiling, telling myself: This is not happening . . . and knowing simultaneously that my world had just collapsed. When she returned some minutes later she was accompanied by a doctor—a quiet man in his midfifties—and a very sensible-looking woman also around the same age. He introduced himself as Dr. Martin and said that the woman standing next to him was Mrs. Potholm, and she would be my “social worker.” Social worker. Thinking back on it, they must have a very strict protocol drawn up for breaking the news to people . . . especially parents. And they must have decided that mentioning the fact that you have been assigned a social worker before delivering the body blow will, in some way, prepare you for the horror of the news. It’s like being told: ‘In a moment you’re about to be pushed off the ledge on the thirty-second floor’—and then the shove happening. It’s still a grotesque free fall . . . but at least you’re ready for it.

“ ‘Ms. Howard . . . Jane . . .” the doctor began, his voice just above a whisper. “ ‘Emily was admitted here dead on arrival yesterday evening. An autopsy was carried out very early this morning—and the cause of death was severance of the spinal cord and massive cranial injury. I mention this to let you know that Emily died instantly. I doubt she suffered. I doubt . . .’

“But I didn’t hear the rest of that sentence, as I turned away and started to howl. The social worker tried to speak with me, but I heard nothing. She tried to reason with me. I didn’t want reason. I just wanted to howl.

“Then, bam, another injection in my arm . . . and I was gone again.

“It was night when I awoke—and my best friend Christy was seated at my side.

“ ‘What are you doing here?’ I whispered to her.

“ ‘It seems you listed me as the person to get in touch with in the event of an emergency on your health insurance forms. So they called me and told me and I got the next plane to Boston and . . .’

“She started to cry. Tears cascading down her face. Trying to be brave for me and failing. I’d never seen Christy cry before—she was always too deliberately tough for that. But here she was, weeping and telling the nurse to get the damn restraints off my arms, then holding me as I let go and must have bawled my eyes out for around half an hour.

“Around an hour later—after a conversation with the social worker—they let me see Emily. She was in the morgue, but Mrs. Potholm told me they’d move her to a ‘viewing room,’ where I could ‘spend as much time with her’ as I liked.

“I remember walking down the corridor with Christy and Mrs. Potholm to the ‘viewing room,’ and reaching the swing doors and my knees buckling and Christy holding me up and telling me: ‘You have to do this. There’s no getting around it. But you will do it with me.’

“And then Mrs. Potholm held open the door and we went inside and . . .”

I paused and I looked up at Vern. He hadn’t moved. Outside, snow was falling, whiting out visibility. The world had vanished.

I continued.

“She was on a small gurney, a sheet pulled up to her shoulders. Everyone says the dead look asleep. But I stared down at my wonderful daughter and all I could think was: She’s gone, she’s never opening her eyes again and telling me she’s afraid of the dark or wants me to read her a bedtime story or . . .

“I stared down at Emily and could not escape the reality of what had happened. There was a huge blue contusion on her forehead, a deep gash on the side of her neck. And when I took her hands in mine they were ice. I thought I would fall apart again—but, at this moment, something came over me. Shock, I suppose you could call it . . . but it was deeper than shock. Trauma of the kind that simply sucks you into a vortex and . . .”

A deep, long, steadying breath.

“That night, I was released from the hospital under Christy’s surveillance. We got back to my apartment and I walked into Emily’s room and I sat down on her bed and . . .

“No, I didn’t fall apart again. Trauma has its own strange stupor. I just sat there for around an hour. Christy was there beside me, saying nothing . . . because there was nothing to say. She did force me to eat something—and she did insist on me taking the pills that the hospital prescribed. After tucking me in, she herself collapsed on the sofa . . . because I don’t think my wonderful friend had slept in over two days.

“But the pills did no good for me. I just lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, knowing that all I could do now was die. That thought preoccupied me all night—especially as it was coupled with a horrendous instant replay of everything that had happened, and this insane growing belief that if I hurried back to the spot of the accident I could stop it. Turn time back completely and have my daughter hop off that mortuary gurney and come home to me . . .

“So, without thinking, I threw a robe on over my pajamas and grabbed my car keys and left the house. It was the middle of the night—and I drove right back to the place in Cambridge where it happened. Drove there, slammed on the brakes, got out, sat down on the pavement, and . . .

“All I can remember after that is this sense of falling. Falling into . . . an abyss? A chasm without a bottom? I don’t know. All I do know is that I sat in that spot for a long time . . . until some cops pulled up in a cruiser and tried to talk to me and when I said nothing, they called for backup and . . .

“I was kept overnight in a psychiatric hospital for observation. They found my home number. They called Christy. She showed up and explained everything. According to the shrink who signed me over to her, it was very common for someone who’d lost a ‘loved one’ in an accident to return to the scene in the hopes of . . .”

I broke off again.

Then: “I’m not going to tell you much about the funeral. An old college friend of mine had become a Unitarian minister. She conducted it. There weren’t many people there—some New England State colleagues, some Harvard people, the nanny, some people from the day care center, and the wife and daughter of the cabbie who’d hit Emily. They were crying even more than the rest of us. After the burial . . . you know, I’ve never once been back to my daughter’s grave, I just couldn’t . . . they gave Christy a letter from the family, saying how sorry they were. I never read it. Couldn’t. But Christy talked to the wife. It seems the guy—his name was Mr. Babula—had been so traumatized by what had happened that he quit his job and was on Valium or something, unable to leave the house, unable to deal with . . .

“But he’d been driving too fast. The police told Christy that. And he’d already got two violations against him for speeding. And they were bringing charges. And . . .”

Another pause.

“During all this, an all-points bulletin went out for Emily’s father. But he was nowhere to be found. We had the cops working on it. My lawyer. Even some of his so-called business associates. Running from creditors had made him go to ground. Not a fucking word from him. Until . . .

“But I jump ahead. After the funeral my department chairman told me I should take as much ‘compassionate leave’ as I wanted. I was back at work five days later. Everyone was stunned to see me—but I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I was operating on some very spectral autopilot in which it was impossible to make sense of anything. Christy had returned to Oregon. I had closed the door of Emily’s room and refused to go in there. I did my classes. I saw my students. I avoided my colleagues. I seemed to be functioning . . . even though my mind was increasingly preoccupied with the idea that I was living in this tunnel made of reinforced concrete. I could just about negotiate its narrow confines, but it was brutally limiting. There was no escaping it. There was no glimmer of light at the end of it. But—and this was the manic thing I kept telling myself—if I was just able to continue negotiating its confinement I would somehow be able to keep functioning . . .

“So, for around two weeks, I was an automaton twenty-four/seven. If anyone at the university asked me how I was doing I’d change the subject. I was doing how I was doing. I was coping. I was, privately, unhinged. But even I couldn’t admit that yet.

“Then two things happened. My lawyer called me to say that Theo had resurfaced. He’d been lying low with his paramour in Morocco while their lawyer did some fancy footwork with the company that had taken away the movie they were selling. I didn’t get all the details—I didn’t want all the details—but the crux of the matter was that there were threats of all kinds of lawsuits by Theo and his bitch, Adrienne. Their legal guy had found some way of blocking the release of the film. The film company had deep pockets and agreed to clear all the debts that Theo and Adrienne had run up in exchange for no legal action . . . and, hey presto, they were in the clear.

“My lawyer said that he had actually talked with Theo who was ‘devastated’ about what had happened to his daughter, and wanted to speak with me . . . but also didn’t want to ring me directly. ‘That’s courageous of him,’ I remember telling my lawyer, then adding: ‘Inform him that I never, ever, want to hear from him again.’

“Theo must have taken him at his word—because I didn’t hear from him. But ten days later, I was in a restaurant off Harvard Square having a meal. It was around eight—and this diner had become the place where I ate every meal, as I couldn’t bear to do anything in my apartment except drink myself to sleep with the aid of Zopiclone and red wine. The waiters there were so used to me by now—and the fact that I always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee—that the food always showed up around five minutes after I sat down.

“But on the night in question, as the sandwich arrived, I looked up and saw Theo and Adrienne coming in. They didn’t notice me at first, because I was in a booth in the back. Before I even could consider what I was doing, I threw some money down on the table, and grabbed my coat and the fork next to my plate. I walked straight toward Theo and Adrienne. They were waiting to be seated. Adrienne saw me first and actually said: ‘Jane! Oh, my God, we’re so—’

“Before she could finish the sentence I took the fork and plunged it right into the side of her neck. She screamed, there was blood everywhere, I kept right on walking out the door, then dashed across the street to a taxi stand and was in a cab before anyone could stop me.

“I was home ten minutes later. I threw clothes in a bag. I grabbed the necessary documentation, including my two passports and some cash and traveler’s checks. I tossed everything into my car. I started driving.

“Ten days later I drove into a snowbank in Montana. And . . .”

I fell silent again.

“End of story,” I said. “Except the woman I stabbed didn’t die and didn’t press charges. And when I messed up my suicide . . . well, maybe living was the punishment I would have to endure for killing my daughter . . .”

Finally Vern spoke.

“You didn’t kill your daughter.”

“Did you not listen to a word I just said?”

“You didn’t kill your daughter.”

“All the advice I got, all the steps I could have taken to avoid disaster, what did I do . . . ?”

“You didn’t kill her. That’s all there is to it.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“No, it’s not. Because I still blame myself for losing my daughter. Even though . . .”

Silence. He put his hand on top of mine. I pulled it away.

“What are you doing here with me?” I said. “I mean, do you really like damaged goods? Is that your kinky thing? Or do you actually think there’s some sort of weird romantic future between us?”

As soon as this was out of my mouth I loathed myself for it. And I turned to him and instantly said: “I’m sorry. I’m so stupid, so . . .”

I buried my head in his shoulder, but couldn’t cry. He put an arm around me, but I could tell he was nervous about doing it, fearful about how I might react.

“You know,” he said quietly, “even if I wanted ‘that,’ it could never be. The prostate cancer ended that part of my life . . . not that it had existed since my wife left me.”

“So what do you want from this?” I asked.

He disengaged himself from me. His eyes were red, rheumy. He pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of his coat and wiped his face. Then he gripped the steering wheel and stared straight out at all that blowing snow.

“I want a whiskey,” he finally said.

TWENTY-THREE

WE WENT TO a bar in a strip mall. Like all strip malls, this one was grim. The fact that several inches of fresh snow had dappled it didn’t lessen its ugliness. The bar was also ugly: a real beer-and-hockey joint that stank of urinated lager and male sweat. At least they weren’t playing heavy metal music—though there was one of those massive televisions near the bar that was broadcasting a Calgary Flames game. On screen two guys from opposing teams had thrown off their helmets and were now doing their best to rip each other’s ears off. All the patrons at the bar seemed to be enjoying the show—and were yelling encouragement to the pit bull in the Flames uniform.

“Hey there, Vern,” the bartender said as we came in. The bartender was named Tommy. He looked like a biker and wore a T-shirt that exposed overripe biceps and a tattoo of the Canadian Maple Leaf intertwined with a crucifix.

“Nice place,” I said, following Vern into a booth and sliding in opposite him.

“That it is not,” Vern said. “But it’s local—and I can stagger home from here.”

Now this statement begged a question: “Does having two drinks make you stagger . . . or do you come in here to break your two-drink rule?” Over the next three hours I got an answer to that question, as Vern proceeded to drink me into an advanced stupor. After telling me in the car that he wanted a whiskey he drove me here in silence, saying absolutely nothing about all that I had told him. He plugged a CD into his sound system: a piano trio by Schumann; brooding, expressive, wintry music. We negotiated our way through the snow and back toward the city. I was grateful that he said nothing after everything I had said. There is a notion propagated in modern life that “talking it out” will somehow make everything better. It’s a lie. All talking does is articulate the agony. You have to get it out because you have to get it out. But it’s not like vomiting up a toxic meal. You don’t suddenly feel purged, scoured, cleansed, and ready to start anew. All you feel is: I’ve said it . . . and nothing has changed.

So I was pleased to avoid extended soul-searching with Vern. Maybe Vern himself had once been told by someone that his daughter’s schizophrenia wasn’t his fault and he too had decided otherwise. Or maybe my story had so appalled him that he just wanted to get drunk.

Whatever the reason, Vern started drinking seriously. Two shots disappeared within ten minutes of us sitting down. This seemed to steady him a bit. Then it was a double every thirty minutes. I matched him, drink for drink. It was an interesting experience, getting truly sloshed. Though I had often drunk myself to sleep in the recent past, this was different. From the hints dropped by Tommy the bartender—“So it’s going to be that sort of afternoon, Vern . . . How ’bout handing over your car keys for safekeeping?”—it was clear that this was not the first time my work colleague had gone on a binge here. I even posed that question to him—around the time round five showed up.

“So if you’re into AA and all that, how do you explain an afternoon like this?”

“It’s simple, really: every other month, when I sense the need to get drunk, I come in here and I get drunk. Tommy knows when I’m having one of those days and what to do when I get to the point where I don’t know what to do. There was a time when I was blotto every day. Now I get smashed under controlled circumstances.”

Over the three hours we were in the bar, Vern did most of the talking. The rye loosened him up considerably and he ranged over a wide variety of subjects, from interpretations of Mahler on record, to the lingering despair he felt about most things to do with the Central Public Library, to a brief mention of a woman he’d fallen in love with while he was at the Royal College of Music.

“Her name was Veronique. She was a cellist from Lyon. Brilliant and, to my eyes, very beautiful in a rather severe way. I once accompanied her in the Second Cello Sonata of Mendelssohn. And I sensed—from the hints she was dropping—that she was more than interested in me. God knows, I was smitten with her. But . . . I was just never good at that sort of thing.”

“By which you mean: seduction?”

“By which I mean: being normal.”

“Who’s normal?”

“Oh, there are people who seem to get through life with a limited amount of difficulty; who know how to make their luck, to capitalize on their talents, to allow things to happen for them.”

“But the majority of people don’t cut through life like it’s very soft, malleable butter. It’s always a brawl . . .”

“Especially against the one great force that none of us can counteract: death.”

“Does it scare you, death?”

“It’s going to arrive, that’s for sure. And I guess the one and only thing that perplexes me is the idea that I will be no more, that my entire story will vanish with me. No ‘me.’ How can that be?”

“ ‘No me,’ ” I said, repeating the phrase. “A year ago that struck me as a very viable alternative.”

“And now?”

“Now . . . I have to live with myself, and all that that means.”

That was the only mention during the afternoon of all that had been articulated earlier that day. More drinks arrived. We kept talking. I felt the rye take hold of me—but I liked its alcoholic balm. I needed to get drunk for the same reason I needed to talk about “that day”: it had to be done. It was a necessity.

By keeping up a steady, but not rapid-fire pace of imbibing, neither of us pitched into incoherency until around five that afternoon . . . at which point Tommy phoned for two separate taxis (was he ensuring that we didn’t wake up next to each other?) and helped each of us out of the bar and into the waiting vehicles. But around two hours before this, I made a momentary observation that—as it turned out—was to direct the course of events in my life for the next few months. Like so many events that manage to alter things for us, this one came about merely because I looked a certain way at a certain moment—glancing up at the television behind the bar just when . . .

“About time they nabbed that lying sonofabitch.”

That was Tommy the bartender staring up at the television. On the screen, George MacIntyre—the father of the missing thirteen-year-old girl, Ivy—was being led out of his very simple frame house. He was a man in his early forties—overweight, balding, with a wispy beard. He was dressed in a dirty T-shirt and pajama bottoms—the cops evidently deciding to arrest him while he was still in bed. But though I took in all the grubby details of his appearance—and the fact that he so seemed to fit the IdentiKit portrait of a child molester—it was his eyes that really grabbed my attention. They were red from crying. But what I saw in them wasn’t fear or guilt or denial; rather, it was anguish. The same anguish I caught in my own eyes on those occasions after Emily’s death when I made the mistake of looking at myself in the mirror. The eyes of someone who had also lost a child and now knew a sorrow beyond dreams. And at that precise moment, I knew: that man did not kill his daughter.

MacIntyre was now being perp-walked to a waiting cop car while dozens of reporters and paparazzi shouted questions and clicked camera shutters.

“As George MacIntyre was led away,” the CBC reporter said, “he was heard shouting: ‘I would never hurt my daughter. Never.’ Since his daughter’s disappearance he has made several dramatic public appeals for her safe return. MacIntyre, forty-two years old, is known to the police. His wife, Brenda, is very active in the local Assemblies of God church, and according to her pastor, Reverend Larry Coursen . . .”

The report cut to Larry Coursen. He was blond, square-jawed, with very good teeth, dressed in a light brown leather jacket and a dog collar, and oozing sanctimonious concern.

“This is an immensely sad day for Brenda MacIntyre, for all members of our Assembly of God congregation and, yes, for George MacIntyre too. What has happened is so tragic. We are praying very hard for Ivy’s safe return—just as we are also praying that the light of our Lord Jesus Christ shines down upon her and also upon George MacIntyre.”

I pulled my glass toward me and threw back the dregs of rye.

“Praise the Lord,” I whispered under my breath. Vern heard me and favored me with a small smile.

Now onscreen was an RCMP officer named Floyd McKay. He explained that George MacIntyre had been transferred to Calgary for further investigation.

“Know what I heard this morning from one of the cops that drink here?” Tommy the bartender said to someone perched on a stool and drinking a Labatt’s by the neck. “That they found a ‘bloodied undergarment’ under a pile of wood in MacIntyre’s workshop, and that’s what led to his arrest this morning.”

“If I was the cops I’d castrate him,” the other guy said.

That’s when I heard myself say: “He didn’t do it.”

Tommy the bartender glared at me.

“Did I hear you correctly?”

I met his gaze.

“You did,” I said. “He didn’t do it.”

“And how the hell do you know that?”

“I just do.”

“Even though they found his daughter’s bloodstained panties hidden in his workshop?”

“That’s hearsay. And I’m telling you, sir—the man is innocent.”

“And I’m telling you, ma’am, he’s guilty as hell. And Vern . . . I don’t know who your friend is, but I think all that Crown Royal you’ve both been drinking has clouded her judgment.”

“Think what you like,” I whispered under my breath. Vern held up his hand to me and gave me the sort of imploring look that let it be known I should now shut the hell up.

“I’m sorry if I offended you, sir,” I shouted to the bartender.

“Hey, just be grateful that Vern’s a regular here. Otherwise you’d’ve been out on the street by now.”

Two more ryes later, the cabs arrived. I muttered a goodbye to Vern as I flopped across the backseat of my taxi. The driver asked me if I was going to be sick, and I assured him that I would keep the contents of my stomach within me until we got to my apartment, and he assured me he would deposit me in the minus-nineteen night air if I failed to make good on my promise.

I don’t remember much after that, except tossing twenty dollars at the driver as I got out and somehow making my way upstairs. I unlocked my front door and fell face-first on my bed. When I woke it was eleven the next morning. I felt as if my head had been cleaved by a very sharp instrument. I looked at the time and groaned. I was never late for work—and now I knew that, even if I wanted to make it in, I was too hungover. So I picked up my cell phone and called Mrs. Woods and apologized profusely for only informing her now that I was out sick, but explained that I’d picked up some stomach bug and was up for most of the night.

“Something’s obviously going around,” Mrs. Woods said, “because Vern Byrne also phoned in sick with the same complaint.”

Great hungover minds think alike.

I lolled in bed for another hour, thinking, thinking. As I replayed the insanity of that drinking session, it was clear to me that Vern had decided he was not the only person who needed to get drunk yesterday.

But the thoughts of this drinking contest—and its toxic aftermath—were soon overshadowed by a larger consideration: George MacIntyre. The way his eyes seemed to become haunted when faced with the specter of all those popping camera lights and shouted questions. The sense of resignation that seemed to dapple his face—as if this new, fresh hell was nothing compared to that of his daughter’s disappearance. A guilty man would have signaled his culpability by doing that Raskolnikov thing of self-incrimination. Something in his countenance would have given the game away. But MacIntyre simply looked crushed by all that had befallen him. He was a man who had lost hope, and who had now entered the ultimate Kafkaesque nightmare: being accused of killing his own daughter while simultaneously knowing that he was completely innocent . . .

And yet, from the little I’d heard in passing about the case, MacIntyre had a history of violent behavior. If it was true that he had beaten his wife and was considered dangerous by his son . . . of course, he’d be immediately regarded as the prime suspect in the case, though none of this could be publicized prior to his trial.

Then there was the fact that a bloody piece of underwear belonging to his daughter was allegedly (according to Tommy the bartender) found in his workshop. Why would he store that item of incredibly incriminating clothing there? Surely if he was the man behind her disappearance he would do everything in his power to hide evidence? Even if he was determined to have his guilt proclaimed by being “found out,” he wouldn’t resort to something as lame as a pair of underwear in an obvious location. Self-denunciation—especially when something like infanticide is involved—would involve something leading directly to the body; a true sign of guilt, and one that would be quickly substantiated.

But the cops—needing to break the case as fast as possible—would jump on the bloody panties as proof that MacIntyre was guilty as hell (that is, if that barroom rumor about this piece of evidence was even true). But until lab reports came back stating that the blood matched that of Ivy’s . . .

Listen to you. Nancy goddamn Drew, with her Dostoevsky references and her hungover need to defend a much-touted sociopath. Talk about displacement activity . . .

But try as I did to put the case to one side, it continued to nag at me all day. Having finally hauled myself out of bed and into a penitential cold shower, followed by a further two-hour act of physical contrition at the gym, I found myself inextricably drawn to my local newspaper shop, where I bought the Globe and Mail, the Calgary Herald, and the Edmonton Journal to get that day’s journalistic take on George MacIntyre’s arrest. I took my newspapers around the corner to Caffè Beano and started reading. The Herald had a full page on “The Ivy MacIntyre Case” and noted that this was the third time in six years that an adolescent girl had gone missing from the Townsend area. In all of the previous cases, no traces of the vanished child had ever been found.

The Herald also noted that George MacIntyre was “known to the police”—that phrase again. It mentioned that he had a previous job driving long-haul trucks, but said little more because—as I was learning—the Canadian press wasn’t like the American press when it came to reporting somebody under investigation for murder. No past misdeeds could be reported. No incriminating comments from neighbors or colleagues at work. The law stopped them from detailing, prior to a trial, anything but the basic facts of the case.

But the Edmonton Journal did carry a quote from the “MacIntyre Family Minister,” Larry Coursen, saying that “ ‘Ivy was one of God’s little angels.’ ” He also noted that, when he first met Brenda MacIntyre, she was in desperate need of healing. “ ‘But when she accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, the healing process began . . . ’ ”

Yeah, sure it did . . .

Within weeks of getting that telephone call from Jesus, Brenda was “ ‘clean and sober.’ ” She’d found a job in the local Safeway supermarket. She’d begun to “ ‘take responsibility for her actions’ ” and had completely cleaned up the family home and had “ ‘re-established her relationship with her children.’ ” (What exactly did he mean by that?) But—as the Rev. Larry Coursen was quick to point out—there was an “ ‘ongoing sadness in her life.’ ”

No doubt this “sadness” was her very unsaved, deadbeat husband George.

The Herald, meanwhile, had a quote from a local Townsend guy named Stu Pattison. He knew MacIntyre from a local hockey team they both played on, and said that he “ ‘doted on Ivy and actually once went crazy in Townsend when some kids in a pickup drove her off the road while she was on a bicycle.’ ”

I scribbled in my notebook the name Larry Coursen and that of Stu Pattison. I also noted the detail about MacIntyre driving long-haul trucks and placed a comment: “Did she ever file a domestic abuse charge?” next to an entry I made labeled: “Brenda MacIntyre.” Then I asked the woman behind the café counter for a pair of scissors and clipped all the articles I had just read. I folded them inside my notebook, walked up to Reid’s stationers, and bought some plain white paper, several files, and a bottle of white glue. Down a little alleyway from Reid’s was an internet café. I spent the next three hours there. Using assorted search engines I found out everything I could about George and Brenda MacIntyre and their two children, printing copious amounts of information along the way.

From the Regina Leader-Post in 2002 I learned that, in February of that year, MacIntyre had been arrested after manhandling a woman in a truck stop. The woman didn’t press charges—but it seems he also directly solicited sex from her and “exposed himself to her” while they were on the way back to his truck.

I read this paragraph again, trying to understand the narrative logic behind it. MacIntyre pulls into Regina and picks up some woman in a bar, then invites her back to his truck. He evidently didn’t have to coerce her back—which meant that the manhandling charge just couldn’t wash. She went willingly—but then, halfway there, he exposes himself to her? What the hell was that all about? If she had agreed to return to his vehicle for sex, why would he pull a stunt like that?

There was more. In an article in the local Townsend rag in May 2005, MacIntyre was found guilty of “damaging private property after his daughter was forced off the road on her bicycle by a couple of adolescents in a car. Ivy wasn’t injured in this incident [the reporter pointed out] but was nonetheless badly shaken up.” This being a small town, she knew the two brothers who’d done it. When MacIntyre found out their names, he went over to their house in the middle of the night and, using a tire iron, proceeded to smash their pickup. Their father ran out in the middle of this demolition job and MacIntyre threatened to flatten his head. The cops were called. MacIntyre spent the night in jail and ended up having to pay $3,000 in restitution.

In the same article, his then-employer, Dwane Poole, was quoted as saying that “ ‘George MacIntyre was about the most talented guy with a lathe and a piece of wood that I’d ever come across,’ ” but that he could turn ugly when crossed.

I read on, finding every published word I could about the case, printing over fifty pages of material, filling my notebook with names and places and dates and phrases that I was certain were pertinent to the case. By the time I got home it was late afternoon. I did something I had never done before: I plugged the television antenna cable into the wall socket and actually watched the news. The Ivy MacIntyre disappearance was the first item. A CBC reporter was standing outside the “Criminal Investigation Unit of the RCMP in Calgary where George MacIntyre is still being questioned . . .” but he had little else to say about the progress of the investigation.

But when I woke from a profoundly deep sleep at seven the next morning, there was a bombshell lead item on the CBC Radio news.

“A formal arraignment of Ivy’s father, George, on charges of her abduction is scheduled to be brought today.”

Did this mean that the bloody undergarment had been found? And if so, did it prove conclusively that the blood was Ivy MacIntyre’s? And did the technicians also find DNA traces of her father on the same garment? And was his born-again wife really the saint she was being portrayed as? And was I the only damn person in the province of Alberta who saw the look on George MacIntyre’s face as he was being led off to jail and knew: the guy didn’t do it?

Questions, questions . . . and why wasn’t anybody posing them?

So, as soon as the news item was finished I made a decision: I was going to call in sick for the next two days . . . during which time I was going to crack this case. Crack it wide open.

As I decided this, another thought came to me: You are seriously unhinged.

TWENTY-FOUR

MRS. WOODS WAS far too understanding about my ongoing “gastric flu.”

“I gather it’s a horrible dose,” she said, “and you really must look after yourself.”

“I feel bad about not being there,” I lied.

“Don’t be,” she said. “Illness is illness. Anyway, this is the first time all year you’ve ever been sick and you’re always putting in extra hours and working weekends. Take the rest of the week off—and do get better.”

I actually felt fine. Maybe it was the restorative night’s sleep that always follows a hangover. Or maybe it was a strange sense of direction. Ever since I had made the proper acquaintance of the Ivy MacIntyre case, some switch had clicked in my brain. It wasn’t the switch that suddenly erased all memory, all pain. No, this was a mechanism that simply pushed me deeper and deeper into the bizarre narration that was this case. It was like losing yourself in a movie, yet one in which I had no idea whatsoever what the ending would be . . . if, that is, there was even to be an ending.

Still . . . to work.

I called Avis and arranged to pick up in a couple of hours. Then I used my cell phone and called Information for Townsend, Alberta. I was in luck. All the numbers I sought were listed—with the exception of that for George and Brenda MacIntyre, which (according to the operator) had recently been changed to unlisted. I then began to make a series of calls, starting with Dwane Poole. He was a soft-spoken man with what I sensed was a natural graciousness. I explained that I was Nancy Lloyd (a name I simply made up), a reporter with the Vancouver Sun, and that I was coming to Townsend that afternoon and was wondering if I could have a half hour of his time.

“I kind of feel talked out about all this,” he said.

“I can appreciate that,” I said, “but I have serious doubts about the ‘rush to judgment’ element in this case. I think George MacIntyre is being hanged, drawn, and quartered before all the evidence is in.”

“I thought that too,” he said, “until that piece of clothing was found in his shop. Now everyone’s saying that the DNA and blood match up . . .”

“Would two thirty p.m. be OK?”

“I guess so,” he said, sounding reluctant but not wanting to come across as impolite.

I then called the Rev. Larry Coursen and got his answering machine. So I left a message, telling him that Nancy Lloyd from the Vancouver Sun called, and might he be around today or tomorrow for an interview? Of course I knew I was taking a risk by giving him the name of the paper. If he was conscientious about such things, he could easily call them and discover he was dealing with a fraud. But I was banking on the fact that he had been so besieged by requests from the media that he would simply accept this one on face value . . . especially as I had also gone to the precaution of making certain that Coursen had yet to be interviewed by anyone from the Sun.

I rang the school where Ivy MacIntyre was a student and asked to speak to the principal. When I explained who I was, I was put on to a deputy named Mrs. Missy Schulder. She told me that the school had made a decision not to engage in any interviews with the press.

“We have nothing to say about this,” she told me.

“Did you yourself know Ivy?” I asked.

“Of course I know Ivy,” she said. “I was her homeroom teacher for two years. Nice girl. Liked the dad too—even if he did have his angry side.”

“But did he ever turn that anger against his daughter?”

“What you trying to get me to say here?” she asked.

“Nothing, ma’am . . . and this is totally off the record.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Well, totally off the record between us: I don’t think he did it.”

“And what makes you say that, Ms. . . . ?”

“Lloyd. Nancy Lloyd. And the reason I’m saying that is because I know damn well a guilty man wouldn’t keep a bloodstained article of clothing around his workshop.”

“I’m with you there,” she said in a low, excited hush. “Let me tell you something else, Ms. Lloyd. I never liked the wife. And ever since she got religion . . . well, ‘insufferable’ is about the mildest word I can use to describe her. George may have been from a low-rent background, and he may have had a lot of ‘anger issues,’ and also never got on with his boy, Michael . . . who I always thought was a bit of a punk anyway . . .”

“Why’s that?”

“He was always hanging with biker types, got into a lot of drugs, gave his dad a lot of lip. George, from what I heard, got real furious with Michael when he discovered he was dealing crystal meth, and Brenda, the wife, defended her ‘poor little victimized boy’ and sent him off to her people. And Michael did get himself straightened out and is driving trucks cross-country. But if I was a journalist nosing around this case, I’d look long and hard at the wife. She was always trailer trash.

“You know, her mother had done time as a prostitute in Winnipeg—what a place to be a working girl. And she had this father who’d beaten her older brother so senseless after an argument that the kid was in a coma for a week and was never completely right again after that. Her dad did seven years in prison for that little incident.

“But the big rumor about Brenda, and one that came out of Red Deer—the town where she grew up—is that, at thirteen, she’d fallen pregnant after being raped by her father. The pregnancy was terminated. No charges were ever brought against him. And three years after this, she met George MacIntyre. He was twenty-four—and was driving trucks at this time. He’d made the mistake of eyeing Brenda up in a café in Red Deer frequented by long-distance drivers. They ended up ‘doing it’ in the back of his pickup. And, wouldn’t you know it, she fell pregnant.”

So George MacIntyre, from a young age, had a habit of picking up women whenever he stopped while driving, and using the sleeping area behind his cab as the romantic spot in which to bed them.

Now why did he do the right thing by Brenda and marry her—and how did she track him down after she discovered herself with child? According to Missy Schulder, the couple lived in Red Deer for six years, during which time Ivy was also born. Then MacIntyre lost his job, due to excessive drinking. So the family moved to Townsend where he was offered the chance to apprentice as a carpenter to an old family friend named Dwane Poole. And then things started going really wrong.

I scribbled all this down as she spewed it forth—and felt that giddy high a real journalist must feel when they bump into the motherload of sources.

“Can you elaborate a little more on that?” I asked.

“I actually think I’ve said enough.”

“One final thing: the other two local girls who went missing . . .”

“You mean, Hildy Krebs and Mimi Pullinger?”

I wrote those names down.

“That’s right,” I said, trying to sound knowledgeable. “Hildy and Mimi.”

“Well, Hildy disappeared in 2002 and Mimi in 2005. They were both a little older than Ivy when they vanished. Fifteen, sixteen years old. The thing was, they were both the sort of girls who were always landing themselves in deep doo-doo. Hildy got herself up the spout at fourteen and then lost the baby early due to a drug overdose. And Mimi was thrown out of school twice for sniffing glue in the ladies, then ran off for a bit with a biker . . .”

“Sounds like a quiet little town you have there.”

“Now don’t go writing anything like that in your paper. Townsend is, by and large, a pretty OK place. Everywhere’s got white trash. We just have white trash that does dumb stuff which lands us all in the papers and has snoopy reporters like you digging for dirt . . . no offense meant, of course.”

I decided Missy Schulder was pretty damn good news—and someone who probably relished her role as the town cynic.

“Any chance you might want to meet up with me for a coffee when I’m down in Townsend?”

“Hell, no,” she said. “I mean, I’ve got to live here, right? And if I’m seen with some Nosey Parker, well, I’ll never hear the end of it, now, will I? But two tips. Since you’re from Vancouver, you might want to ask around the flophouses off East Hastings. Rumor has it that both Hildy and Mimi have gone to ground there. Junkies. And my second ten-cent bit of wisdom of the morning is to repeat what I said to you earlier: follow the wife. She’s the evil one in the story . . . but if you quote me on that . . .”

“Fear not, it won’t happen,” I told her.

After the call I went to the local cybercafe and looked up all I could find about Hildy Krebs and Mimi Pullinger. Everything Missy Schulder told me was on the money—all the trouble into which they landed themselves, the idiot boyfriends, the two disappearances three years apart that were not connected at the time, but which had now come back into focus courtesy of Ivy MacIntyre.

I printed all the material on the two missing girls and wondered if their parents might be amenable to a visit by a fraudulent Vancouver Sun journalist. Then I googled everything I could find on Michael MacIntyre. Nothing of interest. But even if he was legally allowed to come out and say that, as much as he hated his father, George couldn’t harm his daughter . . . well, would that change anything? Of course not. In a case like this, everyone was so wrapped up in the need for closure—for finding the bogeyman and seeing him punished—that they were willing to construct a narrative that served their purposes. And this narrative essentially revolved around the idea that George MacIntyre was the killer among them.

On the way south to Townsend, the local Calgary CBC station talked about the investigation that was continuing both in Calgary—where Mr. MacIntyre was still being held—and in Townsend. No doubt a team of RCMP forensic specialists were now inspecting every fiber in every corner of George’s workshop.

Yes, go ahead and microexamine every damn corner of it. And while you’re at it, why not follow the advice of Missy Schulder—someone who actually knows the human territory here—and cherchez la femme.

That is certainly what I was planning to do if Brenda MacIntyre would see me.

The road south edged its way through Calgary’s endless urban sprawl. Then, suddenly, it all fell away and I was in open country. Though part of me wanted to look up and see what exactly I was passing through, I knew that this could be, at the very least, unsettling . . . especially after the business with Vern the other day. But it’s amazing how you can limit your peripheral vision when necessary and simply focus your eyes on the roll of the asphalt in front of you.

I did finally look up when I got to Townsend. It was a blink-twice-you-miss-it sort of place: a gasoline alley with the requisite monocultural crap (Tim Hortons, an outpost of the Red Lobster, a Burger King), augmented by a short Main Street of undistinguished concrete buildings and one or two red-brick holdovers from the 1950s. There was a bank. There was a supermarket. There was a shop that sold outdoor stuff. There was an old-style mom-and-pop restaurant. There was a sad-looking used bookstore, largely specializing in blockbuster paperbacks (but still, it was a bookstore). There was a bar. I thought about doing that old reporter thing of going into the local saloon and trying to strike up a conversation with the proprietor, in the hopes of eliciting some insights or useful information. But small towns have their own internal bush telegraphs and I didn’t want word to get out too fast about my being here. Best to not announce myself to the world.

Dwane Poole lived on a side street not far from the ugly breezeblock high school that Ivy attended. His was a simple ranch house on a half acre lot, with an extended detached garage taking up most of the available garden space. I heard the whirr of a rotary saw from the garage, so I approached its door. It was open. Poole was inside, wearing clear goggles as he fed a large piece of finished timber into the circular saw. He pushed the wood through, cutting it cleanly, then looked up and saw me.

“You Nancy?” he asked, whipping off his goggles. He was a thin, diminutive man in his late fifties, wearing a wool check shirt, baggy jeans, and round wire-rimmed glasses. I could easily imagine him, thirty years earlier, passing the bong around a crash pad while wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt. Now he came across as quiet, reserved, with a strong streak of shyness. His workshop was a masterpiece of organization: all the tools immaculately arranged, stacks of finished cabinets on one wall (the craftsmanship was impressive), drawings, design plans, and a large wooden desk filling another wall. Behind the desk was a picture of Dwane with a young man attired in the uniform of the Canadian Armed Forces.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” I said, accepting his outstretched hand.

“You’re about the fifth journalist who’s beaten a path to this door,” he said.

“I won’t take up too much of your time.”

He moved toward his office area, where there was a drip machine of coffee brewing.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “I just made a fresh pot.”

“Is that your son?” I asked, pointing to the photograph I had spied moments earlier.

“Yes, that’s David. He’s out in Afghanistan now. Stationed with the Canadian NATO Forces near Kandahar.”

“That must be a source of pride and worry,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully.

“More of the latter,” he said. “I don’t really know what we’re doing over there. But I’m not a politician and my boy did sign up for a tour of duty, so I suppose he has to accept the risks that come with the job.”

He poured me a mug of coffee and motioned for me to sit down on a simple wooden stool opposite his desk. I pulled out my notebook and pen. He himself perched on the edge of the desk and, from the outset, looked like he regretted agreeing to this interview in the first place.

“You know, George might have been the most talented carpenter I’d ever seen. When I was apprenticing—around forty years ago—every skill was hard-won and I really had to work at getting the principals down right. But George walked into this workshop and, within an hour, he was using a lathe as if he was born to it. And his eye when it came to understanding the intricacies of how to cut against the grain . . . like I said, he was a total natural.”

“Did he talk much about the problems he had at home?”

“For the first six months he was all business when he came through that door. He was here to learn a craft, a trade—and he was very determined. He was also, at this point, on benefit—but the provincial government was also paying him what’s called a Skills Re-Training stipend to work with me. It wasn’t much—around two hundred dollars a week—and I sensed money was very tight at home, especially as the wife wasn’t yet working. But, as I said, he kept a tight rein of all that—until he came in one morning with a gash over one eye. I asked him what had happened. He told me Brenda had been drunk and got into a real bad fight with Ivy, roaring at the girl and slapping her across the face. When George tried to pull Ivy away Brenda grabbed an iron and caught him right above the eye. He had to drive himself to a local hospital, get five stitches, and—this was a big mistake—cover for Brenda by telling the doctor on duty that he’d gotten the gash in a bar fight. That went on his medical records—and was used against him after Brenda’s arrest, especially as there was another incident when she punched him in the nose and broke it. Again he told the doctors that it was a drunken brawl—and these two recorded ‘bar brawls’ have ended up now as further evidence that he has a violent temper.”

“You say, ‘further evidence.’ Were there other violent incidents besides those two?”

“It’s a fact that he did punch her once in the stomach—but, according to George, that was only after she had pulled his hair and tried to throw a pot of boiling water on him, which he dodged just in time. Anyway, after throwing the punch, she doubled over and hit her head on a kitchen counter. Ivy came running into the room and saw her mother concussed, so she ran into her room, locked the door, and dialed 911. The police came and arrested her dad.”

“But didn’t he explain to them what had happened?”

“Brenda also had her side of the story—how he’d gotten furious with her for being such a bad housekeeper and slugged her.”

“Surely the cops also interviewed Ivy and she confirmed that her mother had attacked George in the past,” I said.

“Ivy was totally intimidated by her mother. She always threatened her with all sorts of bad stuff—like being sent away to an institution for disturbed children—if she ratted on her. Anyway, she already had a reputation as something of a wild child so it would have been her word against her mother’s. And since George was already exposed as a liar because of what he told the doctor . . .”

He went quiet and stared down into his coffee.

“Word has it that he still hasn’t confessed to Ivy’s death,” he said, “that he’s holding on to his story.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Part of me does—because he so loved her. But they had their terrible moments together. Like I was his biggest supporter. But when he was boozing we were in Jekyll and Hyde territory. I had great hopes that we were going to be partners together. We had three big jobs lined up—but he either showed up for work so hungover that he couldn’t function, or he’d not show up at all. Believe me, I pleaded with George to clean up his act—even told him to take two months off to get sober. George didn’t want to know. Eventually, one morning he walked in here so loaded and crazy that he actually picked up a two-by-four and told me he was going to kill me.”

“What happened?”

“My wife came in while this standoff was going on and had no choice but to call the police. I managed to make a dash out of the workshop. He started smashing up some cabinets we were working on. But here’s the intriguing thing: he only smashed those that he himself had built. Then he collapsed in a heap on the floor and started crying. I mean, bawling like he was the saddest, loneliest man on earth . . . which, at that moment, maybe he was. The police showed up. I told them I didn’t want to press charges, but they still took him off for ‘psychological evaluation’ and that was another mark against him.

“He was released two days later and wrote me this long, sad letter, telling me how he was going to sober up and how he hated himself for turning against me. I wrote back, saying that, of course, I accepted his apology and thought he was a brilliantly talented carpenter—but we could no longer work together. It was just out of the question. I never heard from him again. And then Ivy went missing . . .”

“How about the son, Michael?”

“I never liked him. Sullen, self-important kid—and like a lot of self-important people, not that bright. I know he tangled frequently with George and that George once knocked him down when Michael sassed him. Another black mark against George—though I gathered he only slugged Michael after the kid got caught dealing crystal meth. As you can gather it was one big happy family.”

“You still haven’t said whether or not you think George did it.”

Another long stare into his coffee.

“Will I be quoted on this?”

“Not if you don’t want to be.”

“I don’t. Everything instinctually tells me he would never have hurt Ivy. But I know how he turned against me. And I also know that, once he had nine beers in him, he was capable of extreme craziness. Then there’s the fact that he had that undergarment of hers in his workshop. So, anything is possible here. Anything. That’s about as conclusive as I’m going to get.”

I asked him if there was anyone else I should speak to.

“I guess there’s Larry Coursen—but I don’t like holy rollers who are as smooth as a Vegas croupier, if you take my meaning.”

“Nice metaphor. Maybe I’ll steal it.”

“Just as long as you don’t say you got it from me.”

“Anyone else worth chatting with?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“You ask around town, everyone will tell you that George is guilty as hell . . . especially as the wife is now in good with God. But I have doubt. A lot of doubt.”

Before I left I thanked Dwane for his time and asked for directions to the MacIntyres’ house.

“It’s just two streets over from here,” he said. “You’ll see all the TV vans out front. I think the ghouls are waiting for the moment when Ivy’s body is discovered so they can get Brenda’s hysterical reaction.”

“When a mother loses a child . . .” I heard myself saying, then lowered my head.

“Tell me about it. Every day my boy is in Afghanistan, I think about that. About how . . . if . . . I’d cope.”

He stared back into his coffee.

“I think I’ve said a little too much.”

When I left Dwane I drove immediately over to the MacIntyre residence. As he said, it was easy to find. There were five large television vans parked outside—and assorted camera and sound men lounging around, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee in paper cups, looking bored. Behind them was a run-down split-level house. It needed a new roof, new siding, new steps up to its front door. There was laundry hanging rigid with cold on a clothesline. It had the prerequisite rusted-out car perched on the front lawn. It reminded me of one of those houses you see in Appalachia or any rednecked corner of North America that immediately spoke of social deprivation and bad education and a no-hope view of life. Poor George MacIntyre didn’t have a chance. Everything Dwane told me—like Missy Schulder before him—painted a picture of a man who was in a domestic hell without respite. I could only think about my own personal situation—with my parents, and then with Theo—where I too felt a certain helplessness; a sense that I was with people who just didn’t play fair. George MacIntyre raged against others and drank. I raged against others and used the delusion of being in control of things as a way of denying my depression. George MacIntyre lost a child. I lost a child. Though the details of our stories were wildly different, we shared the same underlying fury at the inequity of others. And it killed the most important thing in both our lives.

I drove around Townsend for another half hour. I passed by the school again. I noted that none of the houses were substantial or venerable, that this was a community with no visible signs of wealth. I stopped in the mom-and-pop restaurant for a cup of coffee. I sat at the lunch counter and tried to start a conversation with the hard-faced woman who was serving me.

“Sad about the MacIntyre girl, isn’t it?” I said.

“Uh huh,” she replied, half regarding me warily.

“Did you know her or the family?”

“Everybody knows the MacIntyres.”

“Were they good neighbors?”

“You’re a reporter, right?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s not a definitive answer.”

“Yes, I’m a reporter.”

“Well, now that I know that, I’ve got nothing more to say to you.”

“I’m just doing my job,” I said.

“And I’m doing mine—which is running my restaurant and not answering your questions. George MacIntyre’s got enough problems on his hands right now . . .”

“That’s sort of an answer, isn’t it?”

“You trying to twist my words?”

“No—but I sense from what you just said that you aren’t of the opinion that MacIntyre is evil incarnate.”

“I’m not carrying on this conversation.”

“Was he as bad as the papers made him out to be?”

“You tell me. You’re on their side.”

“I’m on nobody’s side.”

Behind us came a voice.

“Brenda MacIntyre is a saintly woman.”

The owner of this voice was a woman in her early forties—plump, dressed in the brown polyester uniform that workers at Safeway were forced to wear. When I caught sight of the uniform I immediately remembered that Brenda MacIntyre wore one of these as well.

“Are you a member of her church?” I asked.

“She’s Assemblies, I’m Church of Christ. But we’re both people who have been touched by the Lord. And I know that Brenda is really suffering right now—but she has her faith, which is sustaining her.”

From behind the counter came the voice of the boss.

“I think you’ve said plenty, Louise. And I think we’re going to ask this visitor to finish her coffee and leave us in peace.”

“I was just trying to help,” Louise said.

“You were very helpful,” I said.

“And you owe me one dollar twenty-five for the coffee,” the boss said.

As I left the restaurant my cell phone started to ring.

“Nancy Lloyd?” said a voice I was already familiar with courtesy of many television and radio interviews. “It’s Reverend Larry Coursen here. Might you be in Townsend now?”

How did he know that . . . or was he just surmising?

“Actually I am.”

“Well, it’s a truly busy day—and not just because of poor dear Ivy MacIntyre. But I could spare you fifteen minutes if you came by the church right now.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, then quickly wrote down the directions he gave me.

I didn’t need them—as the Assemblies of God church was located at the far end of the gasoline alley. It was modest-sized, built in an International House of Pancakes red-brick style. There was a large billboard-sized poster to the right of the main entrance, showing two very well-scrubbed, very white parents in their mid-thirties, their arms around two very well-scrubbed, very white children (a boy and a girl, naturally), both around nine or ten years old. I felt that same aching sadness that always hit me whenever I saw any tableau—either real or staged—of parents and children. This time, however, the sorrow was undercut by the “Kodak moment” cuteness of the family and the mawkishness of the words blazoned above this picture: “All Families Are Miraculously Healed at Townsend Assemblies of God!”

You mean, the way the MacIntyre family was “miraculously healed”?

I parked in the capacious car park—its ability to handle a large number of vehicles an indication of either Coursen’s success as a pastor or a very false sense of optimism. There was a large new Land Rover Discovery parked to the side of the church. I sensed it must be Coursen’s as he advertised it with a vanity license plate on which were embossed two words: “Preacher Man.” The front doors of the church were open. I wandered inside. The vestibule had more blown-up life-sized photographs of the sort of happy parishioners who looked like they also modeled part-time for the Land’s End catalog. There were slogans on all of them: “Divine Love Conquers All!” . . . “At Townsend Assemblies We Are All One!” . . . and finally, just one word: “Praise!” There were also donation boxes, above which were further slogans: “It Feels Great to Tithe!” and “He Is Always There for You!” I had never visited any Eastern European countries during the era of Communism—I was far too young—but I imagined this was a miniature version of the exhortations that were plastered in all public places, reminding the subservient citizenry that “The Five Year Program Is the Only Way Forward.”

I doubted, however, if any Eastern European apparatchik dressed liked Larry Coursen. He must have heard me come in, as he emerged from the main body of the church into the vestibule. He was wearing a chocolate-brown cardigan, a purple shirt with a clerical collar, slightly flared blue jeans, and (just to remind everyone we were in Alberta) highly polished black cowboy boots. He was in his early forties, with thick blond hair somewhat coiffed, and—as I had noted on the television—very white teeth. His voice was sonorous, calming.

“Nancy, what a pleasure . . .” he said, extending his hand.

“I appreciate your time, Reverend.”

“Larry, please.”

“OK, Larry . . .”

“And you’re with the Vancouver Sun?”

“That’s right.”

“A fine newspaper. You from BC yourself?”

“No, back East.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Ontario.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Dundas,” I said, pulling a name out of a hat, as I had read a recent newspaper story about a well-known Canadian rock singer turned ace photographer who grew up in Dundas.

“Dundas! No kidding. I did some of my early pastoral work in Dundas!”

Oh, great . . .

“Do you know the Assemblies church on King and Sydenham streets . . . ?” he continued.

“Of course I know it. Passed it many times.”

“Right near the local branch of the Bay.”

“That’s it. It’s a rather modern building . . .”

“All Assemblies churches are. We are a rather new faith in Canada. Come on in—I’ll show you where we worship.”

As he held open the door into the church I felt a wave of fear. How insane to choose a small town as your false place of residence. Why didn’t you say Toronto or Montreal—a big city where anonymity rules?

But, at least, he seemed to have bought it . . .

The main body of the church itself looked like it had been styled after a sports stadium, albeit on a smaller scale, with banked seating all padded in white Naugahyde and a pulpit on a thrust stage. It was surrounded by spotlights. There was a garish white organ with gold-painted pipes and a choir loft that appeared to have room for one hundred voices.

“It’s very impressive,” I said. “And it also looks like it’s tailor made for televangelism.”

My tone was neutral, not sneering. But Coursen smiled tightly, trying to weigh what I meant by that.

“If you mean by ‘televangelism,’ spreading the Gospel through electronic means, then yes—it is something toward which we as a church are definitely aiming. Of course, we are a small town in Canada. But you know Oral Roberts began his ministry in a small church in Tulsa, Oklahoma—and look how his ‘vision’ expanded into his own nationally broadcast program and his very own university. Now do understand: my ambitions are not personal ones. Rather they are communal—in that Townsend Assemblies of God is a very close community with great spiritual aspirations when it comes to spreading the Good News that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“How many do you have in your congregation?”

“Well over two hundred very dedicated souls—which may not seem like a grand figure, but is still, if I may say so, impressive for a town of five thousand. You show me another church in Townsend that has five percent of the population.”

He motioned for me to sit down on one of the Naugahyde benches. He positioned himself relatively close to me.

“Might I ask your faith affiliation?” he said.

“I don’t have one.”

“I see. And why is that?”

“I’m not a believer, I suppose.”

He nodded and gave me the sort of smile that was somewhere between avuncular and sympathetic.

“For many people faith is the hardest thing in the world. “The Great Leap” and all that. But it is also the greatest gift you can receive. With it comes life ever after and a wonderful community of souls to support you while on Earth.”

I took out my pen and notepad.

“Is that a hint I should get off this subject?” he asked.

“I just don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“Very good response,” he said, “even if it evades the subject. Were you raised in any faith, Nancy?”

“My dad was nothing, my mom a Unitarian—which, I suppose, from where you sit, is the equivalent of nothing.”

“Well, Unitarians don’t really believe in Divine Revelation, or the Paradise to Come, or even the Prevalence of Miracles . . . so, quite honestly, it’s hard to know what Unitarians get from their religion.”

“It’s a faith not based on certainty, but on doubt.”

“Can faith and doubt be neighbors?”

“Aren’t they always neighbors? You can’t have faith without doubt.”

“Well, I would argue otherwise. Faith negates doubt. Faith provides you with the sustenance needed to face life’s challenges. Faith provides definitive answers to the biggest questions facing us. And don’t you think there is a huge amount of comfort to be gleaned from that?”

“If you need definitive answers, yes.”

“We all need definitive answers,” he said.

“That’s your point of view, not mine.”

“So you can live with ongoing doubt, no matter how painful that doubt might prove to be?”

“Perhaps it would be more painful to profess faith when you have none.”

A small smile from Larry Coursen. He was enjoying this banter, especially as he could see it was making me uncomfortable.

“We all have faith, Nancy. And we all have the power within us to remake ourselves anew. It’s simply a matter of giving yourself over to the Greatest Gift we can receive while we are alive.”

“Did Brenda MacIntyre remake herself anew?”

Another smile from the Reverend.

“Yes, Brenda herself had a magnificent transformation. When she first came to me she was a woman in crisis. Angry, hostile, alcohol-dependent, enraged at the world . . .”

“Violent?” I asked.

“I think she would be the first to admit she was raised in a violent family, that she married a violent man, and therefore was well acquainted with violent behavior.”

“But was she herself violent?”

“Describe what you mean by ‘violent.’ ”

“Physically attacking her children . . .”

“I’m sure she smacked her children when they were naughty. But attacking George? I think you have it backward. It was he who attacked her repeatedly.”

“Even though several people I interviewed informed me that George MacIntyre told them he’d been violently attacked by your parishioner?”

His lips tightened as I said the words “your parishioner.” He didn’t like that expression at all.

“And who might these people be?” he asked.

“I can’t reveal sources.”

“Well, I can definitively reveal the fact that I know Brenda MacIntyre’s soul—because, in the course of accepting Jesus as Her Lord and Savior, she revealed unto me all her sins . . . sins that have now been washed clean. And I can definitively state that she was never violent toward her violent and tragic husband.”

“Was Ivy MacIntyre also washed clean of her sins?” I asked.

“Ivy was in the process of accepting the gift of redemption when she disappeared.”

“By which you mean . . . ?”

“Brenda had brought her to church several times. She was beginning to make friends with parishioners of her own age. She had seen me on several occasions, during which we had several long private talks.”

“And these talks concerned . . . ?”

“The trouble in her life. Her acceptance of sin as a way of living. Her weakness when it came to boys and drugs.”

“She’d already lost her virginity at thirteen?”

“I never said that.”

“Then what did you mean by ‘trouble with boys’?”

“Just that. She had trouble with boys.”

“And as regards drugs . . . ?”

“She admitted to me that she had smoked pot.”

“That’s not wholly unusual for many thirteen-year-olds.”

“Are you saying you approve of the idea of teenagers smoking pot?”

“No, what I’m saying is: it’s not a shocking revelation that a thirteen-year-old girl had tried it.”

“Did you try it when you were thirteen?”

“No—I was sixteen.”

“Did you like it enough to continue smoking it?”

“Actually, no.”

“Well, Ivy did like it . . .”

“Then I stand corrected.”

“I suppose you do,” he said.

“So Ivy had yet to be ‘saved’?”

“I am sure that, if she were to leave this life now, she would be with God in Heaven. Because right before she disappeared she did accept Jesus as Her Lord and Savior.”

“You didn’t say that before.”

“You didn’t ask me that before.”

“I’m asking it now.”

“Yes, in one of our last private talks, she finally did become born-again.”

“Which means she’s in paradise now.”

“She’s not dead,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I can’t be sure. I simply have faith that she is alive.”

“In most cases of disappearance, if the child isn’t found within forty-eight hours, it’s foul play . . . and the person who has abducted the child usually resorts to homicide.”

“There are two things different about this case. The first is that Ivy is not a child, she’s an adolescent. And adolescents—if they disappear—often end up on the street somewhere . . .”

“Like Hildy Krebs and Mimi Pullinger?”

“Exactly.”

“You know they are on the street?”

“I have to surmise that they have drifted into a bad life.”

“But if Ivy had been saved before she disappeared, why then did she end up on the street?”

“If she is, in fact, on the street. People backslide, Nancy. They give in to their most base instincts and make mistakes.”

“Do you think George MacIntyre actually harmed his daughter?”

“The evidence points to his guilt. Just as there was a history of physical abuse by him in the MacIntyre household.”

“All perpetrated by George MacIntyre?”

“That’s what I was led to believe.”

“But never by Brenda MacIntyre?”

“You evidently have your suspicions that Brenda was not telling the truth.”

“Yes—I do have my suspicions.”

“And why is that?”

“Because of things that people have told me.”

“Such as . . . ?”

“Such as the fact that she assaulted George on several occasions, that she was violent with Ivy, that—”

“All lies,” he said, his voice quiet but definitive.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I am very good at sniffing out lies . . . and liars.”

“Is your nose that infallible?”

“I am not the Pope,” he said. “But I do understand the complexities of human nature. Just as I know when someone is not telling the truth . . . or is telling me they are something they are not.”

He looked at me directly as he said this—and that’s when I realized he had me figured out.

“But getting back to George MacIntyre . . .” I said.

“No, let’s get back to King and Sydenham streets in Dundas,” he said. “I mentioned that’s where the Assemblies of God church was in Dundas. You said: ‘Of course I know it. Passed it many times.’ The fact is, the Assemblies of God church is not on King and Sydenham. Just as there is no branch of the Bay in the town.”

“I was just playing along,” I said, knowing that I sounded completely unconvincing.

“Just as you were ‘playing along’ about being a reporter on the Vancouver Sun?”

He favored me with a big smile and continued talking.

“There is no Nancy Lloyd on the Vancouver Sun. I know this because when you called me I called the newspaper. Given the big media attention surrounding this case it’s best to check out everyone’s bona fides. Yours turned out to be false ones. Which, in turn, makes me wonder: Who are you and why are you so interested in this case?”

I stood up.

“I apologize for deceiving you.”

“You still haven’t answered my questions.”

“Who I am doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, but it does matter. Because it’s clear to me that, though you might not be certifiably disturbed, you are nonetheless a woman in a very troubled place in her life. Very troubled indeed . . . to the point where I might even call you damaged. That’s why I agreed to see you, even though I knew you were lying to me . . . because I wanted to see who exactly was this damaged person and why was she so involved in Ivy MacIntyre’s disappearance?”

“I have my reasons,” I said, glancing at the nearest exit.

“I’m sure you do,” he said. “Fear not, I am not going to stop you from leaving here. I am not angry at you. On the contrary I feel desperately sad for you. Sad because it’s so evident that you are harboring an anger and a grief that has turned you against yourself and against the world. And sad because you are, I’m sure, alone and without love . . . and yet you reject He who loves you more than anyone else. And that is God. But to you, God doesn’t exist. To you, God is a fraud . . . even though it’s you yourself who has committed the fraud here today.”

“Again I apologize. If you’ll let me, I’ll just go now and never bother you again.”

“But I’d rather you bother me. Just as I’d rather you admit to me that you are willing to open your heart to God’s love and let Him heal your grief.”

“He won’t do that,” I said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I have my reasons.”

“You sound so definite.”

“I am.”

“Now I am certainly not a Catholic—but I did once learn in theology school about Pascal’s Wager. You know about that?”

I shook my head.

“Pascal—a French theologian—stated that, even though we couldn’t be certain about God’s existence, weren’t we better off accepting it? After all, Nancy—or whatever your name is—if you were to get down on your knees right now next to me and let me bring you to Jesus, then the gift of Eternal Life would be yours. Think about that—Life Hereafter. Death Defeated. Not only that, but all your sins would be washed clean. Now give me one—just one—good reason why you shouldn’t accept the Greatest Gift You Will Ever Receive.”

I finally met his gaze.

“Because it’s all ridiculous,” I said.

And then I turned and fled.

TWENTY-FIVE

IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT.

This was my line of thought all the way back to Calgary. How could I have been so stupid, so naive, to think that His Holiness wouldn’t have checked up on me? The guy was a hyperambitious televangelist-in-waiting. As such, he was very protective of his image. So naturally he was going to make a phone call to verify that Nancy Lloyd was who she said she was.

What made this entire incident five times worse was the fact that Coursen was no slouch when it came to targeting other people’s weaknesses. The bastard read me like an open goddamn book—and knew exactly what buttons to push to make me squirm.

“On the contrary I feel desperately sad for you. Sad because it’s so evident that you are harboring an anger and a grief that has turned you against yourself and against the world. And sad because you are, I’m sure, alone and without love . . . and yet you reject He who loves you more than anyone else.”

If He loved me, none of this would have ever happened. But to say that would have been to engage in a dialogue about Emily—and that would have been manna from heaven for an evangelist like Coursen. The Bereaved Mother Searching for Healing. As it turned out he still caught me out in a major lie and so brilliantly turned the tables on me that he left me feeling as if I was completely crazy . . . which perhaps was the case.

Idiot, idiot, idiot. Getting obsessed about the persecution of a sad loser who might have been framed, but who—given all the conflicting evidence surrounding the case—might also be very guilty.

And now I wondered if Coursen had managed to write down the license plate on my car and had contacted the cops who, in turn, had contacted Avis Rent-a-Car, who, in turn, had informed them that the car had been rented to a certain Jane Howard of . . .

Idiot, idiot, idiot . . .

But maybe he’d do the Christian thing and let the whole matter drop. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . I’d get away with it.

That night, back home in my little apartment, I couldn’t sleep. When I decided that the night was lost, I walked down 17th Avenue to an all-night internet café and googled everything I could about the Rev. Larry Coursen. Most of the articles were connected with the Ivy MacIntyre case, but I did find the Townsend Assemblies of God official website, which had many glossy pictures of Coursen leading services, laying healing hands on wheelchair-bound parishioners, and posing with his wife Bonnie—a very blond, rather plump woman—and their two daughters, Heather and Katie. Under this photograph was the caption: “Family Is All!” There was also a biographical sketch of Coursen, talking about how he had been raised on the “Plains of Saskatchewan,” attended the Liberty Bible College in Virginia, then returned home to Canada to “begin his ministry.” After brief stints at Assemblies of God churches in Dundas and Toronto, “he was personally chosen to create a new ministry in Townsend, Alberta. Starting with only ten parishioners, the dynamic, inspirational leadership of Larry Coursen has resulted in a twenty-fold increase in membership and a Major Spiritual Impact in this corner of the Canadian West.”

From Toronto to Townsend. The powers that be in the hierarchy of his church must have decided he needed to be sent out to pasture. Or maybe they considered him just a little too ambitious too young, and thought a nowhere parish would teach him some necessary humility.

I printed off all the articles on Coursen, then spent the next two hours continuing to google everything else to do with the Ivy MacIntyre case—trying to fill any further gaps I had in my knowledge. All my predawn research turned up little that was new, bar those details on Coursen and the discovery that the Regina woman who had accused George MacIntyre of sexual abuse also had a previous conviction for prostitution. Her name was Chrissy Ely—and, according to the Regina Journal, she later rescinded her accusation against him, saying it was all a misunderstanding. (Now why wasn’t that more widely reported—and what made her have this volte-face?)

By the time I left the internet café it was nearly seven a.m. I gathered up all my printed papers. I zipped up my parka. I stepped out into the cold and, head down against the wind, pushed my way home, determined to finally get some sleep.

But as I approached the doorway of my apartment building I saw an unwelcome presence outside: a police car. Part of me wondered if I should execute a crisp about-face and get the hell out of there. Another part of me knew: There’s no escaping this. There were two uniformed officers in the car. They both got out as I approached.

“Jane Howard?” the first one said to me.

I nodded, wondering how they knew it was me. I could see them sizing me up, gauging whether I was going to try and do a runner or struggle or . . .

“This is not an arrest, Ms. Howard,” the second one said as they moved to either side of me, effectively hemming me in. “However, you are wanted for questioning as regards an incident yesterday in Townsend. You can refuse to submit to questioning now, but that will entail one of us remaining with you at your apartment while we secure a court order to have you formally questioned by the RCMP. You can also request legal counsel be present during the questioning. That will also entail you being held by us until your counsel—or one appointed for you by the province—arrives. Or you can simply expedite matters by coming with us now.”

Did I really have much choice in the matter? I wanted it all behind me, so I told them: “I’ll come now.”

“That’s the smart decision,” the first cop said, lightly taking my arm and escorting me to their waiting patrol car.

They drove me to an unmarked office block on the edge of the Central Business District. We plunged into an underground car park, pulling in near an elevator. The policemen hadn’t spoken to me during the drive from my apartment. Once we came to a stop, the cop who wasn’t driving got out and opened the door for me. We waited for the other cop to get out. He punched a code onto a keypad. A door clicked open. Lightly touching my arm, the other cop informed me I should move forward.

Up we rode four flights. When we reached this floor, I was directed to turn right, then left. We came to a set of steel doors. Another code was punched into a keypad. Another click. I was ushered inside a small room with a steel table and three chairs. There was a mirror on one wall. I’d seen enough cop shows on television to know this was one of those mirrors that allowed people on the other side to observe the proceedings.

“Have a seat,” the first cop said. “Sergeant Clark will be in to see you in a moment.”

I sat down.

“Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?”

“Black coffee with one sugar would be great,” I said, also thinking: I can’t imagine they always treat criminals this way. Maybe they’d decided I wasn’t a criminal, just a loon.

The door shut behind the cop. I took off my parka and attempted to slump into the steel-backed chair, the completely sleepless night suddenly hitting me. But these chairs were designed to keep their occupants rigid and upright. Even though I was profoundly tired, I did have to reflect on the fact that I had landed myself in a police station . . . an act of profound stupidity on my part.

The door opened again. A man in his early fifties came in. He was tall and had the build of an aging football player. His suit was gray, his tie an indifferent collection of stripes. And he was holding a steaming plastic cup.

“Ms. Howard? Sergeant William Clark of the RCMP. Here’s your coffee.”

“Thank you,” I said, accepting it.

“I’m not planning to detain you here, as long as the matter at hand can be resolved quickly . . . which, in turn, will depend on the answers you give me.”

“I’ll help you in any way I can, sir.”

He studied me as I said that, gauging my sincerity, then nodded his approval. During the drive over to what I now knew was a federal police building, I had made the decision to come clean with the cops. I would talk to them directly. I would not make excuses. I would tell them an approximation of the truth—because, after all, what is the actual truth in any situation like this? Sipping my weak black coffee—and ruminating again on the thought that a policeman actually offered it to me—I decided: They’ve had a complaint from His Holiness and they’ve had to investigate it. If I tell them what they want to know—as the sergeant informed me—they might just be done with me in an hour or two.

He asked me to confirm my full name, my address, my date of birth, my place of birth . . .

“So you’re American?” he asked. I explained the Canadian passport—and how long I had been resident in the country. I sensed he knew all this already, but wanted to see how I would respond to his questions.

“This is not a formal interview,” he said. “You’re not under arrest. But we need to know why you were impersonating a newspaper reporter to gain access to individuals associated with the Ivy MacIntyre case.”

“Because I became obsessed with it.”

“And why did you become so obsessed with it?”

“Because I lost my only child in January last year.”

I articulated that sentence flatly, without emotion. Sergeant Clark looked down into a folder open on the table. I glanced over and saw there were clippings about Emily’s death on the top of the pile. He too had used Google to find out about me.

“In the wake of your daughter’s death, did you suffer from any psychological breakdown?”

“I’m sure you have all that in the file,” I replied.

He said nothing, but again looked down at his papers. Had he run a check on me already and found out that my accident was on a national police database down south? No doubt about it. No doubt at all.

“Now, I am given to understand that you hold a doctorate from Harvard and a very responsible job at the Central Public Library here in Calgary. I only spoke a few minutes ago with your boss, Mrs. Woods.”

“Did you tell her why I was being held by the police?”

“Yes, I did—even though, I need to reiterate, you are not being held by us.”

That’s the end of my job then.

“I did explain to Mrs. Woods that what you had done wasn’t criminal, but could become so were you to repeat such behavior again.”

“I won’t repeat it.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Speaking directly, the public prosecutor could—were we to approach him—make a case against you for impersonation, for perverting the course of justice, and for wasting police time. We’ve expended a good half day on all this; time that could be better used trying to track down the individual or individuals responsible for Ivy MacIntyre’s disappearance.”

I hung my head, feeling nothing but shame.

“Given that, I do recognize there are extenuating circumstances here. You should know that Mrs. Woods robustly defended you—and said that, under the circumstances, you were coping well with the psychological damage that, I know, accompanies the loss of a child.

“That said, you did ‘interview’ Reverend Coursen under false pretenses—and the Vancouver Sun is also most displeased with having been falsely represented by you. So I need to first ask you this, Ms. Howard: What did you hope to get out of your ‘interviews’ with Rev. Coursen and Dwane Poole and everyone else you spoke to in Townsend?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I was thinking, if I could solve the case . . .”

“You’d somehow bring your daughter back to life?”

“I never thought that. I just became a little too focused on the details of Ivy’s disappearance—and kept wondering if there might be another side to the story. It was, I see now, a displacement activity. So I want to apologize to you, Sergeant, for any time I’ve wasted. Just as I plan to write Reverend Coursen to say just how sorry I am.”

“Let me ask you this, Ms. Howard—do you yourself have any thoughts about the case?”

Careful here. If you enthusiastically begin to talk about how he should really check out all the talk about Brenda’s violent streak, he’ll probably decide you’re still very much obsessed with it all.

Then again, if you say nothing . . .

“One thing did stick with me. Dwane Poole stated that George MacIntyre informed him that his injuries requiring hospital treatment didn’t happen in a bar brawl, but were the direct cause of an attack by his wife, Brenda.”

“We got the same information from MacIntyre himself. And, of course, we investigated it. It’s his word against hers—and the medical records at the hospital show that he reported his injuries as received in a bar fight.”

“Did he also talk about how Brenda was violent toward Ivy?”

“Again it’s a ‘he said, she said’ situation. Police work is never infallible, but we wouldn’t have charged him with Ivy’s disappearance unless we were certain we had a case against him . . . which we do. I mention all this because, I sense, that you still have your doubts about his guilt. Which, as a member of the public, you are entitled to have—as long as those doubts do not interfere with an ongoing investigation. Do you understand what I am saying here, Ms. Howard?”

“You have my assurances I will stay out of all this in the future.”

“I accept those assurances. And given the circumstances of your case, I want to be humane about all this. But do understand: if you make further contact with any of the people associated with this case—or if, for that matter, you’re seen snooping around Townsend again—you will be prosecuted. I hope it doesn’t have to come to all that.”

I was allowed to leave half an hour later—a uniformed officer actually giving me a lift back to my apartment. When I returned there was a message on my cell phone from Geraldine Woods, asking me to phone her. I did as instructed. She was pleasant yet direct on the phone.

“Now whatever about the police phoning me up and reporting your interference into an ongoing criminal investigation, there is the fact that you lied to me about the reason for your absence from work this week. Would you like to explain this to me, please?”

I rolled out the same apologies I had given the sergeant—and again pleaded emotional distress.

She heard me out and said: “I’m willing to let this ride the one time—out of actual respect for you and the fact that you’re doing such a brilliant job for us. So please don’t make me fire you, Jane. And please report back to work on Monday without fail.”

After this conversation I did the one thing I could do under the circumstances: I crawled beneath the covers of my bed and passed out until around midnight. When I awoke I felt that momentary rejuvenation that comes with having slept for twelve hours without interruption, followed by the usual nightmarish déjà vu that I had now accepted as a facet of every morning. But as I showered and made coffee and listened to the all-night concert on CBC Radio 2, another thought came to me: Say there was a similar instance of three girls disappearing from another small town in Canada?

Before I knew it I was dressed and back at the all-night internet café. The guy behind the counter grumbled a “Hello” as I came in—no doubt categorizing me as another of his weirdo nighttime clients. I bought a bad instant coffee, slid in front of a monitor, and went to work.

Eight hours later, I’d come up with very little. Kids went missing all the time in Canada. The web was full of page after page of desperate postings by parents with details about their vanished children. But most of these were runaways and, with a couple of gruesome exceptions, the adolescents were usually traced to down-at-heel squats in the grimmer corners of every major city in the country.

One item did interest me: the story of an eleven-year-old girl who went missing near Hamilton, Ontario, and was then found ten days later deposited on her parents’ doorstep, babbling about having been abducted and sexually molested. The article from the Hamilton Daily Record spoke about “police investigations” into her disappearance and accusations, and then, in a later article, about how a “trusted family counselor” had been investigated by the local constabulary. No charges, however, were brought against him. The girl, meanwhile, had been admitted to a psychiatric facility, suffering from post-traumatic stress.

At least they got her back, I thought as I printed the article and added it to my burgeoning file of Ivy MacIntyre–related clippings.

As I was paying off the charges for eight hours of internet use—a bargain at twelve bucks—my cell phone rang. Much to my surprise I found myself talking to Vern. He sounded hesitant and tense.

“Thought I should check in, see how things were going,” he said.

“Did you hear what happened?”

“You mean, about the . . . uhm . . . police?”

“The RCMP, to be specific about it.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Marlene Tucker, no doubt, heard it from Geraldine Woods who passed it on to . . .”

A nervous cough from Vern.

“Well, you know how small things can get talked about around here,” he said. “You got time for a cup of coffee this morning?”

“Something on your mind, Vern?”

“No . . . just . . . uhm . . . like to see you, if it’s not too early or anything like that.”

“I’ve been up for hours. You know Caffè Beano?”

We agreed to meet there in half an hour.

Though Calgary wasn’t exactly New York when it came to style, Caffè Beano still had a clientele who dressed as if this was SoHo. So when Vern showed up—in his chocolate-brown anorak and his matching chocolate-brown flat corduroy cap and his gray polyester trousers—eyes did turn toward him, and I suddenly regretted arranging our rendezvous here, because I could also sense his unease at being so out of place amid the black leather jackets and designer shades, and the fifteen varieties of java on sale.

He sat down nervously at my table.

“They serve just regular black coffee here?” he said.

“They sure do,” I said. After sorting him out with a mug I sat down opposite him.

“So . . .” I said.

“So . . .” he said.

“That was quite a drinking session last Sunday.”

“That’s one of the reasons I’m here. I felt pretty damn awful about getting so smashed in front of you.”

“I wasn’t exactly being abstemious either,” I said.

“I know, but . . . I hate when I do that.”

“Then don’t do it.”

“I need to do it from time to time.”

“Then don’t feel bad about it. I didn’t.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“This week, when I found out about your . . . uhm . . . problems with the . . . uhm . . . law, I couldn’t help but think . . . uhm . . . maybe if I hadn’t gotten you into that marathon drinking session . . .”

“You mean, because I saw George MacIntyre on the TV in the bar?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re blaming yourself for that?”

“Well . . .”

“Jesus . . . and I thought I was the Guilt Queen here.”

“Are you OK now?”

“I wasn’t not OK before. I just got this thing into my head that the police were holding the wrong man.”

“Were they?”

“You want to know?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“I said that, yes.”

Before pausing for breath I started talking. I must have talked straight through without stopping for the next forty-five minutes. I couldn’t shut myself up. As I worked my way through the entire Ivy MacIntyre case—raising the questions I had about who exactly was guilty here and whether there had been a terrible miscarriage of justice—I kept digging and digging into my file of papers on the case. It was only much later that day—when I recalled this monologue and my cross-examination-style presentation of the case for and against George MacIntyre—that I shuddered at the thought of how damn unhinged I sounded . . . and how Vern just sat there, looking a little stunned at my soliloquy, conscious of the stares I was receiving from other café patrons who were just a little appalled to hear this woman defend what the vast majority of the public considered the indefensible . . . but which, according to the rules of Canadian politeness, they weren’t going to contradict out loud. (Tattooed bartenders operated according to a different set of rules than the latte drinkers at Caffè Beano.)

When I finally finished Vern just sat there, appearing simultaneously shell-shocked and too embarrassed to admit that he felt shell-shocked.

“Well, come on, Vern,” I said, still on a manic high from my Perry Mason monologue. “Tell me I’m full of shit, or talking out of my ass, or just . . .”

“Jane, please,” he hissed, quickly tapping my hand. “There’s no need to . . .”

“What?” I said, my voice still raised. “Articulate the thing no one wants to admit? . . . That they’ve tried and convicted a man without fully weighing all the other evidence?”

Silence. Vern glanced around and could see all the eyes in the café on us.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. Then, thanking me for the coffee, he left.

But I followed him right out onto the street.

“Have I said the wrong thing?” I asked him as he was trying to get into his car. “Did I embarrass you in there?”

He shut his car door and turned back toward me.

“I’m going to tell you what my AA sponsor told me when I was coming off a binge. You can continue to convince yourself this sort of behavior is normal and skid off the edge of the cliff. Or you can stop it and save yourself.”

It was the first time I ever heard Vern become stern with me—and it was clear that he was uncomfortable with such paternal directness. Especially as my reaction was shameful.

“The difference between us, Vern, is that I’m not a drunk.”

Having landed that one on him, I turned and went upstairs to my apartment and collapsed into my armchair and thought to myself: You are a drunk. Only what’s intoxicating you all the time isn’t booze, but anger. The sort of anger brought about by grief. The sort of anger that refuses to resolve itself and finds displacement in . . .

But this bout of self-recrimination was superseded by another thought: the newspapers! So I was back down at the magazine shop around the corner from Caffè Beano, buying the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Telegraph . . . every Canadian paper they sold there, including the Vancouver Sun.

“You really want all of these?” the guy asked me as he rang them up.

“Any problem with that?” I asked.

“It’s your money,” he said.

Back at the apartment, I tore through them all, hoping that somewhere I’d find an article raising a shadow of doubt on the guilt of George MacIntyre. But everyone was adhering to the law and just reporting the basic facts of the case. While flipping through the Globe and Mail I noticed a column—about an incest trial in Thunder Bay—by Charlotte Plainfield. She was a star journalist, well known in Canada as someone who frequently took up cases of child abuse and malfeasant criminal behavior. Without stopping to think I clipped out Plainfield’s article, grabbed my MacIntyre case file, and hot-tailed it back to the internet café.

“You again?” grunted the clerk before handing me a password to one of the terminals. There, over the next two hours, I composed a very lengthy letter to Plainfield in defense of George MacIntyre, citing the interviews and research I had done, together with the doubts raised by the conflicting testimony, urging her to find that prostitute in Regina who had retracted the charges against him, and to generally re-examine the case. Fortunately the Globe and Mail listed her email address at the bottom of her article, so I didn’t have to search the net for it. And when I hit the print button to make a copy of my email for my files I saw that I had written over ten pages.

On Monday I returned to work. The first order of business was to pay a visit to Geraldine Woods and again apologize in person. But when I came into her office I could see that something was terribly wrong . . . or, more to the point, that I was in serious trouble.

“I’m glad you came to see me straightaway, Jane,” she said, “because I was planning to ask you to come by here as soon as you arrived.”

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“You mean, you don’t know what’s happened? You’re so out of touch with your actions that you didn’t realize that by sending that very long and frankly unstable email to Charlotte Plainfield . . .”

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

“If I could try and explain . . .” I started to say.

She raised up her hand.

“That won’t be necessary—as a decision has already been taken about this matter.”

“But surely before firing me, you can, at least, let me defend—”

“We’re not firing you, Jane. We’re putting you on health leave. Three months’ fully paid health leave, to be exact . . . and if, during that time, you agree to see a state psychiatrist and agree to the course of treatment he or she recommends, you will be welcomed back here once you have been given the all-clear.”

“And if I don’t agree?”

“Please don’t go down that road, Jane. We do like you here. We all know what you have gone through, what you still have to deal with every day. There are people here who are actually pulling for you. I wish you’d see that.”

Then she picked up the phone on her desk.

“Now I have to do something official here—which is to call Sergeant Clark and tell him you’re here. When Charlotte Plainfield contacted him about your email, it wasn’t to register a complaint; rather, to raise some of the points you made. He then asked to see a copy of it—and that was that.”

“This isn’t fair,” I said. “I simply wrote a well-known journalist with my ideas about the case . . .”

“After impersonating a journalist and wasting police time. Come on, Jane. Sergeant Clark warned you to stay clear of all this. And I told you the same thing. Everybody’s not just been fair; they’ve bent the rules to keep you out of trouble. You’re not getting shown the door. And Sergeant Clark told me he isn’t formally charging you with anything.”

“Then why does he need to see me?”

“He’ll explain that.”

She dialed a number, then turned around and spoke quietly into the phone. After a minute or so she hung up.

“He said he could send someone around in a police car to collect you,” she told me, “but as their headquarters are located just behind us he thought you might find it less embarrassing if you just walked over there.”

How Canadian.

“That’s very trusting of him.”

“I don’t think he considers you a security risk, Jane.”

Just a flake.

“He’ll explain about the psychiatrist and the program they will want you to follow. Please listen to him and please do as he asks. Also, I hope you’ll remember you can always call me if you want to talk anything over. And Ruth Fowler wanted you to know that she would very much like to see you when and if you are willing.”

“Tell her ‘thank you,’ ” I said, my voice weak. I had suddenly been hit by a wave of tiredness and wondered if I could take any more of this excessive decency.

“Would you do one favor for me, please?” I said.

“Of course.”

“Would you tell Vern ‘sorry’ for me. He’ll understand.”

Geraldine Woods looked at me as if she was very intrigued, but also sensed it was best not to delve any further.

“Of course I’ll do that,” she said.

At that precise moment the phone rang. Mrs. Woods answered it.

“Geraldine Woods . . . Oh, hello, Sergeant . . . Yes, yes, of course I’ll tell her . . . Is it something serious . . . ?”

Her face turned the color of chalk.

“Oh, God, that’s dreadful . . . When did this happen? . . . I see . . . Absolutely, absolutely . . . Leave it with me . . . I’m so . . . Well, I actually don’t know what to say, Sergeant.”

She put down the phone. She didn’t turn toward me for a good minute, trying to take in what she had just been told. Finally she said: “That was Sergeant Clark. He has to cancel his appointment with you. Something has happened.”

“Something bad?” I asked.

“Very bad. George MacIntyre hanged himself in his cell this morning.”

TWENTY-SIX

BY THE END of the day the story was everywhere. It was the lead item on all the national news programs in Canada. It was the cover story on the afternoon edition of the local tabloid, the Calgary Sun: “MacIntyre Hangs Himself” was blazoned across the front page, followed by the subheadline: “Accused of His Daughter’s Death He Leaves Note Saying He Can’t Take It Anymore.” All the afternoon radio programs also made it their big piece of breaking news. Every inch and minute of coverage concentrated on one salient notion: that MacIntyre hanged himself to escape justice.

One psychologist interviewed on CBC Radio talked about how a guilty individual can live for weeks, months, even years, denying the fact that he is culpable for the heinous crime he committed, and then the moment arises when he has to confront himself face-on. “That’s when the urge to take your own life—to essentially become your own judge and executioner—becomes immense. The dawn of reality for a sociopath is the dawn either of self-destruction or of some sort of redemption. Sadly, in the case of George MacIntyre his confrontation with the enormity of what he had done proved too much to bear.”

A senior RCMP inspector held a news conference, in which the facts of MacIntyre’s suicide were officially recounted. He’d not been on twenty-four-hour suicide watch because, upon his arrest, he had none of the telltale signs of someone on the verge of killing himself. On the contrary, he’d been so adamant about his own innocence. “Having said that, we did follow all procedures and protocols when it came to ensuring his safety. Sadly these failed him—and I take full responsibility for that.”

Rare as it was to see someone in authority actually take responsibility for a catastrophe (and yes, George MacIntyre’s suicide was just that), I still couldn’t fathom how they could have missed what I saw so clearly in his eyes the first time I caught a glimpse of him on the television: the haunted features of a man who was in the throes of a downward spiral. He’d been accused of killing his child, for Christ’s sake . . . Did they really expect him to take all that on the chin? Who could withstand such torment? And why the hell didn’t they protect him against himself? (Because, no doubt, part of them believed he deserved the self-inflicted fate.)

I myself was in deep shock about all this. George MacIntyre had been my cause, a certain raison d’être. But without him to fight for . . .

Oh, will you listen to yourself, sounding like the truly disturbed and pathetic sad case that you are. You and your wacko theories. The evidence—though not watertight—still pointed to his supreme guilt. Accept it—and now get it behind you.

This line of argument was also put forward by officer Sheila Rivers, a direct, hard-edged member of the RCMP who stepped in for Sergeant Clark when it came to formally cautioning me.

After Geraldine Woods had received the call from Clark, telling him about MacIntyre’s suicide, he also informed her that I still had to report to the RCMP’s offices—and they would be expecting me in a half hour or “a warrant will be put out for her arrest.”

I was at their headquarters ten minutes later. The uniformed receptionist seemed to be expecting me. She hit a button and spoke into a phone, then told me: “Officer Rivers will be with you in a moment.”

Officer Sheila Rivers was in her late thirties: tall, angular, with short black hair and a rapid-fire way of speaking. She was dressed in a simple black pants suit and a white shirt. She could have passed for a businesswoman, had it not been for the holster and gun clearly visible beneath her suit coat.

“Jane Howard?”

I nodded and accepted her extended hand.

“We’ll do this downstairs,” she said, pointing toward a door across the lobby from the reception area. She punched in a code on the external keypad. We were in an IdentiKit version of the same room in which Sergeant Clark had interviewed me.

“This shouldn’t take too long,” she said. “As you have probably heard, it’s a crazy day around here.”

She opened my file—and explained that I could have legal counsel present for this “process.” I told her that wasn’t needed—and she gave me a document in which I waived my right to have such counsel present. I signed it. Then she formally said that it had been decided to place me under something called “Alternative Measures.” She explained that, under both provincial and federal law, these “measures” were not looked upon as a criminal charge; that, though it would remain in “the system,” it could “not be construed as a misdemeanor or felony—which means that if you travel outside of the country and are asked a question on a visa application about whether or not you have a criminal record the answer can be a definitive ‘No.’ ”

She then read through the “Alternative Measures”—in which it was explained that, having been “involved in activities that wasted police time and also hindered an ongoing criminal investigation,” I hereby was being cautioned that any further such actions on my behalf that were perceived to “involve police action” would result in charges being preferred against me. I also agreed to voluntarily enter a program of psychological counseling, to be administered by the Health Board of Alberta—to submit myself to all medical and psychological examinations demanded of me by the board, and to agree to whatever program of therapy they deemed appropriate for me.

I had a few objections about this clause.

“Say they decide I need electroshock therapy?” I asked.

“There is a small-print clause here saying you can refuse to accept said therapies if you consider them detrimental to you.”

“And I bet there’s also a small-print clause allowing them to override my objections.”

“In my experience, the province isn’t in the habit of letting people they classify as unstable roam the streets. They consider you nothing more than a nuisance—and one who can be helped through more conventional means. My advice to you, Ms. Howard, is to accept the terms of the Alternative Measures, see the psychiatrist for however long it is mandated, take the pills they give you, and get this behind you. I’ve read your file. You’re not a misfit and you are certainly no dummy. So cut yourself a break—and play by the rules of the Alternative Measures. MacIntyre is dead. The case is closed now. Move on from it.”

But that afternoon I was back at the internet café, watching all those newscasts online, reading every damn column inch that had been written on MacIntyre’s suicide. Halfway through this media binge, my cell phone rang. A woman introduced herself as Dr. Maeve Collins and said that she was the psychiatrist assigned to my case. She was wondering if I might be able to come in and see her tomorrow at three p.m.

“No problem,” I told her, and took down the address of her office in Kensington.

As soon as I hung up I returned to the CBC website and resumed watching their rolling twenty-four-hour news service. On screen the Rev. Larry Coursen was being interviewed. He was wearing an expression that could best be described as Piously Pained. He was pictured in front of his church, talking to a phalanx of reporters.

“This is a terrible time for Brenda and her dear son, Michael. First the loss of Ivy, now George. I can only hope that George is in a better place today and that the pain and anguish of his life have been replaced by eternal peace. I’ve been asked to speak for the family—and to ask that you respect their privacy at this moment of intense loss for them. Brenda will make a formal statement to the press in the coming days, but for the moment she just wanted me to express to you her infinite sorrow and her belief that George is with Jesus.”

One of the reporters asked: “Any thoughts, Reverend, on whether Ivy MacIntyre will now be found alive?”

“Tragically one must assume that she is dead. Why else would George MacIntyre take his life if she was, verily, alive?”

Hang on, you told me . . .

And I started racing through the files I always carted with me, the files with everything on the case, until I found my notes of my “interview” with him.

“She’s not dead,” he’d told me.

And I’d replied: “How can you be so sure?”

And he’d said: “I just am.”

Why were you so certain of that?

And now . . . was it only because MacIntyre killed himself that you changed your mind?

Another reporter tossed out a new question.

“The police have been very close-lipped on all this, but—presuming, as you said, that Ivy must now be considered dead—do you think MacIntyre left any clue as to where her body might be found?”

There was an involuntary moment when Coursen’s lips almost worked their way into a smile. He caught it before it was noticeable. But I noticed it—perhaps because I had the facility, courtesy of the internet and the stop/start feature attached to this broadcast, to replay the moment over and over again. The sides of his mouth began to curve outward—the hint of an inward grin wiped off his face before it could become discernible to anyone. Anyone, that is, but me. Then again, I was playing it back nonstop. Was the bastard laughing at us? Laughing because he knew . . . ?

I replayed that moment four times over.

“. . . do you think MacIntyre left any clue as to where her body might be found?” the journalist asked Coursen.

And then there was, unmistakably, that involuntary, one-eighth-of-a-second smile which crossed Coursen’s face . . . followed by his answer: “I’m certain he didn’t.”

How can you be so certain, mister? What gives you the right to make an incontestable statement like that? Why are you telling us it’s a foregone conclusion that he didn’t leave a hint where the body could be found? Because MacIntyre didn’t do it? And because you know who did do it?

The interview ended. The news broadcast rolled on. We were back in the CBC news studio. The talking head looked at the camera and said: “In other news, a terrible crash east of Dundas near Hamilton claimed the life of a family of six today . . .”

East of Dundas near Hamilton . . .

Why did the mention of those two placenames suddenly trigger a déjà-vu moment in my brain? Dundas . . . Hamilton . . . Dundas . . . Hamilton . . .

Got it.

I reopened the file and scanned again the notes of my interview with Coursen. When he’d asked me where I’d grown up, I’d said: “Dundas,” pulling the name out of nowhere. And his reply?

“Dundas! No kidding. I did some of my early pastoral work in Dundas! Do you know the Assemblies church on King and Sydenham . . . ?”

Of course he caught me out on that. But . . .

The Assemblies church in Dundas . . .

And Dundas is near Hamilton. And in my burgeoning file, there is . . .

A clipping from the Hamilton Daily Record about the disappearance four years ago of an eleven-year-old girl. Her name—I hadn’t noticed it before—was Kelly Franklin. And the Hamilton Daily Record article spoke about “police investigations” into her disappearance, and then, in a later article, about how a “trusted family counselor” had been investigated by the local police department. No charges, however, were brought against him. The girl, meanwhile, had been admitted to a psychiatric facility, suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Kelly Franklin, Kelly Franklin. I googled her name. Around two dozen stories surrounding her disappearance and mysterious return. Many police investigations. Suspicions about someone known to the family. And then this, in a later Toronto Star article, which I hadn’t bothered to open the first time around:

“Kelly’s parents, Michelle and Morgan Franklin, are devout Christians and say that their religious faith sustained them through the ten days when Kelly went missing. One-time members of the Assemblies of God church in Dundas, they are now stalwarts of the Life Tabernacle in Hamilton.”

The Assemblies of God church in Dundas. How’s that for happenstance. And why did they leave the church?

The article continued:

“In the wake of Kelly’s return, the Franklins and the police have remained very tight-lipped about what they know about her alleged abductor. Though rumors have been rife in both Dundas and Hamilton as to the name of this individual, there is another school of local thought that Kelly was so traumatized by what happened that she couldn’t identify her abductor, and/or that the Franklins have been paid a substantial sum for their silence.”

But who would pay them such a large sum? What organization would be willing to hand over a big settlement in order to keep their name out of the press—especially as their name would be linked to a child’s disappearance?

I googled Dundas Assemblies of God church. Up popped their website—all smiling faces and words of praise. I found the link for “Dundas Assemblies History”—and there, in their list of former pastors, was the Rev. Larry Coursen, with his dates of service: December 2002–May 2004. A short tenure. And when did Kelly Franklin go missing? April 2, 2004. And when did Larry Coursen get dispatched to Townsend? I dug back into my file and found this detail listed on a printout from the Townsend Assemblies website: June 2004.

So Coursen parted company with the Dundas Assemblies not long after Kelly Franklin went missing . . . or perhaps right after she showed up alive again. But then this wall of silence enveloped the case, during which time, Coursen was conveniently dispatched to a nowhere town in the Alberta badlands.

I typed in “Telephone Directory Information” for a Franklin, M. in Hamilton, Ontario. There were three. I scribbled down their numbers, then dug out my cell phone and started calling.

“Is this Kelly’s mom?” I asked on the first try.

“Wrong number,” the voice on the other end said—and hung up.

But the second number hit the jackpot.

“Is this Kelly’s mom?” I asked.

“Who’s this?”

The voice was loud, raspy.

“My name’s Nancy Lloyd. I’m a journalist with the Vancouver Sun.”

“I ain’t talking to no reporters. All that was years ago.”

“I’m aware of that—and I genuinely apologize for bothering you at home. It’s just . . . I’m certain you’ve read all about Ivy MacIntyre’s disappearance . . .”

“I’ve got nothing to say about all that either.”

“I understand. However, I do note that you and your family were once members of the Dundas Assemblies of God church. Did you know that Ivy MacIntyre’s family were members of an Assemblies of God church in Alberta, and that your former pastor—Larry Coursen—is now their pastor out here?”

“I’m not talking about him,” she said, sounding angry.

“Why not?”

“Because that was the deal.”

“What deal?”

“Now you’ve made me shoot my mouth off.”

“Did someone—some organization—do a deal with you to say nothing about Larry Coursen?”

“I ain’t answering no more of your questions.”

“How much did they pay for your silence?”

“That’s my business,” she said. The line went dead.

I sat there, my head reeling. Coursen had abducted Kelly Franklin. Then he either let her go or . . . might she have escaped his clutches? Then what? She’s so traumatized by whatever he did to her during those ten days that she can’t identify him? Or she identifies him and he has a solid alibi? Or she returns home and retreats into herself, to the point where she has to be institutionalized and can’t identify her captor? No, scratch that last idea. She must have been able to point the finger at Coursen. Perhaps when she told her parents, their first reaction was to phone the Assemblies of God big boys—who moved in quickly to dampen down the scandal and ensure that their pastor didn’t get his face on every front page in North America.

And was Kelly Franklin still institutionalized all these years later?

Another quick google and I came up with the following Hamilton Daily Record item: “Abducted Girl Falls Foul of the Law Again.”

It was dated September 23, 2007, and stated that Kelly Franklin, “the girl who was mysteriously abducted three years ago,” had been arrested at a local Woolworths for sniffing glue and becoming sick thereafter. The story recounted how Franklin, aged fourteen, already had a rap sheet for shoplifting, aggravated assault of a woman police officer, and vagrancy. When she walked into the Woolworths in Hamilton she found the aisle that sold epoxy glue, opened four tubes into a plastic bag, then proceeded to place the bag over her mouth and inhale deeply. She was at this for several minutes before staff found her, delirious and incoherent. The police were called, but she became violently ill and started to choke on her own vomit. Fortunately the assistant manager at Woolworths knew CPR and managed to clear her esophagus and avoid asphyxiation. She was rushed to a local hospital, where she was reported to be in stable condition.

A subsequent article—dated six weeks after this one—noted a court hearing where Kelly Franklin was sentenced to be detained in an institution for young offenders “until it was determined that she was no longer a danger to the community or herself.”

There was nothing further on her after this, leading me to surmise that she was still incarcerated.

You son of a bitch, Coursen. You destroy that girl’s life and get your church to pay her family hush money. Then you get transferred out west and two girls go missing in the very town in which you operate and your church does nothing. Maybe because—as I quickly discovered through further use of a search engine—their families weren’t affiliated with Townsend Assemblies. Then, when Ivy MacIntyre goes missing, you frame her poor fool of a father, a man who couldn’t control his temper or his boozing, and therefore was an easy target. The perfect fall guy.

I gripped the sides of the computer table, trying to keep my rage and distress in check. I wanted to call Sergeant Clark and reveal everything I had just discovered. To do so, however, would be to risk getting picked up for breach of my Alternative Measures. Best to say nothing right now. Best to . . .

I checked my watch. It was just four p.m. I called the local car-rental place and asked them if they had any vehicles ready to be borrowed. They told me they could fix me up with a Corolla in fifteen minutes. I paid for the many hours I had spent online. I said goodbye to the slacker dude who was still absorbed in some goth website. As I headed toward the door his response to me was: “Happy trails.”

I doubted this trail would lead to anything happy.

Half an hour later I was edging my way through the usual rush-hour automotive crawl. The days were getting longer now, so I had light with me during the hour it took to edge my way out of all those endless subdevelopments and hit open country. I played the drive-time program on CBC Radio 2—and clicked the radio off when the hourly news rolled around at five and six p.m. I wanted to hear no more about the case. I just wanted to get to Townsend and then . . .

Well, I really didn’t have a clue what I was going to do next. Drive up to Coursen’s house, knock on the door, and confront him with the fact that I knew about his antics with Kelly Franklin back East and was going to expose him to the world? He’d be on to Sergeant Clark in an instant. Then the Franklins, bound by the hush money they’d been paid by the church, wouldn’t be able to finger Coursen. And I’d end up with a criminal record for, yet again, wasting police time.

No—confronting Coursen was definitely out. But tailing him and seeing what he did with his time outside of church . . . well, that might yield something.

The problem was, how to follow him and not be seen? In a small town someone from outside the community, driving around in a car that (damnit) had a big Avis sticker across its trunk would be immediately spotted. Given that I already had a bit of notoriety in the local restaurant and with Coursen himself . . .

So I had no plan, no idea what I was even looking for. All I knew was that I had to find a way of getting to tag along on any “errand” Coursen might be making in the vicinity.

Why was I so certain that he would be making such errands? Just instinct, along with the growing notion that if he kept Kelly Franklin alive after abducting her . . .

Yes, but she was released—or, more likely, got away—after ten days. Why would Coursen keep Ivy alive for three weeks?

Then again, what did he say to you last week during your interview?

“She’s not dead.”

Unless he had taken care of that bit of business in the wake of George’s suicide. After all, what was his comment on the afternoon news?

“Tragically one must assume that she is dead.”

Because you’ve rendered her so?

I reached Townsend by seven and drove straight over to Coursen’s church. A stroke of luck. The parking lot was full and the church lights were on. From the shouting and roaring coming from within they were probably handling snakes and talking in tongues. A sign near the church entrance advertised this: “Monday Miracles Tonight at 7 p.m.!”

There was certainly another “miracle” awaiting me. Larry Coursen’s Land Rover—immediately identifiable thanks to its “Preacher Man” vanity plate—was parked in its usual place. No one was in the lot so I was able to drive over to it and peer inside. Nothing unusual about it, except that the passenger seat in the front was filled with old newspapers and empty paper cups from McDonald’s and Burger King. The backseat had DVD boxes scattered everywhere. I could make out the cover that adorned all the DVD cases: a big smiling Larry Coursen, his hands raised heavenward, above which was the title: Everyday Miracles with Larry Coursen! I tested the door and discovered it was unlocked. This was small-town Canada—and in small-town Canada everyone left their doors open. Immediately I went around to the hatchback trunk and pressed the handle. It too opened and I saw that there were two dirty blankets. I also noted that this vehicle didn’t have an enclosed trunk; rather, a canvas awning was pulled across the roof of the cargo area. Suddenly an insane idea clouded my head. Were you to stow away inside, you wouldn’t be locked in. You could simply detach the awning and escape. Without further thinking, I decided to pursue this.

I closed the trunk door and returned to my rented vehicle. I was about to leave it in a corner of the lot but then realized that this was not a very bright idea. Once the parking lot emptied after the Monday Miracles show, my rental would be left behind. Coursen or one of his staff might wonder why this one car remained. And upon seeing the Avis rental sticker on its trunk . . .

Well, the rental car could be easily traced, resulting in me being picked up by the local sheriff.

So I drove out of the parking lot and down onto Main Street. There was a medium-size supermarket at the far end of the street. It was open until ten p.m. I gambled on the fact that the local law wouldn’t snoop around this parking lot after hours and left it in a corner far away from the street. I checked my watch. It was 7:45 p.m. The Monday Miracles had to continue for another hour at least—and I would need a good fifteen minutes to walk back to the church. It was cold tonight—minus twelve according to the dashboard digital readout. I pulled on a wool-knit hat and kept my head bowed low as I hiked back up to Townsend Assemblies of God. But the streets were empty. I passed no one. I checked my watch again as I reached the church. 8:04 p.m. From inside the church came the electrified voice of Larry Coursen: “We know you’re there, Jesus! We know you’re right inside this church, filling us with love!”

This last word was pronounced with an extended wail. It was followed by shrieks and howls from the congregation. I glanced around the parking lot. Not another person was in sight. Under cover of all that high volume of religiosity I walked quickly to Coursen’s vehicle. I pressed the handle. I grabbed the blankets that had been stuffed into the back of the trunk space. They smelled old, musty—and were cold to the touch. I slid into the trunk, then had to work at lying flat while reaching out with my left hand and attempting to slam the trunk door behind me. It took three tries—but, after watching it nearly catch twice, I yanked extra hard and the trunk slammed closed. I was in. As the awning was covering me, I was also in darkness. I had to shift around a great deal to find a fetal position that was even moderately comfortable. When this was achieved I reached into my jacket pocket and turned off my cell phone. Then I checked the time again. 8:12 p.m. It wasn’t just dark in the car, it was also cold. I pulled on my gloves. I zipped my jacket right up to my neck. I covered myself with the thin, putrid blankets. I waited.

An hour went by, during which time I found myself frequently thinking: What possessed you to pull such a deranged stunt? At least twice in that first hour, I was on the verge of disengaging the awning, climbing over the backseat, out a side door, and vanishing into the night. But just when the cold and the dark and the fear were about to defeat me I heard voices outside and cars starting up. Too late, too late. You’re stuck now.

I checked my watch again. 9:14 p.m. But no sign of the Preacher Man. Cars continued to leave the lot. Then at 9:43 p.m., there were footsteps outside, followed by voices.

“The thing is, Carl,” Larry Coursen said, “if Brenda keeps phoning me day and night, someone’s gonna put two and two together. I mean, every time I walk into the door of my house Bonnie is ripping me a new asshole, telling me she’s gonna expose me blah, blah, blah. The denial thing—the line that Brenda is so suffering she keeps having to call me—will only go so far. So you’ve got to go talk to Brenda again and make it clear that silence is golden here, that she doesn’t want trouble from me. Tell her, once things calm down, I’ll be around again. You cool with that?”

“I’m cool, brother,” the other voice said.

“And next month, once all this has blown over, we can look into getting the parish to buy you that GMC Acadia you’ve been after—for pastoral purposes, naturally.”

“Yeah, naturally.”

And they both laughed.

Jesus Christ, Coursen had been screwing Brenda. This subplot didn’t exactly astonish me—I’d wondered myself on several occasions whether there was a romantic link between them. But to hear Coursen speak about it in such a blatantly cynical way to one of his henchmen . . . well, it seriously unsettled me, perhaps because I was stuffed in a corner of the trunk of his car, shivering with the cold. “Make it clear that silence is golden here, that she doesn’t want trouble from me.” If he found me stowed away in his vehicle, how would he ensure my silence?

The front car door opened. I held my breath, hoping my teeth—slightly chattering with the cold—wouldn’t be discernible. I heard Coursen slide into the driver’s seat and fumble for his keys. Then there was the sound of an engine turning over and the whoosh of air as the heater was turned on full blast. From the speakers situated around the car came this voice—a supersmooth baritone speaking in a deeply motivational way about Optimizing the Whole You.

“Now today we’re going to look at ‘Saying No to the Negative.’ Wherever you are right now—right this very instant—I want you to say, out loud, right now: ‘I AM SAYING NO TO THE NEGATIVE!’ ”

And Larry Coursen did just that. Saying no to the negative he put the car into gear and drove off.

We didn’t travel far—maybe four, five minutes maximum. En route the motivational CD continued to play, exhorting its listener to: “Treat the negative like a cancer—and one which you can stop from metastasizing.”

“I want you to say that now out loud: ‘The Negative is a Cancer—and I won’t let that cancer eat me up.’ ”

Yet again Larry Coursen did as demanded. Having asserted that the Negative is, verily, a Cancer, he braked to a halt. The engine cut out. The heat—which had hardly kicked in as yet—died. A car door slammed. And then he did the unthinkable: with a telltale beep-beep he locked the car and also primed the inside burglar alarm.

I knew that beep-beep sound because my old VW had the same kind of alarm system. Once primed, any upward movement inside the car itself would trigger it. I was certain that we had pulled up in front of Coursen’s house, given how short a distance we had traveled from the church. The fact that he had electronically set the car alarm could only mean one thing: He was going in for the night, leaving me to freeze while crammed like a balled-up fetus in his trunk.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

I started to cry—for the stupidity of my actions, for the way I had again shot myself in the foot with a machine gun, for the fact that my mental state was still calamitous, for the realization that my grief for Emily hadn’t dissipated one bit in the fifteen months since the accident.

I must have cried for a good ten minutes. When this wave of anguish finally burned off, I decided that I would simply jump up and release the awning, then clamber over the backseat, open a door, and hightail it down the street. It would take Coursen a good minute to react to the alarm—and I would be far away at this point.

And then what? Back to my sad little life. Back to the days doing work that I found only marginally interesting. Back to the small apartment—and the empty evenings. Back to everything I did in order to distract myself from the deep-rooted sadness that I simply couldn’t shake. Back to the realization: You are simply marking time.

So why abandon ship now? Why run off when you might just find out . . .

You know what you’re going to find out? That Coursen drives his car between his home and his church . . . and that you are going to be stuck here until some point tomorrow when he leaves the car unlocked and you can hopefully hightail it out of here and not get apprehended by the law or by Coursen and his henchman . . .

This internal debate was overshadowed by a far larger concern: I urgently needed to pee. For around an hour I had tried to ignore the pain in my bladder and the sense that I was about to burst. Now I knew I was courting renal failure if I didn’t do something about it instantly. So I pulled one of the blankets off me, folded it several times over, somehow managed to pull down my jeans and underwear, then shoved the blanket behind me and let go.

It was all ferociously grubby and depressing but the relief was enormous. When I was finished I folded the now-sodden blanket one more time and carefully shoved it to a far corner of the trunk. Then I pulled up my jeans, rezipped my parka, and wondered if I would be able to make it through the night without succumbing to frostbite.

A small blessing arrived: sleep. I nodded off for what seemed like minutes. But when I awoke and checked my watch it was 2:43 a.m. We were on the move again. That’s what had jolted me awake: the beep-beep sound of the car alarm being disengaged, the driver’s door opening and closing, the engine turning over, the heat coming on full blast, and the God-awful motivational CD blaring as Coursen drove us off.

We were on the road for over an hour and a half, a long drive during which Coursen repeated platitudinous catchphrases about “The Need to Assert Me,” “The Way Forward Without Fear,” and “I Can Master Anything and Any Situation.” The motivational speaker unnerved me as he tried to convince his audience that “Everything Can Be Overcome if You Want to Overcome It.” His smoothie-smoothie voice was cloying and infuriating. I switched him off. I listened to the road.

For around forty minutes, the road seemed well-paved, with few bumps or changes of gradient. From what I could also discern we were the only car out here tonight, one or two roaring trucks (or, at least, I presumed they were trucks) breaking the aural loneliness.

But then we took a sharp right turn and the road changed. Suddenly we were driving along something half-paved and jolting. Every forward movement of the car seemed to throw me up against the back wall of the trunk—and I could only hope that Coursen didn’t wonder what load was in the back causing all this commotion. But the CD was still blaring its motivational bromides and the heat was on full blast and the grind of the tires on the rocky road so constant that it must have blotted out the shake, rattle, and roll of my body in the trunk.

On and on we drove. I glanced repeatedly at my watch as ten minutes went by, then fifteen, then . . .

We slowed down and came to a complete halt. The engine died. The door opened, but there was a pause as Coursen seemed to be getting something out of the glove compartment of the car. Then the door slammed shut and I could hear his footsteps walking away from the vehicle. This time he did not, thankfully, trigger the car alarm.

Once the sound of the footsteps had died away I waited a good five minutes before daring to reach up and hit the system that spun away the canvas roof of the trunk. Getting up took some work. I had been cramped in this space for over eight hours and every joint in my body felt as if it had been glued tight. But the relief of actually being able to move again was counterbalanced by sheer unadulterated fear. Fear of where we were. Fear of what I might find. Fear of what Coursen might do to me if he found me . . .

I inched my way up from the trunk and looked out through the car windows. A landscape pitch-black, bar one low light in the immediate distance. I pulled myself headfirst over the backseat—there was no other way to negotiate it—breaking my fall with my hands. Then I straightened myself up and—as slowly and quietly as possible—I opened one of the back passenger doors. I got out, but didn’t close it behind me. A boreal wind immediately hit me. Movement was difficult—my body felt rigid—and the darkness was all enveloping. But I forced myself to walk slowly toward the light in the distance. I couldn’t see the ground beneath my feet. I had no idea what I was heading for; if I was traversing the edge of a cliff, a body of water, a path that would suddenly give way, sending me into free fall.

All there was up ahead was the light. Step by step, I inched my way toward it.

As I drew nearer, I could vaguely discern the outline of a structure. With every footstep the structure came into sharper silhouette. It was a shack. The light was inside the shack. And from within the shack was the sound of a male voice—Coursen’s voice—panting and heaving and simultaneously shouting stuff.

I was now maybe ten yards from the shack. There was a door directly in front of me and a small window to the left of it. I crouched down and headed for the window. Reaching it I sat below it, listening now to Coursen’s rhythmic breathing and the moans of a female voice.

I dared to raise my head and glance through the window. What I saw was . . . unspeakable. A girl—maybe twelve, thirteen years old—was positioned on a filthy mattress, naked from the waist down. A shackle, attached to a chain, was around her left ankle. Coursen, his trousers pulled down, was on top of her, thrusting in and out of her while berating her at the top of his voice. I sat down again, not knowing what to do next. That’s when I put my hand out and discovered a shovel that had been left against this side of the house. My hands were drenched with sweat as I touched it, my heart going insane in my chest. I felt for the handle of the shovel. It was long, substantial. I carefully got myself into a crouching position. I grabbed the shovel with two hands. From inside the shack Coursen’s rant was getting louder, the girl’s cries even more frightened, extreme. Still hunched down I inched my way nearer to the door. It was closed, but looked flimsy. One, two, three, and . . .

I kicked the door in and came rushing toward Coursen, screaming. He jumped up, startled. That’s when I caught him in the stomach with the shovel. He doubled over and I brought the shovel down on the top of his head. He reeled away from the blow, stumbled a few paces, then fell to his knees, not moving, blood cascading down his face.

On the mattress the girl was howling like a wounded animal. I dropped the shovel and went over to comfort her, but she shrieked when I tried to put my arms around her.

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” I said, even though I knew that all this was the antithesis of OK. The girl was filthy, the lower half of her body covered in bruises and cuts. There were open sores around her lips, embedded dirt in her fingernails. The shackle on her leg had cut deep into her skin and looked septic, as if gangrene had set in. To the left of the mattress was a bucket from which came a distinct fecal smell. Her hair was matted, her scalp scabby. But it was her eyes that really frightened me. They were hollow, sunken, devoid of any emotion except horror.

“Ivy MacIntyre?” I whispered.

She gave a tentative nod. I nodded back, then looked over at Coursen. He had slumped to the floor. I grabbed the shovel again. I approached him, raising it above me, ready to strike again if he dared move. But he was half conscious—and judging from the bemused look on his face, seriously concussed. When I prodded him with the shovel there was only a groan as a response. His trousers were still down around his ankles. I reached into one pocket and found his car keys and a big chain with around ten keys attached to it. I pulled them both out, prodded him again with the shovel and saw that, stuck into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, was a gun. I reached for it, pulled it out, my hand shaking as I held its flat, cold handle. I put it inside my own pocket, then returned to Ivy. She was curled up on the mattress, shaking. I went to work with the keys, trying each one in the lock attached to the shackle. The eighth one opened it. As I carefully lifted the shackle off her the extent of the damage done to her ankle became apparent. The iron mangle had eaten into her flesh. There was exposed bone beneath the septic wound.

Before turning my attention again to Ivy I moved toward Coursen, the shackle in my hand. En route, I pulled hard, testing the strength of the chain. It was attached by another shackle to an iron beam located across a corner of the barn. It seemed to be able to withstand a considerable amount of weight—and I tried not to think about how often she had struggled against its medieval restraint. Now Coursen was about to get a taste of his own monstrousness, as I attached the shackle to one of his ankles, locked it, then slapped him hard across the face to rouse him. His eyes opened momentarily. He seemed to be semicognizant of where he was. I leaned down and whispered in his ear three words: “Praise the Lord.”

Then I stood up and kicked him hard in the crotch.

This time he let out an agonized groan. I scoured around the floor and found a filthy pair of track pants that had been left near the mattress. Ivy resisted at first when I tried to help her into them, but I kept whispering to her that she was going to be all right, that it was all over now. I managed to get the track pants on her, then tried to raise her to her feet. But the septic ankle gave way and she howled with pain. So I heaved her over my shoulder, expecting to buckle with the strain, but she was so thin, so emaciated, that she seemed to weigh nothing at all. Without stopping to look back at Coursen I moved toward the door. The absolute darkness of the countryside meant that I had to walk with immense care toward a car whose outline was barely visible. It took over five minutes to find it. By the time we reached it I could hear Coursen in the distance, now screaming.

He was back in the land of the fully conscious. And he was going nowhere now.

When we reached the car there was a tricky moment when I had to lean Ivy up against the side as I opened the passenger door. Some weight was put on her ankle and she almost pitched forward from the pain.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said as I kept her upright with one hand and opened the door with another. Then I carefully maneuvered her into the passenger seat and lowered it, so it resembled a makeshift bed. Instinctually she curled back up into a ball and started to shudder.

I shut her door, then raced around to the driver’s seat. The car started on the first turn of the ignition. As my hands clutched the steering wheel they began to shake so hard I had to squeeze the wheel tightly to bring the shudder under control. I turned on the lights, put the car in gear, reversed, and, peering over the lights, steered it back onto the dirt track. We bumped along for fifteen minutes, Ivy saying nothing, me trying to keep the shock of everything that had just happened at bay. When there was a final bump and we hit asphalt, I remembered that Coursen had turned right here. So I knew I would have to turn left. But before I did I dug out my cell phone and a card that was in my wallet. A card with Sergeant Clark’s information on it. His cell number was the last one listed. I dialed it. The phone must have rung nine times before he picked it up—and from the grogginess in his voice it was clear that I had woken him.

“Sergeant, it’s Jane Howard.”

“Who?”

“Jane Howard.”

“Jesus Christ, do you know what time it is?”

“Four thirty-one exactly. And you need to get into your car now and meet me in Townsend.”

“What?”

“I’m around ninety minutes from Townsend, so get into your car now. You’re going to meet me in front of the Townsend Assemblies of God church.”

Now he was fully awake.

“You have really crossed the line now,” he said. “Do you have any idea what sort of trouble is in store—”

“I want you there,” I continued, ignoring him. “And I want an ambulance there as well.”

“Why? So they can cart you away?”

“I’ve got Ivy MacIntyre.”

A silence. Then: “You’re talking bullshit.”

“You want me to drive her all the way to you in Calgary?”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“You’re insane.”

“You’ve got it in one, Sergeant. I am insane.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWO DAYS LATER, I left the country. And Sergeant Clark even drove me to the airport—to ensure, as he put it, that I was “packed off out of town.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself here . . .

Townsend.

The road was empty and I arrived there in ninety minutes, stopping once at the only service station en route to avoid running out of gas and to buy several liters of water. As I paid for everything, the woman behind the counter—she couldn’t have been more than twenty—gave me the once-over and said: “You don’t mind me saying so, you look like you’ve had one rough night.”

I managed a crazed smile and said: “You have no idea.”

Then I went back to the car. Ivy was still curled up in a ball, her thumb in her mouth. I sat down beside her and opened a liter of water and told her she had to drink it. It didn’t take much coaxing. I lifted her head up and held the bottle as she gulped half a liter down without pause. The water seemed to revive her a bit. When she pushed the bottle away, she then immediately took my hands and pulled it back toward her, downing the remaining half liter with great urgency.

Then we were off again, a passing road sign informing us we were one hundred and fifty kilometers outside of Townsend.

“Once we’re there you’ll be with people who will look after you, make you better,” I said.

“You promise?”

The voice was small, hushed—but at least there was a voice there.

“I promise,” I said.

“What’s your name?”

“Eleanor,” I lied. “And what’s your name?”

“I told you already: Ivy.”

I smiled.

“I know exactly who you are,” I said.

She fell silent. Then, ten minutes later, she suddenly said: “He killed the other girls.”

“He told you this?” I said, trying not to sound shocked.

She nodded.

“Was he talking about Hildy and Mimi?”

She nodded again.

“Did he say where he buried them?” I asked.

“There’s a basement under the shed. He told me I was going there as well once he was done with me.”

She fell silent again. Then, around five minutes before we reached Townsend she said: “I’ve got to talk to my daddy first thing. I know he’s been so worried about me.”

I bit down on my lip and said nothing.

Light was perforating the blackened night as we crossed the town line. Upon turning down a side street toward Townsend Assemblies of God I saw what was awaiting us: two cop cars, an unmarked vehicle, an ambulance. I pulled into the parking lot—and Clark approached us. He was accompanied by Officer Rivers. Clark looked at me with hardened professional skepticism as I got out of the car. I just nodded to both of them, then opened the passenger door. As Clark and Rivers peered inside, Ivy simply looked up at them. I could see what they were seeing—the haunted eyes, the cuts and abrasions, the virulent sores around her lips, the ankle wound that was possibly gangrenous. Rivers put her hand to her mouth. Even Clark—Mr. Professional Tough Guy—looked shaken, then immediately waved the medical people over.

Five minutes later, Clark was driving me back from where I had just come, a police car with two officers trailing us. Sunrise meant I could now discern the terrain through which I had already traveled. It was a two-lane blacktop traversing the loneliest stretch of geographic infinity I’d ever seen—bare, flat plains that seemed to extend beyond all limits and enveloped you in that most terrifying of scenic prospects: a measureless void without boundaries. On my way back to Townsend I’d made a point of checking the odometer at that exact moment when I turned off the dirt path and back onto this paved road. So I could now tell Sergeant Clark that we’d find a turning off to the right exactly 153 km from the Townsend Assemblies of God church. As I mentioned this I touched my jacket pocket and felt a hard metal object contained within.

“In all the confusion and excitement back there I forgot to give you something,” I said. Then I pulled out Coursen’s gun.

“Jesus Christ,” Clark said, relieving me of it, weighing it in his right hand (while steering with his left), checking that the safety was on, then telling me to open the glove compartment and find a plastic evidence bag. There were around a dozen such bags in there, along with surgical gloves and other forensic debris. He asked me to hold open the bag as he dumped the gun into it. Afterward he popped the lid of a storage compartment between the two seats and lay the gun inside it.

“I think you’d best tell me exactly what happened,” he said. “And I want to know everything, minute by minute.”

I did as asked. Clark didn’t interrupt me until I got to the end of it all.

“And Ivy definitely confirmed that Coursen told her the bodies are in the basement?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

He shook his head and said nothing for a while.

“So he’s mangled and waiting for us.”

“You bet.”

“If we’ve got him for Ivy and Hildy and Mimi and can now reveal him to be the guy behind that hushed-up abduction in Dundas, what else might he have done over the years?”

“I’m sure the two of you will have a lot to talk about.”

Before we reached the dirt track I informed Clark of something that had been formulating in my mind all the way back to Townsend.

“When this story breaks in a few hours,” I said, “it will be huge. And you must agree to one thing—in fact, I’m going to go so far as to say this is a nonnegotiable demand.”

“Nothing’s ‘nonnegotiable’ when it comes to a major murder investigation,” he said. “But go on, tell me what it is.”

“I am to remain completely out of it.”

“You serious?”

“Completely. I want no one to know about my role in all this.”

“That’s going to be difficult.”

“Find a way to make it not difficult, Sergeant. It’s the only thing I ask of you.”

He thought this over for a few moments.

“You know what you’re turning down by choosing to remain out of the story?”

“Yeah—instant celebrity . . . the idea of which fills me with horror.”

“Even though it might also mean a fantastic amount of recognition? Hell, word gets out what you did, you’ll be offered book contracts, deals for the movie rights, not to mention a trip to Ottawa to get some bravery medal from the Governor General. But to hell with the glory . . . think of the money.”

“I have thought of that. Just as I have thought about how every damn journalist would fashion the story around my . . .”

“Loss?” he asked, finishing the sentence for me.

“That’s right.”

“Well . . . human interest and all that.”

“No—good copy and all that. And I want no part of it, Sergeant. You take the glory, just leave me my anonymity.”

“I’ll have to talk to my chief about this. But I think he’ll be sympathetic.”

We hit the one hundred and fifty-third kilometer of the drive—and there, as I had gauged, was a blink-once-you-miss-it track.

“This is the right turn,” I said.

“Good thing you clocked it,” Sergeant Clark said. “Who’d even notice this?”

“I sense that was the point.”

“It’s going to be very interesting to discover how Coursen found this place—who rented it to him, etc.”

“As I said before: I’m sure the two of you will have many long conversations.”

But as it turned out I was completely wrong on that score—as the Rev. Larry Coursen had one more final surprise in store for us.

Police sedans do not handle well on unpaved roads. For the next twenty minutes we were tossed like peanuts along the dirt track. Clark didn’t like this one bit and his face became seriously peeved.

“Should have taken Coursen’s goddamn Land Rover . . . except that would have been tampering with evidence.”

“Almost there, I think,” I said as the shack came into view.

By day it looked even more tumbledown, more forlorn and grim than I had seen the night before. We drove right up to its front door. The marked police car pulled right up by us. Clark conferred with the two uniformed officers, then turned to me and said: “Your role in all this is now finished. So if you wouldn’t mind waiting in the car . . .”

I wanted to object; to say that, at the very least, I deserved to see Coursen taken into justice. But I was too tired, too wound tight, to argue. So I leaned against Clark’s car as he signaled for the two officers to draw their weapons. He, in turn, drew his own gun. Then, positioning themselves on either side of the door, they waited while Clark also stood to one side and shouted: “Police! Do not move!”

No reply.

“Coursen, this is the RCMP. We are coming inside. Do you understand?”

No reply.

The cops glanced at each other. Crouching down, Clark ran to the window. When he raised his head up to the pane what he saw made him turn white. He charged back toward the other cops, yelling at one of them to call for medical backup as he ran into the shack. The uniformed cop dashed to the squad car and got on the radio, while his partner went inside. Disobeying orders I walked toward the shack. When I got to the doorway I saw Coursen. He was still attached to the shackle—but he was lying faceup on the mattress where he had raped Ivy. His throat had been slashed and there was blood everywhere. The knife that had caused this fatal wound was still half-clutched in his right hand.

“Oh, Jesus,” I said. Clark kneeled down by the body to check for vital signs, then stood up and came charging toward me.

“Did you know he had a knife?” he said, his voice raised, the stress so clearly showing.

“Of course I didn’t know—”

“You found the gun—”

“Because it was sticking out of his pocket. The knife must have been—”

“You should have checked, you should have—”

“I’m not a goddamn cop,” I yelled back, my brain also reeling at the splatter canvas that was now Larry Coursen. “So don’t tell me I should have been doing your job when—”

“Oh, fuck off,” he said. “Just fuck right off.”

Several hours later, en route back to Calgary, Clark apologized for that comment.

“I think I was a little out of line back there,” he said.

“Is that an expression of regret?”

“Yes, it is.”

“You know something, Sergeant, for a Canadian you’re particularly foulmouthed.”

“Blame my dad. A Detroit auto worker who headed across the border to Windsor when he met my mom and was offered a half share in her dad’s GM dealership.”

“So you’re a compatriot.”

“Only temperamentally.”

“Apology accepted then.”

“Thank you. Now when we get to Calgary, we’re going to need to get you to make a statement. But I want my inspector present for this—and he’s out of town until tomorrow—so how about letting the province of Alberta spring for a hotel for you tonight?”

“You could hold me in a cell overnight.”

“This will be a slightly higher class of accommodation—and it also means your privacy will be protected, just in case somebody got wind that you might be associated with the case . . . though once you’ve had a night’s sleep I am going to try to convince you to let the RCMP ‘announce’ your role in all this.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Being proclaimed a hero might do you some good.”

“It also might do me some harm. No thanks.”

“Sleep on it.”

“My mind is fully made up on this one.”

“Sleep on it.”

They checked me into the Hyatt that was located downtown. A woman police officer named Sharon Bradley brought me to my room, then said that if there was anything I wanted from my apartment she would send a colleague over there straightaway. I gave her my apartment key and asked for a clean set of clothes, pajamas, the volume of Paris Review Interviews I was reading, my portable radio, and my pills.

“The pills are crucial,” I said. Though I was now so tired that I was certain I could sleep through an air raid, I still didn’t know if everything I’d absorbed in the last twenty-four hours would play havoc with my psyche and deny me eight very necessary hours of sleep. The pills, on the other hand, would ensure the oblivion I craved.

The hotel room was clean and modern and rather stylish. I stripped off my dank, filthy clothes and filled the bathtub with very hot water and the bath salts provided. Then I lowered myself in the tub and sat there for nearly an hour. There was a lot to wash away.

A knock on the door finally roused me out of this watery cocoon. I pulled on a hotel bathrobe and answered it. Officer Bradley handed me a black plastic bag containing everything I had requested. I thanked her, then pulled on the pajamas, downed the necessary pills, pulled down the blinds, hit the lights, and surrendered to sleep—even though it was only six at night.

The pills did their magic and, combined with the sleepless night I had just spent, put me down for almost twelve hours. When I woke, the fact that I hadn’t eaten for around thirty-six hours hit me. I ordered a very large breakfast from room service and turned on the television just in time to catch the six a.m. news on the CBC. The discovery of Ivy MacIntyre was the lead story—and it was reported that she was in a serious but stable condition at Foothills Hospital in Calgary.

A reporter on the scene talked about how she had been admitted suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, septicemia, and severe physical abuse—and that a statement by the attending doctor would be released later in the day.

Then they switched over to a press conference with the chief of the RCMP in Alberta, in which he explained the circumstances by which Ivy MacIntyre had been discovered; about how an individual who wishes to remain nameless but was “clearly obsessed with this case” acted on a hunch and followed the Rev. Larry Coursen to an abandoned shed off Route 2 around one hundred kilometers from Townsend, whereupon . . .

I clicked off the television. I couldn’t watch any more.

I ate the room-service breakfast, and I tossed the morning edition of the Calgary Herald that accompanied it (“IVY FOUND ALIVE” screamed the front page) into the circular bin beneath the desk. I had a shower and changed into clean clothes and opened my volume of the Paris Review Interviews and waited.

At nine a.m. there was a knock on the door. A new woman police officer was there.

“Sergeant Clark would like to see you now at headquarters. Can you be ready in five minutes?”

On the way downstairs, we didn’t take the main guest elevators. Instead we were escorted to a rear freight elevator and brought down to a service entrance on the ground floor. An unmarked car was awaiting us and took me and the woman officer the few short blocks to RCMP headquarters. This time we plunged again into its underground parking lot and I was brought upstairs by elevator.

Inside the interview room on the fourth floor was Sergeant Clark and a man in his early sixties who introduced himself as Inspector Laughlin. He had the sort of leathery face one associated with elderly ranchers and that somewhat distanced, detached manner which was Pure West. He stood up and took my hands in his large paws.

“Miss Howard . . .”

A pause. Then: “Well done.”

And that, thankfully, was the only note of congratulations sounded for the next two hours.

Sergeant Clark took over.

“We’ve been very firm in all public announcements to the press that the person who led us to Ivy MacIntyre wishes to remain anonymous—and this, of course, has created a media feeding frenzy. But only Inspector Laughlin, Officer Rivers, and the two officers who accompanied us to the shack know of your identity—and we plan to keep it that way.

“Now, we are aware that certain people at your place of employment might have known about your ‘interest’ in the Ivy MacIntyre case—and I have already personally spoken with Geraldine Woods late yesterday evening. I explained that I was entrusting her with a piece of highly classified information, and asked if she could keep a confidence. I then explained, as simply as possible, that you had been ‘greatly resourceful’ to us in the search for Ivy MacIntyre, but that—for assorted personal reasons—you did not want your identity revealed to the public. She was most understanding and also assured me that she would never reveal anything. You’ve worked with her. Do you believe her?”

“Unlike most everyone else at the library she’s not a gossip. And she is pretty honorable.”

“That was my impression—especially as she pointed out to me that it might be best to invent a story about you having left the country several days before Ivy was discovered.”

Personally, I couldn’t see Marlene or Ruth buying this—but I also sensed that Geraldine, in her own quiet, forceful way might make it clear to them that she would not entertain any discussion of the matter, especially if . . .

“I think you should let her inform the staff that I had a nervous breakdown and was dispatched back to a hospital in the States for treatment.”

“Do you really want your colleagues to think that?”

“I was heading for one before all this—and they all knew it. So . . . yes, by all means. Anything to cover my tracks.”

Clark looked to Inspector Laughlin for advice. His reply was a curt assenting nod.

“Consider it done then,” he said.

“Have they found the bodies in the cellar?” I asked.

“The forensic teams began excavation this morning.”

“And Ivy? I heard on the news she was classified as ‘Serious.’ ”

“She’s not in danger of dying. She is in danger of losing her foot, though the doctors are doing everything to save it. She hasn’t been interviewed by us as yet—and won’t be until her condition considerably improves. But she keeps asking for the woman who found her . . . and for her father.”

I was going to say something like: “You got that all wrong, didn’t you?” but Inspector Laughlin preempted me.

“A bad miscarriage of justice took place,” he said. “Nothing more. Nothing less. We will have to deal with the consequences of all that.”

“And Brenda?” I asked.

“You mean, you didn’t see her everywhere on the television this morning?” Clark asked.

“No. I avoided all that.”

“Lucky you. She played the overjoyed mother and grieving widow at the same time.”

“She’s now grieving for two men—as she was also involved with Coursen.”

“How do you know?”

I recounted the conversation I had heard between Coursen and his henchman, Carl, while sandwiched in his trunk.

“You didn’t mention this yesterday,” Clark said.

“There was a lot going on.”

“Point taken. But just to ensure that you didn’t forget anything else—and to have an official transcript of your version of events—I’d like to take you through the entire story again. We’re going to videotape it—but don’t worry, this will never be made public. And Inspector Laughlin’s going to sit with us, if that’s all fine with you.”

“I’ll do whatever’s asked.”

Another curt, acknowledging nod from Inspector Laughlin.

For the next hour I retold everything. As I spoke I could hear myself functioning not just as a witness, but also as the weaver of a tale. Courtesy of a night’s sleep and even a single day’s critical distance, I knew that this version—though completely similar to the narrative I spoke yesterday while driving back to the shack with Sergeant Clark—still had a more polished feel to it. I had never been able to talk about Emily’s death until that moment in Vern’s car. But this story came easily. Because it was a story I could live with. Because it was a story with an ending that wasn’t awful.

Clark rarely interrupted me as I spoke. Laughlin stared straight at me, his gaze level, unwavering. Only once did I see his face contort—when I spoke about the string of scatalogical abuse Coursen leveled at Ivy as he raped her. Even this hardened cop found that aspect of the story unspeakable.

When I was finished, Clark thanked me and said that I might as well have another night’s sleep in a decent hotel courtesy of the province of Alberta. “It’s the least we owe you,” he said . . . but I sensed this offer of a free room was a ruse to politely keep me under surveillance while the coroner confirmed that Coursen had died by his own hand.

“And while you’re killing time in the hotel room,” Clark said, “you might want to think about where you intend to spend your three months of paid sick leave. The sooner you are out of Canada the better.”

As I stood up to leave, Laughlin and Clark both got to their feet. A final handshake from each of them. A final quiet nod from Laughlin—and I was handed over to the woman police officer and escorted back, through the same clandestine sequence of underground parking lots and freight elevators, to the Hyatt.

There was an internet facility in my room and I checked my bank account. I had more than enough to live on for several months in a cheap corner of Europe. Only a week earlier, I had read an article in the New York Times travel supplement about how Berlin was the only affordable capital city left on the Continent. As it turned out, Lufthansa had a daily flight from Calgary to Frankfurt, with onward connections to Berlin. They even had a last-minute standby fare for just under $1,000. Not a bargain, but bearable. I called them up and reserved it for the following night.

Clark called me at five thirty that evening to check in.

“Any news from the coroner?” I asked.

There was an embarrassed silence on the other end, then Clark said that the Calgary medical examiner had conclusively reached the decision that Coursen had cut his own throat and had died from massive hemorrhaging of blood.

“Meanwhile they have found two sets of bones in the basement—so it looks like everything he told Ivy was absolutely true. We now have every police force in the country with missing girls on the books inundating us. We’re going to spend years sifting through the other cases.”

“And I’m going to spend the next few months in Berlin.”

“Lucky you. When are you flying?”

“Tomorrow, actually.”

“I’m pleased to hear that, as there is now all sorts of media speculation about the ‘Lone Vigilante’—that’s what the Calgary Sun called you, but they are a rag—who saved Ivy. Already the press is giving us a very hard time about refusing to name you. We keep saying that we are just respecting your wishes—and with every statement we make the pressure grows. So . . . yeah, getting out of here tomorrow is a very good idea. And just to absolutely ensure that your exit is completely trouble-free I’ll pick you up at noon at the hotel, get you to your apartment to pack, then have you at the airport by three for the five p.m. flight.”

“How do you know what time the Frankfurt flight leaves?”

“Simple—I looked it up while talking to you.”

Another good night’s sleep. Another clandestine exit from the hotel, only this time into a car driven by Sergeant Clark. He got me back to my apartment and told me I had half an hour to pack. The time constraint focused the mind, but I owned so little in the way of clothes that I had my bag packed within minutes. All my bills—the rent, the utilities, the cell phone—were paid directly from my bank account. My salary would continue to roll in, at least for a while. I would continue to keep the cell phone off. No one knew my private email address, bar my banker back in Boston, and the professional address I used at the library would remain untouched during my absence. I was free to disappear again, slipping away under the radar.

Certainly that was Clark’s intention as well. At the airport he drove me into a special secure corner of the terminal, where I was privately checked in and passed through security, then accompanied by a member of the airport staff to a small lounge off the departures area. There was a bar there and Clark, who had insisted on accompanying me through these various formalities, opened up the fridge and said: “Can I buy you a beer?”

He returned to the sofa and handed me a bottle of Labatt’s.

“Was all this clandestine stuff necessary?” I asked.

“Probably not—but at noon today the Calgary Sun offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could name the ‘Lone Vigilante,’ so why take chances? Anyway, I think you merit a stylish send-off—and I also want to make certain you’re packed off out of town.”

He clinked his bottle against mine.

“How’re you feeling, Professor?”

“Tired—despite the two nights in a good hotel.”

“Don’t be surprised if all this comes back and bites you in the ass in a couple of days. You don’t shake off everything you’ve seen overnight.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Still, when the dark stuff hits, keep in mind that old line about how if you save one life you save the world.”

“Sergeant,” I said, “that’s bullshit—and you know it.”

He looked momentarily taken aback by this, then shrugged and took another slug of beer.

“So much for my stab at profundity.”

“Save it for the next ‘Lone Vigilante.’ ”

“Or maybe I’ll try the line out again when you’re back in town . . . if you’d like to hear it again.”

“You never know,” I said.

But I actually did know. I wouldn’t be coming back to Calgary again.

Clark, however, was right about the return of the dark stuff. It happened a few nights after I landed in Berlin. I was staying in a cheap hotel near Mitte. I was still fighting jet lag. I was coping with the isolation of being in a strange, shadowy city with no command of the sprache. Jolting awake at four a.m. on my third night there all I could see in my mind’s eye was Coursen’s blooded neck, his clothes drenched in gore, his eyes frozen but reflecting the crazed fear of his last moments. He was beyond monstrous—and I couldn’t even begin to fathom the way he could do such appalling harm and simultaneously get through the day, ministering to others, acting smugly self-righteous, listening to his motivational tapes. And at that four a.m. juncture—when Coursen’s slashed and hemorrhaging throat filled my head—all I could think was: This is an image that will never quite leave me.

The next day the weather was clement, sunny—so I decided to walk off my nocturnal phantoms with a long hike down Unter den Linden. I turned left at the Brandenburg Gate, and then happened upon two acres of gray stone slabs. This was the Holocaust Memorial. Walking into it was an unsettling experience, as the slabs were laid out like sarcophagi in a cemetery. The deeper you walked into their labyrinth-like formation, the more they engulfed you. After fifteen steps into its epicenter you were entombed by it all—gray block upon gray block, removing all peripheral vision, all sky, all sense of anything beyond the absolute unyielding prospect of immutable slabs of rock, determined to bury you.

It was overwhelming, this memorial to a horror that was beyond words. It said everything by not trying to say anything. Its creator understood that a grief—whether collective or individual—is entombing. And how do you excavate yourself from a tomb?

I had no idea. But again, I worked at getting through the days.

Berlin improved once I discovered Prenzlauer Berg. It was a reconstructed quarter just north of Mitte; a place of nineteenth-century burgher sensibilities updated for the new century, and in a once-divided city remaking itself. Prenzlauer Berg was a place of young families—and that was hard. But on the bulletin board in its very excellent English-language bookshop, the St. George, I saw an ad for a small studio apartment. I paid it a visit. It was just fifteen square meters of living space, but off Kollwitzplatz—the best address in the district—and tastefully furnished in a simple bleached-wood style. The landlord was willing to rent it to me on a three-month basis, renewable thereafter. I didn’t have to buy anything for it bar sheets and towels. I signed up for an intensive language course at the Goethe-Institut. I spent six hours a day mastering umlauts and the dative case—and met a quiet Swedish artist named Johann. He’d come to Berlin on a fellowship to learn the language and to paint. Much to my surprise we drifted into a fling: nothing serious (he told me he had a girlfriend back home) and, through mutual agreement, pleasantly circumscribed. We went out two, maybe three nights a week together. We got cheap seats for the Berlin Phil or the Komische Oper. We went to jazz joints that didn’t have a cover charge. We saw movies at the cool little kino in an alley off Hackescher Markt. And then we would spend the night together in my fold-out (but still double-size) bed.

It was strange—almost impossible—at first to reconnect to that arena called physical intimacy. When Johann first made a move, my initial reaction was to flee. But fortunately that reaction was internalized and was supplanted by a far simpler thought: I wanted to have sex again.

Johann was decent, tender, and a little distant . . . which, truth be told, suited me fine. I liked being held by him. I liked being taken by him, and I liked taking him. We rarely talked about things that mattered to us—though I did hear about his authoritarian semi-aristocratic father who wanted him to join the family law firm, but still half subsidized his attempts to be an abstract painter. The fact was, he did have talent and the Ellsworth Kelly–style color studies he showed me demonstrated actual promise. But as he himself admitted, he had just enough of a trust fund to ruin him—and he preferred mooching in bars and cafés to getting down to the serious business of mastering his craft. He rarely asked me much about myself—and when he once commented, early on, that I seemed to be in the throes of an ongoing sadness, I just shrugged and said: “We all have our stuff.”

And my stuff was something I simply didn’t want to discuss.

Nor did I want to go near anything to do with the press—though a week after I landed in Berlin I passed a newspaper kiosk and saw that, on the front page of a particularly low-rent tabloid, there was a grainy photograph of Coursen with the headline: “DAS MONSTRUM DER ROCKIES!” In the future, I averted my eyes whenever passing any newsstand.

But between intensive German, and my nights with Johann, and the fact that I could always fill a free evening with a concert, a film, a play, the time in Berlin passed easily. There was a playground on one corner of Kollwitzplatz and that had to be avoided. So too did a dinner with some German friends of Johann’s. When he mentioned that it was at the home of a couple with a five-year-old daughter I begged off.

“I’m not that keen on young children either,” he said. “But do what you want.”

That was the beginning of the end of things with Johann—not that it ever progressed beyond a pleasant enough convenience for both of us. He announced one day that he was returning to Stockholm in a week’s time. Jutta—the woman he’d been with for three years, a diplomat’s daughter, well-heeled—was missing him. And his father had offered to buy them an apartment if he would return to his long-abandoned law studies.

“I suppose I’ll be a part-time painter now,” he said, sounding a little sheepish.

“I’m certain you’ll have a very good life.”

“And what will you do now?”

“Return to the States—and find a use for the dative case.”

Beyond such facetiousness, I knew that I had to be doing something with my life. There was a part of me that couldn’t function without a sense of direction, of ambition, of some sort of purpose to the day. As I found out in those early months in Calgary, to drift meant to retreat deeper into myself. Even taking German classes now struck me as treading water. Maybe I just wasn’t good at playing the bohemian card. Or maybe, deep at heart, I was simply frightened of standing still for any longer. Whatever the reason, I knew that Dr. Goodchild was right all those many months ago in Calgary: What choice did I have in life but to go back to work?

So, around a week before I made the decision to head home (“home”—it was the first time I had used that word in years), I sent an email to my old contact, Margaret Noonan, at the Harvard Placement Office—explaining that, due to a “personal tragedy,” I had left the academic world for the last while, but was now thinking how much I missed standing up in front of a class and talking about literature. And I was just wondering if she might know of any teaching job that had opened up for the fall.

A day later I had a reply—and one which began with Noonan saying she had, of course, learned about my “personal tragedy” and could only express her “immense regret” at my “terrible loss,” but was pleased to hear that I was ready to “reenter the world.”

Reenter the world? Perhaps—but with everything changed. Changed utterly.

She also said my luck was with me. Did I know Colby College in Maine? A top-twenty liberal-arts college, lovely rural location, smart students. A two-year post had just opened up there, a faculty member having just been offered a big job at Cornell. And though I’d be in competition with around eight other candidates, she was pretty certain they would like my credentials. Was I interested? I emailed back, saying yes indeed. Five days later I was told I had a job interview in a week’s time.

So I threw away my fixed-date ticket back to Calgary and bought a one-way fare to Boston. I closed up my apartment and said goodbye to Johann. We had one valedictory night together in bed. In the morning, as he left, he simply said: “I enjoyed our time together.” Then he kissed me on the head and was gone. En route to the airport my taxi was diverted around the Brandenburg Gate and I passed the Holocaust Memorial for one last time. Today—after days of early spring sleet—the sun had cracked the gloomy dome of the Berlin sky. It was actually balmy. So balmy that a trio of adolescents had decided to use three of the Memorial’s slabs as makeshift sun beds. I wasn’t offended by this. Rather I found it strangely affirming. What I see as a metaphor for all the granitic grief in the world you see as a tanning opportunity. Life—even at its most excruciating—is never more than a few steps away from all its inherent absurdity.

Later that day, as the plane dipped and began its approach to Boston, I felt nothing but dread, wondering how, if, I could handle being there. I rented a car at the airport and drove straight up to Waterville, Maine. The college had arranged a hotel for the night. The chairman of the department—a young live wire named Tad Morrow—took me out to dinner. He’d liked my book. He liked my credentials. He liked the fact that I could talk a good game about recent novels and movies, and had even tried being a librarian for a while. And I actually found him good news—very convincing about the college’s attributes and the pleasures of living in Maine, while also explaining that, up here, you were cut off from big-league academia.

“I can live with that,” I told him—and the next day, despite fighting jet lag, I nailed the interview. So much so that, when I returned to Boston that night and checked into a hotel called the Onyx near North Station, there was a message awaiting me from Margaret Noonan. I had been the last candidate to be interviewed and I actually had the job, starting this September.

“The chairman did indicate that the post could go tenure track, especially if you publish another book in the meantime. I have here in my notes that you were, at one time, working on a biography of Sinclair Lewis. Might you think about going back to it?”

“I might.”

So there it was: a job offer, a motivation to return to that world.

I was still flagging from the flight—but the management of the hotel had put a complimentary bottle of wine in my room, and I celebrated with a few glasses of Australian red. Then, around midnight, too wired to go to sleep, I called a number I had so wanted to call for so many months, but just couldn’t.

I could hear Christy’s sharp intake of breath as I said hello.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Where are you? How are you?”

“That’s a rather long story,” I said. “But the short answer is: I’m in Boston and I’m . . . OK, I guess.”

“I’ve only tried to make contact with you around six hundred times . . .”

“I know, I know. And I hope you know why that was impossible for me.”

“I did know about Montana and your flight north to Calgary. Half a dozen times I was ready to jump into my car, drive over, and arrive unannounced . . . but Barry always advised me against it.”

“Who’s Barry?”

“Barry Edwards is a town planner here in Eugene. In fact, he is the town planner for Eugene, Oregon. And he also happens to have been my husband for the past six months.”

“Now that’s news.”

“Yes, it certainly came as a surprise to me as well.”

“Happy?”

She laughed.

“Like you I don’t do happy. But . . . well, it’s actually not bad. And I’ve got some other news as well—and I’d rather tell you straight out than later. I’m pregnant.”

“That’s . . . wonderful,” I said. “When are you due?”

“In sixteen weeks. And I find it difficult telling you all this.”

“But you just did. And I’m glad you did now, rather than when I come out to see you.”

“Now that’s news. Do you have an ETA?”

“That depends on your schedule.”

“My schedule remains what it was. I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I lock myself away from three to six all other days to try to inch my craft forward a bit—my usual prolific output of a poem every ten months, if I’m lucky. But . . . you . . . I need to know more about you.”

“I’ll tell all on Friday. I’m going to Calgary in two days to close down my life there. I’m pretty sure I can fly on to Portland.”

“What brings you back to Boston?”

“You’ll get the whole spiel on Friday.”

“You’re not planning to see Theo while you’re around Cambridge?”

“Jesus Christ, no. I haven’t been in contact since I had an incident with himself and his lover in a diner off Harvard Square.”

“Yes, I did hear about that . . .”

“I figured you probably did. The world is sometimes too damn small.”

“Well, I know for a fact that Theo wants to talk to you.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Because he’s called me every couple of months, wondering if I had any further news of your whereabouts. On two occasions he was rather drunk and very teary. Talking about how Adrienne had dropped him, and how not an hour went by when he didn’t think about Emily and you, and how he wished—”

“I don’t want to hear any more of this.”

“I don’t blame you. So . . . Friday then. Email me the flight details. I’ll be there.”

“I’m really pleased with all your news, Christy. All of it.”

“Who would have thought? Me who always said I’d run a mile from all this.”

“Life does have this habit of upending all our dogmas.”

“I am so glad you called.”

“I’m glad too.”

Afterward I put my head in my hands. Theo. In all the months since Emily’s death I’d tried to suppress my rage against him. In one session after my botched suicide Dr. Ireland told me that, at some point in the future, I would have to find a way of detaching myself from the hatred I felt for him.

“I’m not saying you have to forgive him,” she’d told me. “That might be impossible—and if it proves so, there it is. But what you will have to do is stop hating him. Because hate is ultimately toxic to yourself. You can’t win with hate. It goes nowhere, it solves nothing, and, sadly, it can’t turn back time. One of these days—and it might be years from now—you’re going to have to drop it. But that might take a long time.”

Too damn true—because all I could still feel was contempt and fury.

I told Mr. Alkan the same thing when I met him the next day. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me—and, in his own quiet, hesitant way, asked me how I was bearing up.

“Some days are tolerable, some aren’t. The nature of the beast, I guess . . .”

“Before we get on to other things I must tell you that your . . . ‘ex-partner’ I suppose is the official term for him . . . Mr. Theo Morgan . . . has been in touch with me on a regular basis, attempting to reinitiate contact with you. Naturally I followed your instructions to the word and never contacted you about this. But . . . how can I put this? . . . he fell apart on the phone and seemed disconsolate about his breakup with you and . . . uhm . . .”

“The death of our child?” I asked.

“Quite. There are around half a dozen letters from him here for you, sent over the past year or so.”

“I don’t want to read them.”

“Then they will remain here until you’re ready . . .”

“Burn them, throw them out.”

“Perhaps you will think differently in time.”

“No, I won’t. It’s exactly how I felt when I asked you to sell the apartment.”

“Yes, you did ask me to sell the apartment, Ms. Howard—just as you also directed me, quite clearly, to hand over the insurance settlement to a charity for bereaved parents. But apropos the apartment . . . when you signed over power of attorney to me, you simultaneously signed a document giving me free rein over what I could do with your estate. So, I’m afraid, I breached your directive—as your apartment in Somerville is being rented to a very nice visiting professor of French at Tufts. He’s paying two thousand a month—and after tax and running costs, you’ve been netting around twelve hundred a month, all earning interest in an account I set up for you. Not a fortune, but . . .”

I was going to say something whiny like: “I did tell you to sell the damn thing.” But I knew it would sound . . . well, whiny. Something else struck me: All those months ago, when I was in the darkest wood I could imagine, my need to shed everything was, without question, colored by the fact that I could think of no other solution than to leave the world.

But now . . . now . . . well, it’s somewhat graceless to admit this, but I was rather glad he had held on to the apartment for me.

“Thank you for thinking clearly for me when I simply couldn’t.”

“It’s what I’m paid to do. But yes, I did arrange the entire insurance payment to create a fund in Emily’s name with the Samaritans—”

I held up my hand.

“Some other time, OK?” I said.

“Fine. But there is one other thing that has to be discussed. The cemetery called around two months ago, asking if you were going to commission a headstone for Emily’s grave.”

I knew this was coming—as I also knew that Mr. Alkan would be sent a “reminder” from the powers that be at this “place of rest” (as they called it in their scuzzy brochures), wondering when I’d fork up the several thousand dollars for the requisite marble slab.

We’re all selling something in this life . . .

“Can you give me a pad and pen, please?” I asked.

He pushed both forward. I picked up the pen and wrote:

Emily Howard Morgan

July 24, 2003–January 18, 2007

Beloved Daughter

Then I pushed the pad back toward him.

“Can you take care of this?” I asked.

“Of course. And if you would like to go out and view the site . . . ?”

“I just . . . can’t. It’s just too soon.”

I felt immense guilt about this—the fact that I still couldn’t bring myself to visit my daughter’s grave. But as much as I tried to talk myself out of this decision, a voice inside my head uttered two words: Not yet. There will be a time, somewhere in the future, when, perhaps, I can stand above where she is buried and not fall apart. But that’s not possible right now.

“No problem,” Alkan said. “I’ll take care of everything.”

After this meeting I went to an internet café and booked myself on a flight to Portland, Oregon, with a two-day stopover in Calgary. I also wrote an email to Geraldine Woods, thanking her for all her decency and kindness toward me. Though part of me felt badly about not going in to see her and my other colleagues while in town, I also sensed it was better this way. I wanted to travel under the radar—to pay off what few bills I owed, ship my books back south to Maine, redirect my mail, call the Realtor and ask her to terminate my tenancy of the apartment, close down my bank account: all that endgame-in-a-place stuff.

Upon reaching Calgary at lunchtime the next day all this was achieved in a matter of hours. I even went to Caffè Beano for a valedictory cappuccino—and asked one of the baristas behind the counter if I could borrow the phone to make a local call.

I dialed the number for the Central Public Library. Just in case Ruth Fowler was answering the switchboard late this afternoon I put on a terrible English accent and asked to be put through to Vernon Byrne. He answered on the third ring, announcing his name in that hesitant, I-really-don’t-do-public-conversations manner of his.

“Vern, it’s me.”

A long silence. I broke it.

“Are you still angry at me?”

“I was never angry at you,” he said.

“If I were you, I would have been.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Calgary—but please, don’t tell anyone else that.”

“Your secret is good with me. Anyway, you know I talk to nobody around here.”

“Any chance of a drink tonight?”

“I’m hearing András Schiff play Beethoven—and the concert’s long since sold out, otherwise I’d say come along. But I have the day off tomorrow. You free?”

“I’m free.”

The next morning he was outside my apartment building at ten. He was, as always, dressed in that brown car coat and flat corduroy cap (which he probably wore to the beach—if, that is, he ever went to the beach). He greeted me with his usual tentative nod of the head.

“You have to be anywhere today?” he asked as I closed the car door behind me.

“Actually, no. My books are packed up, my suitcase ready. I’ve got a flight out tomorrow morning at eleven. Other than that . . .”

“How about a drive?” he asked.

“Out of town?”

He caught the worry in my voice.

“That’s what I was thinking—but not south. We don’t have to head down there.”

South meant Townsend and the badlands. We don’t have to head down there. Was this Vern’s way of dropping a hint that he was on to me?

“I was thinking northwest—if that was OK with you?”

“I think I can do that now.”

We headed off, CBC Radio 2 (as always) playing on the radio. There was an uncomfortable minute or so when we didn’t seem to be able to say anything to each other.

Then: “I want to apologize,” I said.

“For what?”

“For calling you a drunk.”

“Why apologize for an observation that is truthful? I’m a drunk.”

“It was still a lousy thing to say.”

“It didn’t bother me.”

“Well, it bothered me.”

A pause. Then he asked: “Have you been following the news about Ivy MacIntyre?”

“I gave up on news a few months ago.”

“Then you missed all the big stuff. Seems that Brenda MacIntyre was having a big fling with Coursen, not knowing that it was he who was holding her daughter. She’s gone into hiding since then, public opinion having completely turned against her.”

“How’s the girl?”

“The doctors actually managed to save her foot. Otherwise she’s been sent to some rehabilitation place outside of Toronto where they deal with children who have been through severe trauma. I know all this because every day there’s been something on the case in the Herald and on the news. The press can’t get enough of it.”

“I’m sure.”

“There’s no question that Brenda’s going to be declared an unfit mother and Ivy—when she’s ready—will be found foster parents.”

“And how did the police and the press deal with the fact that they so demonized George MacIntyre?”

“A major mea culpa from the RCMP, an editorial in the Herald apologizing for rushing to judgment, and the province has just announced compensation in the form of a two-million-dollar trust for Ivy MacIntyre.”

“That’s not going to bring her father back,” I said. Once again I saw her lying facedown in the car, telling me how desperate she was to see her daddy.

“According to the press she still keeps asking to meet the woman who rescued her. And the press keep upping the reward for the person who will come forward and reveal themselves as her savior. So far around fifty different women have said it was them.”

“Evidently there are a lot of ‘Lone Vigilantes’ out there.”

“Seems to be,” he said quietly. Then, with his eyes never once deviating from the road up ahead, he added: “But I know it was you.”

I fought off a half smile. I failed. Vern’s eyes veered over toward me to catch this. The radio played on. And the matter was not raised again.

We reached that juncture in Calgary geography where the city drops away and the plains reassert dominance of the landscape.

“Where are we heading exactly?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” he said.

For the next ninety minutes, as we drove steadily north, I kept my head lowered and avoided looking out the window—because as we gained altitude the badlands were soon encumbered by the jagged, epic silhouettes of the Rockies. Once or twice I caught their stern grandeur out of a corner of my eye—and I had to turn away. It was still too hard to look at such beauty.

Vern knew this, so he kept up a reasonably steady stream of chat, asking about my forthcoming return to the college classroom and quizzing me intensely about every good concert I had heard in Berlin.

“There were no bad concerts,” I said. “Because it’s Berlin.”

“I’d like to find a way of getting over there.”

“You should, Vern. Because sitting in the Philharmonie, listening to that orchestra, would make you happy.”

“Happy,” he said, trying out the word as if it were a foreign one he had hardly uttered before and wasn’t quite sure how it sounded. “Maybe one day . . .”

“Yeah, maybe one day.”

We passed a town called Canmore, a suburban sprawl dwarfed by mountains. We entered Banff National Park. My ears popped as the road gained further altitude. We ignored the turnoff to Banff. I chanced another glance out the window and again instantly turned away. The road narrowed. We skipped the exit to Lake Louise and the Icefields Highway toward Jasper. Instead we continued our western progress, soon crossing the border into British Columbia and passing an old railroad town called Field.

It was here that Vern finally signaled a turn off the road: a blink-once-you-miss-it turn. The road suddenly became as narrow as a country lane. It plunged us past a rushing stream and then down a long corridor of densely packed Douglas firs. They towered above us, taking away the sky.

“Not too much longer now,” he said.

But it was still another ten minutes before we came to a halt. As the car bumped along the half-paved road, as this forest primeval closed in around us, all I could feel was mounting panic: I can’t go on, I won’t go on.

But we kept going on . . . until, suddenly, the road ended. This was it. Nowhere else to drive beyond here. Vern parked the car and got out. When I stayed rooted to my seat he came around to my side of the vehicle and opened the door for me.

“Come on,” he said.

“I don’t think I can—”

“Don’t think,” he said, interrupting me. “Just get out of the car.”

Fear. It’s always there, isn’t it? Endlessly ruining your sleep and holding you hostage and taunting you with the knowledge that, like everyone else who has ever done time on this planet, you are so scared of so much.

But to give in to fear is to . . .

Stay sitting in this car, I guess.

Go on, be brave, shoot crap, take a swing at it—and every other bromide you care to mention. They’re all telling you the same thing: You have to get out of the damn car.

So I did just that.

Vern took my arm and guided me a few steps to my immediate right. My head was bowed, my eyes half-shut. I kept focusing on the ground, the paved parking area giving way to a dirt path bordered by deep grass.

We stopped. I thought: If I about-face now, I’ll be able to make it back to the car and not have to see anything.

But Vern, reading my thoughts, touched my arm again and said: “Look up, Jane. Look up.”

I took a deep, steadying breath. I felt a shudder come over me. I held it in check. After a moment I finally did look up.

And what I saw in front of me was . . .

A lake. Absolutely still, serene and, yes, emerald. The lake stretched toward a definable horizon—a vast meadow that, in turn, ran right into a wall of mountains. It was a peerless day in the West. A hard, blue sky, empty of clouds. A sun that, though initially harsh to the eye, bathed everything in a honeyed glow. Its glare forced me to lower my head, but then I raised it up again. The lake was one of topology’s more fortuitous accidents. It occupied center stage in an amphitheater of glacial peaks, many still dense with snow. It was a scenic vista of such scope, such complete purity, that I blinked and felt tears. I had been able to look at the lake. It meant everything. It meant nothing. But I had looked up. I had seen the lake. And that was something, I suppose.

“Thank you,” I said to Vern, my voice a whisper. He did something unexpected. He took my hand. We said nothing for several minutes. I turned my gaze from the lake to the sky. And somewhere in the messy filing cabinet that is my brain came a remembrance of a particular sleepless night some months past. Up with grief and the sense that I was now living in a fathomless world. Surfing the net, trying to murder the hours until first light—and suddenly deciding to google the word “uncertainty.” And what did I find? Well, among other things, there were several pages on a German mathematical physicist named Werner Heisenberg, the father of the Uncertainty Principle, who posited the idea that, in physics, “there is no way of knowing where a moving particle is given its detail” . . . and “thereby, by extension, we can never predict where it will go.”

That’s destiny, I told myself after reading this. A random dispatch of particles that brings you to places you never imagined finding yourself. After all, uncertainty governs every moment of human existence.

But staring now at that deep blue Western sky and seeing it reflected in the lake, a second quote came back to me from that webpage. It was the notion, put forward by another physicist, that space was a field of linear operations. Heisenberg—ever the pragmatist—would have none of it.

And what was his famous retort?

Suddenly I heard myself saying out loud: “Space is blue and birds fly through it.”

“Sorry?” Vern said, trying to make sense of this non sequitur.

I looked at him and smiled. And said again: “Space is blue and birds fly through it.”

Vernon Byrne thought this one over.

“Can’t argue with that,” he finally said.

And we kept looking at the lake.

SUMMARY

After another tension-filled dinner with her parents on her thirteenth birthday, only child Jane Howard makes an announcement: she vows never to marry or have children. The next day, her father leaves the family—something her mother attributes directly to Jane’s declaration. This guilt and abandonment forever impacts Jane and her interactions with other people. After years of academic study, she falls into a clandestine affair with her much-older and married professor. When he dies suddenly, she is bereft and drifts into a relationship and eventually has a child with a film anthologist. Soon after the birth of her child, reality sets in hard and despite her careful planning, her life is thrown into merciless tumult and she is tested in ways she could have never imagined.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. After a particularly tense birthday dinner, thirteen-year-old Jane Howard announces to her parents that she will never marry nor have children. After her father leaves the family the next day, Jane’s mother attributes his desertion to Jane’s statement. What does this tell us about Jane’s mother and her character? Do you think Jane’s statement actually influenced her father’s decision?

2. Early on in the novel, Jane states: “We can rarely tell others what we really think about them—not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves. The gentle lie is often preferable to the bleak truth.” (p. 37) Do you find this to be true? Why can’t Jane tell her mother the truth as she sees it?

3. Early in their clandestine relationship, Jane tells David Henry, “If we lived together, . . . the letdown would be huge,” a point she felt was “decidedly romantic” because “I don’t have to find out whether or not you floss your teeth, or kick your dirty underwear under the bed . . .” (p. 40) Do you think she makes a salient point about “familiarity breeding contempt”? Do you think their romance would have become serious if it had been out in the open?

4. Given Jane’s feelings about the possibility of “wounding” people, why do you think she was still somewhat honest about her dislike of David’s novel? Why could she be honest with David and not with her mother?

5. After David’s death, Jane is reminded of something he once told her: “We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we’re all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we’re gone, it’s simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive.” (p. 57) How does his musing differ from Jane’s theory that “words matter, words have import”? With whom do you agree more?

6. After the dissolution of her parents’ marriage, Jane comes to the conclusion that “when men are threatened, they vanish.” How does this prophecy manifest in Jane’s life?

7. Why do you think Jane takes the financial job at Freedom Mutual, given that it was the “anathema to all that [she] valued in . . . life”? (p. 84) How is overbearing Trish the polar opposite of Jane?

8. How has Jane’s relationship (or lack thereof) with her father impacted her relationships with other people?

9. Why do you think Jane is worried about settling into domestic life with Theo, besides the obvious fear of turning into her parents? How does Theo’s behavior after Emily’s birth echo her early theory about men vanishing when they are threatened?

10. What do you think Jane means when she has the foreboding reflection of “never underestimate the need for self-sabotage when someone has finally gotten what they always wanted”? (p. 214) How can success be a problem?

11. How would you describe Jane’s relationship with her mother? What made her flee during her mother’s last hours?

12. After her mother’s death, Jane concludes, “if life teaches you anything, it’s this: you can never dispel another person’s illusions.” (p. 236) How is this true for Jane and her mother? In what way was Jane’s mother “deluded” about her marriage?

13. After the Fantastic Films debacle, Jane feels “I deserve all the bad stuff that is going to come down from this. Because . . . there is a part of me that always believes I deserve disaster.” (p. 248) Why do you think she has developed this skewed view of the world? Do you think she is angry with herself for ignoring her thirteen-year-old declaration?

14. How do you think Jane has dealt with the tumult in her life, the lawsuits brought on by Theo’s recklessness, and ultimately, Emily’s death? Why do you think she could not let friends like Christy or Professor Sanders be there for her?

15. After her failed attempt at taking her own life in Montana, Jane retreats from the world. She cancels her credit cards, quits her job, and heads north to Canada, for no reason in particular. What would you have done in Jane’s circumstances? What is the significance of the title, Leaving the World?

16. After fleeing Boston for a small coastal village in Canada, she reflects on “that oft-quoted pensée of Pascal about man’s unhappiness all coming down to his inability to sit alone in a small room and do nothing.” (p. 126) Given today’s never-ending barrage of data from cell phones, computers, and other mobile devices, do you agree?

17. Why do you think the case of missing girl Ivy MacIntyre so struck a chord in Jane? Why do you think she is convinced of George MacIntyre’s innocence?

18. This is the fourth novel in which author Douglas Kennedy writes from the point of view of a woman. How accurately does he capture a woman’s voice?

19. Given all that Jane has been through, what do you envision in her future?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

1. Leaving the World is a novel that has aspects of the picaresque tradition. What are some other books in this vein your group can read and discuss?

2. Jane has a very emotional reaction to Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony when Vern recommends it to her. You can check online for a sample of this moving piece and see how it affects you and the members of your book club.

3. Many important parts of the novel take place in Canada. If your book club serves wine, why not serve some regional wines from the Great White North. You can learn more about the different varieties at http://www.winesofcanada.com/.

A CONVERSATION WITH

DOUGLAS KENNEDY

1. You were born in New York City but have lived in Europe for the last thirty years. How has living abroad informed your writing?

That description of an expatriate as being someone “at home abroad and abroad at home” doesn’t really apply to me. Yes I have spent thirty-three years living in such disparate cities as Dublin, London, Paris, and Berlin—but I never considered myself to be one of those Americans who turned his back on his country. On the contrary, America is everywhere in my novels because, to me, your country is like your family: the perpetual argument. Given that, three decades elsewhere has also played into one of the underlying themes in all my books: the need to run away. And it has also somewhat altered my world-view, in that I sense my inherent (and still active!) American need for optimism has been shaded by a European pessimism about the human condition. But I remain profoundly American in the belief that, even when life is profoundly unfair, we have to somehow move forward. And, by the way, I now live part of the year in Maine—so I have, in a sense, come home.

2. This is your fourth novel written from a female point of view, and you do an incredible job of capturing the female voice. Does writing from a feminine viewpoint pose a challenge? Do you approach it any differently than if you were writing from the male perspective?

I am asked constantly how I am able to write so convincingly as a woman—as I have done in The Pursuit of Happiness, A Special Relationship, State of the Union, and now Leaving the World. The simple answer is: when writing as a woman I have never thought “as a woman.” I have always thought as my narrator—and see the world through her eyes. As such I never pose dumb questions to myself along the lines of: “Now what would a woman think in a situation like this?” Rather, what would Jane (in the case of Leaving the World) think in this situation? I have always written novels in the first person—and, as such, see myself as an actor playing a role. At the same time, there is a strong feminist streak in all my books. Perhaps being the byproduct of a rather unhappy midcentury American marriage—with a highly educated mother who gave up her career to play housewife—had a certain impact on my world-view. Certainly what women readers tell me all the time is that I seem to “get it right” when it comes to dealing with the complexities of female identity in the modern world. To which all I can say in response is: thank you.

3. You have described your reading tastes as “very Catholic.” How so? Your writing has been compared to John Irving and, more recently, Claire Messud, and there are themes that are reminiscent of Dreiser, especially, the naturalistic style. Who are some of your favorite writers and why?

In 1992 I happened upon Richard Yates’s then-forgotten novel, Revolutionary Road, and discovered a writer who wasn’t afraid of telling uncomfortable truths about the way we so often talk ourselves into lives that we don’t want—and the hellishness of quotidian domesticity as practiced in the postwar American suburbs. Though Yates died that same year a largely forgotten figure, it is wonderful to see how his literary star has risen again—and that he is now considered one of the giants of postwar American fiction. Or, at least, he is for me. Another writer who has enormously influenced me is Graham Greene—as here was a serious novelist who wasn’t afraid of being popular and accessible, and told great stories which also confronted the essential grayness of human morality and the way we all search for some sort of forgiveness in a most unforgiving world. Thanks to Greene I became a novelist who believes in the primacy of narrative drive—better known as making the reader want to turn the page—yet who also attempts to pose certain philosophical questions within the architecture of a “serious popular” novel (or a “popular serious” novel—take your pick).

4. Guilt plays a major part in the narrative of Leaving the World—Jane’s guilt over Emily, her father, her mother. What made you want to address a topic such as this?

Guilt is everywhere in life . . . and anyone who ever tells you they don’t feel guilty about something is either a liar or pathological or both. Guilt is such a fundamental human dilemma—and underscores so much that we grapple with, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Without guilt there would be no art. And there would certainly be no novels by Douglas Kennedy—because guilt is a fundamental theme which courses through my fiction. Just as it courses through everybody’s existence.

5. Many of the protagonists in your novels are on the run from something or are trying to escape the chaos in their lives. Why is this so prevalent in your work? Why do you think stories of flight and reinvention appeal to readers?

We all want to run away. We frequently believe that life is elsewhere. We all often wonder about the lives we could have lived if we had only chosen another path, another strategy, another way of looking at the world. We all rue the way we are so often the architects of our own cul-de-sac and have trapped ourselves in existences that we don’t really want. “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains,” noted Voltaire. But in modern western societies, the chains are so often self-imposed.

6. Were you ever worried, in the early stages of writing this novel that at some point an editor, an agent, a trusted reader would say to you “too bleak” in regards to all the difficulties that befall Jane?

Well, terrible things do happen to Jane. But, then again, terrible things do happen to most of us during the course of a lifetime. In fact I would posit the idea that nobody escapes the specter of tragedy. It’s part of the price we pay for being here—and this novel certainly reflects that.

7. Your novels have sold amazingly well worldwide and have been translated into twenty-two languages. Why do you think your books have such international appeal?

Perhaps because my novels are very much rooted in day-to-day existence—and the notion that there is no such thing as a firm foundation in life. It’s all a veneer which can so easily fracture. Or, to put it another way, my novels deal with modern anxiety—and we are all fascinated by the anxieties and nightmares of other people. They reassure us that we aren’t alone. And perhaps the other reason why I have such a large readership is because I believe in the primacy of a good story, in making you turn the page, yet also in posing complex moral questions throughout my novels . . . and never supplying any answers.

8. Despite dealing with some modern issues, Leaving the World has elements of a picaresque novel (albeit, darker ones), with Jane abandoning her old life and having one experience after another. Was this intentional or did the narrative just happen organically? Do you outline the plot before you begin writing?

All my novels are densely plotted, and I have never once planned out a novel in advance. I always start with the narrator, the basic trajectory of the story, the central dilemma, and (intriguingly) the novel’s last scene. Everything else happens during the course of writing the damn thing. And even after ten novels it’s a mystery to me why this methodology (or lack thereof) works. But it does—and I don’t question it.

9. You have two children. How difficult was it for you to write in such painful detail about the loss of a child?

Of course I was articulating my worst nightmare. And that was one of the more intriguing things about writing about such an unspeakable subject—how to make it “speakable,” how to examine one of the most appalling things imaginable, and how to watch my narrator, Jane, find a way through her agony. A word I truly despise is “closure”—because it gives lie to the idea that, in time, you can slam the door on something terrible and move forward. My preferred word is “accommodation”—and the notion that, in the wake of a tragedy, you learn how to coexist with its aftermath, but your life is inexorably altered by it. There is no closure. There is only accommodation.

10. In an interview with The Independent in 2007, you spoke of how you kept a Post-it note above your desk with the mantra, “It’s the Story, Stupid.” How did this come to be your motto?

When I decided that I wanted to be the sort of novelist who could be serious and popular at the same time . . . and when I also worked out that what I disliked in so much literary fiction was the abandonment of narrative drive, and what I disliked in so much popular fiction was a lack of nuance and shading when it came to character development, and a tendency to see the world in a simplistic, two-dimensional way. I have a very nineteenth-century view of the novel: it is, first and foremost, an entertainment . . . but one which can also speak volumes about the human condition.

11. While working at the library in Calgary, Ruth, one of Jane’s coworkers, comments: “. . . that’s the thing about other people’s lives. You scratch the surface, you discover all this dark stuff. We’ve all got it.” (p. 345) Do you think this is why people love to read stories about other people’s struggles?

During the course of a book-signing session in Paris recently, I was approached by a woman who told me: “In the course of reading your new novel I realized that I wasn’t alone . . . that my doubts, my fears, my griefs, were shared ones.” I informed this woman that this was the nicest compliment imaginable—because we all read to discover that we aren’t alone.

12. Can you tell us a little about your next project?

It’s a novel called The Moment. It’s a love story set in Berlin back when it was a divided city. And as I am in the middle of it right now, I think I won’t say anymore about it. Except: watch this space . . .

DOUGLAS KENNEDY is the author of eight previous novels, including the international bestseller The Pursuit of Happiness. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages, and in 2007 he received the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He divides his time between Maine, London, and Paris and has two children.

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COVER DESING BY MIN CHOI • COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY AYAL AROON/TRAVILLION IMAGES

ALSO BY DOUGLAS KENNEDY

FICTION

The Woman in the Fifth

Temptation

State of the Union

A Special Relationship

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Job

The Big Picture

The Dead Heart

NONFICTION

Chasing Mammon

In God’s Country

Beyond the Pyramids

ATRIA PAPERBACK

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Douglas Kennedy

Originally published in Great Britain in 2009 by Hutchinson, a division of Random House UK.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Atria Paperback edition June 2010

ATRIA PAPERBACK and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Excerpt from THE COLLECTED STORIES OF LEONARD MICHAELS by Leonard Michaels. Copyright © 2007 by Catherine Ogden Michaels. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Excerpt from Part V of “The Hollow Men” in COLLECTED POEMS 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt, Inc., and renewed 1964 by T. S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen. Copyright © Elizabeth Bowen 1935.

The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright holders for permission, and apologize for any omissions or errors in the form of credit given. Corrections may be made in future printings.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennedy, Douglas, date.

Leaving the world: a novel / by Douglas Kennedy. —1st Atria paperback ed.

p. cm.

First published: London : Hutchinson, 2009.

1. Women college teachers—Family relationships—Fiction. 2. Women college teachers—Psychology—Fiction. 3. Motherhood—Fiction. 4. Missing children—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PR6061.E5956L43 2010

823.914—dc22

2009042377

ISBN 978-1-4391-8078-5

ISBN 978-1-4391-8081-5 (ebook)

Five Days

From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Moment comes a remarkable new novel that explores how and why we fall in love.

Laura works in a small hospital on the Maine coast and is well versed in the random unfairness of life, a truism that has started to affect her personally. With a husband who has become a stranger since losing his job, a son in college and a daughter set to leave home, she wonders how the upcoming empty nest will affect the disconnected state of her marriage.

While attending a conference in Boston she meets an outwardly drab, fifty-something salesman, also from Maine. When a chance meeting brings them together again, Laura begins to discover a far more complex and thoughtful man behind the flat façade. Like her, Richard ponders his own life and wonders if the time has come to choose desire over obligation.

Five Days is a profoundly moving love story that will have readers reflecting deeply about the choices made that so shape all our destinies. Featuring Kennedy’s trademark evocative prose and his brilliant ability to delineate life the way it is truly lived today, it is a novel that speaks directly to the many contradictions of the human heart.

Read on for a look at Douglas Kennedy’s

Five Days

Currently available from Atria Books

Excerpt from Five Days copyright © 2013 by Douglas Kennedy

ONE

I SAW THE CANCER immediately. It was right there in front of me. As always, I found myself taking a sharp intake of breath as the realization hit: I am looking at the beginning of the end.

The cancer was shaped like a dandelion. Sometimes this sort of tumor looks like a cheap Christmas decoration—a five-and-dime star with ragged edges. But this specific one was more like a minor-looking flower that had been denuded, stripped down to its seeds, but with an insidious, needle-like structure. What radiologists call a “spiculated structure.”

Spiculated. When I heard that word for the first time I had to look it up. Discovered its origins were actually zoological: a spicule being “a small needle-like structure, in particular any of those making up the skeleton of a sponge” (I’d never realized that sponges have skeletons). But there was also an astronomical meaning as well: a short-lived jet of gas in the sun’s corona.

This last definition nagged at me for weeks. Because it struck me as so horribly apt. A spiculated cancer, like the one I was looking at right now, may have commenced its existence years, decades earlier. But only after it makes its presence known does it become something akin to the burst of flame that alights everything in its path, demanding total attention. If the flame hasn’t been spotted and extinguished early enough, it will then decide that it isn’t a mere fiery jet stream, but rather a mini supernova which, in its final show of pyrotechnic force, will destroy the universe that contains it.

Certainly the spiculated species I was now looking at was well on its way to explode—and, in doing so, end the life of the person within whose lung it was now so lethally imbedded.

Another horror to add to the ongoing catalog of horrors that are, in so many ways, the primary decor of my nine-to-five life.

And this day was turning out to be a doozy. Because, an hour before the spiculated cancer appeared on the screen in front of me, I had run a CT scan on a nine-year-old girl named Jessica Ward. According to her chart she’d been having a series of paralyzing headaches. Her physician had sent her to us in order to rule out any “neurological concerns . . .” which was doctor shorthand for “brain tumor.” Jessica’s dad was named Chuck—a quiet, hangdog man in his mid-thirties, with sad eyes and the sort of yellowing teeth that hint at a serious cigarette habit. He said he was a welder at the Bath Iron Works.

“Jessie’s Ma left us two years ago,” he told me as his daughter went into a dressing area we have off the CT scan room to change into a hospital gown.

“She died?” I asked.

“I wish. The bitch—’scuse my French—ran off with a guy she worked with at the Rite Aid Pharmacy in Brunswick. They’re livin’ in some trailer down in Destin. That’s on the Florida Panhandle. Know what a friend of mine told me they call that part of the world down there? The Redneck Riviera. Jessie’s headaches started after her ma vanished. And she’s never once been back to see Jessie. What kind of mother is that?”

“She’s obviously lucky to have a dad like you,” I said, trying to somewhat undercut the terrible distress this man was in—and the way he was working so hard to mask his panic.

“She’s all I got in the world, ma’am.”

“My name’s Laura,” I said.

“And if it turns out that what she has is, like, serious . . . and doctors don’t send young girls in for one of these scans if they think it’s nothing . . .”

“I’m sure your physician is just trying to rule things out,” I said, hearing my practiced neutral tone.

“You’re taught to say stuff like that, aren’t you?” he said, his tone displaying the sort of anger that I’ve so often seen arising to displace a great fear.

“Actually, you’re right. We are trained to try to reassure and not say much. Because I’m a technologist, not a diagnostic radiologist.”

“Now you’re using big words.”

“I’m the person who operates the machinery, takes the pictures. The diagnostic radiologist is the doctor who will then look at the scan and see if there is anything there.”

“So when can I talk to him?”

You can’t was the actual answer, because the diagnostic radiologist is always the behind the scenes man, analyzing the scans, the X-rays, the MRIs, the ultrasounds. He rarely ever meets the patient.

“Dr. Harrild will be talking directly to Jessica’s primary-care physician. I’m sure you’ll be informed very quickly if there is—”

“Do they also teach you to talk like a robot?”

As soon as this comment was out of his mouth, the man was all contrite.

“Hey, that was kind of wrong of me, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, maintaining a neutral tone.

“Now you’re all hurt.”

“Not at all. Because I know how stressful and worrying this must be for you.”

“And now you’re reading the script again that they taught you to read.”

At that moment Jessica appeared out of the changing room, looking shy, tense, bewildered.

“This gonna hurt?” she asked me.

“You have to get an injection. It sends an ink into your veins so we’ll be able to see what’s going on inside of you. But the ink is harmless.”

“And the injection?” she asked, looking alarmed.

“Just a little prick in your arm and then it’s behind you.”

“You promise?” she asked, trying too hard to be brave, yet still so much the child who didn’t fully understand why she was here and what these medical procedures were all about.

“You be a real soldier now, Jess,” her father said, “and we’ll get you that Barbie you want on the way home.”

“Now that sounds like a good deal to me,” I said, wondering if I was coming across as too cheerful and also knowing that, even after sixteen years as an RT, I still dreaded all procedures involving children. Because I always feared what I might see before anyone else. And because I so often saw terrible news.

“This is just going to take ten, fifteen minutes, no more,” I told Jessica’s father. “There’s a waiting area just down the walkway with coffee, magazines—”

“I’m goin’ outside for a bit,” he said.

“That’s ’cause you want a cigarette,” Jessica said.

Her father suppressed a sheepish smile.

“My daughter knows me too well.”

“I don’t want my daddy dead of cancer.”

At that moment her father’s face fell, and I could see him desperately trying to control his emotions.

“Let’s let your dad get a little air,” I said, steering Jessica into the scan room, then turning back to her father who had started to cry.

“I know how hard this is,” I said. “But until there is something to be generally concerned about . . .”

He just shook his head and headed for the door, fumbling in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes.

As I turned back inside I saw Jessica looking wide-eyed and afraid in the face of the CT scanner. I could understand her concern. It was a formidable piece of medical machinery, stark, ominous. There was a large hoop, attached to two science fiction–style containers of inky fluid. In front of the hoop was a narrow bed that was a bit like a bier (albeit with a pillow). I’d seen adults panic at the sight of the thing. So I wasn’t surprised that Jessica was daunted by it all.

“I have to go into that?” Jessica said, eyeing the door as if she wanted to make a run for it.

“It’s nothing, really. You lie on the bed there. The machine lifts you up into the hoop. The hoop takes pictures of the things the doctor needs pictures of . . . and that’s it. We’ll be done in a jiffy.”

“And it won’t hurt?”

“Let’s get you lying down first,” I said, leading her to the bed.

“I really want my daddy,” she said.

“You’ll be with your daddy in just a few minutes.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

She got herself onto the bed.

I came over holding a tube attached to the capsule containing all that inky liquid, covering with my hand the intravenous needle still encased in its sterlized packaging. Never show a patient an IV needle. Never.

“All right, Jessica. I’m not going to tell you a big fib and say that getting a needle put into your arm is going to be painless. But it will just last a moment and then it will be behind you. After that, no pain at all.”

“You promise.”

“I promise—though you might feel a little hot for a few minutes.”

“But not like I’m burning up.”

“I can assure you you’ll not feel that.”

“I want my daddy . . .”

“The sooner we do this, the sooner you’ll be with him. Now here’s what I want you to do . . . I want you to close your eyes and think of something really wonderful. You have a pet you love, Jessica?”

“I have a dog.”

“Eyes closed now, please.”

She did as instructed.

“What kind of dog is he?”

“A cocker spaniel. Daddy got it for my birthday.”

I swabbed the crook of her arm with a liquid anesthetic.

“The needle going in yet?” she asked.

“Not yet, but you didn’t tell me your dog’s name.”

“Tuffy.”

“And what’s the silliest thing Tuffy ever did?”

“Ate a bowlful of marshmallows.”

“How did he manage to do that?”

“Daddy had left them out on the kitchen table, ’cause he loves roasting them in the fireplace during Christmas. And then, out of nowhere, Tuffy showed up and . . .”

Jessica started to giggle. That’s when I slipped the needle in her arm. She let out a little cry, but I kept her talking about her dog as I used tape to hold it in place. Then, telling her I was going to step out of the room for a few minutes, I asked:

“Now is the needle still hurting?”

“Not really, but I can feel it there.”

“That’s normal. Now I want you to lie very still and take some very deep breaths. And keep your eyes closed and keep thinking about something funny, like Tuffy eating those marshmallows. Will you do that for me, Jessica.”

She nodded, her eyes firmly closed. I left the scan room as quietly and as quickly as I could, moving into what we call the technical room. It’s a booth with a bank of computers and a swivel chair and an extended control panel. Having prepped the patient I was now about to engage in what is always the trickiest aspect of any scan: getting the timing absolutely right. As I programmed in the data necessary to start the scan I felt the usual moment of tension that, after all these years, accompanies each of these procedures I conduct; a tension that is built around the fact that, from this moment on, timing is everything. In a moment I will hit a button. It will trigger the high-speed injection system that will shoot 80 milligrams of high-contrast iodine into Jessica’s veins. After that I have less than fifty seconds—more like forty-two seconds, given her small size—to start the scan. The timing here is critical. The iodine creates a contrast that allows the scan to present a full, almost circular image of all bone and soft tissue and internal organs. But the iodine first goes to the heart, then enters the pulmonary arteries and the aorta before being disseminated into the rest of the body. Once it is everywhere you have reached the Venus phase of the procedure, when all veins are freshly enhanced with the contrast. Begin the scan a few critical seconds before the Venus phase and you will be scanning ahead of the contrast, which means you will not get the images that the radiologist needs to make a thorough and accurate diagnosis. Scan too late and the contrast might be too great. That’s why this small block of time still fills me with dread, even after the thousands of scans I have conducted. If I fail to get the timing right the patient will have to go through the entire procedure again twelve hours later (at the very minimum), and the radiologist will not be pleased. Which is why there is always a moment of tension and doubt that consumes me in these crucial seconds before every scan. Have I prepped everything correctly? Have I judged the relationship between the diffusion of the iodine and the patient’s physique? Have I left anything to chance?

I fear mistakes in my work. Because they count. Because they hurt people who are already frightened and dealing with the great unknown that is potential illness.

But children . . . children with cancers . . . it still pierces me. Being a mom makes it ten times worse. Because I am always thinking: what if it was Ben and Sally? Even though they are now both in their teens, both beginning to find their way in the world, they will always remain my kids, and, as such, the permanent open wound. That’s the curious thing about my work. Though I present to my patients, my colleagues, my family, an image of professional detachment—Sally once telling a friend who’d come over after school, “My mom looks at tumors all day and somehow always seems cheerful . . . how weird is that?” —recently it has all begun to unsettle me. Whereas in the past I could look at all forms of internal calamity on my screens and push aside the terribleness that was about to befall the person on the table, over the past few months I’ve found it has all started to clog up my head. Just last week I ran a mammogram on a local schoolteacher who works at the same middle school that Sally and Ben attended, and who, I know, finally got married a year earlier and told me with great excitement how she’d gotten pregnant at the age of forty-one. When I saw that nodule embedded in her left breast and could tell immediately it was Stage Two (something Dr. Harrild confirmed later), I found myself driving after work down to Pemaquid Point, and heading out to the empty beach, and being oblivious to the autumn, cold and crying uncontrollably for a good ten minutes, wondering all the time why it was only now getting to me.

That night, over dinner with Dan, I mentioned that I had run a mammogram on someone my own age that day (this being a small town, I am always absolutely scrupulous about never revealing the names of the patients I’ve seen). “And when I saw the lump on the screen and realized it was cancerous, I had to take myself off somewhere because I kind of lost it.”

“What stage?” he asked.

I told him.

“Stage Two isn’t Stage Four, right?” Dan said.

“It still might mean a mastectomy, especially the way the tumor is abutting the lymph nodes.”

“You’re quite the diagnostician,” he said, his tone somewhere between complimentary and ironic.

“The thing is, this is not the first time I’ve lost it recently. Last week there was this sad little woman who works as a waitress up at some diner on Route One who had this malignancy on her liver. And again I just fell apart.”

“You’re being very confessional tonight.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, but again with a tone that, like so much to do with Dan right now, was so hard to read.

Dan is Dan Warren. My husband of twenty-three years. A man who has been out of work for the past nineteen very long months. And someone whose moods now swing wildly.

“Hey, even the best fighter pilots lose their nerve from time to time.”

“I’m hardly a fighter pilot.”

“But you’re the best RT on the staff. Everyone knows that.”

Except me. And certainly not now, positioning myself in front of the bank of computer screens, staring out at Jessica on the table, her eyes tightly shut, a discernible tremor on her lips, her face wet with tears. A big part of me wanted to run in and comfort her. But I also knew it would just prolong the agony, that it was best to get this behind her. So clicking on the microphone that is connected to a speaker in the scan room, I said:

“Jessica, I know this is all very spooky and strange. But I promise you that the rest of the procedure will be painless—and it will all be over in just a few minutes. Okay?”

She nodded, still crying.

“Now shut your eyes and think about Tuffy and . . .”

I hit the button that detonated the automatic injection system. As I did so a timer appeared on one of the screens—and I turned my vision immediately to Jessica, her cheeks suddenly very red as the iodine contrast hit her bloodstream and raised her body temperature by two degrees. The scan program now kicked in, and the bed was mechanically raised upward. Jessica shuddered at this first vertical movement. I grabbed the microphone:

“Nothing to worry about, Jessica. Just please keep very still.”

To my immense relief she did absolutely as instructed. The bed reached a level position with the circular hoop. Twenty-eight seconds had elapsed. The bed began to shift backward into the hoop. Thirty-six seconds when it halted, the hoop encircling her small head.

“Okay, Jessica, you’re doing great. Just don’t move.”

Forty-four seconds. Forty-six. My finger was on the scan button. I noticed it trembling. Forty-nine. And . . .

I depressed it. The scan had started. There was no accompanying noise. It was silent, imperceptible to the patient. Instinctually I shut my eyes, then opened them immediately as the first images appeared on the two screens in front of me, showing the left and right spheres of the brain. Again I snapped my eyes shut, unable to bear the shadow, the discoloration, the knotty tubercle that my far-too-trained eye would spot immediately and which would tear me apart.

But professionalism trumped fear. My eyes sprang open. And in front of me I saw . . .

Nothing.

Or, at least, that’s what my first agitated glance showed me. Nothing.

I now began to scrutinize the scan with care—my eye following every contour and hidden crevasse in both cerebral hemispheres, like a cop scouring all corners of a crime scene, looking for some hidden piece of evidence that might change the forensic picture entirely.

Nothing.

I went over the scan a third time, just to cover my tracks, make certain I hadn’t overlooked anything, while simultaneously ensuring that the contrast was the correct level and the imaging of the standard that Dr. Harrild required.

Nothing.

I exhaled loudly, burying my face in my hand, noticing for the first time just how rapidly my heart was pounding against my chest. The relief that Jessica’s brain showed no signs of anything sinister was enormous. But the very fact that my internal stress meter had shot into the deep red zone . . . this troubled me. Because it made me wonder: is this what happens when, over the years, you’ve force yourself to play a role that you privately know runs contrary to your true nature; when the mask you’ve worn for so long no longer fits and begins to hang lopsidedly, and you fear people are going to finally glimpse the scared part of you that you have so assiduously kept out of view?

Nothing.

I took another steadying breath, telling myself I had things to be getting on with. So I downloaded this first set of scans to Dr. Harrild, whose office was just a few steps away from the CT room. I also simultaneously dispatched them to PACS—that’s the Picture Archiving and Communication System, which is the central technological storage area in Portland for our region of the state (known by its code name: Maine 1). All scans and X-rays must, by law, be kept in a PACS for future reference and to ensure they are never mixed up, misplaced, assigned to the wrong patient. It also means that if a radiologist or oncologist needs to call up a specific set of patient scans, or compare them with others on file, they can be accessed with the double click of a mouse.

The images dispatched, I began running a second set of scans to have as backup, to compare contrast levels, and to double check that the imaging hadn’t missed anything. Usually, if the first set of scans are clear, I relax about the second go-around. But today I heard a little voice whispering at me: “Say you got it all wrong the first time . . . say you missed the tumor entirely.”

I grabbed the mike.

“Just a few more minutes, Jessica. And you have been just terrific. So keep lying still and . . .”

The second scan now filled the two screens. I stared ahead, fully expecting to see proof of my corroding professionalism in front of me as a concealed nodule now appeared in some ridge of her cerebellum. But again . . .

Nothing.

That’s the greatest irony of my work. Good news is all predicated on the discovery of nothing. It must be one of the few jobs in the world where “nothing” provides satisfaction, relief, the reassertion of the status quo.

A final scan of the scan.

Nothing.

I hit the send button. Off went this second set of scans to Dr. Harrild and the PACS Storage Center. I picked up the mike again and told Jessica we were done, but she would have to remain very still as the bed was brought back to ground level again.

Ten minutes later, dressed again and sucking on a lollipop, Jessica was reunited with her father. As I brought her into the waiting room, where he sat slumped, anxious, he was immediately on his feet, trying to read me the way a man on trial tries to read the faces of the jurors filing back into court with a verdict already cast in stone. Jessica ran over to him, throwing her arms around her father.

“Look, I got four lollipops,” she said, holding up the three untouched ones in her hand and pointing to the one in her mouth.

“You deserve them,” I said, “because you were such a brave, good patient. You would have been proud of her, sir.”

“I’m always proud of my daughter,” he said, picking her up and putting her on a bench, asking her to sit there for a moment “while this nice lady and I have a talk.”

Motioning for me to follow him outside into the brisk autumn morning, he asked me the question I always know is coming after a scan:

“Did you see anything?”

“I’m certain the diagnostic radiologist, Dr. Harrild, will be in contact with your primary-care physician this afternoon,” I said, cognizant of the fact that I also sounded like a scripted automaton.

“But you saw the scans, you know.”

“Sir, I am not a trained radiologist, so I cannot offer a professional opinion.”

“And I don’t design the ships I work on, but I can tell when some-thing’s wrong if I see it in front of me. Because I have years of on-the-job experience. Just like you. So you now know, before anyone, if there is a tumor in my daughter’s head.”

“Sir, you need to understand: I can neither legally nor ethically offer my opinion of the scans.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything. Please, ma’am. I’m begging you. I’ve got to know what you know.”

“Please understand, I am sympathetic—”

“I want an answer.”

“And I won’t give you one. Because if I tell you good news and it turns out not to be good news . . .”

That startled him.

“Are you telling me there’s good news?”

This is a strategy I frequently use when the scan shows nothing, but the diagnostic radiologist has yet to study them and give them the all-clear. I cannot say what I think because I don’t have the medical qualifications. Even though my knowledge of such things is quite extensive, those are the hierarchical rules and I accept them. But I can, in my own way, try to calm fears when, I sense, there is clinical evidence that they are ungrounded.

“I’m telling you that I cannot give you the all-clear. That is Dr. Harrld’s job.”

“But you think it’s ‘all clear.’ ”

I looked at him directly.

“I’m not a doctor. So if I did give you the all-clear I’d be breaking the rules. Do you understand, sir?”

He lowered his head, smiling, yet also fighting back tears.

“I get it . . . and thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I hope the news is good from Dr. Harrild.”

Five minutes later I was knocking on Dr. Harrild’s door.

“Come in,” he shouted.

Patrick Harrild is forty years old. He’s tall and lanky and has a fuzzy beard. He always dresses in a flannel shirt from L.L.Bean, chinos, and brown work boots. When he first arrived here three years ago, some unkind colleagues referred to him as “the geek” because he isn’t exactly the most imposing or outwardly confident of men. In fact, he veers toward a reserve that many people falsely read as timidity. Before Dr. Harrild, the resident diagnostic radiologist was an old-school guy named Peter Potholm. He always came across as God-the-Father, intimidated all underlings, and would happily become unpleasant if he felt his authority was being challenged. I was always ultra-polite and professional with him and simultaneously let him play the role of Absolute Monarch in our little world. I got along with Dr. Potholm, whereas three of the RTs actually left during his fourteen-year tenure (which ended when age finally forced him to retire). Dr. Harrild couldn’t have been more different from “Pope Potholm” (as the hospital staff used to refer to him). Not only is he unfailingly polite and diffident, he also asks for the opinions of others. He’s a very decent and reasonable man, Dr. Harrild, and an absolutely first-rate diagnostician. The slight social awkwardness masks reinforced steel.

“Hey, Laura,” Dr. Harrild said as I opened his office door. “Good news on the Jessica Ward front. It looks very all-clear to me.”

“That is good news.”

“Unless, of course, you spotted something I didn’t.”

Peter Potholm would have walked barefoot across hot coals rather than ask the medical opinion of a lowly RT. Whereas Dr. Harrild . . .

“I saw nothing worrisome,” I said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Would you mind talking to Jessica’s father now? The poor man . . .”

“Is he in the waiting area?”

I nodded.

“We have Ethel Smythe in next, don’t we?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“Judging by the shadow on her lung last week . . .”

He let the sentence hang there. He didn’t need to finish it—we had both looked at the X-ray I’d taken of Ethel Smythe’s lungs two days earlier. And we’d both seen the shadow that covered a significant corner of the upper left ventricle—a shadow that made Dr. Harrild pick up the phone to Ethel Smythe’s physician and tell him that a CT scan was urgently required.

“Anyway, I will go give Mr. Ward the good news about his daughter.”

Fifteen minutes later I was prepping Ethel Smythe. She was a woman about my age. Divorced. No children. A cafeteria lady in the local high school. Significantly overweight. And a significant smoker, as in twenty a day for the past twenty-three years (it was all there on her chart).

She was also relentlessly chatty, trying to mask her nervousness during the X-ray with an ongoing stream of talk, all of which was about the many details of her life. The house she had up in Waldeboro, which was in urgent need of a new roof but which she couldn’t afford. Her seventy-nine-year-old mother who never had a nice word for her. A sister in Michigan who was married to “the meanest man this side of the Mississippi.” The fact that her physician, Dr. Wesley, was “a dreamboat, always so kind and reassuring,” and how he told her he “just wanted to rule a few things out, and he said that to me in such a lovely, kind voice . . . well, there can’t be anything wrong with me, can there?”

The X-ray said otherwise—and here she was, now changed into the largest hospital gown we had, her eyes wild with fear, talking, talking, talking as she positioned herself on the table, wincing as I inserted the IV needle in her arm, telling me repeatedly:

“Surely it can’t be anything. Surely that shadow Dr. Wesley told me about was an error, wasn’t it?”

“As soon as our diagnostic radiologist has seen the scan we’ll be taking today . . .”

“But you saw the X-ray. And you don’t think it’s anything bad, do you?”

“I never said that, ma’am.”

“Please call me Ethel. But you would have told me if it had been bad.”

“That’s not my role in all this.”

“Why can’t you tell me everything is fine? Why?”

Her eyes were wet, her voice belligerent, angry. I put my hand on her shoulder.

“I know how frightening this is. I know how difficult it is not knowing what is going on—and how being called back for a scan like this . . .”

“How can you know? How?”

I squeezed her shoulder.

“Ethel, please, let’s just get this behind you and then—”

“They always told me it was a stupid habit. Marv—my ex-husband. Dr. Wesley. Jackie—that’s my sister. Always said I was dancing with death. And now . . .”

A huge sob rose in her throat.

“I want you to shut your eyes, Ethel, and concentrate on your breathing and . . .”

More sobs.

“I’m going to step away now and get all this under way,” I said. “Just keep breathing slowly. And the scan will be finished before you—”

“I don’t want to die.”

This last statement came out as a whisper. Though I’d heard, over the years, other patients utter this, the sight of this sad, frightened woman had me biting down on my lip and fighting tears, and yet again silently appalled at this newfound vulnerability. Fortunately Ethel had her eyes firmly shut, so she couldn’t see my distress. I hurried into the technical room. I reached for the microphone and asked Ethel to remain very still. I set the scan in motion. In the seconds before the first images appeared on the screen I snapped my eyes shut, opening them again to see . . .

Cancer. Spiculated in shape. And from what I could discern, already metastasized into the other lung and the lympathic system.

Half an hour later Dr. Harrild confirmed what I’d seen.

“Stage Four,” he said quietly. We both knew what that meant, especially with this sort of tumor in the lungs. Two to three months at best. As cancer deaths go, this one was never less than horrible.

“Where is she right now?” Dr. Harrild asked.

“She insisted on going back to work,” I said, remembering how she told me she had to hurry back after the scan because the school lunch she’d be serving started at midday, and “with all the cutbacks happening now I don’t want to give my boss an excuse to fire me.”

Recalling this I felt myself getting shaky again.

“You okay, Laura?” Dr. Harrild asked me, clearly studying me with care. Immediately I wiped my eyes and let the facade of steely detachment snap into place again.

“Fine,” I said, hearing the enforced crispness in my voice.

“Well,” he said, “at least the little girl’s news was good.”

“Yes, there’s that.”

“All in a day’s work, eh?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “All in a day’s work.”

DOUGLAS KENNEDY is an internationally renowned and bestselling author of ten novels have been translated in 22 countries. His most recent, The Moment, became a #1 bestseller in France, as did his earlier book, Leaving the World. His upcoming novel, Five Days, will be published by Atria Books in April 2013.

Kennedy was awarded the French decoration, The Chevalier de l‘Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2007. In November 2009, he received the first “Grand Prix du Figaro,” awarded by the newspaper Le Figaro.

Kennedy has two children, Max and Amelia, and divides his time between London, Paris, Berlin, Montreal, and Maine.

Atria Books/Simon & Schuster Author Page

http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Douglas-Kennedy/1292019

Author’s Website

Douglas Kennedynovelist.com

Facebook

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Also by Douglas Kennedy

FICTION

The Moment

Leaving the World

Temptation

The Woman in the Fifth

The Big Picture

The Dead Heart

The Job

The Pursuit of Happiness

State of the Union

A Special Relationship

NON-FICTION

Chasing Mammon

In God’s Country

Beyond the Pyramids

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