by
Joy Williams
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Janice couldn’t imagine a child like ZoeBella thriving at school, but she squeezed the child’s sticky hand. The magician and the sheep had caused her to feel a little unwell and considerably undirected, though she now knew what she would do. She would take Rose and the children to their home. She was sure that the situation with Leo and the van had not improved and she was eager to finish what she had begun. Otherwise, how would she be able to think about it? She wouldn’t be able to think about it. They lived in a town that wasn’t exactly on the way to Santa Fe, but she could still make it to Santa Fe before dark if they left immediately. Richard had made reservations at a hotel there. There would possibly be a message waiting, or even Richard himself. If there wasn’t, if he wasn’t, then when she arrived she would be the message. One’s life after all is the message, isn’t it, the way one lives one’s life, the good one carries out?
“There’s a big river there, a big attraction, that runs right past all the shops and restaurants and that’s all lit up with fairy lights,” the Marksman said. “Tourists take cruises on it and stroll beside it. They promenade,” he said in a careful voice. “Once a year, they pump the whole thing out, the whole damn river, and clean it and then put the water back in again. They scrub the bottom like it was a bathtub and fill it up again. What do you think about that?”
My hands were damp. I was beginning to worry about this, but my mother always said there was nothing more useless than dreading something you weren’t understanding.
“People have lost their interest in reality,” the Marksman said.
lol
My wife smiled and shook her head. If she had resolved to become relaxed in that moment it would be a great relief, for Bruce had been kind to me and there was no need for tension between them. Pauline prefers to be in control of our life and our friendships. She’s a handsome woman, canny and direct, never unreasonable. I suppose some might find her cold but I am in thrall to her because I had almost been crushed by life. I had some rough years before Pauline, years I only just managed to live through. I might as well have been stumbling around in one of those great whiteouts that occur in the far north where it is impossible to distinguish between a small object nearby and a large object a long way off. In whiteouts there is no certainty and every instinct is betrayed—even the birds fly into the ground, believing it to be air, and perish. I strained to see and could not, and torn by strange sorrows and shames I twice attempted suicide. But then a calm overtook me, as though my mind had taken pity on me and called off the hopeless search I had undertaken. I was thirty-two then. I met Pauline the following year and she accepted me, broken and wearied as I was, with an assurance that further strengthened me. We have a lovely home outside Washington. She wants a child, which I am resisting.
oh boy
“I think it’s a little late for us to be discussing Kant with such earnestness,” Freddie said.
“You mean a little late at night or a little late in life?”
He nodded, meaning both.
“They’ve completed the new library, and we’re allowed two days off from classes to move the books from the old institution down the hill to the new institution. We are to be utilized as a merry and willing human chain. I resist being so utilized. I’m here to learn.”
“So you’re coming here instead,” Angela said.
There was silence.
“Which is wonderful,” Angela said. “Really wonderful.”
“I’m hanging up, Mummy. You can continue with your inanities if you wish.”
christ lol
“This ain’t much of an establishment if you pardon my saying so,” he said to Angela. “No steaks in the freezer, no ice cream, sound system inadequate, music fit only to disinform the listener, no point in hearing it twice, towels thin, washcloths worn and most suspect, bed lumpy, poor recycling practices, few spare lightbulbs on hand, fire extinguishers out of date, no playing cards, clocks not set properly—”
“I like them a little fast,” Angela conceded. It was all true. He was in no way exaggerating.
“Potted violets on windowsill in very poor condition, worst case of powdery mildew I ever saw. I could go on.”
lmao
“Deke used to be an art critic,” Darleen said.
He waved one hand dismissively. “Just for the prison newsletter.”
“Yeah, Deke attended prison for two years,” Darleen said.
“I began my thesis there,” Deke said. “ ‘Others: Do They Exist?’ But I never completed it. I was a couple of hundred pages into it when I had to admit to myself that it wasn’t genuine breakthrough thinking.”
lol
And the boy said, talking with his mouth full like he always does, “That’s why you’re not supposed to have a crucifix in the bedroom. Is a cross the same as a crucifix?” he says.
I could see the meat with the ketchup on it in his mouth. “No,” I said. “A crucifix is a cross with the body on it.”
“A cross is OK, then,” he said. “And a crucifix is OK as long as the eyes aren’t open. You don’t want that in the bedroom.”
One of the senior editors seemed interested in his progress, a man named Franklin Woolf, but everyone called him Loup. He was erudite and viciously funny. You want to be the last to leave the room when he’s in it, one of the other junior editors warned Cliff, though he was eager to learn and knew he could learn a lot from him. Loup arranged to have him move into the midtown writing studio of one of the house’s venerable authors, who had relocated temporarily to Mexico. It was full of books and had good light and a kitchen, and the bathroom was his alone. It was a far better arrangement than the brownstone. The author was working on a “volcano” of a book but everyone knew he had stopped writing, that he’d lost his nerve. Nobody went to Mexico anymore to write books. The man was finished.
sweet housing situation if you can get it
Loup was going through boxes of manuscripts, a dozen of them that had been on his desk for a month. He was now disposing of them rapidly. He would pick an even-numbered page and give it his full attention. One page could tell him everything. Sometimes the decision was made on a single line. It was all true, what writers suspected.
He called Cliff into his office and read aloud, “I looked out the window. I could not tell which were the thoughts and which were the trees.” He said to Cliff, “What the hell does that mean?”
“I like it,” Cliff ventured. “It’s not bad.”
“So give her a chance. If we don’t change her life, somebody else will.”