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.

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.”

“They told me I was washing the diapers with too much bleach and that’s why the baby’s been cranky,” Ricky said. “Do you think that could be true?”

He had so wearied of her it was like an ache in his bones.

“I’ve found a good sitter,” she said. “It took me forever to find a really responsible one. Why don’t I come along to the service for your father?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“We never do anything important together. I hardly ever see you. Afterwards we could go out, couldn’t we?”

“We’ll have another drink and go out tonight. We’ll go to that seafood place.”

It was late afternoon and the sun was falling with haste toward the earth.

“Gramma said that when dusk falls it reminds God of the hearts of men. That’s the only time he thinks of us, at dusk.”

“Your grandmother was an amazing woman,” Cliff said.

She looked at him uncertainly.

They would quarrel later. He was relieved it was finally over.