You recall how as a boy, Rollo Kidd was admired by his teachers. He was invariably a class officer—eighth grade vice president, ninth grade president. Rollo was your (friendly) rival in English, science, math; Rollo received higher grades in math and science, but you excelled (usually) in English.
“At least stroll with me, my dear. Ridgewood Park is just a block away. And from the edge of the park, another five minutes to my house. From the front walk, I swear you can see bookshelves through the windows—you will see the spines of your own books, waiting for you. At all the windows! As if peering out at you. Wait and see—I’ve arranged it very cleverly—it will be quite a sight . . .”
Gently you tug at your hand, to be freed of Rollo’s hand; but not assertively enough to induce Rollo to release it. And of course you would not jerk your hand away, that would be rude. You will walk with Rollo for a few minutes, into the park perhaps, but no farther; certainly not to Ridgemont Avenue. Your car is awaiting you at the curb in front of the library and you have every intention of returning to it.
“Only a little farther, my dear! You will not be disappointed, I promise.”
Just the two of you. Rollo Kidd in his wheelchair, propelling himself along. You, on foot. Your (cool, slender) hand in Rollo’s (hot, fleshy) hand.
It is a chill bright day. The sky overhead appears to be impacted with cloud, light comes from all sides, there are no shadows. In the distance, near-inaudible, a sound of thunder, or jet planes. Behind you and Rollo Kidd in his wheelchair, unobtrusively, out of the range of your vision the shiny black limousine follows slowly, keeping pace.
Acknowledgments
My enormous gratitude and thanks to the editors of the magazines in which the stories in this collection originally appeared, including the New Yorker (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” “Hospice/Honeymoon,” “Where Are You?”); Harper’s (“The Unexpected”); Salmagundi (“The Crack,”), Lincoln Center Review (“The (Other) You”); Ellery Queen (“The Women Friends”); Idaho Review (“The Bloody Head”); Boulevard (“Blue Guide”); Conjunctions (“Waiting for Kizer,” “Nightgrief”); Yale Review (“Subaqueous”); The Strand (“Final Interview”).
“Assassin” appeared in Cutting Edge: New Crime and Mystery Stories by Women, ed. Joyce Carol Oates (2019). “The Happy Place” appeared in the anthology Speaking of Work: A Story of Love, Suspense and Paperclips, ed. Bernard Schwartz (2017).
And deep gratitude as always to my editor and friend Daniel Halpern.
About the Author
JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
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Also by Joyce Carol Oates
By the North Gate (1963)
Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories (1966)
The Wheel of Love and Other Stories (1970)
Marriages and Infidelities (1972)
The Goddess and Other Women (1974)
The Hungry Ghosts: Seven Allusive Comedies (1974)
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?:
Stories of Young America (1974)
The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese (1975)
The Seduction and Other Stories (1975)
Crossing the Border (1976)
Night-Side (1977)
All the Good People I’ve Left Behind (1979)
A Sentimental Education (1980)
Last Days: Stories (1984)
Wild Saturday (1984)
Raven’s Wing (1986)
The Assignation (1988)
Oates in Exile (1990)
Heat & Other Stories (1991)
Where Is Here? (1992)
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?:
Selected Early Stories (1993)
Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (1994)
Demon and Other Tales (1996)
Will You Always Love Me? And Other Stories (1996)
The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque (1998)
Faithless: Tales of Transgression (2001)
I Am No One You Know: Stories (2004)
The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2006)
High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories, 1966–2006 (2006)
The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2007)
Wild Nights! (2008)
Dear Husband (2009)
Sourland: Stories (2010)
Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2011)
The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (2011)
Black Dahlia & White Rose (2012)
Evil Eye: Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong (2013)
High Crime Area: Tales of Darkness and Dread (2014)
Lovely, Dark, Deep (2014)
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror (2016)
Beautiful Days (2018)
Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense (2018)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE (OTHER) YOU. Copyright © 2021 by Ontario Review, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
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Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-303523-2
Version 12282020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-303520-1
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