Fortune's Rocks

by Anita Shreve

  The answer couldn’t matter, though Linda nodded yes. The idea of being carted out to dinner put her in mind of senior citizens, an image not dispelled in the next instant when she was informed that dinner would be early because of the various reading schedules.

  —And then each author will be taken to his or her event. There are four separate venues. A vinyl binder with colored tabs was consulted. — You are in Red Wing Hall. You’re reading at nine-thirty.

  Which would ensure a smallish crowd, Linda thought but didn’t say. Most people with tickets to a festival — authors included — would be ready to go home by 9:30.

  —Do you know Robert Seizek?

  The name was vaguely familiar, though Linda could not then have named a title or even a genre. She made a motion with her head that might be construed as a nod.

  —You and he will be sharing a stage.

  Linda heard the demotion implicit in the fraction, a sense of being only half an entertainment.

  —It was in the program. The woman seemed defensive, perhaps in response to a look of disappointment. — Didn’t you get your packet?

  Linda had, but could hardly admit that now, it being inescapably rude not to have glanced at it.

  —I’ll see you get one. The feral teeth were gone, the smile having faded. Linda would be but one of many wayward writers Susan Sefton was in charge of, most too disorganized or self-absorbed to do what was expected. She looked pointedly at Linda’s breast.

  —You have to wear a badge to all events. It’s in the packet. A rule against which writers surely would rebel, Linda thought, looking around at a room filled with white badges encased in plastic and pinned onto lapels and bodices. — Have you met Robert yet? Let me introduce you, Susan Sefton added, not waiting for an answer to her question.

  The woman in the iris-colored suit interrupted a conversation among three men, none of whom seemed to need or want interruption. The talk was of computers (Linda might have guessed this) and tech stocks one might have bought if only one had known. Seizek had a large head — leonine one would have to say — and an even larger body that spoke of appetites, one of which was much in evidence in his nearly lethal breath and in the way he swayed slightly, as if attached to a different gyroscope than the rest of them. Perhaps she would be solo on the stage after all. One of the two remaining authors had an Australian accent that was pleasant to listen to, and Linda deduced (as if tuning in to a radio broadcast that had already begun) that he was a novelist about whom it had been said just the Sunday previous in a prominent book review that his prose was “luminous and engaging,” his insights “brilliant and incisive.” (A novel about an Australian scientist? She tried to remember. No, an engineer.) And it was impossible, despite the overused and thus devalued words of praise, not to regard the man with more interest than she had just seconds earlier, a fact she despised about herself. One bowed to power conferred. And she saw, as she had not before, that the other two men were turned slightly in the direction of the newly annointed, as though their bodies had been drawn off course by a powerful magnet.

  —And you, Ms. Fallon, would you say that your understanding of love came more from love itself or from reading about love? Seizek spoke thickly, suggesting that she might at any minute be sprayed with sibilants.

  Another conversation she had only bits of. The third writer looked at her not at all, as if she were invisible. It would not be fair to say that he was gay. How odd, she thought, that men would talk of love, had been talking of love before she had even joined them, a topic it was supposed was of interest only to women.

  She answered without hesitation. — Experience. No one has ever accurately described a marriage.

  —A novel can’t, can it? This from the Australian, in broad antipodean accent. — A marriage doesn’t lend itself to art. Certainly not to satisfying structure or to dialogue worth reading.

  —You write of love, the man who could not be called gay said to Linda, rendering her suddenly visible; and she could not help but be pleased that someone knew her work.

  —I do, she said, not embarrassed to state her claim in this arena. — I believe it to be the central drama of our lives. Immediately, she qualified her bold pronouncement. — For most of us, that is.

  —Not death? asked Seizek, a drunk looking for debate.

  —I count it as part of the entire story. All love is doomed, seen in the light of death.

  —I take it you don’t believe that love survives the grave, the Australian offered.

  And she did not, though she had tried to. After Vincent.

  —Why central? asked the third man, who had a name after all: William Wingate.

  —It contains all theatrical possibilities. Passion, jealousy, betrayal, risk. And is nearly universal. It’s something extraordinary that happens to ordinary people.

  —Not fashionable to write about love, though, is it. This from Seizek, who spoke dismissively.

  —No. But in my experience, fashion doesn’t have a great deal to do with validity.

  —No, of course not, Seizek said quickly, not wanting to be thought invalid.

  Linda drifted to the edges of the talk, assaulted by a sudden hunger. She hadn’t had a proper meal (if one didn’t count the small, inedible trapezoid of nachos) since breakfast in her hotel room in a city seven hundred miles away. She asked the men if they wanted anything from the buffet table, she was just going to get a cracker, she was starved, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. No, no, the men did not want, but of course she must get herself. The salsa was decent, they said, and they wouldn’t be eating for another hour anyway. And, by the way, did anyone know the restaurant? And she reflected, as she turned away from them, that just a year ago, or maybe two, one of the men would have followed her to the buffet table, would have viewed the occasion as opportunity. Such were the ironies of age, she thought. When the attention had been ubiquitous, she had minded.

  Small colored bowls of food left the guest to guess at their identity: The green might be guacamole, the red was doubtless the decent salsa, and the pink possibly a shrimp or crab dip. But she was stumped as to the grayish-beige, not a good color for food under the best of circumstances. She reached for a small paper plate — the management had not provided for large appetites — and heard the hush before she understood it, a mild hush as if someone had lowered the volume a notch or two. From the corner, she heard a whispered name. It couldn’t be, she thought, even as she understood it could. She turned to see the cause of the reverential quiet.

  He stood in the doorway, as if momentarily blinded by the unfamiliar. As if having been injured, he was having to relearn certain obvious cues to reality: pods of men and women with drinks in hand, a room attempting to be something it was not, faces that might or might not be familiar. His hair was silver now, the shock of that, badly cut, atrociously cut really, too long at the sides and at the back. How he would be hating this, she thought, already taking his side. His face was ravaged in the folds, but you could not say he was unhandsome. The navy eyes were soft and blinking, as if he had come out of a darkened room. A scar, the old scar that seemed as much a part of him as his mouth, ran the length of his left cheek. He was greeted as a man might who had long been in a coma; as a king who had for years been in exile.

  She turned around, unwilling to be the first person he saw in the room.

  There were other greetings now, a balloon of quiet but intense attention. Could this be his first public appearance since the accident, since he had taken himself into seclusion, retired from the world? It could, it could. She stood immobile, plate in hand, breathing in a tight, controlled manner. She raised a hand slowly to her hair, tucked a stray strand behind her ear. She rubbed her temple softly with her finger. She picked up a cracker and tried to butter it with a crumbly cheese, but the cracker broke, disintegrating between her fingers. She examined a fruit bowl of strawberries and grapes, the latter having gone brown at the edges.

  Someone said, too unctuously, Let me get you
a drink. Another crowed, I am so pleased. Still others murmured: You cannot know, and I am such.

  It was nothing, she told herself as she reached for a glass of water. Years had passed, and all of life was different now.

  She could feel him moving toward her. How awful that after all this time, she and he would have to greet each other in front of strangers.

  He said her name, her very common name.

  —Hello, Thomas, she said, turning, his name as common as her own, but his having the weight of history.

  He had on an ivory shirt and a navy blazer, the cut long out of style. He had grown thicker through the middle, as might have been anticipated, but still, one thought, looking at him: a tall man, a lanky man. His hair fell forward onto his forehead, and he brushed it away in a gesture that swam up through the years.

  He moved across the space between them and kissed her face beside her mouth. Too late, she reached to touch his arm, but he had retreated, leaving her hand to dangle in the air.

  Age had diminished him. She watched him take her in, she who would be seen to have been diminished by age as well. Would he be thinking: Her hair gone dry, her face not old?

  —This is very strange, he said.

  —They are wondering about us already.

  —It’s comforting to think we might provide a story.

  His hands did not seem part of him; they were pale, soft writer’s hands, hints of ink forever in the creases of the middle finger of the right hand. — I’ve followed your career, he said.

  —What there’s been of it.

  —You’ve done well.

  —Only recently.

  The others moved way from them like boosters falling from a rocket. There was conferred status in his knowing her, not unlike the Australian writer with the good review. A drink appeared for Thomas, who took it and said thank you, disappointing the bearer, who hoped for conversation.

  —I haven’t done this sort of thing in years, he began and stopped.

  —When are you reading?

  —Tonight.

  —And me as well.

  —Are we in competition?

  —I certainly hope not.

  It was rumored that after many barren years, Thomas was writing again and that the work was extraordinarily good. He had in the past, inexplicably, been passed over for the prizes, though it was understood, by common agreement, that he was, at his best, the best of them.

  —You got here today? she asked.

  —Just.

  —You’ve come from . . . ?

  —Hull.

  She nodded.

  —And you? he asked.

  —I’m finishing a tour.

  He tilted his head and half-smiled, as if to say, Condolences.

  A man hovered near Thomas’s elbow, waiting for admission. — Tell me something, Thomas said, ignoring the man beside him and leaning forward so that only she could hear. — Did you become a poet because of me?

  She remembered that Thomas’s questions were often startling and insulting, though one forgave him always. — It’s how we met, she said, reminding him.

  He took a longish sip of his drink. — So it was.

  —It was out of character for me. That class.

  —In character, I think. The rest was fraud.

  —The rest?

  —The pretending to be fast.

  Fast. She hadn’t heard the word used that way in decades.

  —You’re more in character now, he said.

  —How could you possibly know? she asked, challenging him.

  He heard the bite in her voice. — Your body and your gestures give you the appearance of having grown into your character, what I perceive to be your character.

  —It’s only middle age, she said, at once devaluing both of them.

  —Lovely on you.

  She turned away from the compliment. The man beside Thomas would not go away. Behind him there were others who wanted introductions to the reclusive poet. She excused herself and moved through all the admirers and the sycophants, who were, of course, not interested in her. This was nothing, she told herself again as she reached the door. Years had passed, and all of life was different now.