There was only ever one Lisa, she’ll tell herself then. There was only ever one life. It was just larger and more peculiar than she expected.)
But for now Patricia’s fingernails are digging themselves into her flesh, and Elisa feels herself tugged forward, her elbows popping and cracking with the sudden strain, and out of Patricia’s mouth comes a stream of loud, incomprehensible speech. Elisa cries out, tries to pull away from the other woman’s grip, but it’s too powerful, and Elisa is too tired and sick. “That hurts,” she says between clenched teeth, but Patricia isn’t listening, she’s talking, it’s all gibberish and Elisa can feel spittle landing on her bare arms.
And then Patricia’s voice rises; she’s shouting now. Surely this is waking up the other guests? Surely one of them is calling the front desk? The woman’s hands are crushing Elisa’s, she seems to be trembling; Elisa can feel it through the floor and can make out a glint of light from the dangling eyeglasses, shuddering in the air. Why doesn’t she pull away? Why did she let the woman into her room in the first place? It doesn’t seem like something I would do. That just doesn’t seem like me. Here she is, though: Elisa has given up on escaping her, this woman called DippedInSunshine.
And now she tries to concentrate, she tries to listen. Because that was her problem, wasn’t it—she didn’t listen. The roaring in her head was always louder. So she concentrates on her fear and on the pain in her hands and on the torrent of sounds spewing from Patricia’s mouth: these twisted vocalizations, the vowels elongated and shrill, the consonants clacking and popping in her face. It’s language. It’s saying something, something just for her, something that will help. She’s so tired, but she digs in: she grips back, hard, and the two women sit there, trying to break each other’s hands, one trying to understand, the other trying to make herself understood. Elisa wants to stop, but she can’t, she knows that the second it ends will be the second right before it would have started making sense. And so she bears down, telling herself it will work, that in the end it’s actually possible to believe in your dream so completely that you can drag the rest of the world into it with you.
Acknowledgments
For various kinds of assistance with this novel, the author would like to thank Tom Bissell, Jennifer Brice, Rhian Ellis, Brian Hall, Kristine Heiney, Fiona McCrae, Ethan Nosowsky, Jim Rutman, Ed Skoog, and Steve Strogatz.
J. ROBERT LENNON is the author of seven novels, including Castle and Mailman, and a story collection, Pieces for the Left Hand. His fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Granta, Harper’s, Playboy, and the New Yorker. He lives in Ithaca, New York, where he teaches writing at Cornell University.
The text of Familiar is set in Adobe Garamond Pro, drawn by Robert Slimbach and based on type cut by Claude Garamond in the sixteenth century. This book was designed by Ann Sudmeier. Composition by BookMobile Design and Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
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