American Innovations: Stories
Page 15
“Can we focus, ma’am? Your address.” I didn’t say anything. “Unfortunately, we’ve got loads to do here, and weekends are understaffed, so if we could get these basics filled out as quickly as—”
But when love is real, there’s no such thing as Time. I wasn’t the criminal, was I? I wasn’t Wanted. Mistakes could be made, though. Misidentifications. But one must be treated with respect regardless. I’ve had so many bad ideas in my life. I needed to be a new woman.
I knew I couldn’t give him my address. Not my former address, and certainly not my current one. It would just make it that much easier to find me. Even if this guy in particular was absolutely trustworthy, an angel. Still, things could get … out of his hands. I had just begun to reclaim my life. I held my fork and quilt closer. I would never give my address out again. At no time and at no temperature. And if they somehow got my new address anyhow, I would keep on moving.
“I’m sorry to have taken your time,” I said to that man, with longing, and anger, and regret, and resolve. “I really am so sorry.”
I stepped back out into the salubrious cold. My mom. I knew where she lived. Or used to live. When had we last spoken? Had we argued? She had never even seen that studio where I had lived so happily for a long time. There were so many things that we had in common. Even owned in common, kind of. She might have advice for me. I wouldn’t necessarily have to take it. I could put my hair in braids. I could stay with her awhile.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Willing Davidson provided essential editorial advice for almost all of these stories; I am likewise indebted to Eric Chinski, Carin Besser, Deborah Treisman, Claire Gutierrez, Ben Metcalf, Joanna Yas, and Jared Bland. The literary agent Bill Clegg has also been a wonder. I am furthermore grateful for the support of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fiction Fellowship of the American Academy in Berlin, and the Hald Hovedgaard Danish-American Writers’ Retreat.
ALSO BY RIVKA GALCHEN
Atmospheric Disturbances
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rivka Galchen is the recipient of a William Saroyan International Prize for Fiction Writing and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, among other distinctions. She writes regularly for The New Yorker, whose editors selected her for their list of “20 Under 40” American fiction writers in 2010. Her debut novel, the critically acclaimed Atmospheric Disturbances, was published by FSG in 2008.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2014 by Rivka Galchen
All rights reserved
First edition, 2014
These stories previously appeared, in slightly different form, in the following publications: Harper’s Magazine (“Once an Empire”), The New Yorker (“The Lost Order,” “The Region of Unlikeness,” “Sticker Shock” as “Appreciation,” “The Entire Northern Side Was Covered with Fire,” and “The Late Novels of Gene Hackman”), Open City (“Wild Berry Blue”), and The Walrus (“Real Estate”).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Galchen, Rivka.
[Short stories. Selections]
American innovations / Rivka Galchen. — First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-28047-5 (Hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-374-71170-2 (Ebook)
I. Title.
PS3607.A4116 A6 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013039912
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