She opened the folder she had taken up with her to the table along with a bottle of water. Inside were the handwritten sheets of the Molly story, rescued from the trash can, the armless woman in the Catskills who, last time Deirdre had left her, had her lips wrapped around the flaccid member of a man who suffered a mortar attack in Baghdad and had had half his face blown off. It certainly wasn’t something she was going to scrap entirely. She hated just throwing away work because of a moment of worthlessness. She looked over at Raquel who’d just received a huge round of applause for her Cambodia piece. Deirdre had to admit it actually sounded quite intriguing and almost prematurely polished in a way she felt could not have been a first draft. That image she left the audience with of the young twelve-year-old girl helping other children in the orphanage even though she was missing an eye that her pimp had stabbed out when she cried as, day after day, men had stood in a line to rape her. What a global market to have cornered, this genre. Deirdre suddenly hated her for it.
She looked out into the audience at the eager looks on the student’s faces. Some of them hopeful and interested, looking up to her, not just at her. She recognized several students from her freshman creative writing workshop and was glad that they had come to hear her. Being the youngest professor there, she liked to think they viewed her almost like a friend, rather than a superior who could fail them. She felt that she had her finger on the pulse of what her generation was writing about. It was something they must’ve admired about her.
“The Last Living Mannequin” peeked out from under the pages of her other story. Even though it usually took her weeks to actually finish a story, she’d been able to write it in less than ten days and she thought it now needed only minimal editing. It was, in her mind, the best piece she had written in years. Maybe even since “My Sometimes Sister.” Undine might certainly be viewed as another one of her “mangled women.” But, for the first time, Deirdre had envisioned one of her characters as an actual real person, in the flesh. She had seen this woman in that Laundromat. She knew her entire backstory from just a single look. She thought about Undine constantly. That was why she had accelerated her writing of her story, because she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her in any precarious situation, dangling at the end of her rope in that small town and waiting for Deirdre to come rescue her. It was a feeling she’d never had before. Accountability to character. It was exhilarating.
So she began reading. It wasn’t just a reading; it was a dramatic interpretation. She looked around the room and people seemed transfixed by her. Her students were poised literally on the edges of their seats, watching her, hanging on every word. The Laundromat came alive right in front of her, it seemed. She could feel it again just from the words on the page. Could smell it even. And she could tell that they could see it, too. But there was a young woman who was not smiling, not perched on the edge of her seat. In fact, she was slunk back in her chair, scowling at Deirdre it looked like. Who was she? Deirdre kept reading, and then she realized who the girl was. She hadn’t seen her since the fall mixer and, for her blandness and unremarkability, had all but forgotten she existed. She was Ian’s plain girlfriend and she was making her way out of the room at a clip that was making the other students take notice, climbing over them the way she had to in order to get out of the corner of the row. Deirdre watched her make her way to the exit door and then heard the crash of it as it closed behind her. Raquel nodded at her animatedly as if to say, “Go on.”
IAN WAS WAITING outside her office when she arrived the following Monday morning. He had startled her when she’d reached the top of the stairs and had come closer towards her.
“I hope you don’t mind me being here, Deirdre,” he said to her in a tone that sounded normal, although she was unsure. Everything had taken on a possibility of malevolence. Even she herself was capable of horrible things, she thought.
“No, no, not at all. Please, come in.”
She hadn’t really expected to get away with it, but she wasn’t aware that he’d act so quickly and so, well, decisively given what his girlfriend must’ve shared with him. Again, though, what lines had she really crossed? There were a couple shared phrases between their two stories, but how else would you describe a bunch of dryers in a wall other than “a wall of windows like on a steamer ship”? It wasn’t completely impossible that the two of them might have arrived at a similar turn of phrase.
“So, what did you think of my story?” he asked.
“What?”
“My story, ‘Because We Care.’ I thought you could go over some of the critique you might’ve had on it.”
“I’ve made some notes, of course, on the copy you gave me.” She began searching through her knapsack
“Great, Deirdre. Hey, I was also wondering if you wouldn’t mind writing a recommendation for me. For graduate school. I’ve decided to pursue an MFA in creative writing. I’m sure a good word from a published writer would go a long way.” The tone of his voice. There was something about it that was different.
“Yes, Ian. Of course. I would love to. You’re incredibly talented.”
“You think so.” It wasn’t a question.
Later that afternoon, while picking up a sub at Noonie’s, the sandwich shop in the Marble Works, Deirdre spied Nan getting out of her car. Nan was wearing a wig she must’ve worn when she went out in public without a scarf. It was too curly and in a garish reddish color that didn’t match her skin tone. In fact, coupled with an ill-fitting navy blue overcoat, it made her look like she was disguised in order to rob a bank. Deirdre saw her tired eyes, the attempt at a quick dusting of blush over her sunken cheeks. Before she was able to duck away back into the sandwich shop, Nan spotted her and her mouth opened just a little bit, involuntarily perhaps, to say something to Deirdre. Instead of speaking though, her eyes narrowed and she dropped her purse to her side, her arms slapping against her thighs. “Well, what? What do you have to say for yourself?” her posture seemed to defiantly state.
So, Deirdre began to approach Nan’s car. Nan watched as Deirdre made her way closer. She readjusted her wig and patted down the wrinkles on the sides of her coat.
“I’m not sure that we’ve ever officially met. I saw you at the faculty party this past fall. I’m Deirdre Kirkendoll,” she said extending her hand.
“Yes, I know who you are. You’re the one my husband was so excited about. You wrote the story about the crippled girl.”
“Yes, that’s me.” Nan reached into her purse and fished out a tissue to dab at her eyes that had watered a bit.
“I was at your reading the other night. I always go to hear Jim read,” Nan said.
“Yes, I saw you,” Deirdre said.
“I’m just coming from Burlington and thought that I’d stop for a sandwich. I’m having a strange sort of reaction to some of the medication I’m on. Excuse me.” She briefly rubbed the palm of her right hand in a circular motion over chest and made like she was about to open the car door.
“What did you think? Of the reading?”
“It was fine,” she answered, curtly.
“Just fine?” Deirdre asked.
Nan paused, her hand on the door handle of the car. “There’ve been several young professors who’ve passed through this town. Some of them lasted and became older professors. Some even had modest successes with their novels. Jim has mentored several of them. And, yes, of course, small bits of the town or the college and the people at the college have appeared on the pages in some, usually hastily disguised, fashion.” She paused to look down, but then looked right at Deirdre in the eyes.
“There is life lived here. There was life lived here before you got here and there will be life lived here after you’ve gone. We are not ‘material’ for you,” Nan said.
“I don’t think I know what you’re talking about,” Deirdre said.
“My husband left one of your stories in his office at home and I read it. The woman with no arms? You writers—you’re all such vultures. My
husband especially. You know that Jim puts me in his novels. He didn’t even bother to really change my name. The character’s name is ‘Nancy.’ She’s the supposedly clueless wife who gets cheated on by her husband, Skipper, that everyone thinks is such a staple of contemporary fiction. The difference between you and my husband is that he’s used up and he knows it. You don’t. You think you’re writing something new? You’re not. You’ve got one story. You’re just writing it over and over and over again. You’re used up and you don’t even know it.”
“If this is because Jim and I—” Deirdre began.
“Just stop. Don’t even finish that sentence. There’s nothing I don’t know about, believe me. And I long ago stopped caring.” Deirdre snickered and Nan continued. “There was nothing authentic about the story you read the other day. Nothing. Honestly, it didn’t even seem like your story. It was cheap. It was impractical. And what’s worse, it was boring. You’ve committed the worst sin a writer can commit: you’ve bored your reader.”
“Who are you to judge me?” Deirdre yelled at her.
Nan opened the door and got inside her car. She started the car and rolled down the window. Then she looked at Deirdre and seemed to decide in that moment that Deirdre was not worth anything further. Deirdre watched as she backed out of the space and pulled out onto the road.
Caravan
THEY CLOSED DOWN the bars first. One by one. Captain Jack’s, Renegade, Follies, Masters of the Universe, Butterfield’s. Even Indigo. That was where we met, after all. On a Saturday night you could find every one of us there. In the beginning they said it was because of an expired liquor license or the violation of some heretofore-unknown noise ordinance or a zoning law or a safety code—reasons that could be explained and supported by law. No one paid any real attention to it. These things happen. If you live in a city, you have to get used to this kind of change, this kind of churn. If you don’t, you’re fooling yourself and probably should live in the suburbs. Neighborhoods erode overnight. Then new ones pop up in their place. What’s in is now out. And vice versa. It’s city living.
So we migrated to other bars, ones we might not have been to quite as often for one reason or another but ones where the liquor still flowed and those beautiful men danced with their apple-shaped butts, an electric current running through our veins, like vodka mixed with 5-Hour Energy spiked with adrenaline and a just-short-of-lethal dash of mercury. And it was fun trying out new places.
But soon thereafter, there were only three bars left in the entire city where we could go. Then two of the last three closed down—both wiped out in a single week, as if from a hurricane.
“It’s just temporary,” we heard at Barstool, the last bar, to which we had retreated.
“We’ll just move somewhere else. We always do,” another added.
“It’ll get better. Besides, I heard Butterfield’s is going to reopen at a new location soon. Lines out the door and around the block, just as it always was. Just you wait. Things’ll turn around.”
It was true. Things had turned around before. There was a time when we hadn’t all lived near one another or run our own shops or frequented our own bars. It was something of a luxury that we’d been able to operate in the space so freely at all. It always had gotten better.
So we gathered at Barstool, in droves most nights. We came early enough so we didn’t have to wait in line too long. The doormen—muscular guys wearing armbands around their mammoth biceps—clicked little silver instruments in their hands after we showed them our IDs. A woman affixed metal bracelets to our wrists. Huge crowds of men packed into the small, rather cubbyholed, labyrinthine space of an establishment few of us had visited in the past. (There was word, in fact, that it had only just been erected, almost overnight; none of us could corroborate this though, since we’d never been there before.) Its decrepit, tattered awning from its days as a discount furniture emporium crackled ominously on windy nights like whiplashes, dripping on us while we smoked when it rained. The shellac on the titular barstools, applied so hurriedly during their construction, had crystallized into small stalagmites that stuck us through our jeans as we sat on them. There were bartenders at Barstool we’d never seen before, extremely attractive ones, who, behind their capable pouring hands and accommodating eyes, seemed to be judging us. Counting us, one said he thought he might’ve seen one night.
Inside Barstool, the clash of different strata did make for the occasional scuffle—twinks getting knocked around by leather daddies, the druggies and the kinks sneering at the preps and jocks—but we were generally more amiable and tolerant toward one another than we might’ve been under different circumstances. After all, who else did we have but one another at a time like this?
“At a time like what?” one older man had said, a fossil from a different generation than ours, all yellowing white hair and a tucked-in flannel (in July, no less). “I’ve never known a time when we had more freedom and choice in life. You can get married now in this city if you want. How dare you be inconvenienced by the closing of a couple of overpriced, vapid watering holes.”
His venom took us aback, but we felt a twinge of sympathy for him. Poor thing had probably lost his lover decades ago and been drinking himself into numbness ever since. It was obvious from the wasting away of his cheeks; the hollow, haunted look in his eyes as they bored into us, through us even. It wasn’t our fault that we happened to have come of age at a time when guys were more careful about these things, not as risky.
“He’s just jealous,” we said to one another and ordered another round. “Cheers!”
At the end of that last night, Barstool emptied out into the street. We’d always joked about the way everyone lined themselves up for picking up that one last trick before heading home. Sidewalk Sale. Discounted, sloppy-ass. Everyone was pretty much wasted. The street was so quiet. A long line of yellow school buses was lined up outside the bar. Guys smoking cigarettes laughed at the absurdity of it.
“Are we going on a field trip?” one of them asked no one in particular—a man in a blue-and-gray striped sweater, flouncing from side to side as he tried to stand up straight.
“They’re drunk buses is what I heard. So that no one has to drive home drunk.”
“But I walked here,” someone said.
“Oh, c’mon. They’ll keep us safe from bashers.” Barstool was, after all, in a sketchy neighborhood. Men had been beaten in its vicinity recently. You could never be too careful.
So we boarded the buses one at a time. It was fun. We felt like we were reliving middle school but now on our own terms. We could sit in the back with the cool kids now. We were the cool kids now.
Once we were packed in, we heard the door close. It sounded different than we remembered from years ago, like a walk-in freezer door shutting, locked from the outside.
Still buzzed, we sang songs and traded gossip. Then one guy said, “Hey, you passed my stop.”
The bus driver looked just like the doormen at the bar, and he refused to acknowledge us in the rearview mirror. He kept driving. The air conditioning had been shut off (if it ever had been turned on in the first place, we couldn’t remember). The windows were the kind where you have to press down on plastic tabs on either side in order to pull down. But the tabs were broken off. We looked behind us and saw the grim, unchanging face of another bus driver and the buses behind that, and the ones behind that—a yellow caravan snaking its way through the quiet city where no one else was outside and no one was watching us. It was almost as if we’d never even been there at all.
So we settled back in our seats, suddenly rather silent and tired. It was like the quiet game we used to play in the car with our parents when we were children: the first one to make a sound loses.
Acknowledgments
This book has my name on the front cover, but so many others had their hands on it at some point along its journey to publication.
Thank you:
To the people who first supported several of these
stories at the following publications: Big Lucks, Collective Fallout, theNewerYork, Glitterwolf Magazine, Driftwood Press, Carbon Culture Review, Anak Sastra, and Lunch Review.
To Stephanie Grant, Richard McCann, Elise Levine, and Andrew Holleran—my graduate school mentors at American University. Their guidance during the most formative and important years of my writing career was so invaluable to me as a young writer. Stephanie and Elise, in particular, had a huge hand in this particular collection. I’d like to thank them for letting me take chances but also for reining me in.
To Brett Millier for her mentorship during my undergraduate years at Middlebury College and for her continued support.
To my unofficial cohort for their essential edits, suggestions, and plot-whispering: K Tyler Christenson, Diana Metzger, Diesel Robertson, Kathy Rawson, Jonathan Church, and Emily Voorhees.
To Stephen Zepecki, Patrick Cournoyer, and Charles Lea for their helpful edits.
To the members of the Sophistigay Book Club for reading this book and then discussing it while pretending I wasn’t in the room (at my request).
To Adina Silbert and Liz French for their love and support through the years.
To my loving parents, Grover and Maggi Walker, and my sister, Amanda Powell Walker, for their endless support and encouragement.
To Rick Moody and David Foster Wallace. Two of the stories in this collection borrow from the form and structure of two indelible pieces of fiction by these writers. “A Goddess Lying Breathless in Carnage” uses the repetitive form of the prologue of Rick Moody’s Purple America (1998). “Women of a Certain Age” employs a similar structure to the one David Foster Wallace used in his short story “Death Is Not the End” which is included in his collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2000).
To Alex Jeffers for his editing and to Steve Berman for his guiding hand as well as his patience and commitment to Read by Strangers.
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