vehemently and with such a rush of colour to her face that I almost surrendered before her desire for experience, for life. But I succeeded in steadying myself. I was not going to risk everything. I had no intention of jeopardizing what I had: Victoria, the trees lining the street, the elegant old houses that wrenched my heart. In the end I wore her down. We would work another year; the extra money would allow us to live like kings in Greece. I think she believed we were still going even three years later. It was only when she suggested we have a baby that I knew she had given up on the idea of Greece.
It is a different street now. The condos which supplanted the trees and houses come in two styles. They are what I like to call Babylonian ziggurat, an industrial hymn to concrete, and the more homely Zuni-pueblo preferred by the under-forties. The pueblo is, of course, where Marsha is to be found. Sitting in my car looking at those huge, jumbled cubes and their glowing windows I feel more keenly the cold and my exhaustion. The Encounter went badly tonight. Or to put it another way, it went so splendidly that I am wrung by remorse.
At six o’clock tonight, an hour before the curtain went up on COCWE , I suddenly recalled with panic that two weeks ago I had promised the class, at their insistence, to read to them this Tuesday from my work in progress. Since no such work exists, this was a foolish promise. Earlier I had got around their questions as towhy they couldn’t find my first novel in libraries or bookstores by bemoaning my publisher’s small press run and explaining that the company had quickly let the book lapse out of print. But I had also spoken casually about a work in progress. This was my undoing. As the weeks passed, the class importuned me to treat them to a selection. Of course, I could have dodged the issue somehow. Upon reflecting, however, I have surmised I may have unconsciously made that promise to entrap myself, to furnish myself with the opportunity for an oblique confession. My commitment to read would force me to write something, and reading what I wrote would reveal me for the fraud I am. I would be eased.
That was only the first step. The second followed inevitably from my nature. I forced this onrushing unpleasantness out of my mind, delayed, dawdled, forgot. So tonight I had nothing to read, nothing except
Cool, Clear Waters
. But when the crisis was upon me I knew I couldn’t read that. Sam Waters was too private, too cherished, a figure to run the risk of having him exposed to sniggers.
There was nothing else to do but cheat. I hammered out at my typewriter a passage from a book I thought it unlikely anyone in the class had read, an historical novel by Alfred Duggan. Tonight, when I was done reading and I glanced up at those exalted faces, I knew, with a rending sensation, that they had loved it. All but Stanley, that is. The fat ladies expressed awe at my erudition (destrier, hauberk, etc.), while Dr. Vlady judged my battle scene surpassed only by Stendhal’s account of Waterloo in
The Charterhouse of Parma
. I was a hit with nary a tip of the old topper to Mr. Duggan.
So here I am, out of the frying pan and into the freezer. Cold and difficulties. The story of my winter. Racing and roaring the engine, I can raise no more than a ghostly, tepid breath from the heater. The side window is slowly frosting over; white fog creeps inward from the perimeter of the glass, congealing in a scum of ice. I fear that if I don’t move soon I’ll be frozen in place like a ship stalled in arcticseas. There is no sense in putting it off any longer. Up there where the windows burn, the Witch of Endor waits.
Marsha swings her door open to me, smiles. “Hello, Ed,” she says, popping up on tiptoe to swipe a welcoming kiss on the corner of my mouth. This kiss of peace exchanged and no mention made of last evening’s contretemps, Marsha offers to take my coat. While she stows it in a closet I saunter
It is a different street now. The condos which supplanted the trees and houses come in two styles. They are what I like to call Babylonian ziggurat, an industrial hymn to concrete, and the more homely Zuni-pueblo preferred by the under-forties. The pueblo is, of course, where Marsha is to be found. Sitting in my car looking at those huge, jumbled cubes and their glowing windows I feel more keenly the cold and my exhaustion. The Encounter went badly tonight. Or to put it another way, it went so splendidly that I am wrung by remorse.
At six o’clock tonight, an hour before the curtain went up on COCWE , I suddenly recalled with panic that two weeks ago I had promised the class, at their insistence, to read to them this Tuesday from my work in progress. Since no such work exists, this was a foolish promise. Earlier I had got around their questions as towhy they couldn’t find my first novel in libraries or bookstores by bemoaning my publisher’s small press run and explaining that the company had quickly let the book lapse out of print. But I had also spoken casually about a work in progress. This was my undoing. As the weeks passed, the class importuned me to treat them to a selection. Of course, I could have dodged the issue somehow. Upon reflecting, however, I have surmised I may have unconsciously made that promise to entrap myself, to furnish myself with the opportunity for an oblique confession. My commitment to read would force me to write something, and reading what I wrote would reveal me for the fraud I am. I would be eased.
That was only the first step. The second followed inevitably from my nature. I forced this onrushing unpleasantness out of my mind, delayed, dawdled, forgot. So tonight I had nothing to read, nothing except
Cool, Clear Waters
. But when the crisis was upon me I knew I couldn’t read that. Sam Waters was too private, too cherished, a figure to run the risk of having him exposed to sniggers.
There was nothing else to do but cheat. I hammered out at my typewriter a passage from a book I thought it unlikely anyone in the class had read, an historical novel by Alfred Duggan. Tonight, when I was done reading and I glanced up at those exalted faces, I knew, with a rending sensation, that they had loved it. All but Stanley, that is. The fat ladies expressed awe at my erudition (destrier, hauberk, etc.), while Dr. Vlady judged my battle scene surpassed only by Stendhal’s account of Waterloo in
The Charterhouse of Parma
. I was a hit with nary a tip of the old topper to Mr. Duggan.
So here I am, out of the frying pan and into the freezer. Cold and difficulties. The story of my winter. Racing and roaring the engine, I can raise no more than a ghostly, tepid breath from the heater. The side window is slowly frosting over; white fog creeps inward from the perimeter of the glass, congealing in a scum of ice. I fear that if I don’t move soon I’ll be frozen in place like a ship stalled in arcticseas. There is no sense in putting it off any longer. Up there where the windows burn, the Witch of Endor waits.
Marsha swings her door open to me, smiles. “Hello, Ed,” she says, popping up on tiptoe to swipe a welcoming kiss on the corner of my mouth. This kiss of peace exchanged and no mention made of last evening’s contretemps, Marsha offers to take my coat. While she stows it in a closet I saunter
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