was a saint!
Then Paul found himself idling at the light where he had used to turn off into the leafy neighborhood where he’d lived with Kymberly, and the memory of his fall from grace gathered gloomily on the horizon of his good spirits like a massive Texas thunderstorm. Once upon a time, Paul had been a very promising literary theorist with a very impressive Ph.D. from a very prestigious school, the University of the Midwest in Hamilton Groves, Minnesota. But within a few years of matriculating, he had found himself stuck in the last year of a nonrenewable postdoc at an undistinguished state school in Iowa, cruelly writer’s blocked, and up to his neck in a pointless affair with a sleek graduate student in communications, a kinetic California girl named Kymberly. His only hope of professional salvation had been to ride the coattails of his wife, Elizabeth, as she negotiated a tenured position for herself at Chicago University. But riding Elizabeth’s coattails depended on Elizabeth not finding out about Kymberly, and that in turn depended on placating Elizabeth’s sinister cat, Charlotte, who lived with Paul in Iowa while Elizabeth commuted back and forth to Chicago. What happened next was sort of willfully blurry in Paul’s memory, but there had been a titanic battle of wills between Paul and the goddamn cat. Charlotte had hoarded evidence of Paul’s infidelity—panties, an earring, wine cooler bottle caps—while Paul had alternated between trying to buy her affection with catnip mousies and fish snacks, and terrorizing her. The battle ended badly for both of them. Call it a draw: Elizabeth found out about Kymberly and cast off Paul like a sack of old clothes, effectively ending his academic career, and Charlotte ended up drowned in Paul’s bathtub. Somehow.
An angry honk from the pickup behind him startled Paul; the light had gone green without his noticing. He jerked his foot off the brake and accelerated grumpily through the intersection. Now he had to let the little mental thunderstorm blow itself out. After Iowa, Paul had followed Kymberly to Texas,where she had gotten a job as a junior reporter at a struggling network affiliate in Lamar, KNOW, channel 48, “You’re in know
now
with K-Now 48,” intoned the announcer, “your home for news and entertainment in central Texas!” while a giant K meant to appear carved out of limestone rotated in a depthless TV null space. But KNOW was fighting for its life in a tough market, and everything was done on the cheap, and Paul came to refer to the station as Know Nothing 48, Home of the Giant Rotating Styrofoam K. The station’s threadbare budget worked both to Kym’s advantage, allowing a rookie a great deal of airtime on big stories, and against her, allowing her to make all her mistakes live, as she mispronounced names, lost her place in her notes, and asked wildly inappropriate questions of the grieving families of murder victims and death-row inmates.
But then Kymberly toughened up and buckled down. She took a stenography course; she cut her hair into a stylish and professional bob; she bought herself a word-a-day calendar and practiced her pronunciation every morning with steely determination, baring her teeth at herself in the bathroom mirror and carefully working her lips around “eleemosynary” or “prestidigitation.” Her performance improved so much that Paul was surprised one evening to realize that the brisk young woman in the trim, lemon yellow suit he was admiring on TV was actually the woman he was living with. This revelation allowed Paul to tap into previously unknown reserves of lust (his desire for her had begun to wane, for all sorts of reasons), and that evening when she came home, he begged her to keep her suit and makeup on, murmuring in her ear, “I’ve never fucked an anchorwoman before.” And Kymberly, even though she was bone tired, allowed him to do it, asking him breathlessly at a crucial moment, “Do you really think
Then Paul found himself idling at the light where he had used to turn off into the leafy neighborhood where he’d lived with Kymberly, and the memory of his fall from grace gathered gloomily on the horizon of his good spirits like a massive Texas thunderstorm. Once upon a time, Paul had been a very promising literary theorist with a very impressive Ph.D. from a very prestigious school, the University of the Midwest in Hamilton Groves, Minnesota. But within a few years of matriculating, he had found himself stuck in the last year of a nonrenewable postdoc at an undistinguished state school in Iowa, cruelly writer’s blocked, and up to his neck in a pointless affair with a sleek graduate student in communications, a kinetic California girl named Kymberly. His only hope of professional salvation had been to ride the coattails of his wife, Elizabeth, as she negotiated a tenured position for herself at Chicago University. But riding Elizabeth’s coattails depended on Elizabeth not finding out about Kymberly, and that in turn depended on placating Elizabeth’s sinister cat, Charlotte, who lived with Paul in Iowa while Elizabeth commuted back and forth to Chicago. What happened next was sort of willfully blurry in Paul’s memory, but there had been a titanic battle of wills between Paul and the goddamn cat. Charlotte had hoarded evidence of Paul’s infidelity—panties, an earring, wine cooler bottle caps—while Paul had alternated between trying to buy her affection with catnip mousies and fish snacks, and terrorizing her. The battle ended badly for both of them. Call it a draw: Elizabeth found out about Kymberly and cast off Paul like a sack of old clothes, effectively ending his academic career, and Charlotte ended up drowned in Paul’s bathtub. Somehow.
An angry honk from the pickup behind him startled Paul; the light had gone green without his noticing. He jerked his foot off the brake and accelerated grumpily through the intersection. Now he had to let the little mental thunderstorm blow itself out. After Iowa, Paul had followed Kymberly to Texas,where she had gotten a job as a junior reporter at a struggling network affiliate in Lamar, KNOW, channel 48, “You’re in know
now
with K-Now 48,” intoned the announcer, “your home for news and entertainment in central Texas!” while a giant K meant to appear carved out of limestone rotated in a depthless TV null space. But KNOW was fighting for its life in a tough market, and everything was done on the cheap, and Paul came to refer to the station as Know Nothing 48, Home of the Giant Rotating Styrofoam K. The station’s threadbare budget worked both to Kym’s advantage, allowing a rookie a great deal of airtime on big stories, and against her, allowing her to make all her mistakes live, as she mispronounced names, lost her place in her notes, and asked wildly inappropriate questions of the grieving families of murder victims and death-row inmates.
But then Kymberly toughened up and buckled down. She took a stenography course; she cut her hair into a stylish and professional bob; she bought herself a word-a-day calendar and practiced her pronunciation every morning with steely determination, baring her teeth at herself in the bathroom mirror and carefully working her lips around “eleemosynary” or “prestidigitation.” Her performance improved so much that Paul was surprised one evening to realize that the brisk young woman in the trim, lemon yellow suit he was admiring on TV was actually the woman he was living with. This revelation allowed Paul to tap into previously unknown reserves of lust (his desire for her had begun to wane, for all sorts of reasons), and that evening when she came home, he begged her to keep her suit and makeup on, murmuring in her ear, “I’ve never fucked an anchorwoman before.” And Kymberly, even though she was bone tired, allowed him to do it, asking him breathlessly at a crucial moment, “Do you really think
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