itself, first retracting her arms into her sleeves, then pulling the hem of the sweater down over her hugged knees. Another day, Pfefferkorn might have come to her defense, but presently he was absorbed in worry. He had put his conversation with Carlotta on a permanent loop in his brain and was analyzing it for some hint that she knew what he had done. He couldn’t find any, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gone into the office in the last week. She hadn’t called. Was her silence furious? Ambivalent? Embarrassed? He didn’t know, and he worried. He worried further that he had been too quick to take offense at her offer of a plane ticket. He did miss her. On the other hand, if he was too old to get hung up, he was also too old to become a kept man. That he should have to negotiate with himself for these tattered scraps of dignity was itself humiliating.
He let a week pass. The phone didn’t ring. He went to class. He came home. He listened to his daughter talk about her ongoing quest for a wedding venue. Another week went by. He avoided looking at the coat closet. He read the paper. William de Vallée had ceased to be newsworthy. The economy was down. Fuel prices were up. Tempers in the Zlabian valley continued to flare, with shots being fired across the border. Pfefferkorn didn’t pay attention to any of it. He had more important things on his mind than the squabbles of people in faraway places. He reread the file where he kept his ideas for future novels. Every single one stank. It had been a full month and Carlotta still had not called. Maybe she had burned the pile of paper on the desk without looking at it. Maybe she’d forgotten about it. Maybe she had left it out for him on purpose. Maybe it had been a test and he had failed. Or maybe she meant it as a gift and his fear was baseless. He took the carry-on out of the coat closet and piled the manuscript neatly on his desk. He stared at the thick block of paper for hours on end. He had known what he intended to do all along, hadn’t he? He still felt conflicted, of course. He had to work on himself, argue with himself, convince himself. He sat on the edge of his bed, unfolding and examining Carlotta’s words—
be happy now—
taking them first as a pardon, then as permission, and finally as a command. The time for excuses had ended. The time had come to act.
23.
One of Pfefferkorn’s more shameful secrets was that he had once tried to write a popular novel of his own. Fed up with being perpetually broke, he took a few days to sketch the plot—it was a murder mystery set at a small college on the Eastern Seaboard—before sitting down to bang out a quick and dirty ten chapters. His daughter, then thirteen, noticed the pile growing on his desk and beamed with pride. Indeed, it was the only time since publishing his novel that he had gotten any further than the first five pages, and while he detested every word he’d written, he had to admit feeling some satisfaction in seeing any book of his achieve a third dimension.
The problem was the ending. In his zeal to entertain he constructed six distinct, wildly complicated plotlines, giving but the slightest consideration to how they might ultimately intertwine. He soon found himself stymied, spinning in place like a man whose six dogs have all run off in different directions. Frustrated, he reversed tack, stripping away all but one of the plotlines, leaving him with a mere forty pages. Attempts to expand these pages proved ham-fisted and futile. He tried introducing a romantic interest, only to discover, to his dismay, and over his loud mental protests, that his protagonist was a latent homosexual. To increase the suspense he murdered another administrator. He murdered a student. He murdered a hapless janitor. Bodies kept piling up and still he had fewer than twenty-five thousand words. It didn’t take much, he discovered, to kill someone in print, and there was only so much page space one could reasonably
He let a week pass. The phone didn’t ring. He went to class. He came home. He listened to his daughter talk about her ongoing quest for a wedding venue. Another week went by. He avoided looking at the coat closet. He read the paper. William de Vallée had ceased to be newsworthy. The economy was down. Fuel prices were up. Tempers in the Zlabian valley continued to flare, with shots being fired across the border. Pfefferkorn didn’t pay attention to any of it. He had more important things on his mind than the squabbles of people in faraway places. He reread the file where he kept his ideas for future novels. Every single one stank. It had been a full month and Carlotta still had not called. Maybe she had burned the pile of paper on the desk without looking at it. Maybe she’d forgotten about it. Maybe she had left it out for him on purpose. Maybe it had been a test and he had failed. Or maybe she meant it as a gift and his fear was baseless. He took the carry-on out of the coat closet and piled the manuscript neatly on his desk. He stared at the thick block of paper for hours on end. He had known what he intended to do all along, hadn’t he? He still felt conflicted, of course. He had to work on himself, argue with himself, convince himself. He sat on the edge of his bed, unfolding and examining Carlotta’s words—
be happy now—
taking them first as a pardon, then as permission, and finally as a command. The time for excuses had ended. The time had come to act.
23.
One of Pfefferkorn’s more shameful secrets was that he had once tried to write a popular novel of his own. Fed up with being perpetually broke, he took a few days to sketch the plot—it was a murder mystery set at a small college on the Eastern Seaboard—before sitting down to bang out a quick and dirty ten chapters. His daughter, then thirteen, noticed the pile growing on his desk and beamed with pride. Indeed, it was the only time since publishing his novel that he had gotten any further than the first five pages, and while he detested every word he’d written, he had to admit feeling some satisfaction in seeing any book of his achieve a third dimension.
The problem was the ending. In his zeal to entertain he constructed six distinct, wildly complicated plotlines, giving but the slightest consideration to how they might ultimately intertwine. He soon found himself stymied, spinning in place like a man whose six dogs have all run off in different directions. Frustrated, he reversed tack, stripping away all but one of the plotlines, leaving him with a mere forty pages. Attempts to expand these pages proved ham-fisted and futile. He tried introducing a romantic interest, only to discover, to his dismay, and over his loud mental protests, that his protagonist was a latent homosexual. To increase the suspense he murdered another administrator. He murdered a student. He murdered a hapless janitor. Bodies kept piling up and still he had fewer than twenty-five thousand words. It didn’t take much, he discovered, to kill someone in print, and there was only so much page space one could reasonably
Similar Books
