Lauren Groff - Fates and Furies

How would he live without her? He had cooked but had never scrubbed a toilet; he had never paid a bill. How would he write without her? [The buried awareness of how completely her hands reached into his work; don’t look, Lotto. It’d be like looking at the sun.]

The sweat had dried on his shirt. He had to do something ; he had to expend his energy somehow. It couldn’t be more than thirty miles to the city. There was only one way there, straight north. It was a beautiful day. He had long legs and great endurance: he could walk fast, five miles an hour. He’d get to the hotel at about midnight. Perhaps she wouldn’t have left yet. Maybe she wasn’t so angry anymore; maybe she had just gone to the spa for a massage and facial and would order room service and watch a naughty movie and take her vengeance this way. Passive-aggressively. Her style.

He set off, keeping the sun at his left, and drank water at a succession of dog parks. Not enough. He was thirsty. In the twilight, he passed the airport and smelled the salt marsh on the wind. The traffic was terrible and he was nearly hit by a peloton of cyclists, three semitrailers, and a man driving a Segway in the dark.

As he walked, he chewed over what had happened at the panel. He saw it over and over and over again. After a few hours, it became a story, as if he were telling it at a bar to a band of friends. A few times through, and the imaginary friends at the bar had become tipsy and laughed at the story. With repetition, what had happened lost its power to wound him. It had become comical, no longer shameful. He was no misogynist. He could summon hundreds of women from the time before Mathilde to attest to his lack of misogyny. He was simply misunderstood! His fears of Mathilde’s leaving him dulled under the friction of the story. An overreaction, and she would be ashamed of herself. She would be the one to apologize to him. She had proved her point; he’d give that to her. He didn’t blame her. She loved him. He was an optimist at heart. All would be well.

He came into the city and nearly wept with gratitude for the tighter blocks, for the sidewalks, for the streetlights gently leading him one to the next.

His feet were bleeding, he could feel it. He was sunburnt, mouth dry, stomach knotted with hunger. He stank as if he’d taken a dip in a pond of sweat. He made a very halting way up the hill to the hotel and went in, and the desk clerk, who’d blessedly checked them in the day before, went, “Oop! Mr. Satterwhite, what happened?” And Lotto rasped, “I was mugged,” because in a way he was, the audience robbing him of his dignity; and the man summoned the bellhop who brought the hotel’s wheelchair and Lotto was escorted up to his room in the elevator, and the key was produced, and he was pushed inside, and Mathilde sat up in bed, naked under the sheet, and smiled at him.

“Oh, there you are, love,” she said. Such magnificent self-possession. Really, she was a wonder of the world.

The bellhop bowed his way out, murmuring something about complimentary room service in a moment.

“Water,” Lotto croaked. “Please.”

Mathilde stood, put on her robe, and went to the bathroom and poured out a glass and brought it with extreme slowness to him. He drank it down in a single draught. “Thank you. More, please,” he said.

“I’m happy to serve,” she said, smiling broadly. She didn’t move.

“M.,” he said.

“Yes, my creative genius?” she said.

“No more punishment. I’m a dope unfit for human society. I wear my privilege like an invisible cloak and imagine it gives me superpowers. I deserve at least a day in the stocks and probably some rotten eggs heaved at my head. I’m sorry.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him calmly. “That would have been nicer if it had been sincere. You’re arrogant.”

“I know,” he said.

“Your words have more weight than most people’s. You swing them wildly and you can hurt a lot of people,” she said.

“I only care that I hurt you,” he said.

“You assume so much about me. You don’t get to speak for me. I don’t belong to you,” she said.

“I’ll stop doing anything that displeases you. Would you please, please, please bring me more water?”

She sighed and brought him more, and there was a knock at the door, and she opened it, and there was the bellhop with a rolling table, and on the table there was a bucket of champagne and a plate of salmon and asparagus and a basket of soft hot rolls and a chocolate cake for dessert, compliments of the hotel, with apologies for the mugging. San Francisco was a genial town, mostly, and this rarely happened. Should he need medical attention, they had a doctor on retainer, et cetera. Please tell us if there is anything more we can do.

Lotto fell to and she watched. He could manage only a few bites before queasiness set in; then he stood, although his feet felt as if they had been lopped off by an ax, and he tottered to the bathroom and put his clothes and shoes directly in the trashcan and took a long hot bath, watching the tendrils of blood eke out of his wounds. He’d lost or was in the process of losing all ten toenails. He put cold water on his face and arms, which were blistered with sun. He stood up, feeling new in his body, and with his wife’s tweezers, he plucked the long fine hairs on his earlobes and massaged his wife’s expensive lotion deep into the skin of his forehead, willing the lines away.

When he came out, Mathilde was still awake, staring at the book in her hands. She put it down, tucked her glasses atop her head, frowned at him.

“If it helps, I won’t be able to walk tomorrow,” he said.

“Then you get to spend the day in bed with me,” she said. “So you win. No matter what, you win. It all works out for you in the end. Always. Someone or something’s looking out for you. It’s maddening.”

“Were you hoping it wouldn’t work out for me? That I’d get hit by a truck?” he said, crawling under the sheets and resting his head on her stomach. It gurgled gently. The rest of the cake was gone from the tray.

She sighed. “No, idiot. I just wanted to scare you for a few hours. The moderator stayed in his office all night because we were sure someone would bring you to him. Which is what a sane person would have done, Lotto. Not walk all the way back to San Francisco, you crazed maniac. I just called him to tell him you’d showed up. He was still there. He’d freaked his shit completely. He thought you’d been abducted by a band of wild feminists for a videotaped scapegoating. He’d been going over castration scenarios in his head.” Lancelot imagined a machete swinging, shuddered.

“Eh,” she said. “It all fizzed out by the time the lunch rolled around. Apparently, last year’s Nobel laureate was found today to have plagiarized half of his speech, and there was a huge free-for-all on social media. I looked up and saw full tables gaping at their smart phones. You, my love, were today’s small-fry.”

He felt cheated; he should have been even more inflammatory. [Glutton!]

He stewed until he slept, and she watched him for a while, turning things over in her head, and when she fell asleep, she did so without switching off the light.

ICE IN THE BONES, 2013

Dean of students’ office of an all boys’ boarding school. On the wall a poster of a waterfall at sunset with ENDURANCE , sans serif, underneath.

DEAN OF STUDENTS: man with eyebrows that take up half his face

OLLIE: skinny boy, recently fatherless, exiled from home for juvenile delinquency. Southern accent he tries to swallow; face full of pustules. Still, sharp-eyed, notices everything

FROM ACT I

DEAN: It has been reported that you, Oliver, do not seem to be fitting in. You have no friends. Your nickname [ Peers at an index card, blinks. ] is Bumblefuck Pie?