Elise Blackwell - Grub

She pulled over and went to the counter to retrieve her purse. “If you really want to read the book, ask me next week, and I’ll print you a copy. But remember that it’s not what I wanted to write. I wish I could have written something else.” She sought his eyes and gave several small, earnest nods before leaving.

By the time Eddie remembered to ask her where she was going, she was already out the door. At the window, he watched for her to appear on the sidewalk below, saw her step into the street and hail a taxi to wherever it was that she was heading.

Standing by one of his nine windows as night sank into Harlem, Henry Baffler argued with Eddie over the difference between flash fiction and prose poetry. His inebriated friend claimed that the two were synonymous and could be used interchangeably, only that poets were more likely to use the term prose poem, while fiction writers and most readers tended to say short-shorts or flash fiction.

“That may be the case, but it shouldn’t be the case,” Henry insisted and laid out the case for flash fiction as a distinct form.

“Fine,” Eddie said, with a stretched sigh. “To go on debating this might lead you to believe that I actually care about this particular issue.”

“How can you not care?” Henry asked, more bewildered than indignant.

On the other side of the glass fell a slow, steady snow — distinct flakes visible against the lighted store signs and streetlights.

“The art of living is the art of compromise or, in my case, of not giving a damn, which amounts to compromise. Who are we to foster our precious sensibilities and act like the world gives a rat’s ass about our petty ideals? Ideals lead to misery for others and ourselves. That’s true in politics, so why shouldn’t it be true in literature and in life? You and I need to learn to cultivate genial vulgarity — that’s what we need — if we’re to get anywhere at all in life. What right do we have to make ourselves and others miserable for the sake of our stubborn idealism? We must make the best of circumstances. Why cut bread with a sharp razor when a serviceable bread knife is at hand?”

“Where’d you get that line? And what are you talking about?” Henry asked. Still he watched the snow, falling harder now.

“Oh my God. I sound like Jackson now, heaven help me.”

“It’s impossible to really describe all the kinds of snow in words, isn’t it?”

“Unless you speak Inuit or Norwegian or one of those languages with three hundred words for snow.”

“That’s not really true about those languages,” Henry said. “Nowhere near three hundred, and a lot of them are just compound words. You know, like wet-snow. Anyway, I think maybe our highest calling would be to develop and write in an entirely new language. Pure invention.”

“Highest calling? Ask yourself what the coarsest man would do, and do that. That’s the only safe way to live.”

A shift in wind changed the pattern of the snow against the street lights. Ice-edge, Henry thought, were words that paired nicely. Icedge, a word like a blade scraping on ice. He grabbed a notebook and wrote it down. Later he would find a way to build a paragraph around it. Further down the page he wrote wetsnow, wets-now, wet-snow. He was on the brink of something, he could feel it, though he didn’t know what.

The first time Jackson had slept with Amanda, the event was as emotionally rich as he thought it would be. The next time, later that same blue afternoon, had been as deliciously depraved as he had hoped it would be.

It was true that Amanda lacked Margot’s girlish quality. On the contrary, she looked a little older than she was. But hers was a beauty independent of age, and it was clear that even at forty, at fifty, at sixty, she would be attractive and elegant, even regal. Every lilting line she uttered suggested just enough deliberation to give it the value of considered opinion without sounding either opinionated or, worse, indecisive. Her smile was at once playful and intelligent, and her glance suggested that no subtlety would slip past her unnoticed.

And all this, despite the fact that her origins were humble in the extreme. She was a self-made woman, and if it happened that the occasional smutty word or trailer-inflected phrase rolled off her tongue in bed, then so much the luckier was the man who possessed her. In the living room, at parties, during her television appearances, she sounded as though she’d been born and raised by Ivy-educated, martini-drinking, Connecticut Episcopalians.

It was as he had expected: she was the perfect woman, and she belonged at his side. So Jackson continued the affair with no thought to morality and little to the unpleasantness of being caught and confronted by her husband, his once best friend. The sooner, the better, really, though he realized he could not appear to seek that eventuality. Amanda was not a woman to be pushed, and, besides, the deception and danger would provide them with an exotic memory of how they got together.

At any rate, it could be only a matter of time before Eddie read her book, and only an idiot could read her book and not come up with four for two-plus-two. Eddie wasn’t stupid. Even without reading the book, he must already know. After all, Amanda spent three afternoons a week with Jackson and sometimes attended dinners and parties at his side. A snapped photograph at one such dinner had appeared in the society page of The Times . Another showed up on the party-poop page of a glossy.

“What happened with that sweet girl you were dating?” Amanda asked one day as they rested after making love.

“Are you jealous?”

“Jealousy isn’t a productive emotion,” she said, “but I am curious. You were quite keen on her. I wonder if I seem shallow in comparison.”

“There’s nothing second-place about you, Amanda. You’re my blue ribbon.”

“Did you love her?”

“I guess I was most of the way there. The truth is this: I would have made her a terrible husband. With you, I’m not such a detestable guy.”

“Watch out, or I might decide to take that the wrong way.” Amanda stroked his arm with cool fingers.

“Happiness is the nurse of virtue. I read that once.”

“And who was it who said that independence is the root of happiness?”

“I don’t know, Amanda, but the world is ours.” Jackson rolled to his side so he could kiss her with his hand on her waist.

Their affair continued through the winter and into early spring. As Jackson had long imagined, Amanda was willing to try anything in bed, and their adventures kept him content while he waited to have her on paper and forever. If she had the upper hand in their relationship, he held power in the bedroom. It was an arrangement that pleased them, an arrangement that worked.

Now a year after the release of their first novels, their publication dates were again with weeks of each other. “Better than simultaneous orgasm” is how Amanda put it when they were alone.

One evening, shortly before the publication of Hide and Seek and The Writers , Amanda phoned.

“Eddie got hold of an advanced reading copy from a friend. He’s reading it now.”

“Come over,” Jackson said.

“No.” Amanda’s voice was remarkably even. “It’s time to finish up here. I have to do this myself — I owe him that. I am his wife. I’ll let you know when it’s over.”

Jackson worried that Eddie would trick her into a reconciliation, that he would forgive her and convince her to stay married. But even as he fretted, he didn’t believe in the unpleasant scenario. He and Amanda were too perfect a couple not to come true.