Elise Blackwell - Grub

“If we can afford it.” Rhiannon crossed her arms and issued a snort. “I saw the other day that another gallery has gone in by that old French restaurant with the jigsaw-puzzle portrait of Edith Piaff.”

“Did you know that Edith Piaff was born blind in a whorehouse?”

“Then maybe your girlfriend Clarice Aames can write a story about her.”

John Young interrupted. “I have no idea what you all are talking about, but I’m a decent man and so I’m going to give you two months’ notice instead of one. No need to clean, because a sledgehammer’s the next tenant. Just take all your stuff, lock the door behind you, and throw away the keys.” He strode a few feet down the hall before turning back and handing Henry a letter. “Found this on the landing. Postman must have butterfingers.”

Rhiannon snatched the envelope from Henry’s hands and opened the letter. “Looks like you’ve got a girly fan. Margot something. Before you know it you’ll have quite a harem. You should remember this, though: polygamy is dead.”

“I did buy your book, by the way, and I really did like the first few pages. Nice to see an author writing about a regular guy.” John Young took only one more step before turning again. “Do throw away those keys when you leave, now, because they’ll do you no good. The locks will be changed the very first thing.”

There hadn’t even been a campus interview — just the one in the cattle-call pit and then the small surprise of the telephoned job offer, not tenure track, but permanent so long as she held up in the classroom. So Margot saw Rebuke, Illinois, for the first time when she arrived with a car full of her belongings. Driving in, she had been disheartened by the dreary two lane highway peppered with sex shops, hunting stores, and a single behemoth club grocery. Yet the town itself sat on a river, and there was a charm to the old albeit cheaply constructed houses. Rebuke could be walked end to end easily. There would be little, other than her students, to distract her from her work. The teaching load would be heavy, she understood this well, and her nights would be filled reading uninspired compositions about capital punishment and cigarettes and the electoral college and the virtues of sunscreen. She realized already, though, that it would be better to feel as though she had too little time than too much of it.

She taught sincerely and well. She drank coffee with her colleagues and occasionally tested a romance with a nice man in another department. She wrote and she published, sometimes in relatively obscure periodicals, but not infrequently in the country’s most prestigious literary magazines. She did not read the other stories in these journals, though, and instead retreated to the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century novels she had always loved. Not only did she not attempt to write another novel, she determined that she would never write another book.

But the day came when she was contacted without warning by an editor at a university press. He had seen and loved some of her stories and wanted to collect her work into a volume. She agreed after he promised that she wouldn’t have to give any readings and that she would have veto power over the cover art and title. As it turned out, she liked the jacket design presented to her: a simple black and gray graphic with the words Bend, River, Bend .

Encouraged by her colleagues, including the kind souls who had interviewed her and recognized her as one of their own, Margot earned her MFA through a low-residency program. She paid her tuition, submitted via email stories that had already been anthologized in Best Midwestern Short Stories , and endured wrong-headed suggestions for revisions offered by the energetic, barely published writer assigned as her mentor. With the terminal degree in hand and a new book in print, Margot was promoted to a professorship and awarded the tenure that would allow her to spend the rest of her career at Rebuke College.

Still a person who loved, perhaps above all else, reading and working with words, Margot was content. On those rare nights when she drank a little too much sherry, she sat in her bay window, listened to the passing river, and imagined herself as the heroine of one of the novels she loved: beautiful, well-spoken, and happily chaste.

As a final payment, and to secure the consequence-less evacuation of his contract with The Monthly , Jackson penned a loving tribute to Chuck Fadge, praising his balanced encouragement of aspiring young writers, crediting him with far more influence than he in fact commanded, and lauding his silly compendium.

As a final effort to help good-hearted Doreen, he fervently argued, via phone and email, that she publish under the name she had been born into. But, alas, her incomprehensible love and respect for Whelpdale overpowered her slightly feminist upbringing. Both of her books were to be published under the name Doreen Whelpdale.

“It will help sell his how-to books,” she explained. “You of all people should understand the financial component of my decision.”

Despite his good effort to do the right thing by Doreen, Jackson no longer much cared. He realized, albeit somewhat sadly, that friends such as these were of the past. There were a few people in every life who were original casts. Amanda was one, and he could admit that there would never in his life be a replacement for Margot Yarborough or for his crusty old friend Eddie Renfros. Other people were, no matter how pleasant, interchangeable. Perhaps when he and Amanda started a family they would hire a down-to-earth nanny who thought ill of no one and whose eyelashes had a girlish flutter. She would be their new Doreen. But the real Doreen wasn’t worth the price of being linked to Whelpdale’s how-to industry, which preyed on the hopes of aspiring writers. Jackson could have endured a connection to the “Thong” imprint, but not that. He had to let the association fade.

No doubt the organizers of the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference had sent him the invitation in some vain hope for generosity and nostalgia — past participant wins major literary prize — and indeed the director sounded disbelieving as Jackson mentioned possible dates for his short layover.

“We appreciate this so much!” she said, in a way that forced him to think of a word every writer loathes as much as utilize: enthuse. “Really, any day works for us. Any day at all.”

“Awesome,” he said. “Your conference rocks.” He had no idea if the woman knew he was insulting her.

He’d planned to bring Amanda, to return with her as his wife and not Eddie’s, and yet he found himself relieved when she was called away to Los Angeles. Though her agent had warned that calls from the West Coast meant less than any other calls in publishing, the film option for The Progress of Love had come to fruition. It was unlikely that the director would actually use the screenplay Amanda was working on, but she would in any case be paid handsomely for the effort.

“I’ll join you on Saturday,” Jackson had promised, booking a coast-to-coast flight from Charlotte. The New South, he thought, the inkling of a new novel crawling across his inner eye.

The Outlook Bar had been packed for his reading, drawing regional residents and tourists as well as the conference goers. Abiding by his publisher’s sound advice, he’d read only early sections from his most recent book. He’d smiled widely during the signing and offered encouragement and occasionally suggestions of tangible assistance to the most attractive female conference participants. He was pleased to see, though, that not one of the women could compete with Amanda for more than an hour or two. The place was lucky she’d ever stood in the room.