Joy Williams: The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

Denise couldn’t stay here a moment longer. She was trembling, she had to get out. They would get in the car, she and Steadman, they would drive away and never come back. They loved driving in the dark and drinking, mixing cocktails in paper cups, driving around. They had done it a lot. They would mix up some drinks and go out and tease cars. That’s what they called it, Steadman and Denise. They’d tailgate them, pounce on them out of nowhere. Crazy stuff.

“Steadman!” she called. He knew what she wanted, he knew what they would do, that this had been a mistake. He opened the door to their car, and she smelled the lovely gin. It was in a glass from before, wedged between the seats.

They drove down the street, picking up speed. They passed a house with a wrought-iron sign hanging from a post. The design was of a wrought-iron palm tree and the wrought-iron waves of a sea. Below it, where the custom lettering was supposed to be, it said YOUR NAME. Delightful! Denise thought. They had ordered it just the way it had been advertised.

“God, that was funny,” she said. People could be so funny.

“It really was,” Steadman said.

They were driving fast now. They were so much alike, they were just alike, Denise thought. “Roll my window down, please,” she said.

Steadman reached across her and did.

“Oh, thank you,” she said. Warm, humid, lovely air passed across her face. “Go faster.”

He did. She giggled.

“Slow down,” she said, “speed up. That road there.”

Steadman did, he did.

They had left the town behind. “Turn the lights off, maybe,” she said.

They rocketed down the road in the dark. Before them was nothing, but behind them a car was gaining.

She turned and saw the two wild lights moving closer. They’re going to tease us, she thought. “Faster,” she said.

But the car, weaving, was almost upon them and then, with a roar, was beside them. It was all outside them now.

“There it is, Steadman,” Denise said. It all just hung there for an instant before the car swerved around them and turned in inches beyond their front bumper. Then, whatever was driving it slammed on the brakes.

Many of the stories included here were previously published in the following works:

“The Excursion,” “The Farm,” “The Lover,” “Preparation for a Collie,” “Shepherd,” “Shorelines,” “Summer,” “Taking Care,” “Train,” “The Wedding,” “Winter Chemistry,” and “The Yard Boy” from Taking Care by Joy Williams, copyright © 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1982 by Joy Williams (Random House, New York). Reprinted by permission.

“The Blue Men,” “Bromeliads,” “Escapes,” “Health,” “The Last Generation,” “The Little Winter,” “Lu-Lu,” “Rot,” and “The Skater” from Escapes by Joy Williams, copyright © 1990 by Joy Williams (originally The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, subsequently Vintage Books, New York).

“ACK,” “Anodyne,” “Charity,” “Congress,” “Fortune,” “Hammer,” “Honored Guest,” “Marabou,” “The Other Week,” “Substance,” and “The Visiting Privilege” from Honored Guest: Stories by Joy Williams, copyright © 2004 by Joy Williams (Alfred A. Knopf, New York). All rights reserved. Adapted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Several of the stories initially collected here were previously published in the following journals:

Granta: “Brass” (Autumn 2011) and “Dangerous” (Winter 2014)

Idaho Review: “The Girls” (2004) and “Revenant” (2014)

Little Star: “The Mission” (January 2014)

No Tokens: “The Mother Cell” (February 2014)

Ploughshares: “Craving” (August 1991)

Prairie Schooner: “Another Season” (Summer 1966)

Tin House: “The Country” (Spring 2014)

Vice: “The Bridgetender” (Summer 2015)

Joy Williams is the author of four novels — the most recent, The Quick and the Dead, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001—and three earlier collections of stories, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was elected to the Academy in 2008.