She is coming trippingly down the front steps like Humbert Humbert’s tongue pronouncing Lo-Li-Ta, her bright plait bouncing over one shoulder. I would recognize Simone anywhere, from any distance, because of that braid. I’d also recognize her because: Simone.
Naturally, I duck back into my car and follow her ancient yellow Jeep onto the road. Where is she going? The rules of the retreat mandate staying at the retreat, sequestering in one’s room or taking soul-clearing walks on the grounds or getting a synapse-stimulating massage or releasing writer’s block in downward dog or doing what the writers are actually there to do, which is write. Leaving the property breaks the spell. Are you cuckolding me, dear? I think at Simone’s little head, which I can see through her rearview.Perfidy, thy name is Simone.What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, like my chambermaid this morning? (Tongue ring won.) But I don’t think so. Simone is no sportfucker; most women aren’t, and I’ve come to recognize the mutant subspecies who are by the fried, feral miasma they emit and, like any wise man, stay far, far away. More likely Simone is heading to the nearest city to buy a new laptop.
Whatever Simone is doing, she’s done me a favor, I realize, by drawing me away from Woodstock Hill. I wasn’t planning on sauntering brazenly through the common areas, instead stealing up the maid’s staircase to Simone’s room. But I had not thoroughly thought this through. Writers return annually to this retreat, and there may be someone here from my time who might remember not only me but my May-November romance with poor sad Kaelynn. Not that there was anything untoward about it. Not at all. But the cultural landscape has shifted, and an established male writer in his prime having a dalliance with an unpublished aspirant two decades his junior, thoughde rigueurand even sought after then, would not be viewed so favorably now. There might be... retrospective questions.
Poor Kaelynn, the human Eeyore. Honestly, I haven’t thought about her much in the intervening years. Occasionally an especially droopy twentysomething at the Darlings might bring a Kaelynn memory to mind, as well as a brief fantasy of secretly placing a memorial to her on the Woodstock Hill grounds. In the pasture where we had our first literal roll in the hay, for instance. But it passes quickly, leaving only a greasy residue of relief and gratitude. Poor Kaelynn, looking like a convenience store clerk with her dull blond pageboy and acne-spattered forehead, in torn T-shirts featuring rock bands I’d never heard of, limp in bed as in life. There was only one situation that animated her: talking about alternate galaxies, in which case she never shut up. That was the gift she gave me: Kaelynn introduced me to science fiction, and at Woodstock Hill my third novel,The Space Between Worlds, was born.
I’d just come off my year-long tour forYou Never Said Goodbye, which was still on theNew York Timeslist in hardcover, and my editor Jayne decided I was suffering from something she called “blockbuster paralysis,” a diagnosis to which I meekly copped, although I don’t believe in it for a second. Any writer who can’t handle success should be buried with his pen through his heart, in my opinion. But despite my actual literary Achilles’ heel, which I’ve never disclosed, not to Jayne, not to anyone, I have two authorial superpowers: I write fast and well, and I can tellwhat’s going to hit. They say don’t ever write to please the market, that a book takes a long time to complete, and by the time it’s done the zeitgeist will have shifted, so authors should write only what moves them. I couldn’t agree less. I came to Woodstock Hill knowing dystopian sci-fi would be the next big thing. Just as I know historical fiction, however editors moan about the market being saturated, is huge now.
I therefore owe poor sad Kaelynn for introducing me to the genre, and perhaps I should have dedicatedSpaceto her instead oftoall women exploring new frontiers... Especially given what happened to Kaelynn after her tenure at the retreat. But it would not be wise to resuscitate recollections of that time. I don’t even really want to revisit them myself. So I blow that tragic girl a kiss, wherever she may be, and follow Simone farther from Woodstock Hill. Wherever she might be leading me.
Which turns out to be into the woods, via a municipal road that turns into a rutted logging track. About a mile in, Simone’s brake lights come on; she pauses as if checking directions, then gets out and unhooks a chain connecting two wooden posts. A sign is nailed to one of them:1415; 1415 ½.Posted. No hunting. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. Simone drives through, reattaches the chain, and continues out of sight.
I continue on a ways, conceal my car in a pullout, and hoof it back on foot, wending through the forest Simone has disappeared into instead of taking the drive. I’m used to navigating woods from strolling my island in Maine every day and from hunting as a boy. I hike up through a birch and maple forest, which segues into an apple orchard, which opens into a meadow at the top of which sits an Airstream trailer. This must have been Simone’s destination, for as I conceal myself behind a big pine near the Airstream, she emerges from it bearing two glass bottles of Coke. I am close enough to see straws striped like barber poles. How nice—whatever recluse Simone’s visiting in the woods, he or she is a regular Martha Stewart.
He, for there he is. Simone’s host comes out of the trailer with twored folding chairs. I size him up: mid-fifties-ish; short—shorter than I am, anyway; stocky, with wire-rimmed glasses, plaid shorts, and white T-shirt, porkpie hat, barefoot. Who is this happy asshole? The urge is all but overwhelming to stride into the clearing, hand extended, smiling, and say,Good afternoon, I’m William Corwyn! Who the fuck are you?
“This is so nice,” says Simone as they settle into the chairs. “It’s like you landed in heaven. How’d you score this again?”
The man clips the end of a cigar, lights it. Of course he does. The filthy habit of little men who need to appear bigger.
“Remember Dave, from rehab? The guy who bailed me out? The main house up the road is his summer home. His caretaker had MS, so...”
“That’s too bad,” says Simone. “For him, not for you.”
“I’ll tell you what, Ms. Vetiver, I must have some good karma. I feel unbelievably lucky.”
“Because you are,” she says. She sips soda through her straw. “Do you get lonely here? It’s pretty far from everyone, especially without a car.”
“After the halfway house? Are you kidding? Besides, I’m making friends with the bears. I’m putting food out for them.”
“For fuck’s sake. Please tell me you’re kidding. That doesn’t even work with mice—as you might remember from our house, or do you need me to remind you.”
He laughs, a deep sound from his barrel chest. He’s probably a scrapper in the ring, but I could take him. “How could I forget the mouse condo? It scarred me for life.”
“Then I highly recommend you don’t feed the bears. They will kill you and eat you.”
“You think?” he says. He blows a smoke ring. “But you’re still pretty cute when I’m yanking your braid.”
“For fuck’s sake, Hank,” Simone says, and rolls her eyes. Coke rattles in her striped straw.
Hank.Why does this sound familiar? The penny drops: This is Simone’s ex-husband, the wastrel alcoholic starting his life afresh. How’s that going? I think. Nice trailer, buddy.
“How’s that feel?” Simone asks, nodding at the pale circlet of flesh around his ankle. “No more house arrest. You’re like the players who take their wedding ring off but can’t hide the tan.”
He scrubs a thoughtful hand over his grizzled stubble. “I don’t think I want to,” he says. “It’s like a battle scar. Something I went through and survived.”
“And it’ll fade quickly,” she says. “Unlike...” She touches his wrist. I imagine the raised white ridges of flesh, horizontal if he wasn’t serious, vertical if he was. For the second time today I think of poor sad Kaelynn, and long-ago lost Becky, and some others who, if God is merciful, are at rest...Lord, hear our prayer.
“You want to hear something really crazy?” he says. “I almost miss the monitor. I felt less lonely when I had it on. Somebody always keeping tabs on me.”
You poor bastard, I think, at the same time as Simone says, “I get it.”
“How fucked-up is that?” he asks, and they say in unison, “Soooooo fucked-up!” This has the timing of an old private joke.
“Remember how she used to say that?” says Simone. “That couples’ counselor—Joanna? Hannah? She didnotknow how to handle you.”
“Nobody did,” he says. “Because I was soooo fucked-up. I put you through a lot, girl.”
