“Of my lowly student digs? Yes, I did. Incredibly sweet of you.”
“I wanted to see where you lived.”
“A lot went down in that house,” William says, and I think, It sure as f*ck did. “Thank you, sugarplum.”
“Also, Zahra sends best wishes. And congrats on your career and our engagement.”
A pause. “Who?” William says.
“Zahra Alaam? From your program? Didn’t she invite you to teach?”
“No, it was arranged through my speaker’s bureau. I don’t recall any Sara.”
“Not Sara,Zahra. Beautiful East Indian woman? Dark hair, mehndi—you know, henna designs on her hands?”
“Ohhhhh,” says William. “Imayknow who you mean. It was so many years ago, but... I think I remember reading she published?”
“She did.”
“But she’s a one-hit wonder. Started strong, then fizzled out.”
“I’m not sure I’d say that,” says Sam Vetiver. “She’s the program head now.”
“Isshe,” says William. “At Harrington! Of our graduate MFA workshop?”
“Yup.”
“Well,” he says. “How about that. Good for her, making the best of it. You know what they say: Those who can’t do, teach.” His chair scrapes, and he adds, “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll get in touch. Who knows, she may want me for a commencement address one of these days... And now, you luscious distraction you, I must away to the desk,” and I scurry back to the Rabbit Hole, all the better to be hidden by the time he comes downstairs.
As if. As if William doesn’t remember Zahra. Or Becky or me or his merry men, the guys who backed him up in everything he did. But maybe he doesn’t. Maybe the only way William can live with himself is to forgeteverything the minute he does it, especially the horrible things. The ones that do the most harm. Even if, as I bet, he doesn’t think they’re hurtful at all.
Like what he did to me the night of The Incident, when he came up to me in the cafeteria, because of course he didn’t approach me at the milk machine to talk Shakespeare.
That’s why I was so shocked, because I knew what was going to happen. William had that reputation, but this would be like Brad Pitt sleeping with his cleaning lady. I kept thinking, Me? Are you sure? I wondered if William was drunk or on drugs, even having some kind of mental breakdown. But he wasn’t. He knew exactly what he was doing.
He took me to the Castle, the student pub where I’d just started picking up extra cash as a dishwasher and which actually did look like a castle, with turrets and everything, and we went to the basement, where I sat on the customer side of the bar for the very first time, on a velvet stool, and William bought me a pint of cider I couldn’t drink a drop of because I was so nervous I knew if I took a sip, I’d choke. I kept thinking, You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to treat me like a date you’re trying to impress. I’ll go to bed with you anyway.
But William was a gentleman. He drank his own beer, and he asked me what my plans were after I left Harrington. Of course, like all of us, I was planning to write. “The Great American Novel?” William said, doing his gazing thing. I could barely look him in the face, it was like staring straight into the sun. “Is that your aspiration?” I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I just want to get published. To make a living writing.” It was the first time I’d said it out loud, and to my surprise it didn’t sound as foolish and conceited as it did in my head. It sounded doable. “You said yourself I was writing commercial fiction,” I reminded him.
William looked surprised. “Did I?” he said. “Well, that’s certainly more lucrative than striving for literary posterity. Here’s to your enormous commercial success.” He toasted me, and we both drank. “I remember now,” he said, “you’re the one who writes about that terrible place in upstate New York. Regina.”
I thought my face would burst into flames right there on my barstool. I muttered something like “Aegina. Yes, that’s me.”
“They’re very bleak stories,” said William. “Suffused with hopelessness. But that’s the stuff of literary fiction, like Cormac or Dubus, and it doesn’t match your domestic content. Have you ever thought about writing romance? Something moreBridges of Madison CountythanBlood Meridian? It seems that might be more in line with your talents. And ambitions.”
I ducked my head. I knew he was insulting me. Any sort of genre fiction was considered brainless, paint-by-numbers stuff, the kind of book that would be consumed on a plane or on a beach and instantly forgotten. Literary fast food. And romance was the worst of all. William himself had called it thumb-sucking tripe for sad housewives, the print version of a vibrator. Nobody in our program would have used it for toilet paper.
And in fact I did not want to write romance, because what did I know about love? I was in no way qualified, not even in my imagination. But I so badly did not want William Corwyn to stop looking at me like that that all I did was mumble “Yeah, romance, maybe,” into my cider.
“I think romance gets a bad rap,” said William. “What could be more important than love? We need more of it in our lives, don’t you agree?”
I did brave a glance right at him then, and he smiled.
“You’re just the person to do it,” he said. “I’ve been watching you for months, and I suspect you’re a woman of great passions.”
He tucked my hair, which I’d just home-permed, behind my ear.
“There,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to do that all night.”
