The Last Book Party(58)
He looked as though he meant it. I told him I had finished a few short stories, one of which would be published in The Georgia Review that winter.
“It’s not The New Yorker, but…,” I said.
“Don’t do that. It’s a great accomplishment—to finish a story and get it published. It’s everything.”
“Thanks.”
“I’d love to read it.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
We stood awkwardly for a moment, perhaps each a little wary of this tentative sincerity between us. It was a relief to see Jeremy as complicated, yet worthy. To know that the good feelings I’d had about him the morning of the book party may not have been unfounded. An image flashed in my mind, of Jeremy in the front of a canoe on the Withlacoochee River, shrinking in fear at the sight of an alligator. And another, of Jeremy sitting on my back porch engrossed in a story. My story. I smiled at Jeremy, who smiled back.
Mary came up, gave me a quick hug, and told Jeremy a writer from The Village Voice wanted to speak with him. “I’ll tell him you’ll be right over?”
Jeremy nodded and she walked away.
“Your fans await,” I said.
“I’ll find you,” he said.
Jeremy walked into the crowd. The party was humming. Editors, agents, authors, publicists, and editorial assistants chatted and drank wine and laughed as if there was nothing more exciting or important than the launching of a book. Some of them were going to read Jeremy’s novel and love it, others were not going to read a word of it and yet proclaim they loved it, and some would read it while hoping on every page to despise it. They would accept Jeremy’s new status as a “writer to behold,” but none of them would know about the complicated brew of ambition, talent, fear, shame, dishonesty, and hard work from which it had grown.
On the way to the door, I stopped to look at the window display, where stacks of Jeremy’s book were arranged in a tableau that seemed to represent someone’s idea of Nepal. There were Buddha statues and bronze bowls, Tibetan carpets and photographs of snowcapped mountains. On an easel was the photograph of Jeremy I’d seen in Publishers Weekly, blown up to larger-than-life size.
I looked beyond the display to the tall bookshelves ringing the room, every inch of them filled with books, thick and slim, their spines shimmering in hues of brown and gold, blue and dusty red, black and green. In those books were more stories than could be counted—not just the stories on the pages, but the stories that had spurred someone to find the words and write them down. To bring to life imaginary people that, over time, had become as good as real. Were all those authors geniuses? I didn’t think so. As I looked up and around the majestic store at the volumes of books, I was sure that many of them, even many of the brilliant ones, were written simply because someone wanted to tell a story.
I stepped outside and let the heavy door close behind me. The air was warm but compared to the intense Florida heat felt balmy and gentle. It would be good to be in New York for a few days. I would clear out the remaining things from my apartment, figure out what I wanted to give away and what would return with me to Florida. I would wander the streets, dig deep into the stacks of my favorite bookstores in search of hidden treasure. And then I would return to Citrus County and the work of figuring out what I wanted to say and how to say it.