Writers & Lovers(67)

She shifts away from me. ‘The only trouble with your pedagogy is that our students have to sit for the SAT and the AP, and they would have to have some familiarity with those literary devices.’

I nod. ‘Of course.’

It’s over, I think in my wing chair.

On my way out I smell lunch. If it had gone better they might have invited me to stay and eat. It smells good. Eggplant Parmesan and cheesecake. I saw it written on the chalkboard outside the cafeteria. I wouldn’t have turned down a free lunch.

Outside three girls are leaning up against the building in wool sweaters, faces to the weak November sun. A copy of A Farewell to Arms is facedown on the flagstones beside one of them. Imagine forcing girls to read about the fake and obsequious and self-immolating Catherine Barkley. ‘There isn’t any me. I’m you. Don’t make up a separate me.’ The only Hemingway I’d ever assign is The Sun Also Rises and only really for that passage when he goes into the church and prays for everybody and himself twice and wishes he felt religious and comes out into the hot sun on the steps of the cathedral with his fingers and thumb still damp and he feels them dry in the sun. I love that part so much.

I walk down the hill to Muriel’s car. But it doesn’t feel good anymore. I miss my bike. I’m not sure I can drive. I feel encased. I roll down all the windows. The driveway is shorter than I remember. I pull out onto the main road. I didn’t know you could blow an interview by feeling too at ease. I didn’t know that was a danger. I didn’t talk about any of the things Muriel coached me on, the curriculum I developed in Spain and the undergrad classes I taught at grad school and then in Albuquerque. Instead I went off on that riff about Bernhard, and I remember as I get on the highway that it’s not ‘in my wing chair’ but ‘in the wing chair.’ ‘As I sat in the wing chair’ is the refrain in Woodcutters, and I am awash in shame for having gotten it wrong. Plus she only hires happy people, so cross me off that list. I think of my conversation with Manolo about All the Pretty Horses, and it’s clear now that he loved the book and I insulted it. I drive on the highway and absorb, one by one, all the ways the morning went wrong. Your pedagogy. She was humoring me. Then I remember the oncologist appointment tomorrow, and maybe none of it will matter because even if I get the job I’ll just be the teacher who has cancer and dies.

I drop the car off at Muriel’s and slip the keys through her mail slot. I have to walk through the Square and back across the river, which is fine. I have nothing but time now. In the Square I stop at Au Bon Pain. I’m hungry, and they have a chicken pesto sandwich for $2.95 that I like and is filling. In line I’m a little out of it. I keep remembering and forgetting the name of the sandwich I’m going to order. Sometimes Tony and Dana get food here, and I worry I’ll see them, but it’s too early. If they’re working lunch today, they’ll still be in the middle of the rush.

‘Hey.’ A tug on my jacket sleeve. A familiar rumble. ‘Casey.’

It’s Silas, in his motorcycle jacket.

Everything in me goes berserk at once. My face flames and my lips quiver, so I stretch them into a wide smile.

‘Hey.’ I give him a belated jerky hug. The jacket creaks and the kiss on the bridge comes back to me and my stomach pitches. He smells like his car. I hold on to him a bit too long.

‘Are you ordering?’ I ask, though I can see he has an Au Bon Pain coffee cup in his hand.

‘No. Well, maybe I’ll get something to eat.’

We stand in line together and I remember my order and he adds a turkey melt and pays for it fast, before I can get my money out of the purse I borrowed from Muriel.

We take our food to a table near the window. I can’t eat. I take two bites and can’t swallow them. When he slides out to get mustard, I spit it all in my napkin.

‘Not good?’

I shake my head.

‘What’s going on? You look sort of . . . drawn.’

It’s a kind way of putting it.

I tell him I got fired, and he’s so sympathetic about it that I tell him about the lump and the bees and the no sleeping and the revision I can’t write. I tell him about the interview and the math band and how I’d blown it by feeling too comfortable and how bizarre it was that I actually wanted to stay for lunch. I don’t tell him about reading his story because it would mean telling him about being at Oscar’s, but I want to. He is listening so carefully, nodding and fiddling with his coffee cup lid. He hasn’t eaten much of his sandwich, either. He gathers up all our trash and throws it out and when he comes back I assume he’s going to say he has to go, but he sits back down with both hands on the table now, close to mine.

‘Remember when I asked you out then left town? It was because everything felt like it was coming loose and I’d have to get up and walk around the city at two in the morning. I couldn’t stop walking. I felt like if I stopped walking I’d die. All last summer I kept packing my bags and not leaving. Then I met you, and I knew I couldn’t go out with you until I felt more normal. So I finally took off.’

‘I don’t have a Crested Butte.’

‘You have something.’

‘It’s more like an abyss.’

‘Something you need to get to.’

‘Yeah. The rest of my life. It feels like the way is blocked.’