Writers & Lovers(76)

It’s disorienting, walking back to my seat. The room is loud with clapping. People are looking at me. And when I sit, the girl next to me says that was cool, and Manolo is still clapping at me from the podium. He repeats the workshop topics and the rooms they are in. He points to the table where there are extra program schedules and tells everyone to have an inspired day.

I go to Victor Silva’s workshop. It’s full of the students who are not put off by a waxed mustache and a black cape. He has us draw a floor plan of the first place we ever remember living. ‘The rooms, the closets, the hallway,’ he says as he draws one himself on the blackboard. He turns back to us and says, ‘Now add the significant details: the couch, the bourbon bottle, the slot between the wall and the fridge.’ He laughs. ‘You see? I’ve already told you my whole childhood in three details.’ He jogs to the left and writes in block letters:

NO IDEAS BUT IN THINGS.



‘William Carlos Williams. Live by that, I tell you.’

Once we have our details—our white-hot places of experience he calls them—we have to choose one and write about it. ‘Not in sentences but in bursts of feelings—phrases, words, don’t worry how they relate just get them out. You are vomiting here.’

I circle my mother’s bathroom and start writing about it—the greasy face lotion, the dry shampoo spray, the heavy razor, the amber bottle of Chanel No. 5—and all the things that became mine the day she left.

‘Casey.’ The school’s receptionist, Lucille, is squatting beside my chair. ‘I’m sorry. She said it was urgent.’ She hands me a blue Post-it. ‘Jennifer,’ it says. ‘Line 2.’ I follow her out of the classroom to the office.

She shows me into the development office, which is glassed-in like Aisha’s but cluttered with stacks of brochures. I pick up the phone.

‘So Amy Drummond has offered thirty North American.’ Someone else has offered twenty, and someone else has come in-between with twenty-five for world. She goes on to mention other editors and subsidiary rights, but I’m still stuck back on her first sentence. And the word ‘offered.’

‘I’ve let the other houses know we’re receiving offers. Some of them had blown it off, and now they’re speed-reading.’ She guffaws. She is giddy, in her own way. ‘You there? Your book is going to be bound and sold, Camila. We’re in an auction. Start practicing your signature.’

‘Everything okay?’ Lucille says when I came out.

‘Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much.’ I love her and I love that office and I love that phone.

I float like a balloon back to the classroom. Everyone is writing. I mouth an apology to Victor Silva who raises his middle finger very slightly at me from his desk in front. I return to my mother’s bathroom, the Pantene shampoo, the green velour bathrobe she left behind and that I wore until my father told me not to.

Victor asks us to find the moments of heat in the writing we have done, has us circle and isolate those words, and with them we write a poem. We read them out loud. There’s one about an ashtray, a sequined dress, flour on a kitchen floor. Victor says something about each one. The feeling in the room is beautiful, wide open.

The hallway is crowded when we change to the next session. The boy ahead of me has on a green-and-white athletic jacket. TREVOR HILLS it says across his back.

In the workshop with the Irish essayist, I sit next to our librarian.

‘Trevor Hills? Are they here?’

She nods.

‘With their teachers?’

‘Usually one or two come along from each school.’

My heart is pounding Silas, Silas, Silas.

The Irish essayist has us close our eyes and listen to the words she says without trying to control our thoughts.

I keep mine open a crack, to scan the packed room. He’s not here.

‘A rainy day,’ she says.

My mother and me running from the Mustang to the house.

‘The sound of a musical instrument.’

Caleb playing the guitar.

‘An act of love.’

My father cleaning my golf clubs in the kitchen sink.

She has us write about one of these moments that come up unbidden, unforced. I’m writing about the golf clubs when Lucille taps me on the shoulder.

‘Line 1’ it says on her blue Post-it.

On the way back to the office I find out she’s worked here fourteen years and her son is in my ninth-grade class.

Jennifer tells me about a new round of offers. ‘Let me ask you,’ she says. ‘Is there a line you want to cross? A number you need to get to? You mentioned you have some outstanding student loans.’ Did I? ‘Give me your wildest dream number.’

There is a calculator on the desk. I punch in a year’s rent for that top-floor apartment with the window seat and bookshelves and add my debt. I tell her the number. We are not even close.

I head back to the essay class, but the halls are packed and it’s over. The one I want to go to next is on the second floor. The stairwell is jammed, and I move up slowly.

‘I guess you didn’t bomb the interview after all.’

I look up. Silas is on the landing in a tie. People are pushing past us. I climb a few steps closer.

‘They’ll come to their senses soon,’ I say.

‘I liked what you said this morning,’ he says. ‘About writing. Good for them to hear those things.’