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Jackson Miller was closer to one of Henry James’s urbane charmers than the men who populated Margot’s fantasies: composites of Thomas Hardy’s stolid, fate-battered heroes, Heathcliff, the Swann of the earliest volumes, and the occasional sincere-eyed European movie star. Yet as she watched the sure movements of his hands, she thought that she could love him if that’s what he wanted from her.

Jackson put two glasses of the red wine on the chest that served as coffee table and sat on the sofa next to her. “Margot, I understand your father doesn’t hold me in great affection, but I hope that’s no reason that you and I can’t continue our friendship.”

“It’s the same for me. The way I feel, I mean.”

“Not that my friendship is any great prize. I am what I am, and I’ll go on struggling for the good life that I’ve always wanted. But your friendship, well, it’s worth a great deal. If I were sure of that friendship, I would at least be within sight of loftier ideals.”

Margot accepted the wine he moved from the table to her hand, and they toasted the acceptance of her novel.

“Hey, I know. You can call it
Stumps
. You know, cypress knees and those literary leper parts.” He held up his arm with his hand balled and twisted.

Margot swallowed her mouthful of wine quickly so that she wouldn’t laugh it across the front of her dress.

“So you have a sense of humor.” Jackson looked down into her eyes, smiling into his cheeks, his good looks boyish despite his height.

“Do I seem so very dull?” Margot tilted her head and tucked her curls behind the ear closest to Jackson, wondering if she was flirting well or poorly.

“Not dull, not at all. But smart and quiet and reticent. Serious. Those qualities are exactly what I like so much in you—and what I find so different from myself. But all the better that there’s a generosity and sense of humor beneath it.”

“And many of your qualities are attractive to me, because they’re so foreign to who I am. You’re self-confident and charming and determined to succeed.” She felt a smile grow. “And tall.”

As he took her glass from her hand, she noticed she’d drunk most of its contents. He set both glasses down and turned to her, wrapping her shoulders in his strong arm.

“I promise to be careful with you, Margot. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything.”

When he said that, his stature seemed more protective than intimidating, and she leaned into him. When he stroked her face with his free hand and kissed her mouth with just the right amount of pressure, she warmed with such pleasure that she thought the feeling might be love. It was like standing in a strong summer breeze, a welcome wind on a stagnant day. It was like the promise of change.

That night, lying in Jackson’s bed listening to his slight snore, she believed that love might indeed be the word for what she felt.

A
s winter stepped into the city, Amanda Renfros discovered something: she liked to write. Social by nature, she generally felt anxious by herself, with no one to react to, banter with, or enchant. Now though, she found that she didn’t mind being alone at her computer, that actually, she wasn’t quite solitary when she worked. She had for company a cast of attractive, witty, and highly promiscuous French aristocrats and their hangers-on. She befriended her heroine, Libertine, a buxom young woman of common birth who’d used her natural charm and ambition to wedge herself into a place at court. It helped, of course, that men found Libertine uncommonly pretty—all the more so because her humble background suggested that she might not be particularly skillful in deflecting the sexual advances of the well-born.

Amanda had begun
The Progress of Love
with an outline. She reminded herself to be open to the muse, though, and made some alterations along the way: folding two characters into one, twisting the plot an extra time or two, tucking in or eliminating scenes as she was moved to. Still, she stayed close to her plan, and it was a much more efficient way to work than the waiting-for-inspiration technique that everyone had espoused in graduate school. She’d heard interviews with novelists who spend a year or two “with their characters” before a four-year period of drafting and exploring, ever hoping to enter the “dream space” or be visited by some creative power from above or without. It was ridiculous, really, and it certainly explained why so many otherwise good books were thrown to the floor by readers hoping for a story. All a writer really needed was a good plot, a plan for its execution, a facility with sentences, a work ethic, and a copyeditor’s eye. There was nothing magical about it. She even taped small signs to her computer to remind herself to stay on track: “Tell the story” and “No hocus pocus.”

Once, while working on
Vapor
, Eddie had been nearly paralyzed, vexed by the vagaries of point-of-view: how close, how central, how reliable, whether temporal omniscience was cheating. “It’s simple,” Amanda had told him. “You’re the writer. Tell the readers what you want them to know.” Now she wrote her story of lust, longing, libido, and ambition among the eighteenth-century French aristocracy with an utterly unselfconscious omniscience.

At three in the afternoon on a Friday in early December, she typed her first novel’s ultimate sentence. It was a line of dialogue mouthed by the comely Libertine: “All for love, and love for all.”

Amanda planned to spend the next two weeks line editing, while waiting for her queries to agents to be answered. She had already decided she wouldn’t even approach Eddie’s agent. What she needed was a human piranha, a beast to be unleashed. What she needed was a bidding war.

She decided to celebrate the completion of the first draft by having a glass of wine somewhere posh and pleasant. Before leaving, she checked her email. First she accessed the dummy address she’d set up to submit “Bad Dog Séance.” Among the spam was a message from the editor of
Swanky
, who said that he was holding a hundred fan emails and a dozen letters for Clarice Aames. He asked her if he could forward them to her, and he begged her for another story. Amanda grinned at the notion of being famous as two people, of having two names and two writing styles, of working two wardrobes. It could be almost like those people who have two separate families that never find out about each other. Already, she could see Clarice as a brunette: powdery skin, a bit goth, lots of bracelets, a husky voice comfortable with a sailor’s vocabulary.

F
ive weeks after his wife carried the draft of
Conduct
to his agent, Eddie Renfros received the response by telephone. After sleeping late and lingering in a steamy shower until the water ran cool, he was washing his cereal bowl when the call came.

Her voice modulated like a radio stock-market report, his agent said, “The prose isn’t quite on par with that of
Sea Miss
, but you’re writing well. I’m worried that the plot is a bit quiet, but there is a plot this time. Still, after the last disaster, we don’t want to set ourselves up to be accused of being too quiet.”

“Quiet?” Eddie asked. “There’s a plane crash, death, adultery, bribery, surgery on a child’s ear, a world premiere, a drunken cellist, and a beautiful shameless slut of a violin player.”

“Eddie, I’m on your side. I want to sell this book even more than you do.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“But you do believe I’m on your side, so let me finish. It’s true that you have events in the book, and I’m going to emphasize them when I pitch the book. But your style does have a way of understating even the plane crash. It happens off the page, and the response of the violist to her lover’s death is so muted.”

“The plane crash can’t be on the page. You can’t kill off a point-of-view character. And the novel isn’t about the plane crash; it’s about what happens after the plane crash.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t sell the book. I think I can. I think a lot of educated women could want to read it. If nothing else, they’ll think they’re learning something about classical music. And the violin slut is good, particularly that one scene. Heterosexual sodomy is very in, after that dancer’s memoir and all. And it’s great that she’s Scandinavian.”

“So one plane crash is enough?” Eddie tried to suppress the sarcasm he felt surfacing like sweat.

“Is the music stuff accurate?”

“As far as it goes, yes.”

“Eddie, I’m worried about you. You’re starting to sound bitter. You’re my writer, my artist, and I need you to stay calm. I do think I can sell this novel, but I don’t want your expectations to be too high. This isn’t an auction project. I want to send the manuscript one at a time to a few special editors—there aren’t many editors who can really appreciate what you write.”

“That could take forever. Can’t you send it to those same editors simultaneously, like with
Sea Miss
?”

“Very young writers were in when I did that.”

“They still are.”

“But you’re not twenty-three this time out, so it’s not really the same situation, is it? Look, if I submit one at a time, the book will arrive with the patina of the exclusive. You’re a boutique writer, and that’s how I need to pitch this. I’m going to get you an advance, but I’m also going to let them know we aren’t looking for body parts here. I know you’re not in it for the money.”

“I just want it published,” Eddie said softly before adding, “but I do need some money.”

“Of course. And this book is going to sell by word of mouth, by hand selling. I have a really good feeling about this one, Eddie. The only thing is, and this is important, if an interested editor wants to talk to you about creating a little more drama—around the events you already have, of course, I’m not talking a second plane crash—don’t dismiss it out of hand.”

“Right,” said Eddie. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

The phone call left Eddie in a peculiar mood, jittery and a bit deflated. At least, he told himself, she was going to try to sell the book. After
Vapor
, that hadn’t been a given. Still jumpy, he was unable to sit and read. The refrigerator held nothing much beyond Amanda’s fat-free yogurt, fruit, skim milk, white wine, lettuce, and blueberries. It wasn’t any great wonder that she was so goddamn thin.

He scanned the apartment, which evoked unpaid bills, and decided to take a long walk. What he needed was to see a friend who expected nothing from him. A few months ago, Jackson would have been his first choice, but he didn’t have the energy for him now and wasn’t certain he even liked his old pal. He sure as hell didn’t want to be around when Jackson got the call Eddie knew was coming. He pictured the new, big-time Jackson, talking about his enormous advance and the foreign-rights deals and the film-option nibbles. Eddie didn’t want to hear about the rewards soon to be heaped upon Jackson’s so-many-pages-a-day, plot-before-all regimen. This conclusion was not guilt-free—he remembered that Jackson had cheered him through every bottle of champagne after
Sea Miss
was accepted—but they were older now, living grown-up lives, playing for more complicated stakes.

He grabbed his jacket and headed out into the overcast day, walking the long cross-town blocks toward Hell’s Kitchen, stopping for a bag of bagels on his way. He lumbered through the theater streets, relatively still in mid-afternoon, except for a few waiters setting out the placards announcing prix fixe dinner specials and some out-of-costume performers carrying bags to their back-stage entrances. Eddie wondered if being in theater was as awful as trying to make it as a writer. This was likely, though no doubt that line of insanity held its own set of problems and annoyances: height taking precedence over talent in casting, temperamental associates, falling sick ahead of an audition. At least writers get to work alone, he concluded, and have their nights free for drinking.

After buzzing twice and hearing nothing, Eddie concluded that the ancient intercom in Henry’s building was busted. He hollered up as he tried to throw a stone, then another, then a small stick, four stories up. After rather too long, Henry’s shaggy head protruded from his window.

“I don’t want to interrupt your work,” Eddie called up.

He couldn’t hear what Henry said, but whatever it was, he was buzzed in.

Henry met him at the door, as breathless as if he’d been the one to hoof up the four flights of banister-free stairs.

“I don’t want to interrupt work on
Bailiff
,” Eddie repeated.

“It’s fine, fine. I’m due for a break. I’ve been working, well, working too hard. I am very close though, very, very close to having the first perfect New Realist novel.”

“That’s great Henry, just great.” Eddie summoned his enthusiasm and set the bagels on the tiny table. “Here, I’ve brought food.”

“Food,” Henry said, as though it were a new-fangled concept, a curiosity that had yet to be tested by time.

From the looks of him, Eddie could believe that food was so far in Henry’s past that he didn’t remember it. Eddie wished that he’d thought to get cream cheese or had brought his friend a large sandwich or pizza or side of beef.

Spitting poppy seeds, Henry spoke as though he had not had companionship since his last substantial meal. “Great, great, yes, great. Except that now I have every reason to doubt the very foundation and premise on which my New Realism is based.” He tossed Eddie the latest copy of
Swanky
and held up a cinnamon-raisin bagel. “Do you mind?”

“Knock yourself out,” Eddie said.

On the cover of the magazine was the notorious picture of dogs playing poker, except that semi-human faces had been photoshopped onto the faces of the dogs. Eddie turned to the table of contents and then the letters page. “Your fan letter! Congratulations.”

“But that’s just it. That’s the terrible thing. Reading that letter, enjoying it even, I realized that what I’m trying to do with fiction is utterly superficial. I’m right—but so what? I’m trite. I’ve said nothing more profound than if you mix red paint with yellow you get orange.”

“Not following you, my friend.”

Still chewing, Henry went on. “Don’t you see? I’ve said what everyone already knows. Everyone smart who’s thought about it, I mean. I’ve identified the symptoms of a problem evident to any reader. But I’ve done nothing to root out the problem. I have no solution. I’m nothing but an anodyne.”

“But the person who wrote this letter admired, hell, she adored your essay, your ideas. Look here: she uses the word ‘brilliant.’ And I hope you caught the fact that she signed her name Nancy Horny.”

“Exactly. One can spot an imposter by the absurdity of his fans.” Henry shoved the last quarter of bagel into the pocket of his cheek.

“So a silly and apparently randy girl wants to feel smart by writing
Swanky
and saying she liked your essay. So what? Accept her flattery and get hold of her email address if they’ll give it to you.”

“It’s not just the letter, Eddie. It’s the fiction in this issue. There’s a story by an emerging writer named Clarice Aames. It is, hands down, the most interesting piece of fiction I have read in a decade.”

“How old are you, Henry?” Eddie cocked his head. “Oh, never mind. Is it really that good?”

“It’s called ‘Bad Dog Séance.’ It does everything, in a dozen or so pages, that I’d hoped New Realism would do in my lifetime. Except that it’s not at all like New Realism. It’s a solution to the problems I merely name.” He paused to let his breathing catch up to his words. “I’ve never heard of this Clarice Aames, but all I can think about now is throwing myself at her feet. If I could just follow her around, just so my eyesight could follow her gaze, see what she sees—”

“I believe that’s called stalking. I take it she’s good-looking, then, this Clarice?”

“I have no idea, nor do I care. Fat or thin, fair or pimpled, eighteen or eighty. I’m in love. Really in love.”

Just as Eddie was about to explain to his friend that his absurd declaration was certainly the product of a famine of both stomach and heart, a rock hit the window hard enough to leave a thin, jagged fracture line in the glass.

Henry ignored the damage to his window and mumbled, “Could you buzz in whoever that is?”

What seemed like a good while later, Whelpdale heaved into the room. As if on cue, he said: “Whatever you do, never trust a woman. Stay away from them. Avoid them at all cost. If you must consort, make it an affair of the genitalia only. Guard your hearts, brothers!”

Hearing the word ‘genitalia’ issue from Whelpdale’s fleshy mouth nauseated Eddie. It was also the case that he had never quite forgiven the fat writer for stealing his stage minutes at the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference. Not to mention the fact that Whelpdale’s goals in life were to make a living as a fiction writer without actually writing any fiction, and to make himself the center of any conversation or situation he was peripheral to. Nevertheless, Whelpdale’s voice held true pain. Eddie rationalized his reluctant sympathy this way: just because I eat steak doesn’t mean I wouldn’t pity the agony of some poor cow. He gave up his chair, the sole comfortable one in the place, and joined Henry on the piece of foam they pretended was a sofa.

Whelpdale wept—real tears and many of them—into his plump hands.

To help him along, help him get it out and then get out, Eddie said, “Girl from Birmingham broke your heart?”

Whelpdale nodded into his cupped palms, his crying still audible.

“Get a little bit of your money along the way?”

Eddie tried to say this in a soft tone that would imply that every man had trodden a few steps in those shoes. And though his own situation was not identical, Eddie’s shoulders lowered at the thought that he could understand woman trouble all too well.

“I’m very sorry. You won’t believe it just now, but you’ll get over her soon and find a much better one.”

Even as he passed along this masculine wisdom, he hated Amanda for being the most attractive woman he would ever have.

“I think I’m through with the softer sex this time.” Whelpdale pulled a creased letter from his coat pocket. “I feel monstrously unlucky. She was my perfect woman. I should never have let her go back to Alabama, not for a week, not for a day. She got back together with an old boyfriend down there. If I had kept her near, captive audience and all, I believe I could have made her love me permanently.” He unfolded the letter and pushed it toward Eddie and Henry. “Read it for yourself.”

Eddie shook his head. “That’s not a good idea. You should burn it so you never read it again.”

“I just want you to see what she’s like. She seems quite torn up about it herself. She blames only herself. Oh God, she’s so gorgeous.”

Eddie listened to him detail the beauty of an apparently anemic and austere-looking young woman with a hick twang. When Whelpdale started to describe her sexual tastes, Eddie held up his hand. “You’ll be sorry later if you go on.”

Henry displayed the new
Swanky
, not mentioning his own fan-mail but downright bubbling about the remarkable Clarice Aames. Whelpdale’s crying diminished to sniffing, and he talked some about the new features of his website and his plans to compose a novel-writing manual. This cheered him up sufficiently to depart with a bit of dignity.

After he left, Henry asked, “Do you think it’s possible that his girlfriend was actually decent in the first place? Or was it a scam all along?”

“Anything is possible in women,” Eddie replied. “Speaking of which, are you getting out and about at all?”

Henry laughed. “Missed a chance not long ago. But as soon as the novel’s done, I might just write a fan letter of my own.”

“The mysterious and possibly lovely Clarice Aames?”

“I’m mostly just kidding, but I really would like to meet her. How many people are there in the world I can talk to about what I do?”

“Four?” Eddie said, pushing the rest of the bagels toward his friend. “Or is it three? Tell me, have you ever thought about doing something else?”

Henry’s grin faded and he blinked slowly. “Something else?”

“Besides writing. It’s all I ever wanted to do, but now I’m not sure why.”

“Who was it who said that writers write because the poor bastards can’t do anything else?” Henry poked through the bag and extracted an onion bagel. “Or did he say that writers write because the poor bastards can’t help themselves?”

Eddie watched his friend. If he ignored Henry’s Ramones tee-shirt and imagined a white smock instead, he could see an eighteenth-century poet: thin frame, pale cheeks, large, heavy-lashed eyes. “Do you think it was easier,” he asked, “back in the days when artists had patrons?”