his eyes away from the page long enough to verify his suspicion, he thought that even the critics were falling under his spell.
He was almost to the end, to the place where the hunter bursts through the door to find his little angel tossed like a rag doll near the furnace, and he could feel the emotion building in the room, even though every person present had already read the book, so nothing he was reading was a surprise. What they were responding to was the passion he himself had for the story; they were eating up the way he felt when he had written it, when his fingers flew over the keyboard as the girl’s fate revealed itself to both the hunter and the writer.
It was a flawless reading, a perfect meeting of author passion and audience expectation, and when he was finished, when the hunter’s anguished cry ripped itself from the page and tore something from the hearts of each one perched on the edge of his or her seat, CJ felt a sense of accomplishment that was seldom rivaled, except when he was sitting alone in his office crafting the words.
The first patters of applause started in that pregnant moment before he closed the book and looked up, and it grew as he took another sip from the almost empty water glass. He rarely enjoyed readings, and he liked them even less now that his books sold well enough without them. But early in his career, both his editor and his agent had impressed upon him the importance of doing them. He supposed that it was simply an ingrained part of the publishing business, and he always felt some guilt if he considered cutting these face-to-face sessions out of his schedule, even though he’d received the National Book Award for his last novel, with one of his books having been made into a movie. He was in that comfortable spot where he’d achieved commercial success without sacrificing his literary style. Still, all of it could be snatched away if he neglected his responsibilities to his fans. But this time, at least in the dream, he was enjoying the experience, and was even looking forward to the Q and A, though he knew the first question was likely to be about the title.
As he gazed into the audience, he noticed the spotlight more, and it bothered him, especially now that the house lights seemed to have faded to black without his realizing it. Looking out into seats he could see only dimly, it was difficult to pick out individual people. What he saw were the small movements of clapping hands that, in the dark, looked like disparate blurs.
Then, through the blackness, as it became more difficult to see the moving hands, and as the sound of clapping fell away, one noise began to grow in volume, eclipsing all others. A man’s voice, and from somewhere out in the audience it called out to CJ. As he listened, the man CJ could not see began to catalog out loud all the faults with The Buffalo Hunter. It was a litany of imperfections that marked it as a fatally flawed work of literature, and with each flaw there was a compelling argument to support his analysis.
Onstage, bathed in the spotlight, CJ had no defense against the assault. He felt naked. It was difficult to listen to the voice go on about his book, tearing it apart chapter by chapter, scene by scene. The thing that really hurt was that CJ found he couldn’t fault the man a single point. The more the man talked, the more CJ came to believe that the book he had only a few minutes ago considered his best work was in fact just another piece of second-rate fiction.
It was a humbling position, and not one to which CJ was accustomed. He wanted nothing more than to make it stop. Consequently, he did the first thing that came to him. He lifted the closed book from the podium and started down the steps, heading down the center aisle and toward the voice. He could barely make out the people on either side of him as he passed the rows of seats. After he had walked by perhaps fifteen rows, it was as if a small spotlight came on, illuminating a single person. CJ recognized him as a writer for the Southern Review. The man had attended a number of CJ’s readings, and up to now had