realized that he was easily placated by a regular string of verbal apologies. The more she ignored his banging, the more hair-trigger the banging became. He’d pound when she dropped an apple, walked two steps in her stack-heeled boots. Harry was unpleasant but she understood he was lonely and that their ritual comforted him, connected the noises of her life with the silence of his and that even if the connection was relentless complaint and apology, their call-and-response interaction settled him.
Still, when was he going to get a little deaf? Too feeble to live on his own? Sometimes she fantasized about Harry dying and his family offering his apartment to her at a good price, well-below-market-value. His son liked her; he called her sometimes to make sure Harry was doing okay. He lived in Chicago and didn’t get back as often as he should. If she owned Harry’s apartment, she would break through the floor, put in a simple spiral staircase like the people on the D line down the hall had done. She’d have two floors and never have to move again. She could have a real office with an actual library. A guest room.
Of course, even given some kind of ridiculously discounted insider price, she was in no position to buy anything—not without The Nest. Thinking about The Nest made her think about her new pages (they were good!) and then about Leo, which led back to Dream Tucker, and then she lit a joint. She wondered if Leo would stop by the office today. Maybe she’d ask him to lunch and take the plunge. She imagined handing him her new work and him reading and reacting with enthusiasm and excitement, saying I knew you had this in you!
He’d been her biggest fan once. He’d watched out for her. She remembered when she was a freshman in high school, Leo a senior, and she’d let Conor Bellingham do things to her in the backseat of his car in the school parking lot after a meeting for the literary magazine; Leo was the editor, she was on staff. As she and Conor made out, she was simultaneously ecstatic and disappointed. Ecstatic because she’d had her eye on Conor for weeks. In addition to being handsome and popular and the class president, he’d submitted a shockingly good story to the magazine and she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, or him, or the last line of the story: “Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.” Disappointed because he refused to talk about writing. She didn’t get it. Or how someone who, frankly, seemed a little doltish could write something so moving.
“Have some more,” he’d said, passing a small flask. The flask was gleaming silver and heavy in her hand. “Irish whiskey. My father’s. The good stuff.”
“Some of my favorite writers are Irish,” she’d said.
“Yeah? Well, I guarantee they drink this stuff.”
“Who are your favorite writers?” She smiled brightly, trying to get him to look at her and not out the window.
Conor shook his head and laughed a little. “You have a one-track mind, you know that?”
She shrugged and bent her nose to the flask and breathed deeply, imagining she was smelling Ireland—the surprisingly sweet fermentation and then the quick sting and heat, the heady aroma of peat and smoke.
“To the old sod,” she’d said, tipping the flask and taking a long sip. She liked it. Conor liked it. Conor liked her! She drank some more and they laughed, about what exactly she wasn’t sure, and then they were kissing again and his hands started moving lower and she stiffened. “Relax,” he said. She took a long sip from the flask and then another. She could feel something on the cold, steely surface. She held it up toward the window and in the light of a streetlamp read the engraving.
“What does ‘Trapper’ mean?” she asked him.
“Nothing. A silly nickname.”
“I think I should probably go.” She realized she was getting very drunk.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“Look outside.” Her voice sounded thick. “It’s starting to snow. I should get home.” Out the window, it was dark and she was having trouble focusing. Conor moved closer, his hand successfully creeping beneath her skirt this time.
“‘The newspapers were right,’” he said, whispering into her ear, “‘snow was general all over Ireland.’”
“Joyce,” she whispered, turning back to him.
“Yes,” he said. “Joyce. I like James Joyce. So there’s a writer I like.” And that was it. Her resolve melted and