The Thieves of Manhattan - By Adam Langer Page 0,34

to a sick empty feeling, as if I no longer had to anticipate the worst; it was already happening. I had been invited to read at what I thought was one of the most influential literary venues in New York, but on a night when it wouldn’t matter; I felt like Crash Davis in Bull Durham, breaking the record for home runs, but in the minor leagues, where nobody gave a damn.

Still, I told myself, at least Miri had chosen my work, might even select one of my stories for inclusion in The Stimulator, might put my photograph on her “Stimulating Events” page. Searching for more hopeful signs amid my gathering sense of doom, I asked if Miri would mind if I read a new story tonight.

No, Miri said, she trusted my judgment. And when I pointed out that I was glad she trusted me even though she had only just met me, Miri said, well, if she didn’t trust my judgment, she certainly trusted Anya’s.

I flinched. “Which Anya?”

“Petrescu,” Miri said. “When I told her we had an open slot, she suggested I call you.” Miri asked if I’d heard which publisher had won the auction for We Never Talked About Ceauşescu. And after I said I hadn’t, Miri said she’d love to chat more, but she wanted to start on time, so she could get home.

I downed my drink in one gulp, and then Faye poured me another. “Thanks for the introduction,” she snapped. I considered apologizing but was too involved in my own thoughts. From that moment forward, I walked through the evening in a daze, half-deaf to the applause that crackled through the bar after Miri introduced Hazel Chu, who stepped to the podium and began to read.

Several weeks and a dozen lifetimes ago, I would have come here with Anya and we would have mercilessly mocked Hazel Chu—her declamatory, pause-laden style peculiar to the literary reading form, all diction and no drama, her Roget’s vocabulary, describing clouds as “cruciferous” against an “oleaginous blue sky.” We would have giggled at her tortured metaphors, obviously flogged in some workshop; we would have kicked each other every time Hazel used the word sinuous.

Tonight, I found no humor in Hazel’s reading. She may have read for an hour or just a few minutes; to me, it was all one endless stream of words and laughter, then applause. Hazel may have written something brilliant or dreadful—I had no idea. All I knew was that one moment, KGB was full and the crowd was alive and Faye and I were at the bar and Hazel was at the podium; the next moment, I was at the podium, and the bar was just about empty. Hazel had taken the audience with her, save for the few stragglers who didn’t seem to realize they were allowed to leave before both authors had read. Even Miri exited noisily while I was thanking her for her “generous” introduction: “Although I don’t know his work, I know people who do.”

My recollection of standing at podiums in the glare of spotlights during open mikes was of being unable to see individual audience members, just blackness and glare. But tonight, I could see everything, as if I were appearing on a stage after a show was over and the houselights had been turned up. I could see Faye, and I could see the bartender; mostly, I saw empty chairs. One seat at the end of the bar was occupied by a man in a dark gogol and a broad-brimmed capote who didn’t even look up when I stepped to the microphone.

I smiled in Faye’s direction as I prepared to read the dedication of “After Van Meegeren.” But before I got the words out, I heard a clattering. The bar’s door swung open, and I heard a loud, whispered saw-ree, saw-ree as Anya Petrescu made her way past the empty chairs. Her beautiful, ruthless eyes sparkled as she took a seat in the previously empty front row. She put her bag on the floor, then looked up at me, smiling. I smiled back at her, then looked over to Faye, who was regarding me with an increasingly contemptuous glare. I could almost see the warmth and trust she had begun to show me evaporating. Veronica had arrived; Betty was throwing back hooch.

I skipped the dedication.

I read my story more quickly than I had rehearsed it, skipped over parts I now saw were repetitive, glanced at Anya, then at Faye, before