 Good start. So Valerie Martin is the author of 11 novels, four collections of short fiction and a biography of St. Francis of Assisi. Her many awards include Britain's prestigious Orange Prize for Property and the Kafka Prize for Mary Riley. Toni Morrison called property a fresh, unsentimental look at what slave owning does to and for one's interior life. The New York Times said of Mary Riley that Martin's treatment of Robert Louis Stevenson's story actually succeeds in ways Stevenson himself could not have brought off and might well have admired. And the New York Times also called her most recent novel, which I highly recommend, The Ghost of the Mary Celeste, a sly and masterly historical novel, a page-turner written with intelligence and flair. I will tell you that beyond her sly humor and engrossing plots, her fiction makes you think and think again as it takes you into the worlds of Britain's literary fiction, pre-Civil War Louisiana, Tuscany, New York City, and the great depths of the ocean. She is a writer of huge range who asks all the important questions, questions that probe the dark terrors of the soul, ontological questions that probe the mysteries of death, moral questions that probe the destructiveness of slavery, and whimsical questions such as, are ghosts real and can these fictitious events be true? I had read Mary Riley in a collection of Valerie's short fiction titled The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories Before I Met Her. And when a lucky accident put our offices next to each other, I quickly discovered she was not only a great writer, but also a great teacher and a wise, generous, and funny colleague. So I'm honored to introduce Valerie Martin to you. Yes, it's nice to be here. It's lovely here, how fortunate we are. And thank you for your fine introduction. That quote was suggested that Robert Louis Stevenson might admire me, whenever I read that, I think. Probably not, but it's nice. He was a generous writer. I'm going to read you a short story. It's not a new story. It's collected in my new collection. This is a beautiful British edition, isn't it lovely? Which is 12 stories that I pulled from the various volumes of stories that I've published over the years. I really actually have not written that many stories. But this story is from a collection that was originally titled The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories. And they're all stories about artists of some kind. They're either fiction writers or sculptors or dancers or painters. And this particular story is about a painter. I wanted to read it, though, because I know we're going to be looking at the movie of Mary Riley, about which I have mixed feelings that I'll be happy to share with you at length. And I'll try to control myself. I actually have nothing to complain about. And also, I know that you've all read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I was very excited to come and talk to people who have all just read Stevenson's wonderful novella. It's just really, I reread it again. And I'm always amazed at how modern it is, how confident he is, how that narrative voice on the first pages, it's totally authoritative and charming. And I was thinking a lot about voice in general and that I'd like to talk with you in classes or in general, just about the whole quality of the authoritative voice and what it is that makes us trust a narrator. We can also speak at length about what makes a story a classic story, which is what happened to Stevenson with Jekyll and Hyde within a year. It was probably translated into most languages and began its long trek through being turned into plays, being turned into films, being turned into a musical. It just had a life that leaped right off those pages and never looked back. But this story is a story with a first person narrator. I thought I do want to read a story with a first person narrator and a female narrator. A lot of my narrators are men these days. I'm not sure why. I like them, the narrators. I like them all. And this story is a voice that is looking back. Whenever you start to write in the first person, the next question you have to ask is where in time is this narrative voice in relationship to the story? Am I talking about right now, which case you used the present tense? Did it happen last week? Did it happen last year? Is the narrator much older looking back? And so this story is a narrator who's looking back. It's not too clear how far ahead of her story she is, but I think not too far, because some of the details are still clearly engaging, at least her moral imagination. So it's a story called Beethoven. And it's a New Orleans story. I'm from New Orleans. When I wrote this story, I hadn't written about New Orleans in a long time, so it sort of took me back to a world that's really always alive in my imagination. And where is it? Beethoven, here it is, 99. And after I read it, if you have questions, I'm happy to talk with you a bit. Beethoven. There's something oriental about you, Phillips, said as I got out of the bed. This was in the 60s before oriental became the wrong word for Asian. And there's nothing remotely Asian about my appearance. I'm blonde, blue-eyed. I concluded that Philip was referring to some perception he had about my character. Philip was desperate, but I didn't know it yet. As I passed the easel and the paint truck on my way to the bathroom, I had to step over a stack of wallpaper books. Let me get with this mic. This was Phil's latest innovation, painting on wallpaper samples. His friend Sid couldn't stop ridiculing him about the wallpaper. But Philip and Sid, Philip said Sid was just jealous. Though they appeared to dislike each other, Phil and Sid went out drinking regularly, and these evenings inevitably generated into bitter arguments that left Philip muttering until dawn. Why do you go with him, I asked once, to which he responded with no hint of irony or friends? Phil was 30. I was barely 20. Everything about him interested me. He was a man, not a boy. He was my introduction to the adult world I longed to enter, the real world, apart from college, which I'd left after one year, feeling the need to throw myself, if not upon thorns, at least upon something that would leave an impression. My parents at first furious then disappointed had become resigned. I was required to visit them once a week, Sunday dinner, which was fine with me as I was eating poorly on my own, and I enjoyed being idolized by my two younger brothers, who thought having a job and an apartment in the French Quarter was the absolute limit of sophistication. The fact that my job was waiting tables in my apartment, a dark, roach-infested hole, did not dampen their enthusiasm. After dinner, they walked me to the bus stop, regaling me with stories about the rituals of high school, which they made me promise never to tell my parents. When the bus came, I hugged them as if I was going off into a perilous adventure, instead of just to cross town to meet Phillip at a smoke-filled bar, to watch Phillip work his way down one more rung of the ladder that stretched between desperation and despair. I had begun to understand that my expectations of the world were unrealistic. I had imagined that as a working single woman, I would attract the attention of a working single man, who would fall in love, and he would ask me to throw my lot in with him. Then I would leave my apartment and move into his. I wasn't picturing anything palatial. Two rooms would have been acceptable, especially if there were windows. Phillip's friend, Sid, lived with his girlfriend, Wendy, in two rooms. They had a tiny kitchen, a decent bath, and their bedroom opened into a seedy patio. I assumed for no reason that the place had been Sid's first, that Wendy had come to him there. Later, of course, I found out the reverse was true. Now it strikes me that the most touching thing about myself in that period was this pathetic assumption which must have come from reading fairy tales about princesses who, like rabbits, are always taken to the husband's abode for breeding purposes. Phillip's apartment constituted a serious obstacle to the maintenance of my supposition. We lived in the same rundown building. He was in the hot, stuffy attic at the top. I was at the bottom, near the narrow side alley where the perpetually overflowing garbage cans were lined up, lovingly attended by swarms of flies and the occasional rap. That was where I met Phil, struggling to drag his can out to the street. I'll help you if you'll help me, I said. He started, he hadn't noticed my approach, and said his can down hard on the concrete regarding me reproachfully. I stepped back toward him into a thin slice of light that filtered through the wrought iron gate from the street. I don't need help, he said. Then with a flicker of an apologetic smile, he'd been rude and now regretted it, he added. But I'll help you when I come back. After we got the garbage out, we went for coffee. We talked about what a jerk our landlord was, and I told Phil about my job. When we got back to the building, he asked me if I'd like to go up and see his paintings. As I stepped across the threshold of Phillip's attic apartment, I was conscious of entering a world where chaos was the rule. I glanced over my shoulder with a sense of bidding sweet reason goodbye. Phil weaned toward me as he pulled in the door, his expression mildly expectant, and I understood that he found nothing appalling in the broiling havoc of his domestic arrangements. The heat, freighted with turpentine fumes, assaulted me as fierce as a room full of tigers, but Phillip brushed past me easily on his way to the air conditioner, an ancient rusty metal box perched on a rotted sill, the wall beneath it permanently stained by a bloom of mildew. It came on with a gasp, a metallic groan, and settled down to a roar. Phillip turned to me gesturing to the machine. It doesn't work too good, he said, and it leaks on the guy's balcony downstairs so he gets pissed off when I run it. Tell him to put a plant under it, I suggested. That's not a bad idea, he said. That's actually a good idea. I had taken one then another step into the room and could now be said to be inside it. Because the windows were all dormers, the light lay in thick swaths, leaving the rest in deep shadow. It was twice as big as my apartment, but there was half as much space. As my eyes adjusted to the combination of brightness and gloom, I saw that there was a pattern to the disorder. Everything having to do with painting was in the light with living in the shadow. There was also a difference in the quality of identifiable stuff lining the walls. Some was in piles, some in neat stacks. Phillip disappeared behind a wooden screen draped with clothing. Would you like something to drink? Just water, I said, advancing another step. Near the screen was a card table with two metal folding chairs, which looked like a safe destination. The table was littered with newspapers, a plate of cigarette butts, a mug with coffee dregs in the bottom, and incongruously, a bright orange satsuma. I took a seat facing the imposing easel in the brightest spot near the windows. There were canvases stacked about, only a few facing out. Their subjects were street scenes, buildings. There was a watercolor sketch of a stand of crepe myrtles that looked highly competent to me. The unfinished canvas on the easel was a moody study of rooftops. Phillip appeared with two glasses of tap water. No ice, he said. The freezer doesn't work. I took the glass nodding toward the window. Those are good, I said. To my relief, Phillip showed no artistic prickliness or vanity, no skepticism about my critical expertise. That's the view from the roof, he said of the work in progress. When it gets too hot at night, I go out there. We sat and talked. After a while, Phillip put on a record. He put a record on the phonograph. It was the popular after bathing at Baxter's and I ate the satsuma. When the time came for me to leave for my shift, he escorted me downstairs to my apartment. On the staircase, he rested a hand on my shoulder. In the shady patio, he brushed my hair back with his fingertips at the door. He passed his arm around my waist and kissed me. It was a slow kiss, unlike any I had previously experienced more tentative than exploratory, serious, and courteous. What time do you get off, he said? The venues for professional artists in our city were limited. And though I was not a student of the subject, I knew Phillip didn't fit into any of them. He was not sufficiently avant-garde to show in the uptown galleries where there were openings with wine and cheese and where the buyers were called clients and the paintings investments. He wasn't bad enough to please the tourists who fluttered along with the pigeons on Jackson Square, having their portraits done in chalk or dickering over the prices of ghastly renditions of patios and bizarre bayous scenes in which the sky was an unnatural shade of green. He might have done commercial art. He had the technical skill, but he disdained such employment. He had learned his craft at the Neil McMurdy School of Art, a private academy run by the eponymous painter who was occasionally commissioned to do large public works. I had wild away many a Sunday morning in my childhood, gazing up at four enormous toes which protruded from beneath the tablecloth at the last supper, part of an alter fresco executed by the esteemed McMurdy. The provenance of those toes was the subject of my earliest attempts at art appreciation. Were they attached to the savior or to the fellow next to him? My parents seemed to think McMurdy was the Louisiana equivalent of Caravaggio, but Phillip said his work was overrated. Still, he recalled his time at the school with a romantic nostalgia, the sentence that began when we were at McMurdy's generally ended with a sigh. He had met Sid at McMurdy's. The standoff that was their friendship had begun there when they were both promising. I knew everyone knew at a glance that Phillip was very poor, but I believed as I assumed he did that this was a temporary condition. What money he had came from a small gallery on Decatur Street where the paintings were not so much displayed as crammed, often without frames, on every available inch of wall space. We were standing in this air conditioned refuge one steaming afternoon in July when I first heard about Ingrid. Phillip was looking at a mawkish rendition of a sad clown, a woman wearing a white costume with puffy black pom-poms for buttons, a white face, red downturned mouth, pointy white hat. The background is solid red, the same shade as the mouth. I've never liked anything about clowns and this painting seemed designed to confirm my distaste. This is Ingrid's, Phil said to the owner, Walter Stack, who looked up from a bit of canvases he was arranging according to size and said, sure. She's still with Hazel? Sure, Walter said. He returned his attention to the pictures. Phillip frowned at the frowning clown. Hazel's all wrong for her, he said. Walter abandoned the canvases and gave Phillip a look I took to be sympathetic, though there was an edge of pity in it that made me anxious. He leaned a painting of a flower pot. The paint was laid on like butter. Against the counter and nodding at the heavy cardboard portfolio, Phillip had pressed against his side, said, what have you got for me? More wallpaper? Phillip lifted the portfolio to the counter and opened it diffidently. His shoulders slumped forward in a way I had not seen before. He lacks confidence, I thought. I have a few on the wallpaper, he said. I'm finding that an interesting medium. Walter began pulling out the various sheets laying them side by side. I sold the Beethoven, he said. Do you have any more Beethoven? Not this time, Phillip said. I could do another one. Do a few, Walter said. I could sell maybe three or four. I can do that, Phillip said. He turned to me taking the small canvas he had wrapped in a pillowcase, which I held against my chest. He placed it carefully on the counter and pulled away the cloth. It was a painting of the rooftops outside his studio window. I thought it the best thing he had. Walter leaned over it skeptically, working his lips as if he were chewing something sour. You see, I can't sell this, he said. It could be anywhere. If you put the church in it, maybe. Taurus, one stuff that says, this is New Orleans, I was there. And they don't want anything dark. This is too dark. Phillip nodded, folding the pillowcase back over the canvas. I had the sense that this scene of crude rejection had taken place many times before, that he had in fact expected it. But it was new to me and it sickened me. What about Beethoven I piped up to my own surprise? Beethoven doesn't say this is New Orleans, but you sold that. Both men shifted their attention to me with a combination of interest and incredulity a cat might expect should it suddenly express an opinion. It pleased me to see that the balance in Phillip's expression was weighted toward interest, whereas incredulity tipped the scales in Walter's alarmed and thorough regard. Beethoven, he sputtered, Beethoven says Beethoven. Everyone knows him, everyone loves him. He's like Einstein or Marilyn Monroe. He dismissed me with a wave of his fleshy hand adding to Phillip, bring me Einstein or Marilyn. I'll sell the pants off of him. As we staggered out into the blinding light of the street, Phillip mumbled, I can do a few more Beethoven. Who is Ingrid, I asked. Ingrid was Phillip's former girlfriend who had shared an apartment with him, not the current attic, but a larger space in a building close to Jackson Square. This was convenient as they were both doing portraits for tourists, pushing out their paint carts early in the morning, sharing the street with horse carriages rather than risking the flood of refuse swirling across the sidewalks and the water curtains pouring off the balconies as the hose bearing residents washed down their terrain in preparation for another sun scorched day. It surprised me to learn that Phillip had plied his art on the square and he admitted he had done it in desperation and not for long because he had no knack for pleasing tourists. They did not like his portraits or his person and haggled over the agreed upon price or even refused to pay. Ingrid's good at it, he said. She has a real professional pat her down. They eat it up. So she's still out there. Sure, Phillip said, she has a license, the space right across from the cabilda. It didn't take much probing to learn that Ingrid, after two years of cohabitation during which Phillip confessed, they had fought all the time, had left Phillip for a woman, a bartender at the anchor, a sleazy establishment frequented by divers. This was Hazel who was in Phillip's view all wrong for Ingrid. He was perfectly candid in his assessment of this failed relationship and seemed relieved to talk about it. I felt hardly a twinge of jealousy but I was curious to see this woman who had rejected Phil and as it was easily done, I had only to alter my usual walk to the restaurant by a few blocks. The next morning, I slipped from the alley into the cool shade of the cabilda portico and half hidden by a column observed my predecessor in Phil's affections. Or rather, I observed her back for she was facing the square, seated on a fold up stool before her easel, her tray of pastels on a plastic cart next to her, one hand lazily conveying a cigarette back and forth between the tin ash tray on the shelf and her mouth. She wore a halter dress, her back bony and tan was bare. Her thick blonde hair poorly cut and none too clean fell about her shoulders in clumps. On her easel hung on the iron fence, prompt against plastic cartons on the pavement near her feet were samples of her wares, garish pastel portraits of famous personalities, Barbara Streisand, Einstein, Mick Jagger, Sophia Lauren. Her specialty was a bizarre twinkling in the eye and a Mona Lisa serenity at the corners of the mouth. The backgrounds were all the same, a hasty scrawl of sky blue chalk. As I watched three tourists, a young man and two teenage girls paused to examine Barbara Streisand. The artist ignored them for one last drag on the cigarette then stabbed it out in the ash tray and added a remark to the group. I couldn't hear what she said, but she had shifted on her stool and I could see her profile, which was all planes and angles, the cheekbones jutting over deep hollows, the nose, blade-like, the chin, a sharp wedge bone. Her eyes, like those of her celebrities, had a chilling glitter to them. The tourists were not dismayed. In fact, they lingered for some moments talking to her. The taller of the girls left twice. The young man appeared fascinated and ill at ease. Were they considering a portrait? As I watched the scene, it occurred to me that Ingrid had no idea who I was and there was no necessity for stealth. I stepped out from behind my column and sat down on the wide step next to the elderly black man who was tenderly unpacking a saxophone. This square was the most public of spaces, designed in order that strangers might eye one another at their leisure. The tourists had evidently asked for directions. Ingrid raised her arm and pointed toward the river. After a brief exchange, they walked away. The taller girl, looking back with a shy wave as they went, I got up and wandered toward the square, pausing to smile upon a child, emptying a bag of popcorn over the bobbing heads of an aggressive flock of pigeons. I turned back at the gate to the square, pretending an interest in the facade of the cathedral. This put me very close to Ingrid, who was occupied in lighting another cigarette, clearly a heavy smoker. She had the pinched skin around the nose, the bloodless lips, probably a serious drinker too, judging by the glassiness of her eyes, this light tremor in her hands. I pictured her kissing Philip, but it was difficult. She was so coarse and she was several inches taller than he was. Two plumes of smoke issued from her nose. She's like some dreadful harpy, I thought, waving the smoke away with one hand. She said clearly, that's a nice skirt. Who was she talking to? I followed her eyes, which left the easel in front of her and turned with surprising force upon me, moving swiftly up from my skirt over my waist, my breast to my astonished face. Her thin lips pulled back into a ghostly smile full of amusement at my discomposure, which was complete. I was so flummoxed, I took a step backward and collided with the fence. It fits you well, she added. The thanks, I said lamely, then recovered my footing and fled into the square. I didn't run, but I made directly for the opposite gate. I crossed the street quickly and threw myself down at the farthest table in the cafe du Monde. So this was ingred. Though I never actually saw Philip pick up a brush or pencil, in the next week his apartment sprouted a crop of Beethoven's. There he was, blowering from behind a chair, propped atop a stack of books face to face with himself across the kitchen table. Phil had gotten a new supply of wallpaper sample books, which were scattered around the easel, splayed open to his various selections. Sometimes when we were having coffee, he hauled one of these books into his lap and thumbed through it as we talked. The samples provided the atmosphere of each portrait, swirling paisley, pointillist, pastoral. Philip worked the designs right into his subjects, coat sleeves and collar. But the face remained the same, instantly recognizable. The lunatics thinning unkempt hair, the overgrown brows, the pugilistic glare, the scowling lips, the brutish jaw, reminding his audience that this was the son of a drunken thug, the epitome of the romantic, the scourge of the dining room, the enemy of livery, the doom of the aristocracy, the death of manners. What is it you like about Beethoven I asked Phil one night when we were perched on the roof smoking cigarettes? The later portets, he said, some of the symphonies, the fifth, the seventh, the ninth, everybody likes those. No, I said, not the music. What is it about his face that you like? Phil considered my question. Mosquito landed on his arm, and he brushed it off with the back of his hand. It's easy to draw, he said. As the summer burned on, I began to hate my job. I wasn't good at it, and my boss had noticed. I could never remember who ordered what, and I could carry only two cups of coffee at a time, whereas Betty, who had worked for three years, could carry four. Once I set a tray of sandwiches and drinks down on a portable serving table, and the whole thing tipped over onto the floor. I sometimes forgot to squirt the air sats whipped cream on the bread pudding. If the diners were impatient or rude, as because of my ineptitude they often were, I became sullen. I worked for tips, we all did, and I wasn't doing very well. One night after a particularly miserable shift, during which I had knocked over a water glass while serving a bowl of gumbo to a miserly spinster, a regular who disliked me, Phil and I were sitting on the roof batting our hands at the humid, bug-laden air and drinking lukewarm beer. I complained about my job, about my boss, about the inheritance in the kitchen, about my dislike of the customers, and my refusal to curry favor to get bigger tips. It doesn't work anyway, I said. They know I'm faking it, and they hate me for it. You should never fake it, he said. If you can't be authentic doing what you're doing, you should do something else. I'm sure that's true, I said, though I wasn't sure at all, but this is the job I have. You should read SART, he said. Inauthenticity is a fatal disease, it kills you one day at a time. So you think I should quit my job? The option is to take it seriously, engage in it, become it. When you're a waitress, become a waitress, and nothing else. This was the first and probably the only advice Phil ever gave me. I drank my beer and mulled it over. It didn't occur to me that Phil was unlikely to be a source of a recipe for successful living. And there was something in his formula, be engaged, or be damned, that struck me as eminently reasonable. It still does. I had not until that moment identified myself simply as what I was, a waitress, and not a very good one. It's not easy, I said, meaning my job. It's odd, isn't it, Phil said. You'd think it would be hard to fake it, but evidently it isn't. He held out his hand to the rooftop, spread like open books around us. Sometimes when I sit out here, he said, I think about what's really going on under every one of those roofs. That's the reason I like to paint this view. It's the lid of the problem. Look how close together they are. It wouldn't take much to burn the whole quarter down. It's happened before. He extracted a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket, his lighter from his pants. There's a flashpoint down there somewhere. Sometimes I think, if I just dropped a match in the right place, I'd get an exhaled mouthful of smoke. I considered the vision, flames leaping from the windows bursting through the rooftops, the screams of the desperate residents clinging to the rickety staircases jumping from the raw line balconies to the stone courtyards below. Then you'd see some authentic behavior, Phil concluded. I tried taking Phil's advice, but my efforts to become a waitress only made me more disgusted with myself at the end of my shift. When I counted out the paltry bills in my apron pocket, Phil was poor too, but at least he was doing what he wanted to do. Except for the weekly visits to my family, I spent my spare time with him, and I was comfortable with him as I had never been with the high-spirited college boys who were like thoughtless children spinning about in circles on the lawn intent on disorienting their senses. Phil was frugal, modest, and he seemed to personally like me. When I arrived at his door, he was genuinely pleased by the sight of me. When we went out together, he was attentive. His eyes didn't wander the room looking for something more interesting. Walter Stack took five of the Beethoven's, and in the next few weeks he sold three, which constituted a windfall for Philip. He was relieved to have the money. It was enough to pay his back rent and splurge on a bottle of wine, which we drank with the undercooked chicken cacciatore I whipped up in my gloomy kitchen. But something about this very limited success made Phil irritable and anxious. The fact that only three had sold was evidence that he need do no more. The craze was over. However, if the two remaining sold, as Walter expected they would, then he would be condemned to produce more. And the truth was, he was already sick of Beethoven. If he weren't careful, he would be the guy who did Beethoven, which evidently struck him as in a appalling fate. You don't have to do nothing but Beethoven, I protested. Beethoven could be a sideline. I'm not a printmaker, Phil snapped. I don't do editions. Every painting is different. It has to be. One leads to the other. Didn't Monet do a lot of water lilies, I suggested, hopefully? And a series of Char Cathedral too. That was the same subject over and over. Phil gave me a guarded look, which encouraged me. Don't artists always do a lot of studies before they finish a big project? Maybe all the Beethoven's are just a warm-up for the big one. Phil drained his glass and poured out another full one. That's ridiculous, he said. You like to paint the rooftops again and again, I persisted. You said yourself, you don't tire of that. Well, that's the point, isn't it? He said, every time I look out the window, it's different. The light has changed. It's cloudy or clear or raining. It's alive. Beethoven is dead. That shut me up. I pushed the chicken around with my fork, sipped my wine, keeping my eyes down. And I'm no Monet, he said this resignedly, as if he didn't want to hurt my feelings. I've never been much interested, as some women are, in trying to make something out of a man and seeing his promise and compelling him to live up to it. I figured Phil was an artist and I wasn't, so he probably knew more about being one than I did. Everyone agreed that artists were by their, that artists were by their nature difficult people. Maybe Phil's problem was that he wasn't difficult enough. He certainly wasn't egotistical, but he was stubborn. He did no more Beethoven that summer and I said nothing about it. He started doing self-portraits on the wallpaper samples, choosing some of the ugliest designs in the books, dark swirls and metallic stripes, paper for a child's room with romping pink elephants chasing beach balls. There was something sinister about these pictures. The likeness was good, but the eyes were wrong, unfocused, and as light-less as a blind man. As soon as they were done, Phil put them away in an old cardboard portfolio. One evening when we were drinking beer with Sid and Wendy, Sid asked Phil what he was working on. I'm in transition, Phil said. This answer struck me as unnecessarily vague. It wasn't as if Phil was not working. He's doing self-portraits, I said. Sid stroked his well-kept beard and irritating habit he had on the wallpaper, he said. Sure, Phil said. I started turning my coaster around on the table, waiting for Sid's pronouncement, which would provoke the usual argument, but Sid said nothing. When I looked up, he was signaling the waitress. I'll buy a round, he said. Phil drained the glass he'd been lingering over. His eyes fixed coldly on Sid's back. If Sid was buying, I meant we were in for a lecture. Thanks, I said to Wendy, who smiled. We're celebrating, she said, we have good news. Sid turned to us, his face radiating self-importance, but he left it to Wendy to satisfy our curiosity. Sid's taken a job at Dave Gravier's agency. Even I had heard of the Gravier agency, which had produced the stylish jazz and crawfish festival posters that hung in upscale restaurants and shops all over town. That's great, I said. It's just part time, Sid said. Phil fumbled a cigarette from his pack, his mouth fixed in a lopsided smile. The waitress arrived with our beers and a basket of tortilla chips, which Sid pulled closer to himself. So you sold out, Phil said softly. Sid took a chip, bit it, chewed reminiscently as he rolled his eyes heavenward. And I knew you would, Phil added. Sid swallowed his chip while Wendy and I exchanged speculative glances. It's just part time, Sid repeated. For now, Phil said. No, not just for now, Phil, Sid insisted. I made it very clear today that I am only willing to work for him three days a week because I'm planning a new series of paintings, large canvas, bigger than anything I've done before, and they'll be expensive to produce. So I'm willing to work part time in order to increase my creative options, not as you imply to limit them, which means I'm not selling out. It's the opposite of selling out. I'm interested in doing important work, lasting work. And I can't do that by painting on grocery bags or feed sacks or linoleum tiles I pull up from the kitchen floor. I need canvas and lots of it, big sturdy frames, a lot of paint and that stuff, as you may not know these days, my friend, because you are living in a dream is expensive. Tell yourself that lie, Phil said, giving me a side long glance that presuppose my agreement. No, I said, I see your point. An artist has to live in the real world, Sid informed us. Right, Phil snapped, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray. And the real world has got to be a lot more comfortable than the one I'm living in, which is what would you say, some sort of anti-reality, a counter-world? Money is freedom, Sid replied, ignoring, I thought Phil's excellent point, which was that everything is reality. Suffering, success, poverty, wealth, a rat-infested hobble or a mansion is all the same stuff. And I need freedom to work. I'm not stymied. I'm not making excuses for myself. I'm not in transition. I'm not afraid to work and I'm not selling out to the establishment. I'm grateful for the establishment. I need money and now I won't have to worry about getting it and I can work in peace. We were all quiet for a moment listening to the fact that Sid had used Phil's expression in transition as the locus of his general contempt. I expected, locus is the word, as a locus of his general contempt. I expected Phil to fire back forcefully, but he just swallowed half his beer, set the glass down carefully and said, you're clueless, Sid. On the walk home, Phil was quiet. I chattered on about my visit with my parents who were pressing me to go back to school, my dissatisfaction with my job, the roach problem in my kitchen which Borek asked it wasn't touching. We trudged up the stairs to Phil's apartment where the heat was packed in so tight it hurt to breathe. For God's sake, I said, turn on the air conditioner. It's broken, he said. I leaned against the table feeling my pores flush out across my forehead and back. When did that happen? This morning, Phil had stripped his shirt off and was bending over a stack of wallpaper sample books. We can't stay here, I said, let's go to my place. At least I have a fan. You go, he said pleasantly. There's something I need to do here. Are you going to paint? He gathered up a few of the sample books and carried them weaving slightly to the kitchen table. Then he pulled one of the jumbo garbage bags from the brawl under the sink. I'm getting rid of these, he said. Tonight? I said, can't it wait until tomorrow? No, he said. I took up a dish towel and wiped it across my forehead. It's too hot, Phil, I complain, and I'm too tired. I don't need help, he said. Just go to bed, I'll see you in the morning. The thought of the comfortable bed in my clammy room off the alley was appealing. I rarely slept there because it was too narrow for both of us. The sheets were clean. The tick tick of the oscillating fan always reminded me of sleeping at my grandmother's house when I was a child. I'm going, I said. Phil scarcely looked up from bagging the sample books. Good night, he said. Sleep well. A hunk story, but it's almost over. A few days later, Phil and I stopped by Walter Stack's gallery to see if the remaining Beethoven's had sold. Phil had nothing new to offer. As far as I could tell, he had stopped painting and he was running out of money. What is this? You're coming here empty-handed? Walter complained as soon as we were inside the door? I'm working, Phil replied. I'll have something in a few days. I scanned the crowded walls and spotted Beethoven sculling out beneath a charcoal rendering of Charlie Chaplin. The famous dead area, I presumed. I was wondering if you sold any of the Beethoven's Phil ass. Something in Walter brought out a diffidence in Phil that made my stomach turn. I did sell one, Walter, said a lady from Oregon who plays the piano. He turned to the cash register and punched the buttons until the drawer sprang open. I smiled at Phil. Surely this was good news, but he was looking past me out at the street with an expression of such excitement mixed with fear that I turned to see what he saw. Two women were maneuvering an oversized portfolio through the heavy glass door. The one at the back was a tall, muscular redhead. The other, pushing determinately in, was Ingrid. Look, Walter said. Now, here's a working artist. What have you got for me, beautiful? Ingrid's hawkish eyes raked the room drawing a bead on Phil who was pocketing the single bill Walter had pulled from the register. Hi, Phil, she said pleasantly enough. Hello, Ingrid, Phil replied. He stepped away from the counter close to me and I assumed he was about to introduce me. Having cleared the door, the two women passed us and lifted the portfolio to the counter. While Ingrid unfastened the ribbons along the side, her friend engaged Walter in light banter about another dealer. I craned my neck hoping to get a look at Ingrid's offering, but the counter was narrow and she was forced to hold the cover upright, blocking my view. Walter looked down doubtfully at whatever was displayed working his jaw. I turned to Phil thinking he must be as curious as I was. He was leaning away from me, his weight all on one leg, shoulders oddly hunched. And as I watched, he raised one hand and pressed the knuckles lightly against his lips. The color had drained from his face and he swayed as if he might collapse if there was a vibration of energy around him, a kind of heat. His dark eyes were fixed with a febrile intensity on Ingrid's back, bathing her with such a combination of sweetness, longing, and terror that I thought she must feel it or hear it. Indeed, his expression aroused in me sensations similar to those evoked by the commencement of certain melancholy music, a shiver along the spine, the silencing of the inner colloquy, all the senses arrested by an unwelcome yet irresistible revelation of suffering. Ingrid didn't feel it. She was engaged in bargaining, which was pointless as Walter took everything on consignment and set the prices himself. Her friend brought up the other dealer again, suggesting that he would make a better offer. And Walter obligingly pretended outrage. Phil's hand had dropped to his side, but otherwise he didn't move. He was so wrapped in his contemplation of Ingrid, so unconscious of everything else, including me, that when I touched his arm, it startled him. He gripped my hand tightly. Phil, I said, let's go now. And I led him, unprotesting, into the street. The group at the counter, absorbed in their transactions, took no notice of our departure. Outside the light and the heat assailed us and we clung to each other until we reached the covered sidewalk on Decatur Street. Do you want to go for coffee? I asked, and Phil nodded. His eyes were wet, but his color had returned, and he gave me a weak, convalescent smile. We'll go inside, he said. It'll be cool in there. That night, we brought my fan up to Phil's apartment, but it was still too hot to sleep. I tossed and turned. Phil weft my side without speaking and climbed out the window to smoke a cigarette on the roof. Anxiety was my bedfellow. A many-headed hydra snapping at me with undisguised fury. My future unfolded before me. A black hole of thankless, boring work. What are you going to do? I asked myself repeatedly, urgently. At length, I got up and went to the kitchen. The moon was full. There was a shaft of creamy white across the ugly floor, lighting my way to the refrigerator. I poured a glass of water and sat naked at the kitchen table, looking about in a panic. There was more room without the wallpaper books. And Phil had cleared off his easel, which struck me as suspicious and portentous. What would happen next? What was Phil going to paint on now? Doubtless, Phil was, Sid was right. And Phil had been using the wallpaper, not for the interesting creative possibilities that afforded, but because the books were free and he was too poor to buy canvas or even cheap board. My eyes rested on the model of linoleum at my feet. Would Phil take Sid's suggestion and start prying the tiles up off the floor? This thought cast me down very low. I had left school because I wanted to live in the real world. And now I was doing just that and I didn't like it at all. My childish fantasy of an untroubled and companionable relationship with a man who valued me was clearly the worst sort of naivete. Though oddly enough, I'd gotten what I wanted. Phil was easy, kind. And I did not doubt that he cared for me. But in the gallery that day, I had seen him unmanned by an unrequited and impossible passion for a woman who cared nothing for him. It wasn't his weakness that had shocked me. It was the invincibility of his ardor, which clearly could group no disembling, even in public, even in front of me. To be either the subject or the object of such a humiliating destructive force was not a condition I could ever tolerate. There's just no future in it, I said to myself. Purposely vague about the pronoun reference. Was it my life with Phil? Or was it the whole catastrophic enterprise of romantic love? Eventually Phil climbed back in the window and found me there naked, clutching my water glass and staring into the blackness between us. He went to the refrigerator and looked inside. I've got a cold beer. We could split, he said. That sounds good, I said. He brought the beer to the table and sat down across from me, opening the can with a can opener. I finished my water and held out the glass for my share. You can't sleep, Phil observed. It's too hot, I said. Do you want to go out? No. Okay, Phil said. We sipped our beer. I don't see what you're going to do now, I said. What do you mean? Well, with the self portraits and no more wallpaper and no more Beethoven, I don't see how you'll make a living. I'll think of something, he said. Maybe Sid has the right idea. You could get some part-time work. Then I take the pressure off. He smiled. I don't want to take the pressure off, he said. The pressure is part of it. Part of what, I said, being miserable? I'm not miserable. I consider this, but you are, he said. I hate my job, I said, then you should quit. And do what? For I answered, Phil finished his beer, got up, and took the empty can to the sink. He came behind me and began rubbing my shoulders. You're very tense, he said. I let myself go limp beneath his hands. I know, I said. He worked my neck between his fingers and his palm up and down until my head fell back against his chest. He leaned down to kiss me languidly. Is it too hot to do this, he asked, sliding his hand around my back and over my breast. No, I said, I want to. Then as I followed him to the rumpled mattress, I felt, in spite of everything, of the heat, of my disillusionment and frustration, of my fear of the future in which we both knew, Phil, would no longer figure, a perverse but unmistakable throb of dark desire. Too exhausted. I'm having trouble hearing you in. Every time I read that conversation, it makes me think I just don't know the answer. I mean, it was something that I, you know, I think all writers and artists are conscious of. There is this sort of notion that if you're very successful, it's probably because you're not very good if you're a literary writer, if what you want to do is, if you admire Chekhov and not Stephen King, right? But there are certainly writers who, I like to think of myself as one of them. I don't ask myself that question, you know, whether to be successful would mean I was doing good work or not good work. But it's a, you know, I think it's a dilemma. Am I right? Everyone feels it. And every once in a while, somebody's really successful. I'm thinking of Junodia as a friend of his, told me that when he got the MacArthur, she called to congratulate him and he said, everyone hates me. And it is that feeling. And if you happen to have a great success and you're working friends are all, they may really be genuinely happy for you, but there's always that feeling of, why her? Why him? So, yeah, it's a terrible world. And I don't know if it's that way in other kinds of work, but I think professional jealousy is a pretty common phenomenon. You know, I do keep journals now. I mean, this is sort of a story, there's a combination of many stories that I know, and maybe characters that I knew a little. I'm not a painter. No, I didn't have any journals from that time, from the 60s, but I was there. And when I go back to New Orleans, it's very odd the whole art world has not changed that much. They still paint in the French Quarter, the Jackson Square. Yeah, I don't generally know what the end of what I'm writing is gonna be. I usually feel my way, especially in short stories. And this story I started as kind of a small thing and just kept getting bigger and bigger. It's just a truly unsalable length. It's not a novella, it's not really a short story, and it's too big for a magazine. But that was how the size that it came out. And I didn't know how the story was gonna end. I knew that Phil was going down from the first pages, but I didn't know exactly how the narrator would come to deal with that. I mean, I like this narrator because I feel like, I guess one reason I wanted to read it is I'm writing again from the point of a young woman who's just trying to observe the world of older people and understand how they operate. And I think this was the first time I tried to do that to create a character. In some extent, Mary Riley is an innocent. She's not that observant. And she, as I was writing Mary Riley, there are many times when I would be writing and I'd say, can't you see? It's right in front of you. It's the same guy, you see? But that's not the case with this narrator. She's a perceptive narrator who really is trying to put things together. And Phil is a person who's determined to fail. It takes a while to understand that in some ways that's his honest method. He honestly believes that he has to do what he's doing for art's sake.