Small Town

At a quarter to eleven, Esther Blinkoff returned a call from Roz Albright. They told each other, not for the first time, how excited they were about Darker Than Water, and eventually Roz said that she had a new writer she was also very enthusiastic about, a woman, she’d published some short stories but this was her first novel.

Think Bridget Jones meets The Lovely Bones, she said.

Esther said she’d love to see it.

Chloe Sigurdson opened up the Susan Pomerance Gallery at eleven. She’d been coming in earlier lately, a change Susan had made in order to give her own schedule more flexibility. This day Chloe didn’t have much to do other than listen to the radio and talk to friends on the phone. Susan came in at eleven-forty-five, changed the station to WQXR, took a moment to brush her hand over Chloe’s breasts, then across the top of her head.

“I’m leaving early,” Susan told her. She was going to her boyfriend’s apartment, she’d brought him a present.

Chloe knew who she meant. The writer, Mr. Big Shoulders.

He’s cute, she’d told Susan, and Susan had said, Would you like to do him? Maybe I’ll give you to him for his birthday.

She wondered if Susan was kidding. Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Susan.

But she knew one thing. When she grew up, she wanted to be like Susan.

John Blair Creighton rose early and went to the gym. It was a new one, right around the corner at Greenwich and West Twelfth, where the Greenwich Theater used to be. Years ago, not long after he’d moved to Bank Street, he joined the Attic Gym, which then occupied the floor above the movie theater. The gym went out of business when the theater expanded and became a duplex, and now the theater was gone, and a new building had gone up to house this new gym, and a few days ago he’d joined it.

He had a workout and a sauna and a shower, ate across the street at the Village Den, but waited until he got home to have coffee. He got halfway through his second cup before he wondered what he was going to do next.

Writing was great, he thought. You suffered and you agonized and you were beset by doubts and fears, and then you finished a book and felt absolutely ecstatic, convinced that you were great and your book was great and your future was coming up roses.

That lasted for about a week, and then you realized that you were washed up, that you’d never do anything decent again, and look at you, you indolent slug, why were you just sitting around doing nothing? Why weren’t you writing something?

So he sat there, trying to think of something to write.

And then the bell rang, and it wasn’t cops, it wasn’t Jehovah’s Witnesses, it wasn’t the kid from Two Boots. It was Susan, and she’d brought him a present.

And shortly thereafter they were in bed, and she was telling him a story. And, on the bookshelf, a magnificent white bear with turquoise eyes shared the dish of stone-ground yellow cornmeal with the little turquoise rabbit.

It looked as though they were going to get along just fine.

And all of them, like everyone else in the great city, waited to see what was going to happen next.