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“Amanda.” Eddie choked on her name. “Maybe you could take an ad out in
The Times
, letting everyone know that you are in no way connected to my failure. Like those people who distance themselves from their spouses’ debt. You could let it be known that you married a success who wound up a failure. Through no fault of your own, of course.”

“Don’t be a simp, Eddie. It’s, well, it’s repulsive.” She paused, and he could see her posture relax just a bit. “Look, you’re having a bad day, and that could happen to anyone. Call the place back and turn down the job. Then finish your book, and we’ll go from there.” Her words formed a command, yet they weren’t harsh. She was all business, dutiful parent to tantrum-prone child. “But call right now so we can put this behind us and never speak of it again. Call and tell them that you couldn’t dream of being a romance-novel copyeditor. Tell them you’re on pain pills or sleep deprived, that it was a mistake they need to forget about. Call right now, Eddie. This moment.”

Now a frantic edge entered her matter-of-fact tone, and Eddie feared that she might lose control. He feared it even as he longed to witness it.

“If I do as you bid,” he said, testing, “I’ll only look weaker in your eyes. And then you’ll never sleep with me again. Is that your goal? To despise everything about me, to have an excuse to sleep with your back to me forever?”

“My goal here is to be your friend and save you from yourself. Call right now, and then get back to work on your book. I can see that the financial worries are making it hard for you to work, so I want you to try and forget about money for now. I’m going to demand that raise, this week, and that’ll help until you finish your book. And I can cut back on some expenses, cut some corners. All you have to worry about is finishing your book.”

She held out her arms to him and stroked his hair as she allowed him to rest his head on her shoulder. He leaned into her touch, breathing in the subtle citrus of her bath powder.

He should be grateful to her, he thought. Many wives would push their husbands to get a job, any job, but Amanda understood that all he’d ever wanted to be was a writer. “I’ll make the call,” he said, but for a moment he didn’t let go.

H
enry Baffler typed away the fall on the electric typewriter he’d received his freshman year in college—his only legacy from his entrepreneurial grandparents. One Friday in November, after several hours of work on
Bailiff
, Henry made one of his bi-weekly treks to the library, checked his bag with the woman at the security window, and sitting down in the computer area, was relieved to find his inbox empty of rejection emails. After he had deleted all the penis-enlargement and night-cream advertisements, he was left with two messages. The first was a note from a Canadian poet, an intriguing installment in their ongoing correspondence on the overlapping boundaries of fiction and poetry. The second was even better: a message from the editor of
Swanky
, which read, “Just received your first fan letter. Will publish next month and mail copy.”

When he went to retrieve his bag, the woman who’d given him a square number 19 was gone. “Nineteen,” he said to the stocky man who had replaced her.

The fellow had subdued his spreading body with the navy blue pants and blazer of his uniform, but his acne and the gold-plated skull hanging from his earlobe suggested that he usually wore black tee-shirts stenciled with the names of heavy metal bands. The kid pushed a leather briefcase at him.

“This isn’t mine,” said Henry.

“Nineteen,” the kid said and lifted his chin to the person waiting in line behind Henry.

“The woman working earlier must have made a mistake. That’s my bag, one up from nineteen.” Henry started to explain the ease of the mistake, how it might appear that the number marked the cubbyhole above rather than below.

“We’re professionals here,” the kid said. “We attend a training session. We know which way the numbers go.”

“Whatever the case,” Henry said, perplexed more than annoyed, “That’s my bag. And this is not my briefcase.”

The kid folded his arms and straightened his shoulders—a no-nonsense gesture of skepticism straight from an action movie, if Henry wasn’t mistaken.

“Look moron,” said the girl behind him. “Why would he say that crappy bag was his if it wasn’t? If he was dishonest, wouldn’t he take the leather briefcase? Looks expensive.”

The kid chewed his lip, his own gesture, a chip in the tough-guy persona. “Depends what’s in the bags,” he said, thrusting out his chin, proud of himself.

Henry observed these gestures, thinking the kid might make a more interesting character than he’d assumed on first glance.

“They may have training sessions but they clearly don’t have screening tests.” The girl spoke out of the side of her mouth but loud enough for anyone nearby to hear. She was a bony girl with long hair, frizzy blonde roots coming in under the black. “Anyway, the inside of the bags brings us to a solution. Why don’t you just ask him what’s in his bag? If it’s his, he’ll know what’s in it.”

The kid paused, his eyes moving with his thoughts, as if to prove he wasn’t the sort to fall for fast tricks. “Okay,” he said, patting the briefcase. “What’s in here?”

“Not the briefcase, you moron. His bag.”

“His alleged bag.”

She poked Henry in the back. “What’s in your bag, guy?”

“There’s a large red comb with two teeth missing. In the outside pocket, in with a subway map.”

The kid unzipped the pocket and nodded. He re-zipped it, returned it to its cubby, and spread his hands on the counter. “Yeah? What else?”

“What else? Are you a fucking moron?” The girl jumped and slammed her boots into the tile. “A red comb with two teeth missing?”

“Those kind of combs always break.”

“You so small in life you gotta find this way to feel a pathetic iota of power?”

“I can call security on you, too.” The kid pointed to a sign reading no profanity.

“Profane,” Henry whispered. “You are profane.” He turned to gaze into the wide library, the place that held all that he most loved, the place that allowed his first novel, despite its terrible flaws, its own slot on the top row of a middle case on the second floor, as though it had been written by Dostoevsky or Diderot or Calvino. Sudden violence surged in him: an unpremeditated desire to leap on the counter and bury his thumbs in the kid’s eye sockets—like Cornwall on Gloucester or like Sophocles blinding Oedipus, his own character—to take away forever his right to look upon the sacred place where he was allowed to work.

Henry inhaled as fully as he could, swallowing the surge of anger, feeling the effort of composure as pain in his temples. When he could speak calmly, he said, “Open the main compartment. You’ll find a copy of last spring’s issue of
Swanky
and a large manuscript titled
Bailiff
. Trust me on this: it’s not worth anything to anyone else.” He waited while the kid returned the bag to the counter and opened it, seeming almost surprised to find that Henry was right, as though Henry were prophetic or clairvoyant rather than the bag’s rightful owner. “Give me my fucking novel right now,” he hissed at the miscreant.

As Henry left with his bag, he heard the girl tell him that she read
Swanky
. Still quaking with anger as the words swirled in his ears, he only registered them later, when it was too late to ask her name.

Discomfited by the encounter over his bag and his missed opening with a girl, Henry hurried home. He was late to meet Matt Baker, a client he was tutoring for college admissions: the least disagreeable job he could find whose schedule wouldn’t decimate his real work. He’d done what he could to ready the kid for the sat and was now helping him with his application essays.

Matt Baker was waiting on his stoop, gaze cast down, avoiding eye contact with the group of amused-looking Dominican men two buildings down.

“Sorry I’m late. Come on up.” Henry’s stomach rumbled, and he hoped Matt’s mother had remembered to send along payment for this session and the last.

The two set up at the small table. The apartment’s low ceiling made it seem all the more cramped. Henry could move around with enough ease when he was home alone, but Matt was a robust kid with black hair raised 1950s style. His huge hands seemed to absorb free space.

After reading over Matt’s essay draft, Henry said: “You’ve got to learn to write in shorter sentences, at least some of the time. The content isn’t bad—not bad at all. But you’ve worked it all into three appalling sentences when you should have written at least a dozen. You need some elegant variation, and don’t even get me started on the comma splices. The admissions committee is going to keel over from sheer fatigue.”

“That’s the problem exactly,” Matt exclaimed, working a hand over his pomaded ducktail. “That’s the problem. I know it, but I can’t help it. The thoughts come in a big clump.”

The sound of the doorbell surprised Henry, but he was glad when he heard a friend’s voice through the intercom. He buzzed up Eddie Renfros and Jackson Miller. “Come on up, but I’ve got another fifteen minutes with a student.”

Sitting on shabby floor cushions, Eddie and Jackson chatted over Henry’s few magazines, including the issue of
Swanky
in which his essay on New Realism had appeared.

Henry moved his pen across Matt Baker’s essay, breaking sentences in two, reclaiming dangling modifiers for the nouns they belonged to, banishing wrong-headed adverbial clauses, noting places where added details served to bog down the prose and other spots where specificity would bolster Matt’s vague claims to collegiate worthiness.

“I see, I see,” Matt murmured. “Don’t worry. I don’t fear revision. It’s compersition that scares me silly. Know what I mean?”

“What you mean is composition,” Jackson cracked from his seat on the floor.

“Indeed, I do know what you mean,” Eddie chimed in. “It’s the same for me. I’m misery personified until I have an entire draft.”

“Personified,” Matt said, “I think that’s one of the words on the sat practice test.”

At the end of the lesson, Matt collected his papers and books and stood. He shifted his weight from the heels to the balls of his feet and back again. He glanced at Eddie and Jackson. At last he said, “Mr. Baffler, is a check all right? My mother sent a check this week.”

Henry calculated the length of time it would take to clear the check, and the pit in his stomach enlarged. “Of course, Matt, that’ll be fine. I’ll see you next week and we’ll get that essay ready to send out.”

After Matt left, Jackson asked, “So what are that young man’s chances of getting into a good school? Seems rough-edged but looks kind of smart. Or at least he would be if he washed all that rockabilly crap out of his hair and lost the loafers.”

“He’s really smart,” Henry said. “But he can’t write a sentence to save his life. He’s getting better, though. I wouldn’t take his money if I didn’t think I could help, if I didn’t think he had a chance.”

“Really?” Jackson cocked his head, amused.

“I turned down another student recently. Really, that guy had no chance of anything but community college in a poor state. I could have used the money—and how—but the food would have choked me. Matt’ll be okay, though. He’ll get in somewhere. And it’s not like he wants to be a writer or anything. He wants to program computers or work in a lab or some such—I forget exactly.”

“Henry,” Jackson said. “Have you considered trying to get a full-time teaching job? You seem to be good at it. And you don’t look like you’re eating very well.”

“I don’t want to talk about day jobs,” Eddie said, his voice a weird mix of angry and forlorn.

Henry looked at the floorboards. “No school would hire me. I never even finished my undergraduate degree, and I don’t have anything to wear to an interview.” Brightening, he pointed to the
Swanky
open on Eddie’s knees. “Hey, guess what. That essay just received a fan letter. It’ll be published next issue, on the letters page.”

“That’s terrific, Henry,” said Eddie. “I hope its author is a beautiful girl who goes weak at the knees for New Realists.”

“I don’t suppose you get paid for a fan letter?” Looking almost comfortable in his foam nest, Jackson reclined further, crossed his ankles, and put his hands behind his head.

Henry shrugged, considered the idea further, then laughed at its absurdity.

“Jackson’s got some pretty good news,” Eddie said.

“Yes, lunch is on me. I’d say at Grub, but I don’t think they’ll let us in looking like we do. But let’s go somewhere good.” He smiled at Henry. “Somewhere with very large portions and imported beer.”

Henry was now so hungry that he had no appetite whatsoever. “What’s all this about? You were almost as bad off as me last month.”

“Jackson’s got a big-time agent. She submitted his novel to fifteen different editors and already has two calls of interest.” Eddie’s delivery was hurried, cheerful but forced.

“Yes,” said Jackson. “One editor said that he was a fan and not to make a move without talking to him first. The other called to ask if we’d sell world rights or just North American. It’s starting to smell like a bidding war.”

Henry felt a smile come on. “How terrific for all of us, Jackson, to hear that it can happen like that!”

Jackson led them the long blocks across town. Henry’s appetite was still stunted by the queasiness of a long-empty stomach; he had to remind himself to push forward, maintain the pace, keep up. Half an hour later, they stood on the crowded sidewalk in front of a store-front Italian restaurant.

Jackson said, “It’s a hole in the wall, but I’ve heard the entire Italian press corps eats here.”

Unlike Henry’s neighborhood, the area was one of busy people—people with jobs, people with things to see and places to go and stuff to buy. It required strength combined with a little give to stand still, and Henry was being pushed toward the restaurant behind his friends just as Jeffrey Whelpdale stepped out. Eddie greeted the coincidence with enthusiasm, but Jackson’s reaction was cool.

“Glad to see you guys!” Whelpdale exclaimed. “I’ve got big news!” Whelpdale struck a match and held it to a cigar. He puffed at the cigar with exaggerated inflations of his jowls, yet failed to keep it lit. Though Henry had never smoked, even he could see that Whelpdale had no idea what he was doing. “I started a workshop: how to write a novel in ten easy lessons. And, well, the workshop was a bit of a wash, but I met a great girl. Very attractive, tremendously interesting. Just my type, too: dark, pale, skinny, anemic looking.”

“Skinny?” Jackson said, suddenly interested in what Whelpdale was saying. “What’s her name?”

“Theresa. She’s from Birmingham, of all places. Great accent—the whole southern thing.”

“Right,” Jackson said, seeping sarcasm. “The whole southern thing.”

“Anyway, she’s very soft-hearted, wants to learn to write but couldn’t afford the workshop. I asked her on the spot to marry me. I scared her, which is understandable, but then she softened. I told her I’d work day and night to help her write and sell her novel. I practically had to beg her to borrow a little money from me. Anyway, that’s how it started, and now she’s agreed to marry me. A month from today, as soon as she returns from a trip to Alabama.”

“I congratulate you,” Eddie said, his voice hollow. He held out his hand to Whelpdale, who dropped his cigar to shake it.

“You give hope to us all.” Jackson gripped Whelpdale’s hand, preventing him from rescuing his cigar before it was crushed under the foot of someone with somewhere to be.

“Great,” Henry whispered, wondering if he would ever be lucky in publishing or love—and then puzzling over which he would choose if he could only have one or the other. Love, he decided; he would choose squalor with love. The words ‘love’ and ‘squalor’ invoked Salinger for him. He realized that he hadn’t read Salinger in years and really should go back to him to see how his work intersected with New Realism. Someday he hoped to write a literary history of New Realism—after it was established—and it was possible Salinger could be seen as a precursor.

Realizing that Whelpdale had gone on his way, Henry followed Jackson and Eddie into the restaurant. The smell of slow-cooking sauces warmed the room, and breathing the air inside felt almost like eating. A stooped, square-shouldered Italian man of indeterminate but advanced age led them to a table and handed them menus listing the names but not descriptions of the establishment’s dishes. The other waiters congregated in the back of the rectangular dining room, near the kitchen’s swinging doors, in ill-fitting black suits, looking nearly as out of place as the black-and-white zebras on the shiny red wallpaper.