car, her mother’s minivan, which she’s been sharing with her brother, Richard, since she’s returned. Inside, she turns on the air-conditioning and then wonders where to go next. If she had any money, she’d go to the mall. If she knew how to reach Raja, she’d call him. But she doesn’t have any money and she doesn’t know how to reach Raja, so she just sits there, staring out at the street. In the distance, she can see the overpass of I-10 looming along the horizon. She thinks about how nice it would be to just get on the highway and drive, maybe down to Galveston, down to the beach. She remembers going there as a child with her family, how pleasant it had been. Richard and her father trolling for redfish out in the ocean, she and her mother lying on the beach, playing cards. She wonders if they’ll ever do anything like that again, just the four of them, as a family.
After a moment, she starts up the car and pulls out on the street, and just as she’s passing by the small row of coffee shops and boutiques on the corner of the road, she notices a young woman sitting in one of the coffee-shop windows, staring out. She slows down the car, looks at the woman, and it takes her a moment, almost a full minute, before she recognizes the blouse, and realizes it’s Simone.
3
“ I DON’T REALLY see it that way,” Richard is saying. “I mean, I don’t really see the point.”
He is sitting at a small outdoor café with Dr. Michelson and Dr. Michelson’s friend Elan. They have ordered, eaten, and now they are talking about Richard, about his future and his promise. Richard himself is still feeling a little hungover from the night before, the party at Beto’s, his third of the week. All around them, people are laughing and drinking, clinking glasses. In the distance, he can see the sun setting just beyond the palm trees at the far end of the street.
“Maybe you could elaborate, Richard,” Dr. Michelson says.
Richard pauses, looks at the men. “I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t really see the point of going to grad school to learn how to write. I mean, William Carlos Williams never went to grad school, right? Plenty of poets didn’t.”
He is making an argument he doesn’t really believe, and perhaps Dr. Michelson senses this because he stops him after a moment and smiles.
“It’s okay to be nervous, Richard. Anytime you put your work up for evaluation, you run the risk of being rejected, and that’s a difficult thing to stomach for any of us. Believe me, I know.”
Richard doesn’t say anything to this. He tries to imagine the last time Dr. Michelson got rejected from anything.
“I was rejected forty-seven times before I ever published a poem,” Elan adds.
Elan says this smugly, as if his own remarkable success should be evidence enough to Richard that these things are possible. But still, Richard wonders, what type of success has Elan really had?
Earlier that night he had sat in a small parlor on the Rice campus and listened to Elan as he read his poetry to a small group of Rice students. Afterward, Elan had signed copies of his book and answered questions from the group. The room had been set up for a much larger occasion, complete with a fully catered hors d’oeuvres table, and the whole time Michelson had just stood there, shaking his head, wondering what had happened.
I sent out an e-mail
, he said.
Put up some flyers. Maybe people got lost trying to find this place. Or maybe they got the dates wrong
. Strangely, Elan himself hadn’t seemed nearly as distressed as Michelson by the poor turnout. In fact, he said he’d half expected it. And besides, he said, it wasn’t about the quantity of the audience members, but the quality, and he had been very impressed by the overall quality of the Rice students. Richard had wondered, even then, if this was just lip service, a lame excuse for what had happened. He’d driven all the way down from El Paso, after all, just for the reading,
After a moment, she starts up the car and pulls out on the street, and just as she’s passing by the small row of coffee shops and boutiques on the corner of the road, she notices a young woman sitting in one of the coffee-shop windows, staring out. She slows down the car, looks at the woman, and it takes her a moment, almost a full minute, before she recognizes the blouse, and realizes it’s Simone.
3
“ I DON’T REALLY see it that way,” Richard is saying. “I mean, I don’t really see the point.”
He is sitting at a small outdoor café with Dr. Michelson and Dr. Michelson’s friend Elan. They have ordered, eaten, and now they are talking about Richard, about his future and his promise. Richard himself is still feeling a little hungover from the night before, the party at Beto’s, his third of the week. All around them, people are laughing and drinking, clinking glasses. In the distance, he can see the sun setting just beyond the palm trees at the far end of the street.
“Maybe you could elaborate, Richard,” Dr. Michelson says.
Richard pauses, looks at the men. “I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t really see the point of going to grad school to learn how to write. I mean, William Carlos Williams never went to grad school, right? Plenty of poets didn’t.”
He is making an argument he doesn’t really believe, and perhaps Dr. Michelson senses this because he stops him after a moment and smiles.
“It’s okay to be nervous, Richard. Anytime you put your work up for evaluation, you run the risk of being rejected, and that’s a difficult thing to stomach for any of us. Believe me, I know.”
Richard doesn’t say anything to this. He tries to imagine the last time Dr. Michelson got rejected from anything.
“I was rejected forty-seven times before I ever published a poem,” Elan adds.
Elan says this smugly, as if his own remarkable success should be evidence enough to Richard that these things are possible. But still, Richard wonders, what type of success has Elan really had?
Earlier that night he had sat in a small parlor on the Rice campus and listened to Elan as he read his poetry to a small group of Rice students. Afterward, Elan had signed copies of his book and answered questions from the group. The room had been set up for a much larger occasion, complete with a fully catered hors d’oeuvres table, and the whole time Michelson had just stood there, shaking his head, wondering what had happened.
I sent out an e-mail
, he said.
Put up some flyers. Maybe people got lost trying to find this place. Or maybe they got the dates wrong
. Strangely, Elan himself hadn’t seemed nearly as distressed as Michelson by the poor turnout. In fact, he said he’d half expected it. And besides, he said, it wasn’t about the quantity of the audience members, but the quality, and he had been very impressed by the overall quality of the Rice students. Richard had wondered, even then, if this was just lip service, a lame excuse for what had happened. He’d driven all the way down from El Paso, after all, just for the reading,
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