mirror image scars. Grace would never accept that. But that’s all it was, probably, and was just as meaningless.
Hundreds of people stopped in Dean & Deluca because they were hungry, thirsty, or curious. Why couldn’t his motives have been as innocent?
Later Grace would tell me I was denying all the obvious signs because what was happening to me was beyond my rational interpretation of how things worked. “If you can’t touch it, you didn’t think it’s real.” She said. “But kismet
is
real.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that,” I countered.
“Expect you to? No. But I want you to. There are reasons for things that we don’t understand, for the unexpected and the unexplained. They have their own logic, Marlowe. Just because you don’t know what it is doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
7.
At ten o’clock that night I got undressed, putting on the dark ruby silk robe that Grace had found for me in an antique store on West Broadway. I hadn’t even noticed it but she’d spotted it hanging on a hook by a painting that had me mesmerized. Ordinarily I didn’t like vintage clothing. While I could appreciate it, the idea of wearing what someone else had once worn didn’t appeal to me. My curiosity over who had owned it and when she’d worn it and how it had wound up for sale fifty years later was too vexing. I didn’t want my clothes to come with another woman’s history.
But the robe still had its original tag on it. For all those years it had escaped being sold. That in itself was enough of a mystery. Had it been a gift that had stayed in its box under the bed? Had it been purchased by a woman to wear on a trip that had never be taken?
I’d had it for as long as I’d been working for Grace and it had become my writing robe. I’m not superstitious. I don’t have talismans. But when I’m going to write someone else’s story, I slip into it, feel its smooth silk against my skin, shiver and then settle down at my desk, ready to take the hours when I used to sleep or watch television or read while Joshua sat beside me and give them over to strangers.
I had two rituals: I always wrote the letters and stories in my ruby robe, and I always wrote them by the light of a candle I used to keep on the bedside table. The same sandalwood candle that had lit my derailed lovemaking with Joshua.
I wasn’t sentimental. It was all part of a process. The low light made it easier to glide into the words.
None of it was like work. I was lucky for that. Other artists I was friendly with worked at tedious jobs in offices, or tiring stints in stores or waiting tables in restaurants. I got to fantasize other people’s lives. But it still required effort and energy – effort and energy that I had spent on Joshua, and then spent mourning him. It was a relief to finally offer it up to the letters and stories. I donated the hours that had been ours to the words. Even though they were written for strangers who paid me to turn their half-realized erotic imaginings and outpourings of passion or love into prose, they were still, in a way, intensely private.
Until that night, I’d never thought about it quite that way, but Gideon had made me see it differently. And I wasn’t sure I was happy he had. If I became self-conscious about what I was writing, I would fail. And more than not wanting to fail, I didn’t want to lose what had become a welcome escape, and had come to represent something much more complicated to me.
The process began with choosing the pen. Each was different and picking one was like the first step a woman takes when deciding what to wear to seduce someone. A black lace bra? A short rose silk teddy? A lemon yellow camisole with nothing else?
Whatever one selected would set the tone for the rest of the ceremony. And so it was with the pen.
That night I equivocated between a sleek maroon lacquer Mont Blanc, an exotic Waterman Serrisima that curved like a man’s penis, or an antique gold pen
Hundreds of people stopped in Dean & Deluca because they were hungry, thirsty, or curious. Why couldn’t his motives have been as innocent?
Later Grace would tell me I was denying all the obvious signs because what was happening to me was beyond my rational interpretation of how things worked. “If you can’t touch it, you didn’t think it’s real.” She said. “But kismet
is
real.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that,” I countered.
“Expect you to? No. But I want you to. There are reasons for things that we don’t understand, for the unexpected and the unexplained. They have their own logic, Marlowe. Just because you don’t know what it is doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
7.
At ten o’clock that night I got undressed, putting on the dark ruby silk robe that Grace had found for me in an antique store on West Broadway. I hadn’t even noticed it but she’d spotted it hanging on a hook by a painting that had me mesmerized. Ordinarily I didn’t like vintage clothing. While I could appreciate it, the idea of wearing what someone else had once worn didn’t appeal to me. My curiosity over who had owned it and when she’d worn it and how it had wound up for sale fifty years later was too vexing. I didn’t want my clothes to come with another woman’s history.
But the robe still had its original tag on it. For all those years it had escaped being sold. That in itself was enough of a mystery. Had it been a gift that had stayed in its box under the bed? Had it been purchased by a woman to wear on a trip that had never be taken?
I’d had it for as long as I’d been working for Grace and it had become my writing robe. I’m not superstitious. I don’t have talismans. But when I’m going to write someone else’s story, I slip into it, feel its smooth silk against my skin, shiver and then settle down at my desk, ready to take the hours when I used to sleep or watch television or read while Joshua sat beside me and give them over to strangers.
I had two rituals: I always wrote the letters and stories in my ruby robe, and I always wrote them by the light of a candle I used to keep on the bedside table. The same sandalwood candle that had lit my derailed lovemaking with Joshua.
I wasn’t sentimental. It was all part of a process. The low light made it easier to glide into the words.
None of it was like work. I was lucky for that. Other artists I was friendly with worked at tedious jobs in offices, or tiring stints in stores or waiting tables in restaurants. I got to fantasize other people’s lives. But it still required effort and energy – effort and energy that I had spent on Joshua, and then spent mourning him. It was a relief to finally offer it up to the letters and stories. I donated the hours that had been ours to the words. Even though they were written for strangers who paid me to turn their half-realized erotic imaginings and outpourings of passion or love into prose, they were still, in a way, intensely private.
Until that night, I’d never thought about it quite that way, but Gideon had made me see it differently. And I wasn’t sure I was happy he had. If I became self-conscious about what I was writing, I would fail. And more than not wanting to fail, I didn’t want to lose what had become a welcome escape, and had come to represent something much more complicated to me.
The process began with choosing the pen. Each was different and picking one was like the first step a woman takes when deciding what to wear to seduce someone. A black lace bra? A short rose silk teddy? A lemon yellow camisole with nothing else?
Whatever one selected would set the tone for the rest of the ceremony. And so it was with the pen.
That night I equivocated between a sleek maroon lacquer Mont Blanc, an exotic Waterman Serrisima that curved like a man’s penis, or an antique gold pen
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