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B
etween her uncertainty about her feelings toward Jackson and her trepidation in the face of pending reviews, Margot Yarborough couldn’t say she was happy. No matter which angle she came at the problem of Jackson from, she could not commit to the idea of a future with him. But neither could she determine to give him up.

She decided to take some sort of action about the review journals though, and made a study of their respective styles in order to armor herself. Her editor had been right: about half of the
Circus
reviews were downright spiteful, and the other half, possibly written by friends of authors or publicists, were kind enough but said next to nothing.
The Monthly
rarely offered blanket praise or condemnation and, in fact, often said little about the book supposedly under the microscope, instead using the review to launch a more general discussion of some literary passion or pet peeve.
The Times
was fairly even-handed. It seemed to save its harsh reviews for well-known writers with disappointing new books while reviewing only those debuts that it could praise.

There was a glaring exception to this generality, though.
The Times
had eviscerated a new book by a first-time author named Henry Baffler. Its comments nauseated Margot: “Let Mr. Baffler remember that a novelist’s first responsibility is to tell a story”; “A reader must want to finish reading the book”; “A pretentious book guilty of the intentional fallacy. Just because one writes about ennui does not mean one should induce it in the reader”; “Here is another of those intolerable objects that prove the sheer wrong-headedness of what Baffler would have us call the New Realism. This book is never interesting, never profitable, never insightful, and hardly ever readable.” The reviewer paraphrased Mickey Spillane’s assertion that no one ever reads a book to get to the middle.

Another publication that had reviewed Baffler’s novel included the sensational story of the young author rescuing his book from flames, noting that it was the news coverage of the rescue that had led to its publication. “We can only wish,” the piece concluded, “that the fire had consumed the manuscript rather than spitting it out into the world.” Others had their fun with Henry’s name, as though describing his book or its publication as baffling was the height of original wordplay.

Feeling devastated for the poor fellow who had written the book, Margot vowed to buy a copy, read it, and write a fan letter to Henry Baffler.

That night she dreamed she was naked in a room, surrounded by crumpled sheets of paper: all viciously negative reviews of
Pontchartrain
. “It’s not my title!” she tried to scream, choked by newsprint. “They made me call it that!”

But the reviewers were much kinder to Margot than they had been to the unfortunate Henry Baffler. A half-page review in
The Times
, no less, argued that her novel was a brilliant pastiche of the eighteenth-century American naturalist novel and applauded Margot’s satirical use of the present tense as the cleverest of anachronisms.

Upon her initial read of the review, Margot smiled, nervous but pleased. Lane and Lana both called her, effusive with their congratulations. Yet after successive readings of the review—three and then four—Margot was seized by self-doubt, by the fear of being uncovered as a poser, an imposter. Margot knew that her book was not so much a pastiche as written in the tradition of—even in imitation of—the old-fashioned novels she loved. She had chosen the present tense not as an act of subversive genius but simply because it made the book, with its cumbersome back story, easier to write. It had allowed her to write the lengthy flashbacks in simple past tense, thereby avoiding all those messy participles.

Margot’s lack of confidence in her own good fortune was soon validated. One Friday, exactly a week before her regional book tour was to commence, Lane phoned.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” her editor said. “But one of the large chain stores—I won’t say which one—says it over-ordered first fiction for the spring. They’re cutting quite a few books, and unfortunately yours is one of them.”

“Why mine?”

“Capricious, arbitrary decision on their part. Maybe it’s the southern setting, or maybe some buyer doesn’t like the name Margot.”

“Is it an unpopular name?” Margot asked, trying to understand what the conversation meant.

“It’s a lovely name. I’m just saying that you can’t take it personally.” Lane paused, then went on when Margot didn’t say anything. “I won’t pretend it’s not bad news. At least one copy of your book was slated to go to every one of their stores, and they’d ordered half a dozen copies for a good number of stores in the south and some larger cities.”

“How many are they taking now? Will it still be in most stores?”

“Darling, you don’t understand. They cut your title.”

“Cut?”

“They aren’t ordering any.”

“But the review in
The Times
was so good.”

“All of your reviews have glowed, and that’s wonderful. It’s not only wonderful, it’s deserved. If only reviews translated into sales, you’d be a wealthy young woman, but that’s just not the case any longer.”

“People don’t want to read good books?”

Margot realized how naïve she sounded, but she couldn’t believe that her good reviews—however much she doubted their wisdom—didn’t mean anything.

“Don’t worry; all is not lost. We’re still sending you to Vermont next week, and Renate booked you into the fiction series at the CIA Bar. You’ll be reading before someone named Clarice Aames. She doesn’t have a book out yet, but she’s gathered quite a following. The turnout should be great.”

Margot had been to a reading at the CIA once, and her stomach shifted at the idea of reading to a large, inebriated crowd.

“I believe in your book. The indies are going to hand-sell, and word will get out.”

After she put the phone down, Margot continued what she’d been doing: heating tomato soup and melting butter in a skillet to grill a cheese sandwich. But when she sat down with the meal that had constituted her winter comfort food since childhood, her appetite was gone. She chided herself for being disappointed by expectations she had never held. It’s not as though she’d ever thought she was writing a bestseller; she was happy just to be publishing a book and garnering a few readers and reviews. It was still a dream come true. Pushing away the image of books stacked high in large, well-lit bookstores, she dipped a corner of sandwich into the scarlet soup.

A
manda Yule’s novel parked on every bestseller list in the country. It was hailed as a literary crossover book—a book club favorite praised by critics for the magic realist elements that so captured the mood of the paintings on which it was based. At the same time, Amanda’s alternative career as Clarice Aames soared, with more stories published and more websites devoted to her work appearing online.

Amanda kept a color-coded calendar, using blue to mark her publicity appearances for
The Progress of Love
and red for Clarice Aames’s readings. Her even script crowded the calendar, blurring into purple. When Amanda was scheduled for a television appearance in Los Angeles, Clarice gave a surprise reading at an Orange County community college. When Amanda signed books at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, Clarice read at an art bar in Oakland. When Amanda appeared in Denver or Minneapolis, Clarice showed up in Boulder or St. Paul. They drew different constituencies, and no one picked up on the pattern. Yet Amanda was careful to keep her two authorial identities distinct, and Clarice always appeared in disguise—a face powdered white, too much black eyeliner, and a long black wig with bangs covering her forehead. Amanda also limited Clarice’s appearances in New York, though she had finally succumbed to pressure and vanity, agreeing to appear at the CIA Bar.

Her biggest problem in maintaining her double identity was her husband, who asked detailed questions about her itineraries and hotel room changes. In the spring, when she changed her drink of choice from red wine to white and from Irish whiskey with a splash of soda to a salty dog, Eddie grilled her. They’d once figured out that a friend of theirs was having an affair with their professor because the friend, out of the blue, had started ordering Makers Mark. And she’d heard of a man whose infidelity was discovered after he acquired his mistress’s mispronunciation of the word
macadam
, a verbal tick whose origin was not lost on his wife. Amanda confronted Eddie one morning as he was busy not-writing. “You think I’m having an affair.”

He stayed hunched over his computer, eyes on the blank screen. “Are you?”

“No,” said Amanda, “I’m not. You have no appreciation for how hard I am working. And despite all the publicity and phone calls for quotes and travel, I’m a lot further along on my new book than you are.”

“That’s a cruel thing to say.”

“The truth hurts.”

Eddie pushed out his chair and swiveled sideways. “You’re really not seeing someone else?”

“Not yet.” She softened even as she said it. “Really, Eddie, I’m not having an affair. It’s all work. And I always change my drinks with the weather, you know that.”

Amanda came close to telling Eddie about her black-wearing alter ego, but she stopped herself. She could not articulate why—she wasn’t sure whether she was trying to protect herself or Eddie or perhaps even Clarice—but she didn’t want him to know. It was a secret she wanted to hold close, a marvelous thing that was all her own and didn’t have to be shared. Some people, she knew, only enjoyed good things—from sexual relationships to compliments at work—if and when they could tell someone else. She wasn’t like that, and she wondered if it meant she was self-sufficient or that there was something askew about her, something related to her childhood, that made her comfortable with complete privacy.

“And now I must get back to work.” She paused, spinning Eddie’s chair back toward his computer. “Perhaps you’d feel better if you did the same.”

For the next four hours, Amanda typed away on her new book: an increasingly autobiographical novel about a pretty young girl reared in poverty who marries an aspiring writing whose star seems to be rising.

As she was taking a break to fix dinner, Henry Baffler phoned.

“How’s Harlem?” Amanda asked.

“I like having an apartment, but I hope it won’t corrupt my work.”

Amanda laughed: at least she hadn’t married Henry. “Impossible,” she said. “And Henry, I want you to know how much we love
Bailiff
. It’s terrific.” She eyed the book on the coffee table, vowing to move the bookmark further along before Henry’s next visit. Perhaps she could memorize a few key lines and make him think she’d studied the whole thing.

“Thank you, Amanda.” Henry sounded moved. “That means a lot to me. A lot.”

She noticed that he said nothing about her book. Maybe he couldn’t afford it, and she knew it was tough to borrow—all the public libraries had waiting lists.

“I just found out that one of the best writers in the country will be reading at the CIA Bar. Clarice Aames. I thought you and Eddie might want to go hear her.”

“Terrific.” Amanda thought quickly. “When is it?”

When he told her the date, she said, “Rats, I’m going to be out of town.”

“That’s a shame. It’s really amazing what she does with non-realism. I’m rethinking my whole aesthetic. I already got tickets. Maybe Jackson will want to go with me and Eddie.”

Amanda realized that she was going to have to improve her disguise or, perhaps, cancel the event. Maybe Clarice should only make surprise, unadvertised appearances in New York.

“Amanda, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“The word
copse
. How many times can it be used in one book?”

“Once every hundred pages,” she said without hesitation.

“Yes, I think that’s the right answer.” He paused, then asked, “What about
splay
?”

“Just once,” Amanda said.

“Even in a very long book?”

“Yes,” Amanda answered with the confidence of the popular. “Just once per book.”

“Damn it all to hell!” Henry exclaimed before apologizing. “Of course you’re right. It’s just that I was hoping to use it a few times. I’m writing an open book.”

“I almost understand what that might mean, and I certainly look forward to reading it.”

“Goodbye, Amanda.”

“Nice chatting with you, Henry.”

She dropped the receiver into its cradle, knowing she should cancel Clarice’s appearance but already imagining how it would feel to have her friends there listening to her read, even her husband, none of them guessing her secret.

J
ackson Miller strode across the room and opened the door to Margot’s light knock.

“Let me take that.” He shook water droplets from her dark umbrella and slid it into the frog-shaped holder that Doreen had given him as a housewarming present.

As Margot arranged her short curls with her fingers, Jackson was smitten all over again by the elegant shape of her head, her lithe arms, her slender waist.

“Your apartment is beautiful,” she said.

“Albeit still nearly empty.” He gestured to his first piece of real furniture: a lone leather sofa.

“So,” she asked after she’d perched on the sofa. “How are your friends the Renfroses?”

Jackson felt peculiar for having told Margot about his friends, about having linked the two spheres of his life, yet he valued her opinion—not necessarily as one he would follow but as one to consider as the most ethical if not the most practical route. That was one role Margot could play in his life: the voice of duty, of how he should act.

“Well, they’re certainly happier now that they have more money,” he said. “Amanda wasn’t cut out to be the supportive wife of a struggling novelist.”

“You don’t have a very high opinion of her?” Margot looked quizzical.

“On the contrary. And even the fact that Eddie and I quarreled over her hasn’t changed that.”

“Quarreled over her?” Margot held her voice steady, but it was tight, and Jackson recognized concern, perhaps jealousy.

“It’s nothing really. It’s that Eddie—before his book sold, mind you—blamed me in part for Amanda’s unhappiness with him.”

Margot did not speak and did not lift her eyes.

“It’s funny really. My fault was supposed to have been glorifying worldly success and so contributing to Amanda’s discontent with their lot. Ridiculous, no?”

Margot nodded.

“The thing of it was that Eddie was as serious as a boat taking on water with no way to bail it out.”

Again she nodded, giving away nothing but earnestness in her expression. “But you don’t think your talk had a negative effect?”

“Who knows? I certainly didn’t mean it to.”

“Well,” said Margot, “if it did, then Amanda can’t be very strong minded.”

“You mean if she was influenced by so insignificant a fellow as me?” Jackson smiled, touched her damp hair.

But Margot didn’t take his flirtatious bait. “To be influenced by anyone in such a way, to accept someone else’s values as her own,” she said.

“You think the worse of me now?” Jackson pictured the conversation as something solid, slipping into a place both unknown and unpleasant and himself helpless to right it.

“Of course not, but I don’t quite understand it. What was the tone of your conversation with her?” Margot’s tone was matter-of-fact, but she folded her arms.

“Same as always. You’ve heard me say it before. Unless you’re a genius, then the goal of writing is to make money and gain a reputation. If that’s scandalous, I’m sorry.” He paused, at once hurt and rankled at Margot’s response to what he’d brought up only in passing. “It’s possible that Amanda was a little too vigorous in agreeing with me. She saw that in my case my writing was leading to solid results at the same time that she was frustrated with Eddie for not working so practically.”

“That’s a shame.” Her head tilted, she stared across the room.

“You think it’s my fault?” He heard his own tone tightening, as though the key to his vocal chords had been turned by an unsympathetic hand. He didn’t understand why Margot, who had always seemed supportive, even adoring, was now critical. It’s not like he hadn’t been up front about who and what he was.

“I’m sure you were only speaking in your natural way and didn’t mean to cause your friend trouble. I think you’re probably a very good friend so long as it doesn’t inconvenience you. Didn’t you once tell me something like that?”

Jackson pushed back in his seat, thinking that he’d been too open with Margot. She’d always been so agreeable, so anxious to please him, that he’d assumed he could be frank with her. Before, he had only to speak when he wanted assurance of her devotion. Now she seemed changed, seemed much more self-possessed, even aloof.

“You have doubts about me? Because I recognize the necessity of making money at writing in order to keep writing?”

“You resign yourself quite happily to the necessity.”

Her gaze felt more clinical than adoring as he searched her face, looking for the sweet, insecure girl who could barely pump her own gas.

“You would rather have me bemoan my fate in not being able to devote my life to nobly unremunerative work?”

“That you never do does give me pause,” she said, “but I don’t mean to be harsh.”

“I suppose you think I don’t care about the quality of my work, or that I’m not capable of writing literature?”

A small smile clung to Margot’s lips and she fiddled with her hands, small in her lap.

“I know that some people don’t have a high opinion of me, but I don’t want you to be one of them. You’re one of the few people whose opinion of me matters. Do you think I’m even capable of generous feelings?”

“Of course. There aren’t many people who aren’t
capable
of generous feelings.” She met his gaze, her small chin lifted with a defiance he had not noticed before.

“Well, that’s good news. I’m a rung up from the lowest of the low.” Jackson’s disbelief in Margot’s changed demeanor gave ground to his rising anger. “Tell me this, then: what do you think of my book?”

“You already know that I like your book.”

“Well that’s a relief. You like my book and don’t think I’m headed straight for hell. High praise from the author of
Pontchartrain
, who would never let worldly ambitions enter her gemlike sentences.”

He regretted his line as soon as he saw her chin lower and her eyes go gauzy. She got up and moved toward the door unsteadily, like a bird with a wing injury, and tried to rescue her umbrella, which was caught on the others.

“I’m sorry, Margot.”

“If I need someone to make fun of my book, there’s no reason for me to leave the house.”

“It hurts, doesn’t it? Having someone you care about disrespect your work.”

“Oh, just forget it.” She gave up on trying to disentangle the umbrella and grabbed the doorknob.

“If you insist on running away, let me at least help you with that.” He took the umbrella’s handle and worked to untangle its spokes.

“Like I care about a little rain when my whole life is falling apart.”

“You consider me your whole life?” Jackson asked, softening to her small presence.

“Of course not.” She yelled at him for the first time. “It’s my book. And my father. And, yes, you. I came here for comfort, but it seems that I can never say the right thing to you.”

“I’m sorry, here, come sit.”

“First, one question. Are you in love with me?”

“Oh, Margot, you know I’m crazy for you. You’re pretty and good and talented and sweet.”

“Are you in love with me?”

He held his forehead. “Margot, I don’t even know what it means to be in love. You find me an accurate definition, and I’ll let you know if that’s what I feel. But I do know that if it’s in my power to make you happy, I’d like to. You deserve to be happy.”

“Deserve? I don’t want you to be with me as some kind of reward for good behavior. Do you love me?”

Whether out of perverseness or the belief that he was doing her a favor—most likely from a jumbled combination of these motives—he merely shrugged.

“But I guess that’s not a fair question, is it?” she said, looking down, her voice dropping. “Because the real problem is that I don’t love you.”

Leaving her broken umbrella in the joke of a frog stand, she pushed out of his apartment and into the rainy city. From his window, Jackson watched her make her way through the heavy storm, running in spurts from tree to tree, awning to awning, getting completely drenched.

“Yes,” he said to his streaming window pane. “I do love you. God, I do love you.”

But he understood now that she didn’t love him, and his ego wanted to resist that knowledge. Already he was altering the memory of what his relationship with Margot had been, protecting himself with the story of a match not fated, of his generous concern for a girl who was better off without him.

Late that night, sulking in a deep rut, yet warm with good single malt, he wrote his farewell email:

There was no quick reply from Annandale-on-Hudson, and Jackson fell asleep telling himself this new story of failed love.