wait for his offer of money on my novel. Months go by. I
don’t call him, my agent keeps calling him, he says he is
working on it, trust him, six or seven months go by, the
stranger in the next room and I barely speak to each other, the
rats are monstrous, I am hungry. I say to my agent: you must
find out, I must have money. She calls. He says he doesn’t do
fiction. He doesn’t do fiction. My book that I finished when the
rats came is published a few months later. He lets it die, no gift
like jewelry for me anymore. He preordains its death and it dies. I
see my house, the ocean so near it. I see the beach, smooth wet
sand, and the curve of the waves on the earth, the edge of the
ocean, so delicate, so beautifully fine, lapping up on the beach
like slivers of liquid silver. I see the sun, silver light on the winter
water, and I see dusk coming. I am alone there, in winter, ice on
the sand, silver waves outside the window. I see a small, simple
house, white and square against the vast shore. I see the simple
beauty of the house absorbing the dusk, each simple room
turning somber, and then the dusk reaching past the house onto
the wet beach and finally spreading out over the ocean. I see the
moon over the ocean. I see the night on the water. I see myself in
the simple house, at a window, looking out, just feeling the first
chill of night. I sit in the apartment, rats are running in the
walls, the walls are closing in, writing my poor little heart out:
in a terrible hurry to tell what is in my heart. You have to be
in a terrible hurry or the heart gets eaten up. There is a carcass,
sans heart, writing its little heart out so to speak: in a terrible
hurry: and somewhere an ocean near a house, waiting. He
can’t want
woman, I thought somewhere down deep, he can’t want that.
Now I am in a terrible hurry to tell what is in my heart. Who
could hurry fast enough?
Did I remember to say that I always wanted to be a writer,
since I was a little girl?
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