Generosity

Wisconsin with a dozen strangers for thirty-six hours without sleeping. When he’s done, Russell can do nothing but sit, his face yipping, unable to sink the putt of appropriate response.

He tries, ever so gently, to suggest room for improvement. He cloaks the suggestion in a general observation. “As I always say, all the best writing is rewriting.” The circle just blinks at him. No way they’re buying perpetual revision. Half of them don’t even believe in the Shift key.

Counterstrike dismisses Teacherman. It’s his God-given constitutional right. He gives Spock’s entry his highest praise: “Perfect the way it is, boo. Don’t change a word. The thing flows like manga.”

They have to explain to Russell what manga is.

“Comic books?” Teacherman pleads. “Do we really have to go there?” His eyes latch onto Roberto, usually reliable in bringing the group back to sense.

But even Munoz turns on him. “Well,” the Thief whispers, his hands like balls of bailing wire, “the best comics must be better than any print-only book. It kind of follows: pictures plus words gives you more to work with than just words alone.”

“What about interiority?” Russell challenges. “Complex levels of concealed thought? Things that aren’t material or visible. What about getting deep inside people’s heads?”

“I hate books that tell me what people think,” Princess Heavy says.

“Exactly,” Counterstrike agrees. “That Henry James guy? He is right at the top of my bitch-slap list.”

Russell snaps. “Fine. Let’s all just drown in shiny consumer shit.” He hears the word too late, garbling himself only at syllable’s end, like a television censor asleep at the bleep switch.

Even Thassa is stunned. They all sit frozen, until the Joker says, “Only the mind can turn shit into shiny.”

Stone apologizes to everyone, twice. He’s so ashamed he can’t even restart the conversation. He lets them go early. He’s ready to resign. Mesquakie was crazy to hire him.

The Berber woman stays after class. It’s all he can do to meet her eye. “Are you ill?” she asks.

Of course he’s ill; he’s alive, isn’t he?

She puts the back of her hand to his forehead. “Mmm. Yes. Warm. You need poly-pheelys, I think.”

They take the elevator down together. She studies him, shyly, but shows no need to ask about his meltdown. She just wants him to be well. Same as she wants from any stranger she passes on the street. She just needs him to delight in the world’s obvious inconsequence. It’s all she’s ever needed from anyone, in any country.

The elevator opens into the main lobby. Three night students straggle in, grinning knowingly as they exit. Thassa stops. Her olive skin blushes russet. “Maybe your problem is that you believe too much in words.”

He can’t even reply maybe. All he can do is stand wincing at everything in this life that ever made him happy. She takes his elbow and steers him toward the corner cafe. He follows her to the tea canteen, then freezes, dead. Seated at one of the tiny mesh tables is Grace’s double, the psychologist, Candace Weld.

Weeks later, Candace Weld would try to decide if she’d deliberately ambushed them. She’d been working late, catching up on session annotation. Between a sick soul and the healthy law, nothing mattered more than a good document trail. She was adding a closing appraisal to Russell Stone’s interview when she noticed in her notes that his evening class was just about to let out. Gabe was at his father’s; nothing waited back at her apartment except dirty dishes. She still had a good three hours of work. She put in one more, then went downstairs and sat for a moment on the edge of the cafe. She wasn’t even sure she could pick out an Algerian from the mix of evening students. But a potentially hypomanic one she might just notice.

They came from the elevators arm in arm. Candace couldn’t control her face, and Fyodor certainly saw her fail to. He shook his arm free fast enough to startle the girl. That’s when Candace Weld wondered what exactly she’d come for, sitting idly in the college lobby, when she should have been heading home.

Weld told her clients that if she ever saw them in public, she would never acknowledge them unless they initiated. She got so practiced at that professionalism that she sometimes failed to acknowledge simple friends. Russell Stone was not a client, of course; he had come to her in consultation only. Had he come out of the elevators alone, she probably would have said hello. But not like this.

She didn’t have to. Fast enough to surprise all three of them, the adjunct steered the girl toward the counselor’s table and made introductions. He didn’t say friend. He didn’t say psychologist. He didn’t say student. He just gave names and let the roles fend for themselves. She did admire that.

The girl was no girl. Twenty-three, but the radiance made her seem younger. People, like paintings, usually darkened with age.

“You know this man?” the Algerian asked. “That’s perfect! May we join ”

Without Stone’s prior account, Weld might have thought she had just come from a concert or film, some exhilarating work of art that made life, for a moment, seem kind and solvable.

“I was just leaving,” Weld said.

“Five minutes?” The student grabbed her instructor’s wrist and shook it. “You know this man. You have to explain him to me.”

As Candace Weld did whenever she was lost, she grinned broadly. And in that moment of her confusion, the pair sat down. The younger woman could not stop beaming at Weld, her eyes all speculation. As soon as she hit the chair, she rose again. “I’ll make the tea. What do you take? I know already what this man drinks.”

As soon as the student wandered away to the self-serve station, the teacher started up, in that male shorthand that needs each word to do twelve things. “I’m sorry.”

Weld donned her counselor’s mask. “For what?”

“She’s trying to cheer me up.”

“Why is that?”

“I lost my temper in class.”

The man was artless, whatever else he was. But before Candace Weld could press deeper, Thassadit Amzwar returned with three hot drinks. She handed them out, saying, “Saha, saha.” Weld put hers to her lips and set it down, just to be doing something.

Thassadit asked, “So did you know this man when he was young?”

“No,” Weld said, stupidly adding, “not really.”

“This is a shame, because I need to know-”

“Ms. Weld is a college counselor,” Stone blurted. “I just met her recently.”

Weld’s face went hot at the man’s scrupulousness. But the news electrified the younger woman. “Serious? Une psychologue? Then I really must ask you some things!”

Counselor and teacher both froze.

“Do you think it’s possible for people to change their own story?”

Candace Weld had planned to down half the tea and bolt. But that question was her drug, her hottest hot button, her hobby and her calling. She could no more refrain from weighing in on it than a gambling addict could keep from testing out a new pair of dice. Before she could stop herself, Candace was holding forth about the untapped ability of any human temperament to recompose itself. Everyone could be redeemed, given the right combination of behavioral adjustment, medical intervention, and talk. And of these three, the foremost was talk.

And as they talked, the counselor’s words turned playful, to match the immigrant’s. Something contagious about the Algerian. Her delight was irresistible: like being seven, and ten hours away from turning eight. Like being eighteen, out on the highway when a tune with a hook like resurrection came on the radio for the first time. Like being twenty-nine, and having the doctor tell you that company was coming.

Candace Weld could count on her two elbows the number of people in life who always made her feel lighter than she was. She’d met both of those people before she’d turned this woman’s age. And yet here was this knocked-about refugee putting her, within twenty minutes, high up on a thermal, reluctant to do anything but circle and enjoy the view.

They followed a bread-crumb trail of topics: How long therapy takes and when you know it’s done. Whether some cultures were healthier than others. Why America was terrified of every country that the Ottomans had ever ruled. Weld trotted out the twelve words left from her two years of college French; her pronunciation paralyzed