are closed. I am afraid I will suffocate, that the air is still
poison, but I am too cold to open the windows. Sometimes the
new exhaust system doesn’t work and I get sick so I am nervous
and afraid each day but the windows are closed. Sometimes
they are opened for a week at a time because the new exhaust system doesn’t work but most of the time the windows are closed. Each day I beat down the humiliation of the last
book to work on this new one: it is like keeping vomit from
coming up. I work hard. A year passes. I finish it. He
141
has called to assure me of his love but he leaves me alone.
*
Then the rats come. Just as I am finishing, the rats come.
There are huge thuds in the walls, heavy things dropping in
the walls, great chases in the ceiling, they are right behind the
plaster, chasing, running, scrapping. The walls get closer and
closer, Edgar Poe knew a thing or two, the room gets smaller
and smaller. I am up each night and they are running, falling,
dropping, chasing, heavy, loud, scampering, fast. They are
found dead in the halls. The landlord says they are squirrels.
*
Night after night: they drop like dead weight in the walls, they
run in the ceiling, the walls close in, the ceiling drops down,
plaster falls, they are running above the bed, they are running
above the bath, they are running above the sink, the toilet, the
sofa, the desk, they are in the walls, falling like dead weight,
we put huge caches of poison in great holes we make in the
walls, we plaster the holes, sometimes one dies and the stink
of the rotting carcass is inescapable, vomitous, and still they
run and chase and fall and pounce: they are overhead and on
every side. I am scared to death and ready to go mad, if only
God would be good to me.
*
I live like this for months. The publisher has promised to publish a secret piece of fiction only he has read. He read it months before, in the privacy of his love for me. Now I have submitted
it officially. He has promised me, money, everything. I am
entirely desperate for money. I am so afraid. He knows about
the rats. He knows how poor I am. He knows I am ready to
leave the sleeping boy, who sleeps through the jumping and
chasing and great dull thuds. I am, frankly, too desperate and
too tired to love. I am too afraid. The boy sleeps. I do not.
This constitutes— finally— an irreconcilable difference.
The editor tells my agent he must talk to me about structure:
ideas he has for the piece of fiction: this means he will publish
it, but he has these ideas I must listen to.
I call to make an appointment at his office.
He insists on dinner.
There is dinner, coffee afterward: a restaurant, a coffeehouse. He talks and talks and talks. I drink and drink and
