which Lola interpreted as anorexic, was some kind of sixteenth-century fashionista who never appeared in public without wearing millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry in order to remind the masses of the power and wealth of the Catholic Church. Lola looked up from her reading and saw that the nerd was staring at her. She looked down at the pages, and when she looked up, he was still staring. He had reddish-blond hair and freckles but was better-looking than her first assessment. Finally, he spoke.

“Did you know those are men’s?” he asked.

“What?” she said, giving him a glare that should have sent him away.

The nerdle wasn’t put off. “Your glasses,” he said. “Those are men’s glasses. Are they even real?”

“Of course they’re real,” she said.

He rolled his eyes. “Do they have a real prescription in them? Or are they just for show?”

“It’s none of your business,” she said, adding, for good measure, a threatening, “if you know what I mean.”

“All you girls wear glasses now,” the young man continued on, unabated.

“And you know they’re fake. How many twenty-two-year-olds need glasses? Glasses are for old people. It’s another one of those fake things that girls do.”

She sat back on her stool. “So?”

“So I was wondering if you were one of those fake girls. You look like a fake girl. But you might be real.”

“Why should you care?”

“I think you’re kind of cute?” he asked sarcastically. “Maybe you can give me your name, and I can leave you a message on Facebook?”

Lola gave him a cold, superior smile. “I already have a boyfriend, thanks.”

“Who said I wanted to be your boyfriend? Christ, girls in New York are so arrogant.”

“You’re pathetic,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “And look at you. You’re wearing designer clothes at a Starbucks, your hair is blown dry, and you have a spray tan. Probably from City Sun. They’re the only ones who do that particular shade of bronze.”

Lola wondered how this kid knew about the subtleties of spray tans.

“And look at you,” she said in her most patronizing tone of voice. “You’re wearing plaid pants.”

“Vintage,” the kid said. “There’s a difference.”

Lola gathered her papers and stood up.

“Leaving?” the kid asked. “So soon?” He stood up and fished around in the back pocket of his hideous plaid pants. They were not even Burberry plaid, Lola thought, which she could have excused. He handed her a card.

THAYER CORE, it read. In the bottom right-hand corner was a 212 phone number. “Now that you know my name, will you tell me yours?” he said.

“Why would I do that?” Lola asked.

“New York’s a tricky place,” he said. “And I’m the joker.”

9

A few weeks later, James Gooch sat in the office of his publisher.

“Books are like movies now,” Redmon Richardly said, waving his hand as if to dismiss the whole lot. “You get as much publicity as you can, have a big first week, and then drop off from there. There’s no traction anymore. Not like the old days. The audience wants something new every week. And then there are the big corporations. All they care about is the bottom line. They push the publishers to get new product out there. Makes them feel like their people are doing something. It’s heinous, corporations controlling creativity. It’s worse than government propaganda.”

“Uh-huh,” James said. He looked around Redmon’s new office and felt sad. The old office used to be in a town house in the West Village, filled with manuscripts and books and frayed Oriental carpets that Redmon had taken from his grandmother’s house in the South. There was an old down-filled yellow couch that you sat on while you waited to see Redmon, and you leafed through a pile of magazines and watched the pretty girls go in and out. Redmon was considered one of the greats back then. He published new talent and edgy fiction, and his writers were going to be the future giants. Redmon made people believe in publishing for a while — up until about 1998, James reckoned, when the Internet began to take over.

James looked past Redmon and out the plate-glass window. There was a view of the Hudson River in the distance, but it was small consolation for the cold, generic space.

“What we’re publishing now is an entertainment product,” Redmon continued. Redmon hadn’t lost his ability to pontificate about nothing, James thought, and found comfort in this fact. “Oakland’s a perfect example. He’s not so great anymore, but it doesn’t matter. He still sells copies — even for him, not as many. But it’s the same story with everyone.”

Redmon threw his hands into the air. “There’s no art anymore. Fiction used to be an art form. No more. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter. The public is only interested in the topic. ‘What’s it about?’ they ask. ‘Does it matter?’

I say. ‘It’s about life. All great books are about only one thing — life.’ But they don’t get that anymore. They want to know the topic. If it’s about shoes or abducted babies, they want to read it. And we don’t do that, James. We couldn’t even if we wanted to.”

“We certainly couldn’t,” James agreed.

“ ’Course not,” Redmon said. “But what I’m saying is ... Well, you’ve written a great book, James, an actual novel, but I don’t want you to be disappointed. We’ll definitely get on the list, right away, I hope. But as to how long we’ll stay on the list ...”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” James said. “I didn’t write the book to sell copies. I wrote it because it’s a story I needed to tell.” And I won’t be corrupted by Redmon’s cynicism, he thought. “I still believe in the public. The public knows the difference. And they’ll buy what’s good,” he added stubbornly.

“I don’t want you to have your heart broken,” Redmon said.

“I’m forty-eight years old,” James said. “My heart’s been broken for about forty years.”

“There is good news,” Redmon said. “Very good news. Your agent and I agreed that I should be the one to tell you. I can offer you a million-dollar advance on your next book. Corporations are bad, but they’re also good. They have money, and I intend to spend it.”

James was so shocked, he couldn’t move. Had he heard correctly?

“You’ll get a third on signing,” Redmon continued, as if he gave away million-dollar advances all the time. “With that and the money we’ll get from the iStores’ placement, I think you can expect to have a very good year.”

“Great,” James said. He still wasn’t sure how to react. Should he jump out of his chair and do the watusi?

But Redmon was being calm about it. “What will you do with the money?” he asked.

“Save it. For Sam’s college education,” James said.

“That will about use it up,” Redmon agreed. “Six, seven hundred thousand dollars — what does it get you these days? After taxes ... Christ. And with those guys on Wall Street buying Picassos for fifty million.” He put up his hands as if to push away this reality. “It’s our new world order, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” James agreed. “But one could always pursue the teenage fantasy. Buy a little sailboat in the Caribbean and disappear for a few years.”

“Not me,” Redmon said. “I’d be bored in two days. I can hardly stand to take a vacation. I like cities.”

“Right,” James said. He looked at Redmon. How lucky to know one’s own mind. Redmon was always pleased with himself, James thought.

While James did not, he realized, know his own mind at all.

“I’ll walk you out,” Redmon said. Standing, he made a face and put his hand to his jaw. “Damn tooth,” he said. “Probably needs another root canal. How are your teeth? It’s extraordinary, getting old. It is as hard as people say.” Exiting the office, they came out into a maze of cubicles.

“But there are advantages,” Redmon continued, his overweening confidence firmly back in place. “For instance, we know everything now. We’ve seen it all before. We know there’s nothing new. Have you noticed that?

The only thing that changes is the technology.”

“Except we can’t understand the technology,” James said.

“Bullshit,” Redmon said. “It’s still a bunch of buttons. It’s only a matter of knowing which ones to press.”

“Like the panic button that blows up the world.”

“Wasn’t that disabled?” Redmon said. “Why can’t we have another cold war? It was so much more sensible than a real war.” He pushed the button for the elevator.

“Mankind is going backward,” James said. The elevator came, and he got on.

“Say hi to your family for me,” Redmon called out with genuine urgency as the doors were closing.

Redmon’s admonishment struck James as extraordinary. Family concerns were something Redmon never would have considered ten years ago, when he was out bedding a different woman in publishing every night and drinking and doing cocaine until dawn. For years, people had postulated that something terrible would happen to Redmon — he appeared to deserve it, although what the terrible thing was, no one could say — rehab, maybe? Or some kind of death? But nothing terrible ever did happen to him. Instead, he slid into his new life as a married father and corporate man with the agility of a skier. James had never understood it, but he thought perhaps Redmon, instead of being a source of consternation, ought to be considered an inspiration. If Redmon could change, why not he?

I have money now, James thought, the reality hitting him at the same time as the crisp September air. At least New York appeared to be having a real fall this year. Ordinary occurrences were now a pleasure and a relief to him, a reminder that in some ways, life could go on as before.

But would it now that he had money? Passing the chain stores that lined lower Fifth Avenue with their wares displayed in great glass cases like a middle-class shopper’s dream, he reminded himself that it wasn’t so much money. Not enough even to buy a tiny studio apartment in this great and expensive metropolis. But he had a bit of money. He was no longer — for this moment, anyway — a loser.

At Sixteenth Street, he passed Paul Smith and, out of habit, stopped for a second and gazed into the windows. Paul Smith’s clothing was a status symbol, the choice for the sophisticated, urbane downtown male.

Mindy had bought him a Paul Smith shirt years ago, for Christmas, when she was feeling proud of him and, apparently, had decided he was worth a splurge. Staring into the window at a pair of velvet pants, it occurred to James that for the first time in his life, he could afford anything in this store. This new feeling empowered him, and he went in.

Almost immediately, his phone rang. It was Mindy.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Shopping.”

“You? Shopping?” Mindy said with faux astonishment that was edged ever so slightly with disdain. “What are you buying?”

“I’m in Paul Smith.”

“You’re not going to actually buy anything, are you?” Mindy said.

“I might,” he said.

“You’d better not. That store is too expensive,” she said. James had thought he’d call Mindy first thing about his advance, but he surprised himself by wanting to keep it to himself.

“When are you coming home?” she asked.

“Soon.”

“How did it go? With Redmon?”

“Great,” he said, and hung up. He shook his head. Both he and Mindy had a quaint, puritan approach to money. Like it was always about to run out. Like it shouldn’t be squandered. One’s feelings about money were a gene one inherited. If your parents were afraid about money, then you’d be afraid. Mindy came from New England stock, where it was considered tacky to spend a lot of money. He came from immigrant stock, where money was needed for food and education. They’d survived in New York because they saved and didn’t get their self-esteem from their outward appearances. But maybe that wasn’t the solution. Because, James thought, neither he nor Mindy seemed to have much self-esteem at all.

James looked around the store and, walking to a rack of jackets, fingered a fine cashmere overcoat. He did not know what it was like to have money. Not having money had kept him tied to Mindy’s apron strings.

He knew it, had known it for years, had denied it, had rationalized it, had been ashamed of it, but what was most shameful was that he’d never been willing to do anything about it. Because, he’d told himself, he believed in the purity of his pursuit of literature. He’d been willing to sacrifice his manhood for this higher ideal. He’d taken succor in the fact that he was an honorable struggler.