“So it is! What time’s your flight to London?”

“Nine-thirty, but can I ask you two last things?”

“Anything,” she says. “Almost.”

“Am I still ‘the spiral, the spider, the one-eyed man’?”

“You want me to check?”

Like an atheist wanting to be prayed for, I nod.

As she did in Shanghai, Holly touches the spot on her forehead and lets her eyelids almost close. What a great face she has but … it shouldn’t be that gray, or stretched. My eyes wander to her pendant. It’s a labyrinth. Some symbolic mind-body-spirit thing, I guess. From Ed?

“Yes.” Holly opens her eyes. “Same as ever.”

A possible drunk laughs maniacally outside. “Will I ever know what that means? That’s not my second question.”

“Some day, yes. Let me know when you know.”

“I promise.” The second question’s harder because one answer to it scares me very much: “Holly, you’re not ill, are you?”

She reacts with surprise but not denial. She looks away.

“Oh, sod it.” I want to unask my question. “Forgive me, it’s not—”

“Cancer of the gall bladder.” Holly attempts a smile. “Trust me to choose a nice rare one, eh?”

I can’t even attempt a smile. “What’s the prognosis?”

Holly wears the expression of someone discussing a tiresome inconvenience. “Too late for surgery—it’s spread to my liver and … um, yeah, it’s all over the shop. My oncologist in London gives me a—a—a five to ten percent chance of being here this time next year.” Her voice croaks. “Not the odds I’d choose. With chemo and drugs the odds improve, up to twenty percent, maybe, but … do I want to spend a few extra months puking in bin-liners? That’s the other reason I’ve been here in Iceland all summer, shadowing poor Aoife, like, y’know, whatsisface from Macbeth.”

“Banquo. Aoife knows, then?”

Holly nods. “Brendan, Sharon, their kids, my mother, and Цrvar too—I’m hoping he’ll help Aoife when, y’know. When I can’t. But nobody else knows. ’Cept you. People get so maudlin. I have to spend what energy I’ve got cheering them up. I wasn’t going to tell you either but … you asked. Sorry to put a downer on a lovely evening.”

I see her, and see Crispin Hershey through her eyes, and perhaps she sees Holly Sykes through mine. Suddenly it’s later. Holly and I are standing by the table, hugging goodbye. It isn’t an erotic hug. Truly it isn’t, dear reader. I’d know.

It’s this: As long I’m holding her, nothing bad can happen.

·   ·   ·

THE TAXI DRIVER has earlobes full of metalwork and just says, “Okay,” when I tell him the name of my hotel. I wave goodbye until I can’t see Holly anymore. I’ve arranged to go to Rye before Christmas, so I’ll just ignore this unpleasant premonition that I’ll never see her again. The radio’s tuned to a classical-music station and I recognize Maria Callas singing “Casta Diva” from Bellini’s Norma—Dad used it in the model-airplane scene in Battleship Hill. For a moment I forget where I am. I switch on my iPhone to text Holly, to thank her for the evening, and as I’m writing it, a message from Carmen gets relayed through. She sent it while I was delivering my lecture earlier. It has no text: it’s just an image of … a blizzard?

A blizzard at night through a windscreen?

I tilt my head and rotate the phone.

Mashed-up asteroids? No.

It’s an ultrasound scan.

Of Carmen’s womb.

With a tenant in it.

December 13, 2020

THE KEYby Jun’ichirф Tanizaki: That’s the one. But having found the title in my cupboard-under-the-stairs of once-read books, the mind of Crispin Hershey drifts away from Devon Kim-Ashkenazy’s novel-in-progress ( Across the Wide Ocean, three generations of abused women from Pusan to Brooklyn). I know it’s happening, but I feel powerless to stop it. Up, up, and away my mind rises, through the ceiling tiles and roofing slates, over the bunker where the English Department has been temporarily housed since 1978. Espy the theater’s curvaceous roof by Frank Gehry; skim over Lego-like accommodation blocks; circle the Gothic chapel from Lincoln’s era; tumble amid the glass-and-steel science buildings; up to the president’s house, red-bricked, gabled, ivy-veined; through the lych-gate to the cemetery, where Blithewood College lifers turn into trees at the speed of worms and roots, and up the highest tree of all, spirals Hershey’s absent mind, known only unto squirrels and crows; the Hudson River stately winds between the Catskills’ pigeon-toes; a train’s revealed, a train’s obscured, a quote around a broken cup, “I like to see it lap the miles and lick the valleys up.” GoogleEarthlike soars his mind, through clouds where snowstorms brew; New York State has dropped away, and Massachusetts flew, and Newfoundland is ice-entombed and Rockall gull-beshatten, where no eye sees the lightning flash its momentary pattern …

“CRISPIN?” DEVON KIM-ASHKENAZY. “Are you okay?”

My postgrads’ faces suggest it was a prolonged zone-out. “Yes. I was recalling a Tanizaki novel that does wonderful things with a similar diary-narrative to yours, Devon. The Key. It could save you from reinventing the wheel. But generally,” I hand her back her manuscript, “good progress. My only cavil is the, uh, violation scene. Still a little adverb-rich, I felt.”

“Fine.” Devon uses a breezy tone to prove she’s unoffended. “The violation in the flower shop or the violation in the motel?”

“The one in the carwash. Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose. Halve your adverbs and your prose pumps twice as well.” Pens scratch. “Oh, and beware of the verb ‘seem’; it’s a textual mumble. And grade every simile and metaphor from one star to five, and remove any threes or below. It hurts when you operate, but afterwards you feel much better. Japheth?”

Japheth Solomon (author of In God’s Country, a Mormon bildungsroman-in-progress about a Utah boy escaping to a liberal East Coast college where sex, dope, and a creative writing program provoke existential angst) asks, “What if we can’t decide if a metaphor’s a three or a four?”

“If you can’t decide, Japheth, it’s only a three.”

Maaza Kolofski ( Horsehead Nebula, a Utopia about life after a plague destroys every male on earth) raises her hand: “Any holiday assignments, Crispin?”

“Yes. Compose five letters from five leading characters, to yourself. Does everyone know what a letter is?”

“A paper email,” answers Louis Baranquilla ( The Creepy Guy in the Yoga Classabout a creepy guy in a yoga class). My pre-Internet credentials are an ongoing joke. “What do we put into these letters?”

“Your characters’ potted life histories. Whom or what your characters love and despise. Details on education, employment, finances, political affiliations, social class. Fears. Skeletons in cupboards. Addictions. Biggest regret; believer, agnostic, or atheist. How afraid of dying are they?” I think of Holly, suppress a sigh and push on. “Have they ever seen a corpse? A ghost? Sexuality. Glass half empty, glass half full, glass too small? Snazzy or scruffy dressers? It’s a letter, so consider their use of language. Would they say ‘mellifluous’ or ‘a sharp talker’? Foul-mouthed or profanity-averse? Record the phrases they unknowingly overuse. When did they last cry? Can they see another person’s point of view? Only one-tenth of what you write will make it into your manuscript, but when you knock on that tenth”—I rap my knuckles on the table—“you’ll hear oaken solidity, not sawdust and glue. Ersilia?”

“Seems …” Ersilia Holt (a thriller named The Icepick Manabout Triad gangs versus Taliban cells in Vancouver) scrunches her face, “… kinda deranged, to actually write lettersto yourself?”

“Agreed, Ersilia. A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a degree, your sanity. Writing novels worth reading willbugger up your mind, jeopardize your relationships, and distend your life. You have been warned.”