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If it were any colder, I could disengage
The writer sits on the edge of a bed I haven't owned in six years, looking lankier than he is in a soldier's greatcoat and a crumpled collarless shirt, smoking. All my writers are nervous types, and they smoke too much, which I can't. (Benson & Hedges, sometimes Kents smell like my grandmother. I sat out on the porch with her and added spices to a bowl of cold water, trying to make soup. She quit when I was eleven. I walk through some stranger's cloud of smoke and think of her, but it still makes my head slam up shop.) This one has tousled celery-grey hair and the face of someone who wears glasses without them, raw and slightly apprehensive; he has a wristwatch, but it doesn't work. I have a fever. This is a nightmare. I thought it was a lucid dream, but I was wrong.
—I wrote this a little before nine in the morning, in a kind of blurry experimental half-sleep. I'd woken up freezing, what felt like hours earlier, but hadn't been awake enough to stretch out of bed and close the windows. I felt terrible, so I went back to sleep for five minutes and woke up nearly an hour and a half later, feeling worse. I don't actually think I'm feverish. I was reading Bulgakov's Notes on the Cuff & Other Stories (1991) as I was falling asleep, which couldn't have helped. If I still feel like this by tonight, all the exiles I talk about are going to come out ghosts.
—I wrote this a little before nine in the morning, in a kind of blurry experimental half-sleep. I'd woken up freezing, what felt like hours earlier, but hadn't been awake enough to stretch out of bed and close the windows. I felt terrible, so I went back to sleep for five minutes and woke up nearly an hour and a half later, feeling worse. I don't actually think I'm feverish. I was reading Bulgakov's Notes on the Cuff & Other Stories (1991) as I was falling asleep, which couldn't have helped. If I still feel like this by tonight, all the exiles I talk about are going to come out ghosts.
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If I talk about the Aeneid, I'll talk about the Pharsalia, and what if I got Lucan? Then where would we be?
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This one has tousled celery-grey hair and the face of someone who wears glasses without them, raw and slightly apprehensive; he has a wristwatch, but it doesn't work.
This is brilliant description.
I'm sorry you're feeling so poorly. I hope you're not actually feverish, and that you'll be feeling better soon. Barring that, I hope today will be as good a day as it's capable of being. And that the ghosts don't show up tonight, or if they must that they'll be as decent company as ghosts may be.
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Thank you. I don't know what I can do with it right now, but I write these things down anyway.
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Nerves and cigarettes, possibly my worst two habits. I didn't take you for a smoker, but I may well have misread that. May this thing pass swiftly.
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No, I don't smoke—I'm a classically trained singer, so I like my lungs, but I also react very badly, physically, to cigarettes. I just have nostalgic associations with a few brands, despite the fact that they cause my throat to close, my sense of smell to disappear, and my ordinary headache levels to spike through the roof.
May this thing pass swiftly.
Thank you.
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Excellent! Just what I'd like to do on that panel.
Nine
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I don't think I'm preparing for anything this year. What I know off the top of my head is what they get.
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*nodding*
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I suppose if he was a ghost it only makes sense.