In One Person

"Rachel is sucking up to you, and you don't see it," Elaine said. I didn't say anything, and Elaine added: "If you ask me, I think my tits are bigger."

"Bigger than--"

"Rachel's!"

"Oh."

Elaine was never sexually jealous of anyone I was sleeping with, but she didn't like it when I was hanging out with a writer who was younger than she was--man or woman.

"Rachel writes in the present tense--'I go, she says, he goes, I think.' That shit," Elaine declared.

"Yes, well--"

"And the 'thinking, wishing, hoping, wondering'--that shit!" Elaine cried.

"Yes, I know--" I started to say.

"I hope she doesn't verbalize her orgasms: 'Billy--I'm coming!' That shit," Elaine said.

"Well, no--not that I remember," I replied.

"I think she's one of those young-women writers who baby her students," Elaine said.

Elaine had taught more than I had; I never argued with her about teaching, or Mrs. Kittredge. Grandpa Harry was generous to me; he gave me a little money for Christmas every year. I'd had part-time college-teaching jobs, the occasional writer-in-residence stint--the latter never longer than a single semester. I didn't dislike teaching, but it hadn't invaded my writing time--as I knew it did invade the writing time of many writer friends, Elaine among them.

"Just so you know, Elaine--I find there's more to like about Rachel than her small breasts," I said.

"I would sincerely hope so, Billy," Elaine said.

"Are you seeing anyone?" I asked my old friend.

"You know that guy Rachel almost married?" Elaine asked me.

"Not personally," I told her.

"He hit on me," Elaine said.

"Oh."

"He told me that, one time, Rachel shit in the bed--that's what he told me, Billy," Elaine said.

"Nothing like that has happened, yet," I told Elaine. "But I'll be on the lookout for anything suspicious."

After that, we drove for a while in silence. When we left New York State and crossed into Vermont, a little west of Bennington, there were more dead things in the road; the bigger dead things had been dragged to the side of the road, but we could still see them. I remember a couple of deer, in the bigger category, and the usual raccoons and porcupines. There's a lot of roadkill in northern New England.

"Would you like me to drive?" I asked Elaine.

"Sure--yes, I would," Elaine answered quietly. She found a place to pull off the road, and I took over the driving. We turned north again, just before Bennington; there was more snow in the woods, and more dead things in the road and along the roadside.

We were a long way from New York City when Elaine said, "That guy didn't hit on me, Billy--I made up the story about Rachel shitting in bed, too."

"That's okay," I said. "We're writers. We make things up."

"I did run into someone you went to school with--this is a true story," Elaine told me.

"Who? In school with where?" I asked her.

"At the Institute, in Vienna--she was one of those Institute girls," Elaine said. "When she met you, you told her you were trying to be faithful to a girlfriend back in the States."