Ann Patchett: in the church sanctuary in Belfast: with my dear dear friend Harold: rain lashing the luminous windows: strip mall in Nashville: stalker Barb from the bookstore: Parnassus, the mountain where the gods of music, poetry, art live: dogs (Rose!) and retail: double bass player Edgar Meyer: funny, so funny, even with a cold: and brilliant and lovely and so present: her job to put the right books in people’s hands: her job to wrest the wrong books from the same hands: a room full of the middle-aged and de-estrogened: forgiveness, sort of, for her compromising her friend Lucy Grealy: forgiveness for my loving her and her writing but abandoning her books because of flaws in the early works that drove me away: plot and place and people: now, another way in, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (the simple, beautiful cover with her lowercased name small at the lower edge): the advice—the only advice—to sit with yourself and see what rises up, every day, every damn day, every damn fucking day (fucking, not hers, but mine): the placement of Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena in Harold’s beautiful hands
Harold Garde