The Use of Fame by Cornelia Nixon

Author:Cornelia Nixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2017-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

He didn’t write to Tory—he put it off from one day to the next. Instinct said even to touch her name in the message app would be to play with fire. He spent as much time as he could with his favorite grad students and packed boxes to ship to Berkeley and Florida.

Because he was leaving, his students organized an evening tribute for him, with testimonials and readings from his work. Johnny flew in for it, and several other poets drove there or took the train, Walt coming from Harvard, his old friends Pete up from Maryland and Ellen from Pittsburgh, where they used to teach together.

The event was in a big elegant room, and it was packed, with about five hundred people listening, some students sitting on the floor. One by one his friends stood at the microphone, took turns telling stories about him and reading their favorites of his poems. All of his colleagues showed up, too, except for the Mouth Breather and Gumby.

When Hank went up there, his eyes became shiny, and he seemed genuinely heartbroken to see Ray go. When they finally led him to the microphone, Ray had to struggle to hold back tears himself.

This time Abby had not even seemed to consider flying in, and that made him sad—it was like he was on probation now. At the grad student party afterward, he gave her a call, so she would not wait up for him. She sounded cautious, and when they signed off, he felt sudden urgency.

“I love you,” he said. “You know that, right? I love you.” This time, he did cry.

Late that night, when the party broke up and everyone else went off to find some place to sleep, he ended up with Ellen in an all-night diner downtown, waiting for biscuits and gravy to show up. Ellen was an old salt from a fishing village up in Maine, and the only person he knew who still smoked cigarettes. She was also a decent poet and good friend. He could always count on her to hit him with the truth.

He had put away a vat of beer at the party, and in a sudden fit of alcoholic weepiness, he told her the whole sordid story, about Tory and Abby and himself.

Ellen laughed and lit a smoke. Dragging on it, she exhaled above his head. “Christ, Abby is a saint. I would have sliced your dick off a long time ago.”

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