The Collective: A Novel by Lee Don

Author:Lee, Don [Lee, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Joshua, never one to be outdone by me, had started his own romance the night of Leon and Cindy’s wedding. He had gone home with Lily Bai, another new 3AC member who was a ceramic artist.

“I tell you,” he said in his attic room, “this chick, she’s a little pistol. She gives unbelievable head. She could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.”

“Isn’t that a line from an old movie?” I asked, but laughed nevertheless.

He had been spending the past few days at the Ritz-Carlton. Lily was from Ann Arbor, her father a geneticist who’d developed several patents that had made him a fortune.

“Room service!” Joshua said. Lily lived in a two-bedroom condo attached to the Ritz, and the hotel’s services were fully available to the condo residents. “I’ve been fucking this hot little kumquat and eating room service the entire time! You can’t ask for much more in life.” He was going back; he’d just come home for some clothes.

“You’re able to write there?” I asked.

“Sure. She’s at her studio most of the day.” Joshua had long ago abandoned his Murakami regimen, and ever since the 3AC had formed, he had become more susceptible to distractions, far less disciplined.

I told him about Mirielle, about her going to AA.

“Fuck, man,” he said, “that pious, sanctimonious twelve-step shit bores me to tears. It’s just an excuse for self-absorption. Oh, poor me, poor me. Whatever you do, don’t fall in love with this girl. I know you. You’re a complete sap when it comes to women. Will you promise me you won’t fall in love with her?”

I broke my promise to Joshua almost immediately. For the next two weeks, I helped Mirielle unpack and set up in her new apartment in Winter Hill. She was sharing it with two PhD students at Tufts who were a couple, and her room was small, without much closet space. We went to hardware and furniture stores. I installed shelves for her, and miniblinds. I hung up photos. I assembled bookshelves and storage carts. I bought her a garment rack on wheels.

Still, we spent nearly every night back in Harvard Square. She liked my new bed. I’d pick her up after one of her AA meetings or from Casablanca, and I’d walk her back to the house. “Are you living with that Chinese guy now?” a fellow waitress asked Mirielle.

I made breakfast for her every morning—omelettes, poached eggs, French toast, pancakes. I gave her massages. We went to movies and poetry readings at the Blacksmith House and the Lamont Library. We ate in the Porter Square Exchange, where she ordered food in Japanese. We stopped by Toscanini’s each night for ice cream, a weakness of hers. We ran on the Esplanade together. That path at sunset, coming down Memorial Drive toward town—the water on the Charles blustery and whitecapped, the gold dome of the State House gleaming above Beacon Hill, the skyscrapers in the Financial District orange-lit—was glorious. With Mirielle running beside me, my chest would squeeze, and I’d love the city.

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