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Pfefferkorn had a system, refined by many years of experience, for classifying his creative writing students. Type one was a nervous, fragile girl whose fiction was in essence a public diary. Commonly explored themes included sexual awakening, eating disorders, emotionally abusive relationships, and suicide. Next there was the ideologue, for whom a story functioned as a soapbox. This student had recently returned from a semester abroad in the Third World, digging wells or monitoring fraudulent elections, and was now determined to give voice to the voiceless. A third type was the genre devotee, comprising several subtypes: the science-fiction hobbit, the noirist, and so forth. Last, there was the literary aspirant, dry, sarcastic, and well-read, prone to quote, with a veneer of calm condescension occasionally (and then spectacularly) shattered by an explosion of nastiness. Pfefferkorn himself had once been of this type.

Although the last three types were predominantly male, a high absolute number of type-ones led to a preponderance of women in Pfefferkorn’s classes.

There was a fifth type, naturally, so rarely seen as to not merit its own category, and whose nature moreover rendered the act of categorization irrelevant: the true writer. In all his years Pfefferkorn had encountered three of them. One had gone on to publish two novels before becoming a lawyer. The second had grown rich writing for television. The third taught creative writing at a small college in the Middle West. She and Pfefferkorn corresponded once or twice a year. The first two he had lost touch with.

It was common for professional educators to say that they lived for the rare birds, a sentiment Pfefferkorn found unforgivably self-important. It was only to the vast, mediocre herd that the actual work of teaching applied, and then only to dubious effect. Talented students had no need of the classroom. Teachers liked talented students because talented students made teachers look good while requiring no effort on the part of the teacher.

One week after his return from California, Pfefferkorn sat in a room with ten untalented students, conducting a workshop. He did not participate in the conversation other than to nod and to offer smiles of encouragement to the fragile young woman whose story was up for dissection. She wore an oversized sweater with a button that said FREE WEST ZLABIA, and as the criticism grew progressively more rancorous, she retreated into her clothes like a turtle protecting itself, first retracting her arms into her sleeves, then pulling the hem of the sweater down over her hugged knees. Another day, Pfefferkorn might have come to her defense, but presently he was absorbed in worry. He had put his conversation with Carlotta on a permanent loop in his brain and was analyzing it for some hint that she knew what he had done. He couldn’t find any, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gone into the office in the last week. She hadn’t called. Was her silence furious? Ambivalent? Embarrassed? He didn’t know, and he worried. He worried further that he had been too quick to take offense at her offer of a plane ticket. He did miss her. On the other hand, if he was too old to get hung up, he was also too old to become a kept man. That he should have to negotiate with himself for these tattered scraps of dignity was itself humiliating.

He let a week pass. The phone didn’t ring. He went to class. He came home. He listened to his daughter talk about her ongoing quest for a wedding venue. Another week went by. He avoided looking at the coat closet. He read the paper. William de Vallée had ceased to be newsworthy. The economy was down. Fuel prices were up. Tempers in the Zlabian valley continued to flare, with shots being fired across the border. Pfefferkorn didn’t pay attention to any of it. He had more important things on his mind than the squabbles of people in faraway places. He reread the file where he kept his ideas for future novels. Every single one stank. It had been a full month and Carlotta still had not called. Maybe she had burned the pile of paper on the desk without looking at it. Maybe she’d forgotten about it. Maybe she had left it out for him on purpose. Maybe it had been a test and he had failed. Or maybe she meant it as a gift and his fear was baseless. He took the carry-on out of the coat closet and piled the manuscript neatly on his desk. He stared at the thick block of paper for hours on end. He had known what he intended to do all along, hadn’t he? He still felt conflicted, of course. He had to work on himself, argue with himself, convince himself. He sat on the edge of his bed, unfolding and examining Carlotta’s words—be happy now—taking them first as a pardon, then as permission, and finally as a command. The time for excuses had ended. The time had come to act.

23.