Page 109 of Lucky Night

Wow, Nick! That’s amazing!

He shrugs.

I can’t believe you never told me. Don’t make that face! Who’s downplaying their accomplishments now?

Okay, sure, he says. It’s a big deal. And it was a big deal to me, back then. It was something I’d wanted since I was twelve.

What did you study? Law?

Jesus, no. I…

Why is this so hard to talk about, like it’s a crime? Well, maybe it is. A crime and a shame. Everybody’s ashamed, she said. Looks like she was right.

I studied poetry, he says.

Poetry. She’s trying very hard not to look surprised.

Indeed, he says. Indeed, madam, I sought to scale the heightsof—

For Christ’s sake. No distancing ironies now. None of your mock heroics.

I studied literature at Brown, he says. The Elizabethans. The Metaphysical poets. All the grand old English men. And some women. I fell in love with them, with how they wrote. The sounds, the images, the emotions they evoked. How it felt to speak them out loud. So I decided to go to England. Worship at the altar. My plan was to get a doctorate in literature and spend my life researching them, teaching them. Surrounded by ivy, ideally, and old books.

Why is he telling her this? Why flee to this, of all places, as a salve for his anxiety?

We’re told the governor is en route from Albany.

It sounds wonderful, Nick.

Doesn’t it? It was a very pretty dream. It lasted about eight months.

Ohno!

Oh yes, he says. I had to get there to find out that my guys were out of fashion. People were interested in the obscure, the undiscovered. And—though none of my professors were blunt enough to say so, being very English and very polite—I wasn’t cut out to be a scholar. I didn’t have original thoughts—not enough to build an academic careeron.

Hold on, she says. A person doesn’t get to Oxford, on a Rhodes scholarship, when they’re not good enough.

I had a lot of passion, he concedes. I was smart. But I didn’t want to develop a new theory or critical approach. I wanted to study the very greatest of them, to know them deeply, inside and out. That wasn’t enough. I wasn’t rejected outright—it was my decision to withdraw. I didn’t see a way forward. Not a…true way.

They’re quiet for a moment. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to console him, which he appreciates, more than he could possibly say.

Anyway, he says. You asked, earlier, if I’d ever been disappointed. That’sit.

She nods. I’mso—

Hello? Hello, are you there?

Brian is speaking loudly into his microphone.

Nick rejoins her at the foot of the bed.

Ma’am? Can you hear me? Barbara? It’s Barbara, right?

A woman speaks, only to be interrupted by a burst of squawking static.

Barbara? Can you turn down your television? It’s causing feedback on the line.

Brian appears to be talking to a woman inside the hotel.

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