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preening, puffed-up, faux-literary arrogance that masks a gnawing, all-consuming insecurity. Back then, I didn’t understand it. I mistook the tensions within me for the torments of nascent genius. At least, until that moment when I read Stewart’s short story and saw what true talent really was. It was as if some internal balloon that I had been keeping inflated through sheer force of will had suddenly been drained of its air. A strange, terrible emptiness filled me. I was forced to face the truth that I had, for years, been denying: I was a poseur, a fraud, an artist manqué, and always would be. It was
Stewart
who was the writer;
Stewart
who would realize all my fantasies of literary success and acclaim;
Stewart
whose stories and novels would keep my mother’s spirit happy in Heaven.
    It was too dreadful a thing to contemplate; by four A.M., I had forced myself to consider a less dire view. Perhaps (and everything seemed to depend on this), perhaps the novel Stewart had just completed was
not
good, not publishable. And soon my mind, like a defense attorney who has hit his stride, began to present arguments for why the novel was, in all likelihood, a failure. “Harrington’s Farm” was a poetic fragment of autobiography, but could he sustain such subtle flickerings over the course of a
book
? It just didn’t seem likely. Hadn’t my mother herself once told me that first novels often suffered from an excess of personal detail, bogging down in childhood obsessions that the writer had not yet fully thrown off? Certainly she had. And when I recalled this, I was buoyed by the thought that tomorrow was another day. I was only twenty-five; there was still time: still time for me to write my own masterpiece; still time for me to prove my father wrong. Still time for me to win, from my mother’s shade, the benediction—the
love
that is, when you get right down to it, all I, or any writer, seeks.
     
7
     
    I was awakened at seven-thirty the next morning by the sound of Stewart’s typewriter. Not his usual gunning attack, this time, but instead a halting, tentative, hunt-and-peck rhythm. Is he starting
another
novel? I thought, with panic. After a few minutes, however, his machine dribbled into silence. Then he tiptoed (as he did every morning) out of his room.
    I cracked open an eyelid and watched him creep past the foot of my Hide-a-Bed and into the kitchen: a shadow figure stooped under the weight of a packed knapsack. I listened as he poured and drank a glass of milk—his usual breakfast—then I secretly watched as he slinked out to the entrance nook. He unlocked the apartment door, eased it open, and wheeled his bicycle out into the hall. I listened as he locked the door behind him; then came the
tickety-tickety-tick
of his bike gears as he walked his ten-speed down the hallway. I heard the scrape, swoosh,
and ka-LANGGGG
of the big outer door of the building, and he was gone.
    The night before, Stewart had said he was starting a summer course today, a Tuesday. I figured the class would last at least an hour, probably more. The place was all mine. Tuesday, you see, was my day off from the bookstore.
    I think you can guess what I did next.
    Without even pausing to pull on a pair of jeans, I got out of bed and crept in my underwear over to Stewart’s room. Funny that I should have tiptoed, considering that I knew I was alone. Perhaps it was some kind of atavistic instinct that always accompanies acts of sneakiness. The dirty old floorboards felt cold against my bare toes.
    His door, a stout thing bearing moldings so often repainted that their beveled edges were almost rounded, was half closed. I pushed it open and went in. I had been in his room on only one or two other occasions, always with him present. I felt a deep, shaming sense of transgression, of trespass, but this was overridden by a need that could not be denied.
    The room, a mirror image of mine, was dominated by a futon, a bookshelf, a desk, and a filing