HINDSIGHT

Georgette knew Katherine when they were both twenty, and both twenty-one, too. They sat next to each other in a writers’ space for about a month before they slept together. Georgette had already sold a book, a collection of essays that, the publisher asserted, would “reframe” the “contemporary understanding” of “literature by women, for women.” Katherine was taking a second shot at college. It didn’t last. It couldn’t last. Georgette was married. Her husband, almost incredibly, thought her straight. She was years away from clarifying. Katherine was a hot shoe. Her phrase: “You know,” she said, “like atop a camera. I am energy that can be used for more than one thing.” Her brilliance condemned so much around her. A year went by, the less said the better, discretion still valor, but a list perhaps suffices: dinners laughing uncontrollably, phone calls where each tried to talk like only business was being transacted, emails in code, orgasms both when least expected and when devoutly wish’d. The breakup, quick, expected. Seats changed in the writers’ space. Georgette progressed like any foregone conclusion might. Her book emerged to acclaim. It reframed the contemporary understanding. More books followed. She was an eminence. Pasts were forgotten. And then one day she saw in the newspaper that Katherine had published a book, also a collection of essays. The review belittled and thrilled her. Katherine’s book was “furious with intellect.” It contained sentences that “could be said to function like poisonous snakes, moving with natural if not preternatural confidence and putting their teeth in.” The review seemed well-written because of how close it had stood to Katherine’s flame. Georgette remembered when she had stood that close. She looked at her own books lined up on the shelf, each the same size as the others, and had a sudden urge to sweep them all onto the floor. Instead, she wept.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas