She's going to write a short short story and enter it in Dave Egger's contest, which she will win and which will make her famous. She works on her story in between bowls of Raisin Bran and many stolid looks at the paint peeling in the window well, which she knows is a source of lead dust and which will certainly poison her eight-year-old unless she coats it with some of that stuff in the can downstairs. She starts off writing the story about herself but then changes it, because in the stories he has included as examples for contestants to read Dave Eggers never uses the first person or uses the word 'I' anywhere. Even where he could say 'I' he says 'we,' like EB White, or 'the writer,' which the editor at the only newspaper job she ever had told her he didn't want her to do anymore, but which she still thinks sounds good. She loves Dave Eggers, even though she has never read anything by him except these short stories he has put in the Guardian, because he never says 'I,' and this means he's doing his best to do something about his ego. She's changed all the I's in her story to Barbara. Barbara is a good name. No, it's not. It should be Gretel, then she can work in something about gingerbread houses, which would be ironic if the character were someone from the twentieth century, because there are no gingerbread houses anymore. She changes a lot more of the words. She wants to say something about the sexual revolution and how terrible it was, and also something about the falseness of suburban culture. Dave Eggers says he can write one of these short short stories in a single sitting, but this is her 26th sitting and she isn't getting anywhere. She might be fussing with it too much. It might be better just to let it go. What will it be like to tell people she has won this contest? What will Dave Eggers say on the telephone when he calls her? No, he won't call. You only get a subscription to McSweeney's, which is a journal Dave Eggers started, and a first edition of one of Dave Eggers' novels. Three hundred and eighty-three, she says, three hundred and eighty-four.
But Is That Irony Or Something Else ?
There was a writer, named Sharon, who wrote stories and was known far and wide and was deeply read. Her stories were, more often than not, about unhappy marriages, about infidelity, about malaise and marital dyspepsia. She wrote about such things not because her own marriage was troubled, but because she was happily married - to Gil, a life coach whose clients were motivational speakers, chiefly - and she wanted to write fiction that was clearly fiction. Stories about happy people in happy unions would seem, she thought, to be based on her own contented life, and thus to maintain the privacy of her husband she wrote about sadness, rage and betrayal - things foreign to herself and Gil. But her readers, thinking themselves savvy, assumed she was writing about her own life, subtly disguised, that she, Sharon, was trapped in a loveless home, that she found refuge in these semi-fictional outlets-slash-cries for help. About this, Gil was not happy. People stopped him on the street and advised how he might work things out with the dear and talented Sharon. And because so many of her stories involved men with small apparati who cheated on their devoted wives, most people - thousands of strangers! - suspected Gil of infidelity and diminutive prowess. About this, he also was not happy. He brought it up with Sharon, and she laughed and called him silly. But did she consider it silly when Gil began to spend time in clubs where women danced without their clothes on? Was it silly when he took up with a dancing woman named Chesty Bazoombas (the surname was Greek), who listened to him and was a great comfort in many other ways, too? Sharon did not find this funny or silly, and was not smiling a year later when the divorce was final, when Gil and Chesty were off together living in some suburb named Moonpie, and when Sharon had nothing to do - for fiction would only allow her stories of the happily betrothed - but to switch to memoir. And the world had far, far too many memoirs already
These Certain Young People
There were two couples, who knew each other because one half of one couple had dated one half of the other. Years ago. Names: Darrell and Jane, Eric and Darcy. Jane and Eric had dated many years before, and this was in the past, it was agreed, and it was fine with everyone all around. All were friends now, yes. Neither of the couples was married, but they were monogamous and happy and 27. All of them were 27 and they enjoyed being this age. One day the four of them decided that they should, as a group, go skiing some day - spend a weekend together in some place with snow and cottages and goggles.
They set the date a month hence, and rented a house. As the weekend approached, Darrell came down with whooping cough, and Darcy was sent away on business. So Jane and Eric, who had had a history - a rather steamy history, it must be noted - were left to decide whether or not they should still go to this cottage, for which they had planned and paid. Darrell and Darcy were reticent in their advice; they were both very trusting and disinclined to conflict or suspicion. Even so, they secretly hoped their mates would choose not to go, because after all, things do happen alone in houses, after skiing and with eggnog and hot tubs. In the end, despite the secret wishes of good Darrell and Darcy, Jane and Eric decided to ski after all, thinking that it was silly to let the rental go to waste. They made the wrong decision, of course. It was a stupid goddamned decision that only idiots of a certain age would make - that age when you do cruel and wretched things because you think there will always be time to become a good person later. These sorts of people are terrible and aren't worth talking about any more.