Chapter One
My mother calls me from Old Town, Maine, at eight in the
morning, an hour into my writing time. "You sound grumpy, Katinka," she
says. "Did I interrupt something?"
"Just my work."
"As long as it's just your work," she says.
It's her social-whirl voice, her social-work voice. Send this girl to
the prom. I sigh. It's my own fault for answering the phone. But what if
a publisher should want to ring me up? I turn off my computer. Some days
it hums, a companionable sound. Other times it chugs like The Little
Engine That Could, an accusatory gasping that seems to imply that
all the effort is coming from it, not from me. This morning it's full of
complaints. "Can't you write a little faster," it seems to say. "Can't
you write at all?"
"Any news?" my mother asks.
Meaning men. "Since I talked to you two days ago?"
"You never know."
I keep silent. What can I tell her, that I think I'm falling in love
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