Chapter 13

Preston invited her to the party. Their new publishing company was based in Newark. The party, oddly enough, was in Manhattan. Why Manhattan of all places she didn’t know, but she had the feeling that Don Bluestein probably wanted it that way. The money from her new book contract wouldn’t come in until later in the week. She couldn’t afford a night out in Manhattan between contracts, but she was determined to go anyway. Her E- Z Pass would cover the tunnel toll, and her credit card would pay for parking and a hotel room. She wasn’t about to drive back to New Jersey all tipsy. She reserved a room at the St. Mark’s hotel and hoped the night would end uneventfully.

She knew Claude would be at the party, but she didn’t know just yet if she should go. There were complications involved, the biggest one being that she didn’t want to see him, at least not right away. She buried these feelings for him. She never expected to see him again and prepared for the extreme awkwardness of running into him when she had purged all of her romantic feelings for him. They would approach the same situation differently, she imagined, and maybe it wasn’t such a good idea that she show up.

And then came a more practical reason for not showing up—it wouldn’t look very good for an A-List poet of a major publishing corporation to show up at a rival’s party. She had been included in the trade when Breakthrough sold out. She was part of a corporation now, it seemed, and no, it certainly wasn’t bad getting a lot of money for poems she herself didn’t appreciate all that much, but it at least paid her bills, and fairly soon she could leave South Orange altogether and buy a cozy apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the epicenter of art, she thought. She didn’t mind leaving her position at Seton Hall either. Like a great rain in humid weather she would wipe her memory clean of South Orange if only to start all over again in a city where the players were major and the poetry was as infinite as the knowledge stored on its bookshelves. An innocent, childlike assumption on her part, but one that pulled her resolve into the streets of Manhattan. She was happiest there, so why not return?

Until then, though, she had a decision to make about the party. Things like what to wear and how she should do her hair were minor concerns, because she didn’t intend to impress Claude or lure him back into their affair. She should dress as regularly as possible. Neither did she want any of the other partygoers hitting on her either. Pretty but plain became her motto. She was a poet after all, and they should appreciate her words more than the look of her body in a skimpy evening dress. It’s something her mother would have wanted for her.

She picked out a long black skirt and an old white blouse—something she would typically wear to the classroom and not to a soiree. She sensed there would be plenty of women for Claude to hit on anyway. She would blend in, have a drink, talk shop, and leave early, hopefully after saying a quick goodbye to Preston whom she thought was responsible for everything and whom she would probably never see again either. She didn’t mind being without these men in her life. Claude, especially, was trouble, and Preston even worse. She’d rather have a stranger from the East Village hitting on her than any man from New Jersey. But she didn’t want to see them anymore. Not for a while.

As she readied herself for the party, she also thought about moving back to West Hartford, not with her family, as she couldn’t stay there anyway, but near her old college. She was happiest there too, and trying to relocate to happiness had a futile ring to it, but she no longer cared for misery either. A woman can’t simply be happy. A woman can’t search for it either. For her happiness either just came or didn’t no matter where she went. Such was the female poet’s dilemma. While she pushed herself to greater heights, there was always something weighing her down, dragging her below the earth no matter how hard she tried. It seemed to her like an odd paradox—the more intense the search, the farther happiness moved away. It had been this way ever since the incident in front of her home. It took suffering to realize these paradoxes, as though the incident, still fresh in her memory, balanced out what would normally be a graceful, fulfilling life lived with her poetry. She didn’t necessarily regret the incident but constantly wondered why it had to happen to her. It may have been something she wore that night.

She drove through early evening traffic and arrived later than usual at the nightclub near Washington Square Park. She couldn’t believe how many women there were wearing next to nothing. She looked like a demure librarian by contrast, and she felt a little out of place from the get-go. The place was packed with hard bodies gyrating to the sounds of a DJ in a booth spinning records on twin turntables. She spotted Don Bluestein in the corner talking with an intern of sorts. He smiled and swayed as he spoke. He must have been drunk already. The girl talking to him laughed every few seconds like a cork popping off a bottle. A perfect body she had, a taught well- preserved body of a young woman in bloom. No wonder Don flirted with her like he did. He held a glass of liquor at his chest, almost spilling it as he pontificated. She didn’t think it necessary to spoil his fun, so she avoided him and took a seat in the quiet section of the bar.