Anne and I didn’t fade out or implode like most of my other relationships. Back and forth we went—together, then apart, then together again—as if caught on a wild spring tide. What finally ended our romance was my crushing demotion to the obituary beat and the morbid preoccupations that came with it. Anne didn’t want to hear about people our age dying—whether it was F. Scott Fitzgerald or the friend of mine in Colorado who keeled over while reeling in a ten-inch brook trout. Nor did she care to listen to morose, middle-of-the-night speculations about the demise of my long-gone father, though she was too gentle to interrupt. One morning she simply said goodbye and moved out. That time I knew she wasn’t coming back because she took her favorite Nabokov novel, which she’d always “forgotten” before, and a leather-bound volume of sonnets by John Donne (composed at the ripe old age of twenty-five).
Such details make it all the more excruciating to know she has pledged herself to a hack writer of espionage novels. From The Falconer’s Mistress:
The woman slipped her hands inside Duquesne’s fur-lined overcoat but drew away when she felt the ominous bulge of the holster.
“Now you know who I am,” he said, pulling her face close to his. She gazed into his gray eyes with a mixture of dread and excitement. “I’ll leave, if you wish,” he said.
She shook her head. “It’s cold outside,” she whispered.
He smiled. “It’s Prague, isn’t it? It’s always cold in Prague.” Then he kissed her.
Sweet Christ Almighty, what is there to do but kill him? No jury in the world would convict me. I’ve bookmarked that page as Exhibit A, and the novel accompanies me now to Anne’s house. I believe it will simplify matters for the homicide crew.
Yet the moment Anne answers the door, all thoughts of murdering her fiancé dissolve. She looks fabulous and happy. Carla was right.
Anne invites me inside and, before I can ask, lets on that Derek is at the county library, reading up on Soviet nuclear submarines. “Oh. In Jane’s,” I say smugly.
“Pardon?”
“Jane’s. You can look up any ship in the world in Jane’s. A sixth grader could do it.”
Anne’s sigh is tinged with resignation. “Carla warned me you were taking the news badly. What’ve you got there?” She nods at Derek’s book, which I’m clutching like a hot casserole. “Jack, if you came here to lecture me, you’re wasting your time.”
“Fine. But his writing is unforgivably wretched. Surely you’re aware.” This is not my finest hour. Anne would do well to boot me from the premises. Instead she brings me a perfect vodka tonic and tells me to sit down and listen up for once.
“In the first place,” she says, “all my favorite novelists are dead, so they’re not available to marry. In the second place, Derek is a good guy. He’s fun, he’s affectionate, he doesn’t take life so damn seriously… ”
“You’ve just described a beagle, not a husband,” I say. “And, for the record, it’s death I take seriously. Not life.”
“Knock it off, Jack. Please.”
“Tell me you didn’t meet him at a book signing. Tell me you met him at a Starbucks or a Yanni concert. That I could almost live with.”
“He did a reading at our store,” Anne says.
“Aloud? He’s got balls, I’ll say that.”
“Enough!”
“You know his real name is not Derek Grenoble? It’s—”
“Of course I know.”
“And you’re telling me you’ve actually slogged through… this?” I hold up The Falconer’s Mistress.
Anne laughs. “Yes, it’s truly awful. But I love him, anyway. Like crazy.”
“He isn’t forty-four. Did he tell you he was?”
“No,” she says, “but I told Carla to tell you that.”
“Cute. How old is he then?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“Well, I know. I looked him up.”
“Then keep it to yourself,” Anne says sharply. “Didn’t you hear anything I said? He makes me feel good. Know what else? He’ll be the first to admit he got lucky with those silly spy books. He doesn’t pretend to be John le Carre.”
“Wise of him,” I say.