Read Amy Inspired for Free Online

common complaints that bound us together: There were no more thesis abstracts to belabor or deadlines to dread. We spent a year disbanded, living less than five miles apart but rarely seeing each other outside of a random run-in at the farmer’s market or the library video aisle.
    Valerie was the one who rallied us back together for a book club. We invited neighbors and acquaintances, informing them we would be reading serious novels by serious novelists: Gravity’s Rainbow and War and Peace and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . When no one else joined the club, we lost no time defecting from the booklist we’d prescribed in favor of more indulgent forays into Jane Austen and the Brontës. We had every intention of rereading the novels, but the majority of our meetings consisted of watching the film adaptations of books we’d already read.
    Valerie finished a second raspberry-cream donut. At this point in her pregnancy she couldn’t wear her collection of handmade silver rings on her swollen fingers and her usually curly hair had gone straight. “Hormones,” she’d reply when people asked about the new do. I found the transformation exotic. She had the darker complexion of her Puerto Rican father and the voluptuous figure of her American mother. She was zaftig, thick-lipped and thick-thighed; on her, pregnancy seemed a natural shape.
    “Well, I had my qualms about you dating a writer,” she said, doctoring her coffee with a third creamer. “I don’t know what I’d do if Jake was. We’d kill each other out of sheer competition. And at least you have time to focus on your writing now.” She perked up, remembering: “Did you get any news from Exatrope ?”
    “Rejected.”
    “What? But your style is perfect for them.”The sincerity of her surprise at this news endeared me to her forever. “Amy, this is not your week.”
    Everett said, “I’m beginning to think it’s not her decade.”

    Everett had agreed to be my date for the poetry reading that night so I would be with company if Adam showed. The reading was held in the upstairs galleries of the Fuhler Art Building. As a member of the committee that had instituted the reading, I was obliged to attend. Three student performances were to be given simultaneously in three different galleries, the idea being that the audience changed rooms instead of the poets taking turns. I supposed it was meant to be interactive; mostly it reminded me of channel surfing.
    “I can’t stand it,” Everett said.
    We were sitting on folding chairs in gallery two. Fifteen rows up, a tall man with panty hose over his face was reading a sonnet. Behind him, a video montage of war headlines flashed on a projector screen. When it became apparent that the ten-minute recitation was only prelude to a second collection of poems, Everett began to fidget. He preferred rhythm, lyricism. These kinds of readings provoked him to panic, a minor detail I wished I’d remembered before demanding he come with me.
    “Can we leave?”
    “We can’t leave while he’s performing,” I whispered.
    Over our own poet, we heard three others; the walls separating the galleries did not reach all the way to the ceiling.
    “I want to leave,” he whispered back. His voice was petulant, like a child’s.
    “We’ll wait until he’s done.”
    He groaned under his breath, bent over, and started breathing into the program he’d folded into a tube. I noticed he was missing a button on his right cuff. He was typically dressed: old jeans and a white-collared shirt under a tweed jacket. At thirty-two he was completely bald up top. His glasses were horn-rimmed, his one stylish ornamentation. His intelligence eclipsed his social skills. Our friendship still surprised me.
    When the panty hose performance was over, the emcee returned to the microphone. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, please give a warm welcome to Jason Burkie.”
    “It’s one of your students,” Everett