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particularly desirable when she feels, or imagines that she feels, subtly rebuked. In that instant of turning away, glimpsed in profile, when you might still call her back . . .
    “Irina, darling—wait!”
    I pushed away from the little table—I hurried after my dear wife of nearly a quarter-century. My heart beat quickly with desire and hope and a wish to hold the woman tightly and to be held by her tightly.
    The hell with “Jack of Spades”—that night.
    Entering my study in the morning I perceived that something had been altered. Almost I’d thought that an intruder had been here!
    At first I could not make out what was wrong or out of place, then I saw that the lamp on the smaller worktable lay on its side, as if it had been pushed over; the lightbulb had shattered. When I checked the switch, the light was still on.
    A six-ounce (empty) glass smelling of whiskey had left a faint ring on the antique wood of the table.
    A dozen or more pages of yellow legal paper were covered in an indecipherable scrawl barely recognizable as my own and the pen with which I’d been writing had fallen to the floor and lay several feet away as if it had been flung down in fury.
    “How does it feel to be a ‘local celebrity’? The ‘most famous writer’ in Hecate County? One of the ‘bestselling’ writers in New Jersey?”—so I have been asked by well-intentioned interviewers, who seem not to notice that such questions are deeply embarrassing to any writer of integrity.
    Quickly and quietly I aver that I am very grateful for the “modest success” I’ve had, and try to change the subject.
    However, it is true that my writing “success” has changed the lives of myself and my family considerably. I have hoped to express my gratitude by being generous to others less fortunate.
    For instance, I have endowed one of those “emergency” funds for writers administered by the Writers Guild. I have endowed scholarships at Harbourton High where I’d graduated in the Class of ’79. Irina and I have made contributions to the local animal shelter and we’ve helped build a new wing of the Harbourton Public Library which has a permanent exhibit titled BESTSELLING MYSTERIES BY HECATE COUNTY ’ S OWN ANDREW J . RUSH . (Embarrassing! But I don’t interfere in the operations of the library.) We’ve given annually to literacy programs in such beleaguered New Jersey cities as Newark, Trenton, and Camden and we’ve participated in NJN-TV (New Jersey Network) literacy fund-raisers. We’ve helped refurbish the funky old Cinema Arts Theatre on South Main where, on occasional Friday evenings, Andy Rush acts as an amateur M.C. introducing classic mystery and noir films like Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo, Diabolique, Niagara, The Shining, The Vanishing. We’ve given money for the new softball field and to the Harbourton Little League in which I’d once played (not badly) as a boy. (Indeed, it is embarrassing to acknowledge that the new softball field is named after me— Andrew J. Rush Field .) Now that the children are grown and gone from us Irina has returned to work (part-time) at the progressive Friends School in nearby Hadrian where she teaches art and where she is active in the PTA. Irina Rush has been a tutor in the New Jersey Literacy Program for several years.
    In 2010, I received a Citizen’s Award from the New Jersey Association for Responsible Citizenship. Just last year, I received a Governor’s Medal from the State of New Jersey for my philanthropic contributions. And next year, it has been promised—(that is, there is a rumor to this effect)—that I will be honored by induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame as one of the state’s “most cherished” contributors to the arts.
    And my most acclaimed works of fiction lie before me. I am sure.
    God damn you I am not a thief, and I am not a plagiarist and I am not to be vilified by anyone.

6 “We Will Bury Her”
    “It’s a nuisance suit, Andrew. The judge will toss it