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Even if he takes only one, I’ll be happy. Let him put just one of my stories in his magazine and pay me for my efforts. Let me finally be paid for something I’ve written.
    That’s all I hope for. The guy isn’t God. Just an editor.Someone who has a vital need to hear good stories. He’ll go looking for them all the way to the end of the night.
    I looked outside. All the lights were off. I imagined a map showing our house, our yard, a wilderness, and then the city—the metropolis, streaked by the moving headlights of its traffic. High up, one window, one single window, shines in the darkness. It’s Douglas, reading my stories.
    That window hasn’t left my mind since.
    I put my typewriter on the kitchen table and started typing.
    The refrigerator was vibrating so hard it seemed it would die. I got up and struck it a heavy blow. It went back to its ordinary hum.
    In all likelihood, it’s not long for this world.
MARIANNE
    Raymond? An envelope came for you. It filled the whole mailbox and all my mail wound up on the ground. Mom’s letter was lying in a puddle. What’s in this envelope? Did you order some magazines? The sender is … “Douglas.” Douglas something. Who’s he?
    Raymond, will you please stop typing for five minutes? Click clack click clack! I’m going nuts from so much clicking and clacking.
    Open it, my hands are wet.
    Well?
    You’re about to burn yourself with your cigarette.
RAYMOND AND MARIANNE
    Marianne and I are in the kitchen. She’s holding my stories in her hand. My stories, revised and corrected by Douglas.
    “So what do you think?” I ask her.
    “He did more than just cut. I read the first two and skimmed the others.”
    “Well, you know them.”
    “As if I’d written them. Do they all do this?”
    “Who?”
    “Magazine types. Book editors don’t take so many liberties, do they?”
    “A magazine has more constraints.”
    “What constraints?”
    “Advertising. They need space for the ads.”
    “You mean to say this guy cuts down your stories to make room for ads?”
    “He didn’t cut all of them. Look at ‘Why Are You Crying?’ It’s intact.”
    “Except that now it’s called ‘Biscuits.’ ”
    “He loves one-word titles.”
    “And ‘Excuse Me’ has become ‘Collision.’ ”
    “One or the other, he said. I can keep it ‘Excuse Me’ if I want.”
    “Are you going to keep it?”
    “Marianne, he knows his job.”
    “You told me they call him ‘Scissors.’ ”
    “It’s a compliment. It means he has a good eye.”
    “Do
you
think he does?”
    “Nothing’s definite. He’s proposing some cuts. I can do what I want about them.”
    “That’s my question. What are you going to do about these proposed cuts?”
    “Marianne, I don’t believe you realize what’s going on. Getting published in that magazine—I know some people who would crawl on the earth for that.”
    “But not you. Right?”
    “He knows his job.”
    “ ‘Biscuits’ … ‘Collision’ … ‘Scissors.’ ”
    She kept on muttering. I got up and opened the fridge. I took a beer, the only one left.
    Her voice suddenly got louder: “Did he really say you have too much heart?”
DOUGLAS
    The throes of departure
. I’m accustomed to them. All writers know the feeling. At the moment when they’re about to jump on board, they imagine the worst. As if I was going to shipwreck their stories.
    Raymond got worried. The cuts frightened him. He thinks his short stories are going to turn into … very thinly sliced Raymond.
    That’s not what my scissors do. The writers I bring on board know it. They know it, and they thank me.
    Take Raymond, since we’re talking about him. Take his story about a woman who feels repulsion for her husband. She’s lying down in her bedroom. When her husband climbsinto bed and scoots close to put his arms around her, Raymond writes that she “moves” her legs. Too predictable, much too timorous. I strike “moves” and put “spreads.”
She