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the nursery wallpaper and that this might be symbolic of something, though what I couldn’t decide. She still didn’t seem very happy.
    When we finally got to Julian’s story, Professor Morrissey praised it effusively, as did I, as did all the girls except Shelly. Morrissey talked for ten minutes alone about one description of a rock covered in lichen, and by the end I’d have believed that the secrets of the entire universe were contained in that rock. But Julian didn’t say a thing. He didn’t write down our comments. He didn’t even smile.
    My first real conversation with Julian didn’t occur until a month later, in mid-November, when Professor Morrissey invited “a dear friend and old classmate” of his, a writer named Jan Sokol, to come in as a guest lecturer. For homework, we had all read his story “The Minimum Wage.” I’d thought it was pretty awful until I realized that it had been published in the New Yorker . I decided I must be missing something, probably because I didn’t know anything about Czech revolutionaries, which it seemed to be about. Sort of.
    Sokol, like Morrissey, was in his nebulous forties. Plump and baby faced, with wiry sprays of dark hair, the writer slumped over the edge of the table as he spoke. From my seat near the front, I breathed in the stench of cheap vodka. I checked the time on my wristwatch, even though I knew that our class met at 8:30 in the morning. Sokol leered at several of the girls along the left side of the table as Morrissey introduced him. They seemed utterly repulsed, but I couldn’t help but notice that Shelly was staring at him with curiously wide eyes.
    “The university has invited Jan to do a reading here during alumni weekend. And the dean has asked me to hold a contest. The student who submits the best story will read it in front of a gathering of alumni and students in December.”
    “That’s the first thing to know about being a writer,” Sokol interrupted in a squeaky, nasal voice. “Nobody actually wants to read anything themselves. They all just want you to read it to them.” This sounded like a joke, though he sounded utterly miserable as he said it. His eyes flitted to my photocopy of his story, which I had out in front of me. Slowly he reached over and grabbed it in a pudgy hand.
    “Pinkerton,” he said absently, “may I borrow this?”
    I was about to say that my name wasn’t Pinkerton when Sokol rose up out of his seat and studied my photocopy for a moment at arm’s length. His face took on a look of abject desperation.
    “For the love of whatever gods you believe in,” he pleaded, “don’t be writers.”
    We all looked to Morrissey while this plea echoed through the classroom. Our professor appeared only mildly alarmed. It wasn’t clear if Sokol had anything else to add, but then suddenly he continued.
    “You might as well walk across the desert planting apple seeds. Be doctors. Or, if you’re not smart enough to be a doctor, be a security guard. That’s what I do. We make pretty good money. And don’t worry about getting hurt. The chances are ten billion to one that anyone is going to blow up the building you’re in. I guard the Las Olindas Mormon Tabernacle, five nights a week. The worst that happens is that kids come and try to piss on it, and then I get to zap them with a taser. But most nights it’s quiet. Sometimes I just dance down the hall like it’s the darkest nightclub in Warsaw. I get drunk. Later I zap myself, just to see if I can feel it. Or I’ll call a girl over. That’s the real ticket. Happiness! Happiness is making love for as long as you can stand it to the most luminous thing you can find on this rotten corpse of a planet!”
    He punctuated this last point by slamming his fist on the table, spilling coffees and scattering pens all along its length. None of us breathed. Even Julian was absolutely alert. I was so sure that it was all simply preamble to some sort of inspirational speech, about how,