“May I inquire how you were employed before entering the Army?” Esmé asked me. I said I hadn’t been employed at all, that I’d only been out of college a year but that I liked to think of myself as a professional short-story writer. She nodded politely. “Published?” she asked. It was a familiar but always touchy question, and one that I didn’t answer just one, two, three. I started to explain how most editors in America were a bunch— “My father wrote beautifully,” Esmé interrupted. “I’m saving a number of his letters for posterity.” I said that sounded like a very good idea. I happened to be
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