The Woman in the Library

by Sulari Gentill

The young woman next to me has divested her jacket to reveal full-sleeve tattoos on both arms. I’ve never been inked myself, but I’m fascinated. The story of her life etched on her skin… She’s like a walking book. Patterns and portraits and words. Mantras of love and power. I wonder how much of it is fiction. What story would I tell if I had to wear it on my body?

I received a letter from Alexandra, who says that while she enjoyed reading the opus, she regrets that she cannot offer me representation. I’m not sure she actually regrets it, but that’s what she wrote. The reality is, I suppose, that I am a straight white man with no diversity or disadvantage to offer as a salve for the fashionable collective guilt that rules publishing. I understand that popular correctness demands that men like me be denied to compensate for all the years in which we were given too much. I just wish I’d had a chance to enjoy a little of that privilege before it became a liability. Anyway, she said no. So there we are.

I rarely reread books. There are too many wonderful books without retreading old ground.

I do like that Cain’s name was once Abel. If it is possible to have a favorite biblical story, mine was that of Cain and Abel, the first murder. It adds a kind of ancient weight and tradition to the petty homicides of today, as though even the most base and inelegant dispatch has an echo in time and is a curse of the ages.

The mystery writers, the historical novelists, the political thriller writers, the science fiction writers…everybody but the people who write instruction manuals is writing romance. We dress our stories up with murders, and discussions about morality and society, but really we just care about relationships.”

I look at him silently. “What are you thinking?” he asks. “Whether I know you well enough to call you an idiot while sitting on your couch and eating your pizza.” Leo nods thoughtfully. “Yes, ma’am, I think you do.” “I might wait until I’ve finished the pizza.”

I am the writer, but it is she who seeks theme and motif in life, and I am captivated by the earnestness with which she regards the world.

After all, how are you to know you like killing people until you have taken a life and in doing so discovered the incomparable thrill of holding existence in your hands and snuffing it out?

I think it is the responsibility of writers to bear witness to the darkness as well as the light.

Do not be afraid of taking your writing to dark places, my dear. The world is getting darker, and murder now needs to compete with disease, neglect, and the inherent selfishness of man.

“You can’t lie to people who work with the homeless. They’ll know.”

“Caroline Palfrey…the woman in the library?”

Forgive me if my protest is strident, but I abhor disloyalty. It is in my opinion the lowest violation and should be punishable in only the most punitive way.

sometimes you have to cut your losses and give up on people.”