Amateurs by Dylan Hicks Read Free Book Online Page A

book, much more so than the first. Archer’s been joking that it should be called The Second, Stranger. With a comma, you see.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œOh my, listen to this: ‘Not since Norman Rush’s Mating has a male novelist rendered a female narrator with such authenticity and brio.’ The reviewer is doubtless male,” Gemma put in sotto voce. “But it truly is a striking piece of ventriloquism.”
    â€œI can’t wait to read it.”
    â€œCan you not wait? Because people said that to Archer about his first book, that they could not wait to read it; but often they would say so when the book had been out for many, many months and they had already—well, just then!—admitted to knowledge of its existence. In a word, they were waiting, and proving they could do so quite contentedly.”
    â€œI see your point.”
    â€œI suppose those people are better than the ones who play at having read the book when they so obviously haven’t, which is what I tend to do with writers other than Archer—who doesn’t care a whit about any of this, I should say. I’m more sensitive about these things than he.”
    â€œWell, I’m eager to read the book,” Karyn said.
    Gemma called out again to Archer: “May we send your delightful cousin an ARC?” It wasn’t clear if she had waited for an answer when she said, “I’m sending you an advance review copy.”
    â€œOh, you don’t have to—”
    â€œBut I’m sorry, I cut you off. You were about to say . . .”
    â€œI’m not sure I remember.”
    â€œIn connection with Lucas.”
    â€œOh, it was—it was just that this call was starting to sound like a matchmaking ploy.”
    â€œMmm, I can see that, now you mention it,” Gemma said. “But if it were a matchmaking ploy, I suspect I would have downplayed Lucas’s expanding indigence and would not now raise the issue of his appalling clothes.”
    â€œMaybe—”
    â€œOr the fact that he spends much of his time at a computer looking at pictures of women dressed like Jessica Rabbit.”
    â€œMaybe you think I’m into mothering sad cases,” Karyn said.
    â€œI don’t get that sense at all. On the contrary, frankly.”
    They listened to the phone static for a few seconds, then Karyn said, “Do you just mean redheads in sexy dresses, or do you mean women deliberately trying to look like Jessica Rabbit?”
    â€œOh, very deliberately, Karyn. It’s a whole community.”
    They laughed.
    â€œJust to be clear,” Karyn said, “I’m kind of seeing someone.” She wasn’t seeing Paul the consultant, of course. He was now plotting a dirty weekend in Wisconsin, but Karyn wasn’t egging him on.
    â€œYou misunderstand me,” Gemma said. “I have no ideas in that direction. I only suggested you two meet in advance because I see that you’re right, it would be uncomfortable to make the trip as strangers.”
    â€œYeah, I’m not sure.”
    â€œBut you’ll think about it?”
    â€œI can’t imagine my thoughts will change.”
    â€œI’ll call you back,” Gemma said, and hung up without saying goodbye.
    December 2004

    â€œLaqueur’s central point is that what he calls ‘modern masturbation,’ in other words, masturbation as a medical and social crisis, arose synchronously with the Enlightenment—”
    Sara missed a few of Archer’s words while sliding a knife under a dab of misplaced guacamole. Lucas, who “hadn’t eaten all day” (she’d seen him eat breakfast), was hogging the thick, limey chips, Archer the conversation. Sara, too, had come to like the sound of her own voice—droll, she hoped, and in a cultured midrange (squeaky at matriculation, she had worked to drop her pitch by a quarter octave over her freshman year), but she didn’t need to