Leaving the World by Douglas Kennedy Read Free Book Online

herself had also begun to get the occasional poem published in small magazines and journals. A self-proclaimed ‘backwoods girl’ from Lewiston, Maine – ‘the shithole of New England’ – she was someone who thought nothing about smoking forty cigarettes a day and getting drunk on cheap beer. But start her talking about the metric intricacies of one of Pound’s Cantos or the use of pentameter in Williams’s ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’, and she demonstrated an intellectual acuity that was nothing short of dazzling. Her own work also mirrored the high modernism of the poets she so admired.
    ‘The problem with me,’ she said one night when we were out drinking, ‘is that, when it comes to art and men, I always go after the most complicated, difficult person in the room.’
    The fact that she was somewhat overweight – and that exercise or even the most marginally healthy diet were anathema to her – lent her an added allure: the redneck intellectual who looked as though she’d just walked out of a trailer park, but nevertheless managed to always have some preppy guy named Winthrop Holmes III chasing after her.
    ‘I think they see me as rough trade, whereas the fact is: I like rough trade. Or crazies. Whereas you – the Patron Saint of Self-Restraint with your damnable inability to put on weight . . .’
    ‘It’s not for want of trying.’
    ‘Yeah, you’re just some goddamn ectomorph – and pretty to boot.’
    ‘I’m hardly pretty.’
    ‘You would say that, given your talent for self-deprecation. But take it from me, guys find you easy on the eye.’
    David told me the same thing on several occasions, commenting how he often saw me frown when I looked in the mirror, as if I didn’t like what I saw there.
    ‘I’ve always had a thing against mirrors,’ I said.
    ‘Well, you’re hardly a plain Jane,’ he said. ‘More from the Audrey Hepburn school of—’
    ‘Oh, please . . .’
    ‘Even Professor Hawthorden – the chairman of the Harvard English Department – noted the resemblance.’
    ‘My hair is longer than hers.’
    ‘And you have the same patrician cheekbones and radiant skin and—’
    ‘Stop, now,’ I said.
    ‘You can’t take a compliment, can you?’ David said with a small smile.
    I don’t trust them, I felt like telling him, but instead said: ‘You’re simply biased.’
    ‘That I am. And what’s wrong with that?’
    Take it from me, guys find you easy on the eye.
    I looked back up at Christy and just shook my head.
    ‘One of these days you’re going to actually start liking yourself,’ she continued. ‘Maybe then you’ll start putting on just a little make-up and stop dressing like some tour guide in the Rockies.’
    ‘Maybe I don’t care about style.’
    ‘Maybe you should stop playing the rigid, self-protective card at all times. I mean, shit, Jane . . . it’s graduate school. You’re supposed to drink too much and start dressing like an intellectual slut, and be sleeping with a lot of unappetizing and inappropriate guys.’
    ‘I wish I had your epicurean attitude to such things,’ I said.
    ‘ Epicurean? I’m just a slob and a nympho. But come on, you’ve got to have some guy stashed somewhere.’
    I shook my head.
    ‘Why don’t I believe you?’ she asked.
    ‘You tell me,’ I said.
    ‘Maybe because – one – I sense you have a secret lover, but– two – you’re so damn controlled and disciplined that you’re keeping his identity secret, because – three – he’s somebody you don’t want anyone to know you’re involved with.’
    I worked hard at putting on my best poker face – and concealing the fact that I was quietly terrified that she might know something about David and myself.
    ‘You have a very vivid imagination,’ I said.
    ‘You’re seeing someone on the side.’
    ‘But as I’m not married . . .’
    ‘You’re the thing on the side , sweetheart.’
    ‘Again, I admire your ability to conjure