![]() ![]() ![]() On one trip back inside, I found my wife standing in the hallway, staring at the book on top of the suitcase. Only one book remained, but it was too big to fit in the bookbag, so I balanced it on top of my suitcase while I started loading my other bags in the car. ![]() I stuffed a bookbag with Dashiell Hammett novels, a biography of the actress Jean Arthur, two poetry collections, four literary journals ( Tin House, Ecotone, etc.), a Hardy Boys mystery, and A Little Life (which is awfully thick for a book with the word “little” in its title). One thing remained: choosing the stack of books-always too large and over-ambitious-which I’d bring along with me on the trip. I was ready for a week-long business trip during which I’d work hard for eight hours of the day then retreat to the bland sterility of a hotel room where I’d eat a lonely salad, call my wife, take a bath, and wonder if it was time for that emergency bottle of pinot noir. Into my suitcase, I’d neatly arranged the folded flags of shirts, squares of underwear, my shaving kit, my slippers, a corkscrew for an emergency bottle of wine, and a clump of white socks which, with their balled cuffs and trailing streamers of feet, looked like sperm swimming upstream. ![]()
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