his or other peoples. It wasn’t the kind of detail that occupied Harbinger Singh.
He was a man of methods and goals. He made lists, then crossed out the tasks he’d accomplished. He would move undone jobs from one list to another, and sooner or later, the neat equidistant lines indicating completion would cover all his pages. Harbinger saved these pages in a desk in a drawer, numbered by date, and although the entries were barely discernible, and he couldn’t quite remember just what he had done, still the several hundred pages he kept in three black folders gave him deep satisfaction.
On occasion he had an affair, but they never amounted to much. He told himself that these affairs, though even the word was too big, these quick forays into sex, maybe, were a natural part of his marriage to Carla, who wasn’t very interested in sex. While they were still married, he became lightly involved, only twice, with women he’d met through work. Though he’d never thought, even for a minute, that either relationship was love. He loved Carla absolutely. She had work to do, and her work, which put them both into a top tax bracket, took priority over everything else, even pleasure. On occasion, she had something that could possibly be described as an urge, but her urges were not memorable, and her thoughts barely wavered from her job, even then. After sex, she’d often bring up office problems, seeking Harbinger’s advice.
After he and Carla got divorced, he took a few women to dinner, but he found, on those slow and painful evenings, that they had less to say to one another than he and Carla had. Though his relationship with Carla had been more or less flat, and he didn’t know why he should love her, still he did. This love burned through him. He was always there. He thought about Carla day and night, although there was no reason to be so obsessed with a woman so careful, so clean. So rational. She even wore pajamas.
On their last night together, before she moved out, into a big clean building with a doorman and a gigantic parking lot, they had what turned out to be the first of their weekly dinners.
Harbinger asked why she supposed they’d married. Carla, who often spoke as though she were addressing her senior high school class with her valedictory speech, something she had done nearly twenty years before, on the subject of social policy and moral responsibility, replied in a softer tone. “No one knows why they marry. If they say they do, they’re pretending. I suppose we married because we respected one another and our work is somewhat compatible. We were not unhappy,” she added, which was, for Carla, a gentle remark. She would not say more.
“I suppose you’re right,” Harbinger replied. “But what about,” and here he paused, wondering whether the word was appropriate for this particular occasion. Then he just went ahead. “What about love?” he asked. “What about love?” Carla did not seem thrown, or even upset. “A major subject,” she replied. “We don’t know much about it, I guess. No one does. Certainly not us.” She smiled vaguely.
Harbinger imagined he would write this scene very differently. He imagined Carla crying, desperate to be together again. Not cool, but rather enraged. On the edge of her seat with anxiousness. Silently and not so silently pleading Please Take Me Back Harbinger Singh.
“But you loved me once,” he said sadly, as though it were a question. “Of course,” she replied. “Of course I did.”
“Then what changed?” Harbinger asked. He did not want to sound mournful or pitiable, only interested. “What changed between us? And if it’s all the same, why did we both agree so easily to divorce?”
“Nothing’s changed,” she said, and then she added very familiarly, “Harbinger.” She rarely used his name.
“I see,” he said, and then decided that he would rewrite this altogether. They’d both be crying, unable to eat, and they would decide that parting would be a horrible mistake. Then they’d return to their old apartment, warm, dark, full of rugs and Indian music, and make love in a way that surprised them both. Maybe the book should end there.
Harbinger thought of this as he rang Arlette’s buzzer. He wanted the word wild in the title. He read somewhere that it was one of those words, like dogs and whales, that people always liked. Wild End, he thought. Wild Whale, Wild Dog, or even Wild Taxes. Taxes were something he knew well. Even so, he felt wedded to Hot and Dusty. He would ask Arlette Rosen her opinion.
Arlette had dressed for Harbinger Singh. She tried to look officially artistic for her writers, knowing and literary, reasonably in charge, and sure enough of what she was doing. Aspiring writers, she knew, concentrated on these details. She imagined herself a book doctor, and so she often wore white, even in winter. For Harbinger Singh, a lawyer with literary ambitions, Arlette wore a white cotton skirt, plain, nearly Victorian, and a French cotton T-shirt, very simple. She was tall and thinnish, and her face, in the right light, had a handsome cast, like a Russian feminist explorer on a silver coin. But she could look impenetrable too, the kind of woman who’d be too hard to please. She wore earrings, thin silver snakes from Bali that decorated her ears. On her wrist was a silver bracelet, old and foreign looking, surprisingly soft. It moved across her wrist in a light and girlish dance.
Harbinger looked at her and thought to himself, Not Too Bad. Arlette looked at Harbinger and wondered about his suit. She tried not to be as judgmental as she was, but this was an effort.
“Do come in,” she said, and he extended his hand first, to shake.
“Harbinger Singh,” he said unnecessarily, and pumped her hand up and down for a minute. His hand was straightforward and strong.
“Well, hello,” he said again, when she didn’t seem to respond right away.
“Please come in,” she said. “Right in here, if you don’t mind. I only have two rooms. I’ve thought about renting an office for years.” Here her voice trailed off, as though reasons why not were not of their concern right now. “But this is enough,” she added.
He did not look around her living room. He just sat down. The couch was a faded velvet, a pinkish that once might have been more red. The cushions were small satin squares with pieces of embroidery she’d gathered on her trips. She’d sewn them on herself. He did not look at them. She could tell right away that he didn’t care much about visual details. Usually, writers who came just began to talk and Harbinger was no different. Arlette sat across from him in an old rocking chair. She leaned forward with her spiral notebook and a pen.
“I’ve always had the intention of writing,” he said. “A book primarily, although there are other possibilities when that is finished. A play is in my head,” he said. “I call it Queens, referring to one of my homelands. A biography of Gandhi.” Then he added. “And the poems.”
“What about them?”
“There are the poems,” he said, shyly. “I haven’t written them yet. But of course, I am a poet. Aren’t we all? It’s in our souls, I believe.”
“I see,” said Arlette. “And where would you like to begin?”
“With the novel,” he replied. “I just need a little help. A push in the right direction, because I know it is right in my head. The story is there in front of me. I just need time to put it down. And a little help with the process. I am sure.” Here he smiled at her, and crossed his legs, swinging his right foot nervously back and forth arhythmically. Arlette tried not to stare at his moving leg.
“What will your book be about?”
“Well,” he replied, leaning into the cushions on her couch as though he were preparing to tell a very long story. “Well,” he said again. Then he
