When Joy finally came back into sight, her hands were on her hips, face red. All he wanted was a single wave. “Z!” she called. “Last chance. If you don’t come now, I’m marrying the first guy I find in the hotel.”
Paul let go of the window sash. He wanted to stand on his own, even for a moment, feeling the throb between his legs and in his chest. She wouldn’t acknowledge him, he knew, but he waited anyway.
Beside him, Aziz made a strange noise, something between a gasp and a guffaw, and when Paul glanced at him he wore a strange expression, frozen smile, stricken eyes, a combination of amazement and alarm. His dark face seemed oddly pale beneath the surface of his skin, as if it had thinned and gone translucent. “My God,” he said, and blinked several times, leaning backward on his heels. For a moment Paul thought he was going to faint, but instead he hugged himself. “I never thought I’d—”
He broke off and turned away from the window. His posture was one Paul recognized—that of a man overburdened, crippled by love.
“I think I’m going to hurl,” Aziz said.
And Paul surprised himself by taking the boy’s head between his hands and kissing him, firmly, once on each cheek.
Acknowledgments
I owe huge thanks to Victoria Barrett and Andrew Scott of Engine Books for all their selfless work to bring this book into the world; to PJ Mark for essential suggestions; to Willamette University for research support; and to Alexandra and Iona for making life so sweet.
I’d also like to thank the editors of the following journals, where some chapters first appeared:
Passages North: “Girl Made of Metal”
Harvard Review: “The Measure of a Man”
PRISM international: “Four Nocturnes for Left Hand”
Four Way Review: “Could Be Worse”
Arts & Letters: “Some Macher”
Jewish Fiction: “Grow or Sell”
The Laurel Review: “Around the Cape of Good Hope”
Fifth Wednesday Journal: “Between You and Me”
Finally, I am grateful to the University of Nebraska Press for permission to quote Wright Morris in the epigraph:
Reproduced from The Works of Love by Wright Morris by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1949, 1951 by Wright Morris.
About the Author
Scott Nadelson is the author of three story collections, most recently Aftermath, and a memoir, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress. Winner of the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and an Oregon Book Award, he teaches at Willamette University and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.
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