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By Root 361 0

she asked how his mother was, Great, she’s out on parole; she told him that she’d heard that young men shaved their balls now. Ray lifted his head and asked her if she would like that. I guess I would, she said. Is it unpleasant otherwise? Ray said. Oh, I don’t know, Ellie said. It’s like a mouthful of wet mitten—what do you think? When he stopped laughing, early in the morning, with a faint light falling on Ellie’s silver hair held back with a pink ribbon and her slim, manicured hands, he came.

* * *

Ray followed Macy home from Buck’s. He could see her dark outline in the car when they drove under a streetlight, her right arm up the whole time, talking on her phone. She honked twice when she got to her driveway and pulled in. Their porch light snapped on and the moths gathered. Macy ran onto the porch and Ray could see Neil, in just his underwear, reaching out for her with both arms.

Ray turned left instead of right and parked in front of Randeane’s. From the car, he saw the white edge of her chaise. He saw just the green tips of her slippered feet. He honked twice and drove home.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My editor, Kate Medina, continues to be not only my brave and erudite captain but a dear friend and wise counselor. My agent, Phyllis Wender, continues to be the standard by which literary agents should be measured; her warm intelligence and steadfastness are legendary.

I am grateful to both the MacDowell Colony and the Yaddo Foundation, as more than a few of these stories were written in those places.

I am blessed with my beloved family of readers, Alexander, Caitlin, and Sarah, all exceptionally literate, all straight talkers, all my favorite people. I am grateful to my friends Kay Ariel and Bob Bledsoe, as well, for their generous criticism and sturdy support and for much more than that. Richard McCann has continued to be my eleventh-hour hero, with timely, stringent, and compassionate criticism. I have also been immeasurably assisted by Jennifer Ferri, who has made my business hers, in the best possible way.

A CONVERSATION WITH AMY BLOOM

Random House Reader’s Circle: In this collection of short stories, you tackle some new themes, notably love in the second half of life, and death. Why did you decide to go in this new direction? How do you see these stories fitting in with your earlier collections?

Amy Bloom: I think that generally the subject chooses the writer, not the other way around. It seems natural, even inevitable, that as I get older certain issues and moments in life that might have been less central to me at thirty-five are now more present, and although a number of the stories in this collection are told from the point of view of younger protagonists, both of the quartets have to do with the passage of time. In the Lionel and Julia quartet, I was particularly interested in ending with a story that was largely focused on the point of view of people who were about to become the patriarchs and matriarchs of a family, having always been seen in these stories as “the kids.”

RHRC: You are known for tackling love’s taboos, particularly when it comes to gender and sexuality. What are some of the taboos you explore in this collection?

AB: The truth is I never think of any subject as taboo. And the things that I think of as truly taboo—pedophilia, sexual violence—I don’t usually write about. As Camus once said, we do not choose whom we love. To me, this seems to be not only the way it is in life but probably the way it should be. I am all for loving relationships in which the couple at the center are a match set in terms of height, weight, color, and socially approved orientation. But it doesn’t strike me as any better or more blessed or more heartwarming than when people who clearly are not a match set on the outside are so clearly meant to be together on the inside.

RHRC: Tell us a little about your choice to write interlocking stories, as opposed to a novel or a single story?

AB: Perhaps one of the more striking aspects of both quartets is that they don’t just cover long periods of time in