A Big Little Life

give-me-the-keys-to-your-house-I-want-to-snoop-through-your-closets request seemed less real, as if I must have misunderstood, and the X who had asked for the keys, Bizarro X, seemed to have been someone I imagined.
    After our food was served and as we began to eat, X said, “I’m going to come stay at your beach house for a few weeks this summer.”
    The shrieking violins returned, and suddenly my food tasted like something termites might have gnawed on. Smiling as if I saw nothing strange in X’s announcement, I said, “Oh, well, you know, we don’t rent the place out, it’s not an income-producing property.”
    “Yes, I know,” said X, “that’s what’ll make it such a special vacation, like staying in a wonderful home, not like a hotel.”
    Disquieted by the presence of a sharp knife beside X’s plate, I tried to convince myself that this person must be pulling my chain, having a laugh at my expense. I might have embraced that notion if X’s eyes had not become as feverish as those of a malaria victim tormented by hallucinations. X stared across the table at me as Rasputin must have stared when he mesmerized the czar. Although I was reluctant to meet that intense gaze, breaking eye contact might be read as a weakness.
    “Don’t worry,” X said, “I won’t wreck the place.”
    Of course I knew at once the place would be thoroughly wrecked.
    “There must be lots of interesting people to meet in a town like Newport,” X continued, “all the surfers, beach bums, and everything, but I’ll keep the parties down to one a week.”
    “Well,” I said, “beach properties are pretty close together, and our neighbors don’t like parties.”
    “It’s your property,” said X, “they can’t make rules for you.”
    “Ordinarily,” I heard myself saying, “I would agree withyou, but our neighbors are crazy skinheads, total gun nuts, they sit on their back patio with assault rifles on their laps, bandoliers of ammunition, you don’t want to push them.”
    X regarded me as I had regarded X: as if I were of questionable sanity.
    Instead of continuing to meet craziness with craziness, I said, “Well, as soon as you decide when you’d like to come, let me know the dates, and we’ll work it out.”
    I had no more intention of accommodating X for a three-week vacation than I had of stabling a herd of Aegean horses in the beach house.
    Evidently, I sounded sincere, because X said, “Great. It’ll be a lot of fun. You and Gerda will be invited to the parties, of course.”
    “Cool,” I said.
    For the remainder of lunch, we talked about this and that, as if neither of us belonged in an asylum, and Bizarro X appeared now and then only as an occasional facial expression that didn’t comport with what X was saying. Although telling a funny story, X glowered as if recounting a harrowing encounter with a rabid cat, while a dissertation on the threat of global warming was delivered with a sunny smile.
    After surviving lunch and the drive home, when I could easily have been overpowered and strangled with a wire garrote in traffic, I was relieved when X did not suggest staying for dinner and then for the rest of my life. I waved at X’s departing rental car as if forlornly biddingadieu to a friend whose absence would make my world a grim, gray place.
    A few days later, having returned to the East Coast, X called to give Linda five names to add to our free-book list. Each time a new novel of mine is published, I send inscribed copies to approximately 250 family members and friends, as a way of saying that I’m thinking of them and that my life has been brightened by knowing them over all these years, and another fifty to people who, like X, have been helpful on the business side of my life. The five names provided by X were, of course, strangers to me.
    A few days later, X called to give us another five names to add to the free-book list. The following week, X called to say that none of those ten people had yet received their inscribed books, so we might want to resend, this time by Federal Express. A couple of days later, X phoned to leave the name and number of an acquaintance—let’s say the name was Q—who had recently been through a bad divorce and needed a shoulder to cry on. X felt that no shoulder in the world would better console Q than that of her favorite author.
    Although a time had existed when I personally took calls from X, that time was past. Usually, we had reason to talk four times a