That Old Cape Magic

over the summer. Unfortunately, in the lazy afternoon warmth on the B and B’s porch, Griffin found it difficult to fully enter its fictional world. Part of the problem was that his earlier assessment seemed to be correct: the story just wasn’t very good. But what puzzled him even more was why he’d tried to write it in the first place. Would he have done so but for the Great Truro Accord? He doubted it. Some stories, even ones buried deep in memory and the subconscious, had a way of burrowing up into the light, of demanding conscious attention,until you had little choice but to write them. But “The Summer of the Brownings” hadn’t been like that. He’d remembered them only when the strike loomed and he was casting about for something he might work into a story or novella. But why write either? Why had he been so willing, even anxious, to concede there was something wrong with the life he and Joy were living? What was so wrong with being young and free? With running off to Mexico on impulse? With turning their cars over to an endless parade of envious valets? That’s what living in L.A. was, if you could afford it, and they could. It was unfair to blame Joy, of course. It wasn’t like she’d tricked him. If anything, he’d tricked himself. In a moment of weakness, besotted by love, he’d imagined himself a different sort of writer from the one he knew himself to be. Joy had simply reacted to his enthusiasm. All she’d done was love him, the man he was, the man he’d been fool enough to believe he might become.
    Maybe nobody was to blame, but the end result of the exuberant, love-inspired Great Truro Accord was that he and Joy were now out of plumb.
Plumb
. Griffin couldn’t help smiling. He hadn’t thought of that term in years. One summer he’d worked as a carpenter’s assistant on a road-construction crew that built concrete footers. That whole July and August, in the blistering Midwest heat, he’d worked with the same two guys, Louie and Albert. Where conversation was concerned, they’d been minimalists. “Are we plumb?” Albert would ask after a good hour of silence. “We were a minute ago,” Louie would respond, placing his level on the two-by-four in question, cocking his head to look at the bubble. “We’re plumb some,” he’d tell his partner, shrugging, which Griffin understood meant
close enough
. “We’re not building a skyscraper.” As they explained it to Griffin, a half bubble off in a foundation was no big deal unless you were going up thirty stories. Of course, half a bubble, factored over thirty floors, was no small thing. That, he now realized, was how he’d been feeling two days ago when he’d packed that bag and headed to Boston alone—thirty floors up and half abubble off. Plumb the last time they checked, but now, suddenly,
plumb some
.
    Stories worked much the same way, Griffin thought, shoving “The Summer of the Brownings” back into his satchel. A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation. That was the problem with most of the scripts in his satchel. Griffin knew that much without even reading them. They would end unconvincingly because of some critical misstep at or near the beginning. Over the next few days, despite his lack of enthusiasm for the task, he’d carefully examine every one of his students’ rickety narratives, figure out exactly where they went wrong and how to go about fixing them, should their authors want to. They wouldn’t, though. He knew this because he himself didn’t want to revise “The Summer of the Brownings.” As far as he was concerned, if the error was somewhere in the foundation, in some awkward place you couldn’t get at with the tools at hand, it could just
stay
a half bubble off. Better to forget it and start something new.
    He really did hope Sid had something for him.

5
Smirt
    T hat evening Griffin went to a steak house not far from the B and B. The Olde Cape Lounge had a frozen-in-amber fifties feel, but it was mobbed, the line of people waiting for tables stretching out the door. There was, however, a vacant stool at the bar, so he climbed aboard and squinted at the sign above the back bar, which read, in ornate Gothic letters:

    The words, somehow foreign and familiar at the same time, sort of reminded him of
The Canterbury Tales
, which he’d read long ago in college.
Pen, hand, ends, devil
and
no
were all recognizable words