The Book of Joe

call in her office a half hour later. “Hi, Joe,” she says easily enough.
    “Please don’t be mad about this.”
    “I’m not mad,” she says pleasantly.
    “What?” This is an old trick of Carly’s and one I’ve never fully understood. When she gets mad, she punishes the offending person by not allowing them the privilege of even witnessing her anger, for that would be the first step toward
    absolution. I was forced to navigate through the minefield of her hurt a number of times, both in high school and in our years together in Manhattan, and I now recall with clarity that when it comes to hurt and anger, Carly is like a Rubik’s Cube.
    “It’s fine,” Carly says. “It had nothing to do with me.”
    “So what are you saying, that we’re okay?”
    “We’re as good as we ever were.”
    “Ah. Calculated word choice. Veiled references. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    I take a deep breath. “I just want you to know that what happened with Lucy happened when I first got here, when there was nothing at all happening between us.”
    “Joe?”
    “Yes.”
    “The minute you got here, there was something happening between us. You know it and I know it, so do me a favor and cut the bullshit. At least give me that.”
    “Okay,” I say. I wonder if I should be encouraged that we’ve gotten past the feigned lack of concern much faster than I thought we would. “But what happened with Lucy happened once, and it would have been a mistake even if nothing happened between you and me, and it wasn’t going to happen again regardless.”
    “That’s too bad,” Carly says dryly. “Now you’ll have no one to kiss.”
    “You know I was completely yours the moment you kissed me.”
    “If you’re expecting me to say ‘You had me at hello,’ you’re in for a huge disappointment.”
    These frustrating conversations continue at odd intervals for the rest of that day and the next. Carly resolutely takes all of my calls while patently refusing my entreaties to meet in person. I have myself convinced that this will be a battle of attrition, but underneath it all I am terribly worried that she’s working toward shutting me out permanently behind a wall of casual indifference. In between these seemingly futile calls, I struggle to shut out all distractions and maintain the momentum of my novel. The time has come for Matt Burns to visit the scene of his father’s supposedly accidental death, at the foot of the waterfalls in the woods behind Norton’s Textile Mill, where he’d diligently kept the books for the Norton family for so many years. I don’t know when I made the decision to transplant the Bush River Falls into Matt’s fictional upstate New York hometown, but now that they’ve become central to the story, I find myself at somewhat of a loss to come up with the exact mix of events, both romantic and sinister, that make the falls loom as the totemic centerpiece of the novel. I decide it might behoove me to take a drive out to the falls, to sit at the base of their deafening trajectory, become enveloped in the frigid shroud of their mist, and be inspired. If nothing else, at least it will get me out of the house for a little while.
    It’s a brisk, frowning October day, clear and cloudless, the Mercedes’ leather cold enough to chill me through my pants in the two minutes or so before the seat warmer kicks in. I drive out to the falls, pulling off the road onto one of the plethora of dirt lanes that lead into the woods at the point where the falls descend into the Bush River. I leave my car in what I consider to be the approximate spot where once upon a time Carly and I engaged in the mutual surrender of our virginity, perhaps in the subconscious hope that I’ll somehow stir the ghosts of our former selves to intervene with the fates on my behalf. Making my way through the underbrush toward the Bush River, I recall the slow, awkward nature of our lovemaking that night, and think that what is so often considered to be the loss of innocence is actually the height of it. I step out of the woods at the base of the falls and sit down at the edge of the large, thrashing pool into which both waterfalls noisily descend. Scattered along the banks of the water, as expected, are empty beer bottles, crushed cans, torn, faded condom wrappers, cigarette butts, and cracked plastic lighters, all the discarded equipment and residue of the ritualistic march of