The Book of Joe

know?”
    “Yeah.” I think of Carly and how I just want to freeze time, cancel all the rules and allow something else to emerge.
    We look at each other for a moment. It’s really beyond strange to be talking like this. We aren’t suited for it. “Yeah,”
    Brad repeats, and stands up. Apparently, he’s had all the brotherly bonding he can take for now, and I think we’re both relieved. Still, it’s definitely a start, something we can build on in small increments. “Anyway. I didn’t mean to lay this all on you.”
    “Hey, it’s okay.”
    “Thanks for being so good about the inheritance.”
    “Forget about it.”
    He stops at the door. “Dad was proud of you,” he says. “I know you probably don’t think that, but he was.”
    “He told you that?”
    “Nah,” Brad says. “He’d never come out and say something like that. But I could tell it by the way he spoke about you. I inherited his business, but you left and made it on your own.
    He was proud of you for that.”
    I’ve just ceded the family fortune to him, and he’s probably just saying that to return the favor, but even knowing that, I find myself moved by his effort. “Thanks for telling me.”
    “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he says, extending his hand.
    We shake, an oddly formal gesture for so intimate a discussion. A hug would make more sense, but I doubt either of us is up to that.
    Still, it’s a start.
    After Brad leaves, I get to work on my new novel, reveling in the ease with which the words come. The character of Matt Burns is beginning to unfold in my mind as if I’m discovering him rather than inventing him. He’s an average guy, somewhat bowed under the weight of his own gradually diminishing expectations. He stuttered as a child and was ridiculed profusely for it, and even though he corrected the stutter years ago, he speaks in quick, economical bursts, as if terrified that it might start up again at any moment. Matt makes a living as a construction foreman. He’s not particularly strong himself, but he’ s good with his hands. He’s hap piest when surrounded by the deafening cacophony of construction equipment. At all other times, the world feels too quiet, and now, as he begins looking into the odd circumstances surrounding his father’s death, with conversation the only tool at his disposal, he feels uncomfortable and out of his element.
    Matt proves to be my instrument, and I climb onto his back and ride him through the town, taking in the local flavor and meeting the secondary characters as we go. I write straight into the night, knowing that I’m going into excessive detail that I will later have to sift through and pare down, but I’m thrilled to finally be writing again, to be seeing everything with such clarity. I surge with the power of my creation, a god presiding over the formation of his universe. It’s been far too long since I felt like a writer.
    Sometime after two I fall asleep at my desk and dream that I’m at a party of some sort at Lucy’s house. The yard is crowded with company, some dressed in formal wear and others in bathing suits. I’m in a bathing suit, so I make my way toward the pool, where Lucy sits in a lounge chair, sunning herself in a black bikini. “Hey, Joe,” she says, smiling and waving at me lazily. “Look who’s come back.” I look up and see Sammy standing on the edge of the board, affecting a mock bodybuilder pose before jumping gracelessly into the water. But when he emerges, I realized that I was mistaken.
    It’s Wayne, not Sammy, who now swims in powerful strokes across the pool. I call out to him, amazed that he seems to have regained his health, but he is too caught up in his swimming to hear me. I then step onto one of those frustrating dream treadmills where no matter how much I walk, I can’t seem to get to the edge of the pool. “Wayne!” I shout. “It’s me.” He pauses in his strokes, treading water as he looks through the crowd, but despite my wild gesticulations, he can’t locate me. Eventually, he shrugs and climbs out of the pool. Lucy gets up from her chair and hands him a towel, and they kiss, a deep, lustful kiss, which of course makes no sense.
    Then he turns and walks right by me, eighteen years old again, glistening and powerful and full of life.
    “Wayne,” I say. He turns and looks at me as if seeing me for the first time. There are droplets of water clinging to his earlobes and nose. “It’s me - Joe.” I’m confused and