Free 10 by Ben Lerner

opened, admitting cold air and a middle-aged woman, surely the librarian; she recognized him and waved.
    His problem was that the coffee required two hands, or at least he had taken it with two hands, one on cup and one on saucer, so as not to spill coffee or upset foam; he couldn’t return her wave. He felt himself scowling at this situation, realizing too late she’d think he was scowling at her. His solution was to look at the cup with exaggerated intensity, in the hope that she would understand his dilemma. He walked slowly, eyes fixed on the dissolving flower, to the seat beside the window, having ruined everything.
    But he remembered Dr. Roberts’s idea. Roberts had said that when the author found himself in one of these “false predicaments,” and he began to draw shorter and shorter breaths, he should just describe whatever little crisis he’d manufactured, what he was feeling, to whomever he was meeting in the same “winning and humorous way” he recounted it after the fact to Roberts.
    The librarian was at the table she’d inferred was his destination by the time he reached it. He set down the cup and saucer with excessive care. She had a lot of curly hair he only now saw as auburn. He shook the hand she extended and said:
    â€œI wanted to wave to you when you came in but I had this coffee in my hands and I was afraid I’d spill it and then I was afraid that by failing to wave I appeared unpleasant and then I felt myself scowling at appearing unpleasant and then realized I must really seem unpleasant and so had already made a disastrous impression.”
    She laughed as though this were indeed winning, and said, “You sound like your novel.” The anxiety dissipated, but into flatness. He spilled some of the coffee lifting it to his lips.
    *   *   *
    The year before, they’d found cavities in the author’s wisdom teeth; they needed to come out. He could elect IV sedation (“twilight sedation”) or just local anesthetic, as the dentist suggested. They’d taken a panoramic X-ray of his head, chin on a little stand while a camera whirred and clicked around him, and then scheduled the extractions for the following month, when the dentist was back from vacation. There was no rush. It would be a few days of unpleasantness, that’s all. Let the office know twenty-four hours in advance if you want the IV, said the receptionist, whose fingernails were painted with stars.
    He learned from the Internet that the difference between twilight sedation and local anesthesia was not primarily a difference in the amount of pain but in the memory of it. The benzodiazepines calm you during the procedure, yes, but their main function is to erase your memory of whatever transpires: the dentist getting leverage, cracking, a sudden jet of blood. This helped explain why the people he asked were fuzzy regarding the details of their own extractions, often unsure if they’d been sedated or not.
    That October his ruminations about twilight sedation dominated his walks with Liza. They would meet at Grand Army Plaza in the late afternoon and head into the Long Meadow of Prospect Park, then wander along the smaller trails as the light died in the trees. Finally, it was the last walk before he had to call if he wanted the IV.
    The unusual heat felt summery, but the light was distinctly autumnal, and the confusion of seasons was reflected in the clothing around them: some people were dressed in T-shirts and shorts, while others wore winter coats. It reminded him of a doubly exposed photograph or a matting effect in film: two temporalities collapsed into a single image.
    â€œI don’t want them working on me when they know I won’t remember what they’re doing,” he said.
    â€œWe are not talking about this again,” Liza said. It was characteristic of Liza to begin an activity by claiming she’d have no part in it. “We’re