Free Good on Paper by Rachel Cantor

wouldn’t get the point.
    You know what romei means, right? Pilgrims whose destination is Rome?
    He hadn’t read his footnotes, apparently. I explained.
    Romei sees himself as one of Dante’s pilgrims? Benny asked. That most nihilistic of writers thinks he has a journey to make toward a redemptive end?
    That’s what he thought when he moved to Rome and named himself.
    Whoa, Benny said. I had no idea. What was my point?
    Least Jewish book you’d ever read.
    Right! We don’t have that straight line.
    We? I asked.
    We Jews, Benny said. Or is it us Jews?
    It’s you Jews, remember? I don’t count.
    I Jews, then. I Jews got the spiral. Moses never made it to the Promised Land.
    You’re not making sense, I said. What’s the spiral?
    I’m getting sleepy.
    Oh, no! Tell me about the spiral!
    Benny pretended to snore, honking into the receiver like a cartoon pig.
    You’re thinking of Yeats’ gyre? I asked. His spiral staircase? Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return? They weren’t Jewish. Freud’s return of the repressed?
    I want you to tell me a spiral story, Benny said. Otherwise I’m going to bed.
    Oh, no! I said. Stay up with me and talk about narrative line!
    What good are you? Benny mumbled.
    G’night then, I said.
    Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
    You’re not going to make me get off first, are you? I said, and we agreed to hang up on the count of three. I smiled into my pillow. But sleep? No. I was thinking about straight lines and spirals, exiles and pilgrims, redemption within reach and ever deferred. Were there any pilgrims left, I wondered, journeying with confidence toward a happily ever after? Weren’t we all homebodies now, couch potatoes eschewing narrative? I had been, till I heard Romei’s irresistible call. Or maybe we were exiles, as Benny said, running from chapter to chapter, chasing an endless spiral (which went where, exactly?). Or refugees pushed by plot points out of our comfy chairs, no noble destination except away-from-here?
    What would that narrative look like, I wondered—the narrative of the passive, the buffeted, the confused? Not heroic. I thought of the irony of Dante-the-homebody writing about a pilgrimage of the soul in Vita Nuova , then Dante-the-exile a few years later, pushed out of Florence, writing about Dante-the-pilgrim in the Comedy . The irony, too, of Romei the exile turning to heroic narrative.
    There would be no sleep tonight. I put my father’s bathrobe on and set some water to boil. Then returned to the study with some PT. It was three in the morning and I was sipping tea, my hair a fright about my head, taking notes about Dante’s straight line to salvation, his meaningful march toward The End, that great resolution in the sky—and checking lines, first one, then another—and why not begin at the beginning? Next thing I knew, I was reading the thing. The dreaded Vita Nuova .
    You know what? I didn’t collapse. Dante’s libello didn’t reach its razor edges into my soft, my throbbing heart. I wasn’t overcome by memories—of T., of romantic failure, the loss of love. I didn’tthink of the past at all. I thought about Romei’s work, excited to get to it.
    Go figure.
    Tink, balanced on my pyramid of books, just stared at me.
    I told you so, he seemed to say.

13
    TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

    On Monday, I was putting away laundry and explaining to SuperTemps that an opportunity had arisen that required me to suspend relations with their fine establishment—temporarily, that is, till Y2K—when I heard the low hum-whir of the fax across the apartment. Anon! It had arrived! I did a little dance, right there in front of the linen cabinet, something between a hora and the pogo.
    You sure the aliens aren’t making you queen of Venus? Durlene asked.
    They haven’t been in touch, I said.
    If so, I’ll have to leave you to it.
    No need to leave me to it, I said.
    My best bookkeeper is waiting for the Second Coming in a potato field, she said.
    Silence from the study.