“What do you mean?”

“Oh … just that the combination of hair that signifies ‘old’ with a face that isn’t old is confusing to a lot of people. I’ve noticed it can make some people think I’m older than my real age, and others think I’m younger.”

“How old are you?” Jake asked. “Maybe I shouldn’t ask.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll tell you, but only after you tell me how old you think I am. It’s not a vanity thing. I’m just curious.”

She smiled at Jake, and he took the opportunity to see it all again: the pale oval face, the streaked silver hair down her back, and that girlish hairband with the linen shirt and leggings he’d seen around town, and on her feet tan boots that looked ready to hike off home along a rugged wooded path. She was right, he realized, about her age. Not that he’d never been especially adept at assessing age, but with Anna he couldn’t have said any number between, say, twenty-eight and forty, with any certainty at all. Because he had to say a number, he approximated his own.

“Are you … in your mid-thirties?”

“I am.” She smiled. “Want to try for the bonus round?”

“Well, I’m thirty-seven, myself.”

“Nice. A nice age.”

“And you are … ?”

“Thirty-five. An even nicer age.”

“It is,” Jake said. Outside it had started to rain. “So. Why radio?”

“Oh I know, it’s ridiculous. Radio broadcasting is an insane industry to want to go into in the twenty-first century, but I like my job. Well, not this morning, but most of the time. And I’m going to keep trying to get fiction on the air. Though I doubt many other novelists are going to be as mild-mannered about it as you were.”

Inwardly, Jake winced. “Mild-mannered” had made him think, immediately, of that other version of himself, the Jake who’d once silently endured the diatribe of a narcissistic guest-writer from California: noisy pipes! bad sandwiches! non-working fireplaces! And the never to be forgotten: Anybody can be a writer.

On the other hand, that same diatribe had ultimately brought him here. And here was good. Despite the incandescent events of the past several months—Oprah! Spielberg!—and the ongoing astonishment of his book’s ever-growing readership, he was actually happier right at this moment—with the silver-haired girl in the wood-lined coffee shop—than he’d been in months.

“Most of us,” said Jake, “most fiction writers, I mean, we’re not all that hung up about the sales and the rankings and the Amazon number. I mean, we care, we need to eat like everyone else, but we’re just so glad people are reading our work. Like, anyone’s reading our work. And despite what your boss said on the air this morning, Crib wasn’t my first book. Or even my second. Maybe a couple thousand people read my first novel, even though it had a good publisher and some nice reviews. But even that’s way more than the number of people who read my second book. So you see, it’s never a forgone conclusion that anyone is actually going to see your work, no matter how good it is. And if nobody reads it, it doesn’t exist.”

“Tree falls in the forest,” Anna said.

“A suitable northwest interpretation. But if they do read it, you never get over the thrill of that: a person you don’t even know, paying their hard-earned money so they can read what you wrote? It’s amazing. It’s unbelievable. When I meet people at these events and they bring in some grubby copy they’ve dropped in the bath or spilled coffee on, or folded down the corners of the pages, that’s the best feeling. Even better than someone buying a brand-new copy right in front of me.” He paused. “You know, I have an idea you’re a secret writer, yourself.”

“Oh?” She looked at him. “Why secret?”

“Well, you haven’t mentioned it yet.”

“Maybe it hasn’t come up yet.”

“Okay. So what is it? Fiction? A memoir? Poetry?”

Anna picked up her mug and gazed into it, as if the answer resided within. “Not a poetry person,” she said. “Love reading memoirs, but not interested in digging around in my own dirt so I can share it with the rest of the world. I’ve always liked novels, though.” She looked up at him, suddenly shy.

“Oh? Tell me a few of your favorites.” It occurred to him that she might think he was asking for praise. “Present company excepted,” he added, trying to make a joke of it.

“Well … Dickens, of course. Willa Cather. Fitzgerald. I love Marilynne Robinson. I mean, it would be a dream to write one, but there’s absolutely nothing in my life that suggests I could do it. Where would I get an idea? Where do you get yours?”

He nearly groaned. Back in the cerebral file of acceptable answers he found the most obvious one, the one Stephen King had given them all. “Utica.”

Anna stared. “I’m sorry?”

“Utica. It’s in upstate New York. Someone asked Stephen King where he gets his ideas, and he said Utica. If it’s good enough for Stephen King, it’s certainly good enough for me.”

“Right. That’s funny,” she said, looking as if she thought it was anything but. “Why didn’t you use that line last night?”

For a moment he didn’t reply. “You were there last night.”

She shrugged. “Of course I was there. I’m a fan, obviously.”

And he thought how astonishing it was that this very pretty woman was calling herself his fan. After a moment he heard her ask if he wanted another coffee.

“No, thanks. I’ll need to go soon. Otis was giving me the side eye, back at the radio station. You probably noticed.”

“He doesn’t want you to miss your next gig. Totally understandable.”

“Yes, though I’d love to have a little more time. I wonder … do you ever come east?”

She smiled. She had an odd smile: lips pressed together so hard it looked almost uncomfortable for her to hold the expression.

“I haven’t yet,” she said.

When they went outside he considered, thought better of, then reconsidered a kiss, and while he vacillated she actually reached out for him. Her silver hair was soft against his cheek. Her body was surprisingly warm, or was that his own? He had, in that moment, such a powerful idea of what could come next.

But then, a few minutes later in the car, he found the first of the messages. It had been forwarded from the contact form on his own author website (Thanks for visiting my page! Have a question or a comment about my work? Please use the form!) just around the time as he was about to go on the air with local Seattle institution Randy Johnson, and it had already been sitting there in his own email in-box for about ninety radioactive minutes. Reading it now made every good thing of that morning, not to speak of the last year of Jake’s life, instantly fall from him and land with a brutal, reverberating crack. Its horrifying email address was [email protected], and though the message was brevity itself at a mere four words, it still managed to get its point across.

You are a thief.

CRIB

BY JACOB FINCH BONNER

Macmillan, New York, 2017, pages 3–4

She found out she was pregnant by throwing up on her desk in calculus. Samantha had been finishing up some notes on the problem set, making sure she had the right assignment as everyone left. (She had a theory that Mr. Fortis, who was generally a moron, didn’t actually look through the equations themselves; he just checked to make sure the problems were the ones he’d actually given out.) Then she’d gotten to her feet, swooned like somebody in a soap opera, put out her arms to brace herself above the desk, and hurled all over her own notebook. Her very next cogent thought was: Fuck.

She was fifteen years old and not an idiot, thanks very much. Or maybe she was, but this wasn’t happening because she’d been ignorant or na?ve, or because she’d thought nothing bad (this was bad) could ever happen to her. It was because a true bastard had told her an outright lie. And probably more than one.

The vomit was slimy and kind of yellow and the sight of it made her want to throw up again. Her head was aching because that’s what happened when you threw up, but the main thing concerning her now was the way her skin had kind of jumped to life all over her body in a really unpleasant way. That was probably also a sign of pregnancy, it occurred to her. Or just rage. It was clear to her that she had both.