Mr. Gwyn Read Free

are in your bed?” the woman asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat sort of nonsense is that?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œAnd if someone isn’t in your bed you don’t dream about her.”
    â€œNever.”
    At that point a fat, rather elegant girl came up to him, there in the Laundromat, and she handed him a cell phone.
    â€œIt’s for you,” she said.
    Jasper Gwyn took the phone.

7
    â€œJasper! Did you put in the fabric softener?”
    â€œHello, Tom.”
    â€œAm I disturbing you?”
    â€œI was writing.”
    â€œBingo!”
    â€œNot in that sense.”
    â€œI don’t find that there are many senses, if someone is a writer he writes, that’s it. I told you, no one really succeeds in stopping.”
    â€œTom, I’m in the Laundromat.”
    â€œI know, you’re always there. And at home you don’t answer.”
    â€œBooks aren’t written in a Laundromat, you know, and anyway I wouldn’t write them.”
    â€œBullshit. Come clean. What is it, a story?”
    The laundry was still in prewash, and there was no one leafing through magazines. So Jasper Gwyn thought he could try to explain. He told Tom Bruce Shepperd that he liked lining up words, and forming sentences, the way he might crack his knuckles. He did it in the closed space of his mind. It relaxed him.
    â€œFantastic! I’ll come there, you speak, I record, and the book is done. You wouldn’t be the first to use a system like that.”
    Jasper Gwyn explained to him that they weren’t even stories, they were fragments, without a before and without an after—really, they could hardly even be called scenes.
    â€œBrilliant. I’ve already got the title.”
    â€œDon’t tell me.”
    â€œ Scenes from Books that I Will Never Write .”
    â€œYou told me.”
    â€œDon’t move, I have to take care of two things and I’ll be there.”
    â€œTom.”
    â€œTell me, brother.”
    â€œWho is this elegant girl here?”
    â€œRebecca? She’s new, very good.”
    â€œWhat does she do besides carry around a cell phone in Laundromats?”
    â€œShe’s learning, you have to begin somewhere.”
    Jasper Gwyn thought that if there was one thing he didn’t like about having stopped being a writer it was that he would no longer have any reason to work with Tom Bruce Shepperd. He thought that one day Tom would stop following him around with his phone calls, and that would be a bad day. He wondered if it wouldn’t be right to tell him. There, in the Laundromat. Then he had a better idea.
    He closed the phone and nodded to the fat girl, who had moved a few steps away, out of politeness. He noticed that she had a very beautiful face, and, besides, she limited the damage by choosing her clothes well. He asked her if he could give her a message for Tom.
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œBe so kind then as to tell him that I miss him.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œI mean that sooner or later he’ll stop bothering me wherever I go, and I’ll feel the same relief you feel when you’re in a room and the refrigerator motor stops, but also the same inevitable dismay, and the sensation, which you surely know, of not being certain what to do with that sudden silence, and maybe not, ultimately, being equal to it. Do you think you understand?”
    â€œI’m not sure.”
    â€œWould you like me to repeat it?”
    â€œMaybe I should take notes.”
    Jasper Gwyn shook his head. Too complicated, he thought. He opened the phone again. Tom’s voice arrived. Exactly how those gadgets functioned he would never understand.
    â€œTom, be quiet a second.”
    â€œJasper?”
    â€œI want to tell you something.”
    â€œShoot.”
    He told him. About the business of the refrigerator and all the rest. Tom Bruce Shepperd coughed and was silent for a few seconds, something he never