The Hours Read Free Page A

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    mus t love it too, poor as well as rich, though no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed? Even if we’re further gone than Richard; even if we’re fleshless, blazing with lesions, shitting in the sheets; still, we want desperately to live. It has to do with all this, she thinks. Wheels buzzing on concrete, the roil and shock of it; sheets of bright spray blowing from the fountain as young shirtless men toss a Frisbee and vendors (from Peru, from Guatemala) send pungent, meaty smoke up from their quilted silver carts; old men and women straining after the sun from their benches, speaking softly to each other, shaking their heads; the bleat of car horns and the strum of guitars (that ragged group over there, three boys and a girl, could they possibly be playing ‘‘Eight Miles High’’?); leaves shimmering on the trees; a spotted dog chasing pigeons and a passing radio playing ‘‘Always love you’’ as the woman in the dark dress stands under the arch singing iiiii.
    She crosses the plaza, receives a quick spatter from the fountain, and here comes Walter Hardy, muscular in shorts and a white tank top, performing his jaunty, athletic stride for Washington Square Park. ‘‘Hey, Clare,’’ Walter calls jockishly, and they pass through an awkward moment about how to kiss. Walter aims his lips for Clarissa’s and she instinctively turns her own mouth away, offering her cheek instead. Then she catches herself and turns back a half second too late, so that Walter’s lips touch only the corner of her mouth. I’m so prim, Clarissa thinks; so grandmotherly. I swoon over the beauties of the world but am reluctant, simply as a matter of reflex, to kiss a
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    frien d on the mouth. Richard told her, thirty years ago, that under her pirate-girl veneer lay all the makings of a good suburban wife, and she is now revealed to herself as a meager spirit, too conventional, the cause of much suffering. No wonder her daughter resents her.
    ‘‘Nice to see you,’’ Walter says. Clarissa knows—she can practically see—that Walter is, at this moment, working mentally through a series of intricate calibrations regarding her personal significance. Yes, she’s the woman in the book, the subject of a much-anticipated novel by an almost legendary writer, but the book failed, didn’t it? It was curtly reviewed; it slipped silently beneath the waves. She is, Walter decides, like a deposed aristocrat, interesting without being particularly important. She sees him arrive at his decision. She smiles.
    ‘‘What are you doing in New York on a Saturday?’’ she asks.
    ‘‘Evan and I are staying in town this weekend,’’ he says. ‘‘He’s feeling so much better on this new cocktail, he says he wants to go dancing tonight.’’
    ‘‘Isn’t that a little much?’’ ‘‘I’ll keep an eye on him. I won’t let him overdo it. He just wants to be out in the world again.’’
    ‘‘Do you think he’d feel up to coming to our place this evening? We’re having a little party for Richard, in honor of the Carrouthers Prize.’’
    ‘‘Oh. Great.’’
    ‘‘You do know about it, don’t you?’’
    ‘‘Sure.’’
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    ‘‘It’ s not some annual thing. They have no quota to fill, like the Nobel and all those others. They simply award it when they become aware of someone whose career seems undeniably significant.’’
    ‘‘That’s great.’’
    ‘‘Yes,’’ she says. She adds, after a moment, ‘‘The last recipient was Ashbery. The last before him were Merrill, Rich, and Merwin.’’
    A shadow passes over Walter’s broad, innocent face. Clarissa wonders: Is he puzzling over the names? Or could he, could he possibly, be envious? Does he imagine that he himself might be a contender for an honor like that?
    ‘‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the party sooner,’’ she says. ‘‘It just