Are You Happy Now? Read Online Free

Davoodi?” Lincoln asks innocently.
    “It was fantastic. He’s a genius, don’t you think? Was he there when you went to the U of C?”
    “No,” Lincoln muses ambiguously. “No, I think not.” Cyrus Davoodi is a tall, imposing scholar from an ancient Persian family who made a name in academic circles by pioneering the application of postcolonial theory to American romance novels. Yes, he is a genius, everyone says, but a few years ago, he won a worldwide award for the worst writing of the year—a snarky designation, to be sure, but the newspapers paid attention. Out of curiosity, Lincoln had looked up Professor Davoodi’s award-winning paragraph. Only a hundred words long, the paragraph was nonetheless a thicket of inflated phrases and run-on sentences so clogged with clauses—dependent, independent, and unrelated to any apparent earthly thought—that Lincoln had literally dizzied himself trying unsuccessfully to puzzle through it. Randomly stringing together big words from the dictionary would have produced a more readable narrative.
    “He’s so full of ideas !” the grouse offers.
    “Maybe we can find a place for him on the spring list,” Lincoln deadpans. And then arrange a joint reading with Professor Fleace and Bill Lemke, bring together all our stars.
    Amy’s tiny brow furrows as she tries to determine whether Lincoln is teasing her. “I hate it that Yale stole him away,” she says.
    Lincoln waves a hand. “Ah, well.” He sighs and rudely turns back to his manuscript, but Amy doesn’t leave. It occurs to Lincoln that she exudes the slightly aimless air of a college student who can drop into a pal’s dorm room and chat thoughtlessly for hours since nothing really important is ever going on anyway. “These round windows are so odd,” she says after a moment,running her fingers around the circular copper frame holding the pane of glass. “They really add something distinctive, don’t you think?”
    Lincoln doesn’t look up. “Yes.”
    “Ahead of its time,” Amy points out. “The square form was so dominant in those days.”
    “Mm-hmm.” The building was put up a century ago by a former sea captain who, as legend has it, longed to recall the portholes on his ship. Never mind that the skimpy windows kept the interior shadowed and gloomy.
    “And at least you have a window,” Amy says. “I’m in a cubicle in the interior of the building.” She leans forward to look down the alley. The movement hikes up her blouse, and as Lincoln glances over, his practiced eyes spot a delicate line of lace panty peeking above her slacks. Hmmm.
    “In our business, all you need is a good fluorescent light,” he tells her. Lovely lace panties? On the grouse? “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry. You have work to do.” She bows and anxiously starts to back out of the room, bumping the edge of the bookshelf. “Oops.” Finally she composes herself for a last exchange: “You know, you asked me earlier if I wanted to write?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, before I took the course with Professor Davoodi, I was working on a collection of short stories. One was even published in the new student literary magazine. Would you mind looking at them sometime?”
    Lincoln imagines fragile, minimalist prose recalling incidents so evanescent, so utterly uneventful, that only a sensibility with exquisite perception could read their devastating impact.
    “Pistakee doesn’t publish fiction anymore,” he tells her coolly.
    Amy quickly adds, “I know, I mean, it would just really be helpful to have them read by a real editor.”
    How else is Lincoln going to get rid of her? “Just drop them off.”
    “Thanks!” she calls out, and scurries out of the office, leaving the door ajar.
    A real editor, Lincoln thinks. I wish.
    Outside in the alley, the Mexican busboys from the restaurant down the street chatter away in Spanish as they pile up more bags of garbage. Lincoln forces himself to rejoin Professor Fleace