By Michael Dahlie

It was true that Henry didn’t entirely understand what, exactly, their magazine was really trying to achieve, although he enjoyed the fervor of his friends and the conviction that everyone else seemed to feel over the importance of the project. And the fact was that he was happy to be included in it all, and the money he contributed was hardly substantial, at least as far as he was concerned. $30,000 for a magazine that would really “challenge all this shit that gets published these days” seemed entirely reasonable, although Henry himself did not feel the sort of anger everyone else seemed to feel about what publishers were putting out. Henry had even had a job in publishing once, although it had ended badly. He wasn’t particularly good at what an HR person called “interpersonal relations,” on a professional basis at least, and after a two-month internship at a major magazine (”with a literary slant”) he left without so much as the promise of a good recommendation, to say nothing of a full-time job.

But it had been a difficult time. That was true. So maybe he was to blame for it all. Both his parents had died suddenly in a boating accident near Edgartown, in Martha’s Vineyard, leaving him without much stamina for the various demands of a magazine job. It had also left him with quite a bit of money, which, if he were being completely honest with himself (which, in fact, he often tried to be) probably wasn’t very good for the more competitive aspects of his character, as much as these dimensions to his character existed in the first place. Fifteen million dollars was hardly the sort of thing that lit a fire under him, as the saying goes. In fact, it was exactly the sort of sum that allowed Henry to imagine that he could take his time to figure out what exactly he wanted to do with his life, although even this seemed not to be such a pressing question. Mostly he wanted to meet a girl he liked and make some friends — real friends — around Brooklyn. These things, surely, in their truest sense, in the sense that Henry believed in, were not dependent on money.

2.

And there was, in fact, a girl he was interested in. She happened to be his fourth cousin, which (according to his research) was a relation that was not only legal to date, but posed absolutely none of the genetic problems that might be associated with so-called inbreeding. They only shared some colonial ancestor, after all. It did, however, present a psychological barrier, at least as far as this girl (named Abby) was concerned.

“I don’t want to go there, Henry,” she said one evening when, after eating a fairly heavy meal of sausages and noodles at an Austrian restaurant in Williamsburg, he confessed that he was having confusing feelings towards her.

“I mean, of course,” Henry said in response. “Of course, I don’t want to go there either. I suppose that’s why I’m bringing it up. I suppose I wanted to talk about it.”

“Yeah,” she replied, “but I don’t even want to talk about it. I mean, when I say I don’t want to go there, I mean I don’t even want to talk about the possibility of going there.”

“Well, that’s what I mean too,” Henry said.

“Yeah, but you brought it up,” Abby said.

“But only so we didn’t have to talk about it.”

Abby stared at Henry for several seconds before saying, “Well, I suppose I should have expected this kind of thing. You’re a strange guy, Henry. Really. But that’s good. I mean it. I really like you, Henry. In fact, I think that maybe you’re the nicest, best guy I’ve ever met. I’m not making that up. But I like you as a friend. As a cousin. Yikes! And I think we need to leave it at that. We really need to leave it at that.”

“Okay. All right. Let’s leave it at that,” Henry replied. “This is exactly why I brought it up.”

Of course, Henry understood that it was probably very unlikely that he would have the ability to “leave it at that.” He even found himself suddenly and quite unexpectedly thinking he ought to try to kiss Abby — perhaps that was the sort of bold act that would really tilt things to his advantage. And perhaps Abby didn’t know about the research he had done into the legal and biological aspects of this sort of thing — that was important, after all. But just as he was having these thoughts, Abby said, “But really, Henry, let’s drop it. Let’s promise to drop it. And it’s not just that we’re cousins. We’re not a good match. So don’t try to talk me into it.”

“Of course not,” Henry said. “Of course not. We’ll leave it alone. I won’t bring it up again.”

And this time, as he said this, he decided that maybe he wouldn’t bring it up again. But the fact was that he really did want to kiss her, and he wondered if this particular desire really would ever go away. And he also wondered if maybe he had more of a shot with her than she was letting on. It was always so difficult to know with this sort of thing. Perhaps, with time, her feelings would change.

3.

It should be pointed out that despite the various failings in Henry’s life (whether he was a bumbling intern at a magazine or awkwardly trying to seduce a fourth-cousin), he was, in fact, quite capable in many other ways. He’d been, for instance, an excellent student, and not just in the colder and less humane disciplines. He had done very well in his college creative writing classes, both poetry and fiction. And this was at Harvard, of all places, so surely no one could accuse him of not having some kind of subtle and imaginative mind. One of his professors even said he ought to continue to work at his writing because he had “a real talent for this kind of thing.” What exactly “real talent” meant, Henry didn’t know. But for this particular professor he’d written a lengthy short story about a 91-year-old man who was caring for his younger sister, who was suffering from kidney cancer.

“It was very moving,” the professor had said, “and I don’t say that about a lot of what I get in this class. Generally speaking, Ivy League students don’t always make the best writers.”

Henry was quite happy with this praise — it had come at a good time, since he had, only the night before, been rejected by a young woman (not a relative) who said she adored him as a friend but that “that romantic spark” just wasn’t there. It was very disappointing — and something he seemed to hear at least once a semester — but the next day he really was buoyed up by his professor’s comments.

It was a question, though, why Henry’s story had captivated his teacher, and Henry spent quite a bit of time over the next several days re-reading his story and thinking about how to recapture whatever it was that had made this one turn out so well. He did at times suspect that maybe it was a one-off sort of thing, a kind of transitory inspiration, although he also determined that he was particularly good at writing about diseases. He had done extensive and creative research concerning nephrology and cancer statistics in the United States, and, as he considered this, he thought that perhaps he might one day become one of the great advocates for people who suffered from cancer of the kidney.

There was also the possibility that he had a certain kind of affinity for old people, although Henry was much less excited about this prospect. That said, it seemed to him more and more (as he thought about writing other stories and about who, in fact, he got along with in the world) that this might be the more accurate conclusion. He had always gotten on well with old people, and the fact of the matter was that he spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like being old — an old person with a terrible illness, an old person who couldn’t afford to take care of himself, an old person who had never been in love (real love, that is, love that was returned). He thought about it all quite a bit. Maybe that would be his stake in the world of modern literature. Certainly he had never read a novel about a 91-year-old. It was an appealing idea, and it stayed with him over the years following his graduation from Harvard and into his post-grad years in Williamsburg, when he eventually put up the $30,000 to launch the magazine.

4.

Why exactly the magazine was to be called “Suckerhead” was at first a mystery to Henry, although it was explained to him by the editor-in-chief that, “It’s just so fucking funny that it’s got to be the name.” It was true that Henry also found the title funny, but that hardly justified it being the title of their literary venture.

All the same, Henry didn’t complain. “Perhaps we could call you sucker-in-chief and I could be sucker-at-large,” Henry said — after making his financial contributions, he had been named an editor-at-large. To Henry’s surprise, this suggestion did not go over very well. In fact, the editor-in-chief, a 25-year-old named Tully — a graduate of Wesleyan — seemed quite offended. After a rushed bite of his pumpkin ravioli, Henry quickly added, “I mean, it might be pretty funny to have something like that on the masthead.”

“I want people to take us seriously,” Tully replied tersely. “We’re really trying to do something here. They’re the suckers, not us.”

Henry thought about this for a moment. It was true that irony was often beyond him, although not always, and he took quite a bit of pleasure hearing an incisive, sarcastic remark, although he never managed to make many of his own. “I guess that’s right,” he said at last, feeling a bit like he was somehow losing the thread of this particular conversation. “I guess that’s right.”

Losing the thread of a conversation, or the thread of his entire social world, was not uncommon for Henry, especially since he had moved to Brooklyn. But Henry loved Brooklyn, loved Williamsburg especially — the bars, the parties, and the people — and despite his difficulties navigating the intricacies of Brooklyn society, he embraced it all without any sort of resentment or cynicism. It was true that he did always feel as though things were happening just a bit beyond his reach. He was present for many of the great events — he frequented the popular music venues, ate at the newest restaurants, and was even invited to what he imagined were the most exciting parties. But he never really felt quite like he was at the heart of it all — or like he even particularly belonged to the periphery. He often suspected this was because, while there were lots of people he was friendly with and would hang around with, there was no one in Brooklyn that counted as a close friend, no one who really seemed to like him with any sort of enthusiasm, with the single (and confusing) exception of Abby.

It was not what Henry had imagined life would be like when he moved to Brooklyn (following a strange semester as a graduate student in the English literature department at the University of Michigan). He had moved to Williamsburg because of a woman — one of the few that didn’t reject him outright after he made his customary long confession (again, over starchy northern European food) about how he was having feelings that were “just a little beyond friendship.”

This woman seemed unfazed by the confession, didn’t say she “really just wanted to be friends,” and even seemed not displeased when, after a month of dating, when she was leaving Ann Arbor for Brooklyn, Henry said that he’d like to move to Brooklyn, too.

It was only four weeks after he arrived in Williamsburg (and rented a fairly impressive loft in one of the newer buildings on McCarren Park) that this particular woman, named Paige, left him. Or, she didn’t really leave him so much as tell Henry that maybe they shouldn’t be romantically involved anymore, especially because she had started dating someone else who had indicated that he’d like to “be exclusive” with her.

It devastated Henry. He was entirely shocked that she was dating someone else, that their own relationship wasn’t, itself, “exclusive,” and that she was throwing him over for this other person. For this woman (and maybe this was what astonished Henry the most), their relationship seemed to be nothing more than an odd and minor adventure that added up to little and cost nothing in terms of her emotional well-being. She even said as much: “I just can’t believe you’re crying like this. This is nothing. I like you. I do. But we’re only 24. Why are you crying like this?”

Over the next several weeks, Henry transformed a short story about an 85-year-old man who had never been in love into a story about an 85-year-old who had never been properly loved, and he found it so moving that he sent it to about a dozen literary magazines with an unusually assertive cover letter. The typed, form-rejection-letters came swiftly, although he did get several small handwritten notes at the bottom that said things like “Not bad!” and “This was interesting!” It was always good to get a note. Henry knew this. But the fact was that they seemed to make him feel even worse about his romantic and literary failures because somehow his feelings and artistic expression ended up meriting only a kind of booby-prize. That is, his pain and his art weren’t laughed at as cliché and ridiculous — his pain and his art were appreciated. But they were appreciated only enough to justify a few mild words of encouragement. And mild words of encouragement are hardly what a man wants to hear when he’s digging deeply into his emotions and his artistic imagination.

All the same, Henry didn’t give up on the story, and later he even passed it along to the fiction editor at Suckerhead, with the clear understanding that there was, of course, no obligation to publish it.

“Only if you like it,” Henry said.

“Sure, Henry,” the fiction editor replied. “I’ll give it a read and let you know what I think.”

5.

Despite Henry’s difficulties in Brooklyn, however, he was sure that he had a friend in Abby. She was a real friend — one that Henry did things with on a one-on-one basis, someone with whom he had meaningful conversations, and someone that seemed to like him a great deal. And all this continued even after his embarrassing confession. Because Henry needed Abby’s friendship, and because he secretly believed they might one day “get together,” as the saying goes, he didn’t flee the friendship after the rejection, as he might have done in the past, but instead put forth a brave face and carried on.

A month or so after they’d had the conversation about Henry’s confusing feelings, Abby even invited him away for a weekend to visit a farm in Vermont. The farm was owned by her aunt (no relation to Henry) and the trip away was “just as friends,” Abby made clear, adding with a bit of a smile, “So don’t try any of that incest shit with me, all right?”

“But it’s not incest!” Henry replied, and was about to point out that in most places a fourth cousin wasn’t even really considered a relative. But Abby saw how distressed he was and quickly replied, “I’m kidding. I’m kidding. It’s not incest. I know. I know. We’re not even really related. Dude, you’ve got to lighten up. But seriously, though, don’t try to kiss me. I’m only inviting you along because I know we’ll have fun together.”

Henry paused. “Yes, well, I was kidding too. And don’t worry. I don’t want to kiss you. I just wanted, that night, to talk about kissing you, because it seemed to be an issue.”

“Well it’s not,” Abby replied, flashing Henry a smile, although now with just a bit of effort. “It’s really not. But let’s not even ever again talk about kissing being an issue.”

Henry nodded. He thought that he might take the opportunity to say that it was Abby who brought it up this time, but he decided it might be best to leave things alone at this point.

At any rate, on the following Friday, mid-day, they found their way to Henry’s parking space in Greenpoint, got into his car (a silver Volvo station wagon that he inherited), and headed north. The farm was in southern Vermont, not far from Manchester, and this was Abby’s second trip there that month. Abby kept herself alive in Brooklyn by doing various odd jobs — dog-walking, freelance web-design, etc. — but when she could, she slipped away for two- and three-day stretches to work on her aunt’s farm, making a little money and enjoying a break from the city. And she was very interested in farming, as she insisted over and over in the car.

“It’s just really strange how alienated we are from what we eat,” she said. “I mean, it’s incredible the kind of care and labor that goes into it all. And the economics of it. And the weirdo luck. You can have a great harvest one year and then a terrible season the next, and usually that’s because of something like a drought in the Ukraine or over-production of turnips in Arkansas.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that’s true,” Henry said, and, although it was not something he had thought much about, he began looking forward to learning more about all this.

This particular farm, however, although clearly “working” by any definition, was hardly the sort of thing that would qualify as an example of the American farm. Rather, as Abby explained, it was a very expensively run organic farm that had been financed by Abby’s uncle, who managed a hedge fund in Greenwich. His wife bought the farm (called Highgate Meadows) several years earlier after his fund had had a particularly astonishing year, purchasing it from an older couple that was retiring to Florida. This husband and wife were real farmers. They made their living that way. But they were fairly well off, as these things go, and the land they owned was spectacular — nice enough to finance an extremely comfortable retirement in sunnier climates.

Abby’s aunt, Cecily, put another two million dollars into the property, building a greenhouse, buying harvesting machinery and equipment to make cheese and, apparently, a flock of Libyan heirloom goats which were entirely unique in North America.

“She’s a little affected,” Abby said. “She can’t quite understand why everyone can’t pay twenty bucks for a pound of hamburger meat. I mean, by world-wide standards, I’ve got some cash, and I definitely can’t pay that much. But she doesn’t really get that. But I like her. There are things I like about her. And I like going to the farm. It might be a bit utopian. Rich person utopian. But I like it there. And I do think it’s important. Maybe it’s the farm that I like. I like the farm.”

6.

Henry was able to piece together more of the story when they finally arrived. They drove up the long gravel drive, parked at a surprisingly impressive farmhouse which looked to be at least 200 years old, and then walked around back to find Abby’s aunt standing in a patch of sunflowers that she was cutting with a large pair of gardening shears.

“These things will grow right into the first snowfall,” she said with a strange kind of mania. “But it’s best to cut them back now. That’s what they say, at least.”

For the next few moments, they exchanged customary greetings, which included remarks about the now-diminishing autumn leaves and Abby’s extraordinary slimness. The two young people were then offered something “hot to drink” and before long they were in the modern and expansive kitchen of Highgate Meadows.

“I’m worried that I’m a little too obsessed with all this,” Cecily said, pulling a large copper kettle off one of twelve Viking burners. “I used to scream at my husband about being such a workaholic, but now I feel like I’m the neglectful one in the relationship. But it’s all so fascinating. And what I’m doing is very, very important.”

“Abby told me a lot about it on the way up,” Henry said, putting his hands on an antique butcher-block that had an alarming amount of cleaver scars. “It does actually seem very important to me as well.”

“Well, I’ll show you around just as soon as the tea is ready.”

After they each had a cup of tea in their hands, they commenced the tour, which took them through assorted venues, including the new greenhouse (with a large crop of a strange kind of hydroponically-grown orange tomatoes), a large aging barn filled with various tools and farming equipment, an empty field where, as Cecily explained, a crop of organic acorn squash had been harvested a month earlier, and then to what Cecily described as the pride and joy of Highgate Meadows — the goats and the cheese facility.

“I built all this from scratch,” Cecily said as they approached a single-story shingled building with a low-pitched roof.
Henry did remark to himself — and this really was the only cynical reflection he had on the entire tour — that Cecily didn’t look like she had ever built anything on her own. Despite her ragged clothes and a few dirt smudges on her hands and forearms, she still looked like some kind of grand Connecticut socialite — tall, athletic, fully exfoliated and moisturized. But the farm was beautiful and obviously a success, so who was he to say what an authentic farmer or builder should look like? Certainly he too was a complete failure when it came to physical labor and building things, so he really was in no position to judge.

And it really was impressive. They stepped into what Cecily was now calling the cheese house, and it all seemed to be from the set of some sort of futuristic movie. Everything was either white, stainless steel or transparent plastic, and it felt like a kind of science lab without so much as a hint of germs or dust. It was also entirely empty — not unlike utopian (or dystopian) movies.

“Not much action now,” Cecily said. “We’ve shut down for a little bit. We just made a huge batch of cheese and we’re not putting anything else together till February. There’s no room to store it. We need to deal with this inventory now. Anyway, there’s no rush, and it’s always best to do things right.”

All the same, without the so-called action, it was very striking — the mixers, the beakers, the refrigeration units, the stacks of cheese wheels in the large storage room. It wasn’t, however, as interesting as their next stop. They left the cheese house, walked across a small quadrangle, and came to another shingled building that was attached to a large fenced pen.

“This is the goat barn,” Cecily said as they stepped into the structure. They walked into a little ante-room, then opened another door and entered a dark, low-ceilinged room, filled with what Henry thought were at least eighty surprisingly tall and confused looking goats. The room was smaller than Henry would have expected, but, as Cecily explained, “They get skittish when they have too much space.”

Cecily also gave a fairly detailed description of the goats and their value. Apparently, she had purchased them from a farmer in Delaware who had started with only eight goats and then jealously managed the flock since the 1950s. They were one-of-a-kind in “the Americas,” since none of the flock’s generations had ever been sold off. Perhaps more relevant, they had originally come from Libya — where they were also fairly rare — and importation of Libyan goods, to say nothing of goats, hadn’t been permitted for quite a long while.

“And even today,” Cecily said, “with Khadafy supposedly joining the ‘world community,’ it would be next to impossible. There are all sorts of strange diseases to worry about and endless FDA reviews. It would take decades. And they’re hard to take care of because they’re very temperamental. And they need to be kept warm. That’s something that’s hard to do in Vermont. They hate temperature shifts, especially when temperatures fall, and it shows in the quality of the milk. But they’re worth the trouble.”

One of the reasons was because the goats’ milk was abnormally sweet, which allowed for various opportunities in cheese making that other goats couldn’t match. Cecily used about a quarter of the milk herself, but was able to sell the rest to artisan cheese makers around New England for “top-dollar.” The goat milk was, in fact, the only part of the farm that produced any real revenue.

“But as for profits, not revenue but profit,” Cecily said, “that’s going to take a while. This was a huge capital investment.”

“How much does a goat like this cost,” Henry asked.

“They’re expensive,” Cecily said, “because you can sell their milk at such a high price. And they’re one of a kind. So each goat, and I have about a hundred, cost $10,000.”

For just a second the number 10,000 registered in Henry’s mind as the value of the flock, so the first impression he had — again, just for that second — was that $10,000 seemed like a very reasonable price for such a valuable commodity. But then he reconsidered Cecily’s statement, and then did just a little math, and realized that this particular flock of goats that was now before him was worth a million dollars.

“My God,” Henry said at last, although he regretted this just a bit. After all, it’s hardly polite to gasp at the price of another person’s possessions, even if it is a million dollar flock of goats. “Of course, it’s obviously a very wise investment,” Henry quickly added, “since they bring in good revenue.”

“Yes, well,” Cecily said a little more quietly, “I know it’s a large sum. But the point of this farm is larger than making money, even though I want it to be profitable.” Cecily paused for a moment, then laughed a bit. “I actually was fine with it at first. I mean, I still am. But there’s just a bit of resentment in Vermont over people buying up farms and launching this kind of project. I mean, it’s always been this way. This farm was built by a Quaker family that had a lot of money, and they did very well. Farming and land-owning, after all, used to be one of the ways rich people got rich. And there’s always been poorer farmers — or farm-hands, mostly — who weren’t crazy about that. I mean, I guess they might have some reason. And we really try to pay everyone well. As well as we can. This is a business after all.” Cecily paused again, laughed once more, then said, “I guess this is on my mind because there’ve been a lot of pretty hostile articles about my kind of farm in Vermont newspapers — Burlington, Manchester, a lot of our newspapers. And I’ve been mentioned once or twice. Particularly by a columnist in Manchester who writes about farming in Vermont. He likes to talk about know-nothing city people and rich New Yorkers ruining Vermont’s way of life. And I suppose I know how it sounds in the abstract, out of context — a million dollars for a hundred goats — and somehow he found out what I paid and has talked about it in his column. But I’m really trying to do something important here. I really am. What’s important is the mission, not the price. I mean how can you put a value on doing what’s best for the world and the environment.”

Cecily paused, although she looked like she had more to say. She was certainly a little energized at this exact moment. But after another second or so, she announced that she had to work on her rabbit hutches and that perhaps this would be a good time to conclude the tour. “The rabbits are arriving in a few days and I’ve got to be ready. I don’t think this is a work weekend for you, Abby, so do whatever you like. Maybe tomorrow I can get you to help me mend a fence that’s fallen. But for now why don’t you two just enjoy yourselves. And there’s beer in the fridge, if you just want to sit by the fire.”

Henry and Abby walked the perimeter of the harvested squash field and then along several other fields that grew, at different times, alfalfa, yams, pumpkins, carrots, and various other crops that could be grown in Vermont. They wandered through the machine shed, and Henry examined the tractor attachments and a portable emergency generator, and also looked over the long work bench. Every kind of tool imaginable hung above the bench, and the long wooden work area was flanked by two space heaters, a paint-covered portable radio, and a small fridge which, Henry saw when he opened it, was filled with Miller Lite.

They also spent a little time watching three very strange Wiltonshire pigs, each of which had an unusual meaty growth on its forehead. Apparently, there was quite a market in New York city for this kind of pig.
Fashionable restaurants were now naming their pork and beef by breed, and the New York Times Dining section had profiled this particular pig (as Abby informed Henry) and said that its meat was the best a person could get.

“Can you eat that thing that hangs off the top of their heads,” Henry asked. As he asked this, he did think that perhaps this was a gruesome question. But he was honestly curious.

Abby didn’t know. “And, frankly, that’s kind of gross,” she said.

“But it might be good,” Henry said, trying to affect a sort of worldly ease with the grim realities of farm life. “I once heard that on farms nothing is wasted.”

“I’ll ask my aunt if she’ll cook you one tonight,” Abby replied, punching Henry softly in the shoulder. “Wiltonshire forehead flap with applesauce.”

“That sounds good to me,” Henry said.

Dinner was duck, roasted whole with shallots and lemon juice, parsnips (from the farm) and bread baked by some sort of bakery down the road that had also been started by the wife of a hedge fund manager.

Cecily hesitated a bit as she added this last bit of information. The three of them were in the dining room, all pleasantly lit by two silver candelabras, and eating with great enthusiasm. But Cecily now looked just a bit remorseful for bringing this up.

“I suppose sometimes it’s just embarrassing,” she continued. “For all the reasons that I told you I’m a little embarrassed by the goats. But what are you going to do? Money has to come from somewhere. And I could be spending it in Miami or Zurich, so it seems like my husband’s professional windfall is being put to good use. But ‘wife of a hedge fund manager’ has such an ugly ring to it. And, like I’ve said, I haven’t quite been accepted as part of the farming community here. But I understand the criticism. Or where it comes from, at least. The important thing is to keep my head down, keep my mouth mostly shut — even though I could spend the rest of my life talking about sustainable agriculture — and produce good food. If I stick it out, they’ll accept me eventually. I hope so, at any rate.”

It was an interesting moment of introspection — interesting (and just a bit moving) to Henry, at least — and the wine they were drinking certainly made everything more appealing. It was a sort from California that Henry knew nothing about, although he knew absolutely nothing about any kind of wine at all, really, so this wasn’t surprising. As Henry took a bite of his duck, he thought he might actually like to spend more time learning about wine, and then, leaning back in his chair and surveying the very austere but beautiful farmhouse dining room, he thought that maybe he might one day even like to own a farm like this. He couldn’t quite imagine actually managing a farm that produced anything. But country living held quite a bit of appeal to him. Certainly, this farm did. It really was a wonderful place.

And later that night, and the next day, as they packed up for their return, he and Abby were invited for another visit. “You can come as much as you like, Henry,” Cecily said. “It’s hard on me being mostly alone up here. My husband can’t make it up as much as I’d like. And as I said, I’m hardly in a position to accuse him of being obsessed with work, since it seems to be my problem as well.”

They were standing by Henry’s silver Volvo as she said this, and Henry once more had the vague idea that perhaps one day he’d like to have a place like this. He looked to his right, across an empty patch of gravel, and at the goats, which were now outside, wandering around their pen. Maybe if he got his own farm he’d even get his own flock of goats to take care of — a flock of Libyans, perhaps, although he concluded that this was probably unlikely. Maybe another kind of rare goat. He didn’t know. But he did want to come back. “I’d love to visit again,” he said. “It really is nice up here.”

Part Two

7.

It didn’t take more than a few weeks for plans along these lines to unfold. About a week or so into November, Abby proposed another visit for the two of them over Christmas.

Holidays were, needless to say, a troubling matter for Henry because his parents were dead. It was true that he was on good terms with various relatives (none of whom really knew Abby or any other fourth-cousins, for that matter) and he managed to see them every so often. Some lived in the city, others in Connecticut, and others still in places like California and Washington D.C., although he saw these particular people with much less frequency. Festive events, of course, provided the main occasion for visits, but ever since Henry’s parents had died, he shied from these sorts of things because, rather than making him feel safe and secure in the bosom of kith and kin, he found that he mostly felt very, very lonely and missed his parents terribly.

For this reason, Henry found that he liked to spend holidays alone. The first time around it was a bit hard, but this was mostly because he felt like he was missing out on some kind of fun, not because he was staring into the abyss of death and misery. And staring into the abyss of death and misery was obviously much worse than missing fun, as almost anyone would say. Henry did, the previous year, try having Thanksgiving dim sum with some so-called foreign friends, but these people, who had no reason at all to celebrate Thanksgiving, seemed just a bit too interested in why he wasn’t with family over the holiday, and he didn’t particularly like having to explain himself. Mostly, what he liked to do on holidays was walk around and drink coffee and read and think (in a pleasant way) about what he had liked most about his mother and father. This was generally what he liked to do anyway, and perhaps it was the routine and the ordinariness that gave Henry some relief from contemplating the misery of it all.

That particular Christmas, however, Henry did decide to agree to Abby’s plan. “I know you’re a strict loner at Christmas,” she’d said. (They were drinking wine and eating a small dish of roasted Brussels sprouts at some sort of Czech restaurant.) “And that’s totally cool. But my aunt and uncle are going to be in the Caribbean, in St. Croix, for the week of Christmas, and their caretaker has plans as well, and they’ve asked me to head up to Vermont to keep an eye on the place. I’ll go up on Christmas day — after presents and breakfast at home — and you could meet me then. Or you could go up on Christmas Eve and have the place to yourself. No one else will be there. The caretaker is leaving that afternoon for Cleveland or somewhere for two days, so you can still do your I-want-to-be-alone thing.”

“Well, it’s very nice of you to invite me,” Henry said. “Let me think about it. I probably shouldn’t say yes right away.”

But it did seem to Henry that he probably would take Abby up on it. Henry really liked the farm. And he especially liked the goats. If he was alone at least until the afternoon of Christmas Day, that seemed like it would be all right. As far as he was concerned, it was Christmas Eve that always counted most; the holiday always felt over by noon Christmas Day anyway. And Henry thought it would be fun to spend time with Abby, even if he was still concerned that he hadn’t quite left behind his crush. At any rate, it didn’t take more than a day for Henry to consider it all. He called Abby, who was house-sitting in Park Slope, and told her that he’d love to come.

“I like the idea of at least spending an afternoon over Christmas with someone I know,” he said.

“I like that idea too,” Abby replied.

8.

And Henry really was looking forward to the trip, but he did have several other things occupying his thoughts.

First, there was the matter of Suckerhead, which had a organizational meeting one evening at a place called Tamerlane, a bar which offered beers of the Pabst Blue Ribbon sort, a wide array of grilled sandwiches, and, for reasons Henry couldn’t quite understand, an extraordinarily expensive wine list which included several bottles that went for over $300.

Henry did like Tamerlane quite a bit, though. It had old leaded-windows and tin-pressed ceilings and antler chandeliers (clearly not original, but they gave the bar a sort of old-time feel). And the music was always good. Henry didn’t really know that much about music, other than the things that all people in Williamsburg knew, but he found that the bartender’s iPod always seemed to have interesting things to listen to.

The organizational meeting consisted of sixteen people — the various editors, editors-at-large, submission screeners, and even a publicity person that had a day job at Simon & Schuster. It was just a little unnerving to Henry, for several reasons, but most on his mind was the fact that the fiction editor was still reviewing his story. On this front, he mostly felt embarrassed. After all, he was using an unfair advantage to publish his work. He assured himself that this sort of thing happened all the time. “This is how publishing gets done,” he even once said to himself out loud, parroting something he heard at the magazine where he had interned. Still, the fiction editor seemed oblivious to Henry’s anxiety and didn’t say a word about his story, even though they greeted each other warmly before the meeting.

Henry sat quietly in a corner listening to reports on things like advertising, typefaces, the possibilities of color art, and whether or not they should solicit work from poets with whom the poetry editor had studied. The main topic, though, was where they should have their printing done. One of the associate editors, a woman named Karen who Henry had always found very attractive, had been researching the possibility of sending the work to a printer in a developing country. This was not such a far-fetched idea, and certainly many publishers had books and magazines printed in countries other than the United States. Karen had concluded, however, that the best place to have Suckerhead produced was at a company in Ontario, Canada: “Because they’re totally green, they pay their employees well, and, frankly, there’s not going to be any hassle. These guys are pros.”

There was quite a bit of debate following this, including the obvious point, raised by several people, that Canada was not, technically speaking, a developing country. But Karen made fairly impressive arguments about uncertain labor practices, questionable workmanship, and environmental issues in the other locations. Henry, at least, was impressed, although he made an effort to evaluate the matter carefully, from all perspectives and divorced from the fact that he really did find Karen very attractive.

After the meeting was over, Henry was surprised to find himself delivering a fairly well-reasoned explanation of his views to Karen over beers at the bar, where he said things like, “It really seems you’ve done a very thorough job with all this.” And, “I really think you’re onto something with this Canada idea.”

Perhaps more surprising, Karen seemed to be interested in everything he was saying, including his views on modern literature, the viability of print literary journals in the electronic age, and even his opinions on visual art, something Henry knew very little about. Karen responded to most of what he was saying by replying, “Yeah, I really think that’s right,” and “I never really thought of it that way, but that’s pretty interesting.”And after all this, after what Henry decided was truly an exciting conversation, Karen finally suggested that they grab something to eat. “Let’s go to this new place called ‘404.’ Texas barbeque. Just opened. It’s supposed to be great.”

“That sounds good to me,” Henry replied, and, after visiting the men’s room, he soon found himself walking under the BQE on his way to dinner.

In the spirit of authenticity (which, of course, New York was famous for), 404 sold its food by the pound from one of various “stations” and, if it was meat, it was wrapped in tan, waxed butcher paper. (Sides such as baked beans and cole slaw were served in white Styrofoam containers with opaque plastic lids.) Henry and Karen decided to buy a pound of brisket and a pound of pork ribs, two orders of beans, and one order of cole slaw. It was far too much. That was obvious. But they had been drinking, and they were having fun together, so it seemed reasonable to make a celebration out of the evening. In this spirit they also each got a beer and a shot of Maker’s Mark, and before long they were seated at a long table surrounded by other diners.

“I’ve really wanted to come here for a while,” Karen said as she unwrapped the pork ribs.

“Yeah, it’s a really cool place,” Henry replied. “I’m glad we came.” He looked down at the ribs and started to wonder if there was a dignified way to pull the fat off one before eating it. He wanted to do what was appropriate. But Karen quickly grabbed a rib from the pile and shoved the end in her mouth without any of the trimming Henry was planning, and thus, Henry did the same, eating the fat with feigned abandon, even though it was definitely not something he wanted to do.

In any event, the food was magnificent (as was the bourbon) and the conversation flowed well, and as the piles of paper-wrapped meat diminished, Henry started to wonder if he ought to start planning out his next moves. After all, this was precisely the sort of occasion where young men in Brooklyn ended up having sex — as far as he could tell — and if sex was a possibility, he should certainly have a plan.

But it turned out that no plan was needed. Near the end of dinner, Karen, took a large bite of cole slaw, nibbled on the end of a rib, and then said, “Why don’t you come over to my place after we’re done here. My housemate’s out of town. We could have another drink. And then maybe we could sleep together.”

Needless to say, this particular proposal was stunning, for an almost endless number of obvious reasons. Mostly, though, it seemed to be very clear evidence of something that Henry had long suspected — that sex for everyone else was an entirely natural and easy arrangement, and (and this was the important corollary to this suspicion) Henry was somehow, due to a kind of cosmic injustice, was excluded from this easy sexual exchange — excluded for reasons that Henry could never quite decipher but which he imagined had to do with his outrageous self-consciousness, unreasonable fears of perfectly normal things, and the general confusion that he seemed to feel when around women.

It was all a very interesting matter. But this was not a complex proposal, and Henry had to answer with some ease and speed if he was to keep up this spirit of casual intimacy. “That sounds cool to me,” Henry finally said. “I was just going to suggest the same thing.”

Henry ate the rest of his brisket with alarming speed, and before long he was back at Karen’s apartment in Greenpoint, sipping another glass of bourbon and wondering (again) just how to make the first move. But Karen once more took the lead, kissing Henry and slowly unbuttoning his jeans, and before long Henry found himself in precisely the sort of heroic and, to Henry’s surprise, just a bit raw, situation he had always wanted to be in with Karen.

9.

And (to Henry’s happy astonishment) they saw each other again. Six times, in fact, by Henry’s exact count, and each time was the same: an indulgent dinner of fatty meat and distilled alcohol followed by interesting bedroom acts that kept Henry in a state of delight and self-congratulation well into the next day.

Still, it was hard to say what all this meant. They were both in their mid-twenties, after all, and in this day and age exclusivity had to be affirmed and not assumed, as Henry sadly found out when he arrived in Brooklyn. And Henry could never quite escape the suspicion that Karen was just a bit too good for him — just a little too attractive and a little too savvy. But by the sixth date (now the first week in December) he felt some small amount of confidence. Henry had decided that perhaps this so-called relationship might have some kind of future. However (and this, sadly, surprised Henry not one bit) the whole thing ended very badly.

It had been decided, after some discussion, that people friendly with other people Henry knew would gather to watch the New England Patriots play the New York Jets at a bar on Metropolitan Avenue, a bar which was known for having several popular video games. The idea for this particular gathering had started with Karen, who had proposed it to a friend in an email that had been forwarded to subsequent people and, finally, after perhaps thirty people had received it, to Henry. The thing was that the first email, the email that had proposed the plan, included (obviously due to a careless and also catastrophic mistake) information about Henry and Karen’s feelings towards him. In response to a mercifully deleted question, it said the following: “Yeah. Henry. Strange guy. Or not strange as much as a bore. Milquetoast, as my mom says. I suppose technically he’s a decent looking guy. And that 15 Million bucks is pretty appealing. But even that’s not enough for me to stick around. Just taking one for the team. All for the good of Suckerhead’s finances! But one thing I’ve got to say, because I’ve got to tell somebody, is that he makes the freakiest facial expressions during sex. I definitely couldn’t look at that for the rest of my life. Probably not even another night. Way, way freaky.”

Henry was so completely startled as he finished reading this (again, it was far at the beginning of a long string of emails) that he found he had an absolutely shocking and adrenaline-fueled sense of awareness of every single aspect of just how terrible this was. The fact that he was called milquetoast and a bore was, needless to say, entirely demoralizing. Worse was that somehow the sex had been turned into a type of painful barter for the money he had put up for the magazine. More worse, and his hair really did feel like it was standing on end when he contemplated this, was that he made strange (and clearly disturbing) faces when he had sex. And the worst of all (by far the worst): people around Brooklyn now knew about these particular faces. Karen was telling people. And even if she wasn’t telling a lot of people, it was now on an email circulating throughout Williamsburg. How long would it be before some other person read back to the beginning of the exchange and posted his discovery on MySpace?

It was all more than Henry could bear. And after just two or three seconds of the previously described adrenaline-fueled awareness, his thoughts began to dissolve, and, without any ability to stop himself, Henry burst into tears.He was alone and he was at home. At least he had that. Henry had, on more than one occasion, burst into tears in public. So he was happy, at least, that he wasn’t using some café’s WiFi and weeping into his coffee.

The crying lasted nearly three minutes. But it quickly subsided, although the agony did not, and soon he was walking alone through Williamsburg with his collar pulled tight around his neck, wondering how he was going to get through all this. He began thinking about those relatives he had in California and how he had always had a vague desire to live close to a proper, sun-drenched beach. But after that fantasy ceased, and he concluded that he would actually not be that happy spending more than a month or so living on the beach, as it were, he decided that what he really needed to do was head home and take some sort of action. If not an angry phone call or a hostile email, then, at the very least, the announcement that he was not interested in going out with Karen again.

Surprisingly, however, by the time he got home, now just a few hours after his horrifying discovery, Henry found that he had an email from Karen, canceling their next date and adding, almost as an afterthought, that she had decided that they probably shouldn’t be romantically involved anymore. Of course, in this day and age, especially in Williamsburg, it had long been entirely appropriate to break up with someone on email, and this wasn’t even a break up, given the fact that they had only gone out on a handful of dates. Still, Henry wondered if she hadn’t realized that she had disseminated her offensive thoughts about him and decided to bail out before he did.

Henry even formulated a long email response that accused her of this, and then, at length, discussed the importance of privacy, and the lack of care and kindness in our troubling world, and how it was nobody’s business — not even that of her closest friends — what he looked like while having sex.

It felt good to write this hostile email. In the end, though, Henry decided not to send it, thinking it would only make him look worse, and probably be more fodder for Karen to make fun of him to her friends.

And so he abandoned his email, and began to cope with his feelings of humiliation by starting work (and it actually went very, very well in those next hours) on a story he had long wanted to write about an 90-year-old man who had to struggle with the sorrow of having to commit his 106-year-old mother to a nursing home. This project took him well into the night, and, mercifully, through the next week-and-a-half. And, with some amount of thanks for the distraction, Henry even sent it out to several literary journals as soon as he had finished, although given the odds and his recent luck, it seemed likely that he would not be particularly successful with this project either.

Part Three

10.
And so, given these recent events, by the time Christmas came, Henry was relieved that a return trip north to Highgate Meadows would take him far from the city and, better yet, allow him to spend time alone with Abby. She’d been doing quite a bit of freelancing at some sort of textile-arts website and had been unable to meet Henry at all following his most recent humiliations, although Henry did his best to pretend that nothing bad had happened to him. He was, however, not very good at this.

“What’s with all the moaning?” Abby asked on the phone one evening. “You’ll see me soon enough. We’re spending Christmas together.”

“I suppose,” Henry replied. “And I’m not moaning. I guess I’m just looking for something to do.”

“Well, find a hobby,” Abby said. “I’m making great money and getting a billion hours, so I’m not seeing anyone ’til I split for upstate.” (Abby’s family lived in Saratoga Springs.)

It did occur to Henry that perhaps Abby had seen the email that Karen sent, although Abby’s address didn’t appear on any of the forwarded emails — he had checked three times. And, given that Abby had always been skeptical of the Suckerhead crowd, if she did get the email, she might dismiss the whole thing.

So it was all a puzzle, but by the time Henry loaded his bags into the back of his Volvo early on Christmas Eve, his mind had relaxed somewhat. He’d spend time in the country inspecting picked-over squash fields, walking along old stone walls, and feeding the prized heirloom goats, who wouldn’t care one bit what faces Henry made in bed.

The plan involved Henry staying at Highgate Meadows alone on Christmas Eve. The caretaker was gone, as were the employees, and Abby would not be up until Christmas afternoon. She had a few small duties to take care of, but Henry was encouraged to “have fun and make yourself at home!” as Cecily was kind enough to say in an email she sent before departing for St. Croix. Abby gave Henry more specific instructions — which room he was staying in, where he could find towels, etc. “There are things I’ve got to do when I get there,” Abby also said. “But it’s all minor. Everything is on autopilot, basically, so there’s nothing really to think about. We’ll just be there to make sure no catastrophes occur.” Abby also explained where the woodshed was and where the liquor was kept.

And the promise of liquor was on Henry’s mind as he drove north. He had arrived at a vision of himself in front of the fireplace with some kind of brandy as the final symbol of him relaxing and putting Williamsburg behind him, if only for a day or so. He even had a fairly methodical plan for how to build a fire and pour himself a drink in as little time as possible — he would wait to unpack his car, wait to use the bathroom, and wait to make himself something to eat before the fire was built and the brandy was poured.

There was another thing that was making him long for the warmth of a fire and a drink. It had started to snow. Heavily. And it was really quite beautiful. Henry’s Volvo had a number of so-called cross-country upgrades, and was very well-equipped to handle the snow, so he wasn’t worried about road conditions. He even allowed himself to enjoy the scenery and think (with some irrational optimism) about the various possibilities that might unfold on a snow-covered Vermont farm alone with Abby. The snow certainly was heavy, and as he drove through Massachusetts and then crossed the Vermont border, it occurred to him that this was one of the heaviest snowfalls he had ever seen. He turned on the radio to get the weather report (he had been listening to NPR podcasts thus far) and his suspicions were confirmed as assorted newscasters discussed what they were predicting would be the worst storm in thirty years. Henry had heard that snow was coming when he was still in Brooklyn. Or, he had read about it online. But there was none of the drama and seriousness that he was now hearing in the voices on the radio. And by the time he pulled onto the road where Highgate Meadows lay, he was hearing specific reports of record temperature drops and the possibility of 42 inches of snow — it was supposed to last all the way through Christmas and into the following day.

Henry could, of course, see for himself what was being discussed by the weather forecasters. The festive and Christmassy snow had turned into a freezing blizzard, and Henry had trouble even making out the silhouettes of the buildings as he drove up the gravel drive. But he had arrived. So there was really little for him to worry about at this point. At least he wouldn’t freeze to death on the side of the road, and that, after all, was something to be thankful for.

11.
And so, once he arrived, Henry executed his well-made plans, although he did have to make one small adjustment and use the bathroom before he built the fire. Within fifteen minutes of his arrival, however, he was sipping a glass of some kind of expensive looking armagnac and watching a large oak log atop a pile of pine kindling slowly catch fire.

It was very peaceful and took him far away from Williamsburg. After a few moments of taking it all in — the leather-bound books, the antique sideboard, the soft, yellow couch with two quilts draped along the back — Henry wondered again, as he had the last time he had been to Highgate Meadows, if this wasn’t, in fact, exactly the life for him. And the corollary thought — this was new, however — was that maybe what he really needed was a woman like Cecily, although, of course, a much younger version. Maybe he needed someone who enjoyed the country, someone who liked sitting by the fire, arranging quilts in appealing ways, and cooking elaborate meals. Henry did, for a moment, wonder if these desires didn’t have just a bit of a sexist side to them — was he looking for June Cleaver? But after thinking about this for a minute, he decided that Cecily was anything but June Cleaver, and he also discovered, somewhat reluctantly (given the implications) that Cecily also reminded Henry a bit of his mother. His mother was sweeter, if that was a thing a person could really be, and quite a bit less ambitious than Cecily. But his mother was an emotionally astute woman and an excellent storyteller, having somehow memorized the entirety of the details of every maternal relative Henry had ever met, or known to exist. It was, in truth, nearly the only thing his mother liked to talk about, although the stories were never repetitive or dull, and always left Henry with a very strong urge to write himself.

It was when he was in his last year of college (the semester before he started his so-called internship at the magazine) that she died, along with his father, in the boating accident near their house on Martha’s Vineyard. Again, it had been entirely unexpected, as boating accidents always are, and so shocking that Henry was sure he still hadn’t recovered. What he generally felt, at the times when he thought about it all, was that he hadn’t yet really experienced the event in its full form and was instead moving helplessly away from that first horrible phone call in a state of increasing confusion. It was strange, never quite feeling that you had grasped the depths of a terrible event, to say nothing of having recovered from it. And the fact was that Henry had been very close to his parents, as different as they were from him.

Henry had grown up in Lexington, in an enormous house on fourteen acres of land, with an old barn, a pond, and a reasonable commute for his father into Boston. His father managed a sort of investment fund, which consisted partly of the family’s money, and partly of money from other investors — generally other wealthy families that didn’t have someone as smart as Henry’s father to manage their estates.

Henry’s father had a more formal job once, before taking the reins of the fund. He was a successful equities analyst for a major Boston brokerage. He bowed out without too much trouble, though, following a disagreeable change in management. But Henry’s father was never possessed with the kind of financial monomania that most successful equities analysts are, and he slipped easily into his calmer life without too much trouble. He was an excellent sailor, loved to play tennis and to hunt, and he was devoted to his family. Henry came home at least five or six weekends a semester when he was at Deerfield (a fairly unusual thing among his peers) and his father always loved to spend time with him.

The truth, however — and this had been completely clear to Henry for all his life — was that Henry and his father were very different people. Even when he was in grade school he could tell that that he was frailer and more sensitive (in the bad way) than his father, and these first suspicions bore themselves out as he grew older, and grew even more sensitive and even less of an athlete. But the thing was, and this was something Henry understood deeply and with great emotional precision, his father loved him with a heroic sense of gratitude and acceptance. Never once — really, not once — did his father ever make a single disparaging remark about things like Henry’s irrational fear of water, his lack of physical stamina, his crippling shyness around girls, or anything else that marked him as functioning far on the other side of his father’s robust and masculine vigor.

“You and I are different guys,” his father once said, just after they discussed Henry’s decision to abandon his tenuous alternate’s position on Deerfield’s junior varsity cross-country team. “We’re different. But Henry, you’re the best man I know. You really are. I couldn’t be happier that you’re my son. I learn something from you every day. And you know why? Because you’re the most emotionally generous person I’ve ever met. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one mean or petty thing come out of your mouth. Ever. Not even when you were little. And that’s pretty unusual. About as unusual a thing as I’ve ever seen.”

This conclusion had always puzzled Henry. Certainly he had held thoughts and opinions that were far from generous and very well might land squarely under the heading of petty. But it was true that Henry had few enemies and had never really mistreated a friend.

One thing was clear however — clear at least on the couch at Highgate Meadows that Christmas Eve: Henry’s father loved him. And Henry knew it. And while there are, of course, any number of perfectly obvious reasons why losing your father is entirely devastating, in Henry’s case, the most important loss had to do with the fact that he felt as though he would never find anyone who thought as well of him, who liked him quite as much, who really seemed so happy to be around him.

All the same, it was still a pleasant thought, despite the tragedy that lay behind it. Or comforting, at least, that there at least had been someone like that. And it was part of a constellation of ideas and memories that Henry decided he might now nurse for the entire evening, now that the fire was built and he had secured something good to drink.

Just as he began to consider that he might now try another variety of Cecily’s armagnacs in order to contemplate his past more deeply, his cell phone rang. At first Henry thought he might ignore it, not recognizing the number. But he eventually answered, thinking it might be some elderly relative calling to wish him a merry Christmas. Instead, however, it was Abby, and although she did at first say she was calling from Saratoga Springs to wish him a merry Christmas, she also said she had more specific matters to discuss.

“So I guess the storm is pretty bad up there,” she said.

Henry looked out the window. He’d almost forgotten about the storm now that he was in front of the fire. The storm was still raging — almost worse now. “It is pretty bad,” Henry finally agreed.

“We’re getting killed here,” Abby said. “But it seems like you’re even worse off. I guess a lot of roads are closed for the night.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. The roads were terrible getting here.”

“Anyway, Cecily wanted me to make sure you’re not dead and that the farm’s all right. She also wants you to check on the goats. Make sure the goats are all right. But that’s it. I’m going to try to leave early tomorrow. Hopefully the roads will be passable, so I should make it there one way or another. I’m taking my dad’s Landcruiser. But you’ll be on your own tonight and a lot of tomorrow.”

“That sounds fine to me,” Henry said. He thought for a moment that perhaps he’d buy some armagnac when he got home. He wondered, specifically, how much this particular bottle was and he even considered that maybe he’d like to open a small shop in Williamsburg that sold nothing but armagnac. “Everything is great here though,” he finally added.

“Do you have a fire?”

“I have a fire. And I found the liquor cabinet. We’ll have lots of fun tomorrow. We can play gin in front of the fireplace.”

Henry expected Abby to say something like, “I can’t wait” or even, “Don’t drink everything before I get up there.”

There was no response, and Henry had the vague idea that Abby was about to scold him for some inadvertent offense. But there was nothing. At last, Henry said, “Hello? Hello?” several times.

Still no response. Henry pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. The screen said “no reception.”

He stared at his phone for another second, then stood up and walked to a cordless phone at the far side of the room. He’d call her back that way. But the cordless phone was dead as well. And then, in the next instant, the one small lamp that Henry had on in the living room flickered, then flickered again, and then it went out.

Henry walked through the back hall to the kitchen and tried the lights there. They were also off. It was still light out, so he could see fairly well. But after trying several other light switches, he determined that the electricity was clearly out. This was probably not a very good development, Henry thought, although also probably nothing to worry about. He’d just have to keep an eye on things.

And perhaps this ought to begin with the goats, seeing that they were the one thing that really concerned Abby and Cecily.

12.
Henry could hardly help but remark that these so-called Libyan Goats were — even to the layman — magnificent looking animals. They had intense, glaring eyes, and black shining horns, and although their coats were technically gray, in the now dimming light of the Vermont winter, with the sun filtered through a terrible snowstorm and the large Plexiglas windows of the small barn, the goats looked blue. And not just gray with a bluish tint. Their coats were a sort of pure, dark blue, unmistakable and with almost no real gray in it at all.

They were certainly puzzling animals, and Henry thought that he’d like to spend more time with them, but before he could think too deeply about the mysteries of animal life, he noticed something else. It was just a little colder than it should have been in the barn. The heat was electric — Henry could see that quickly enough from the ceiling installations — so it would now be out just like everything else electrical on the farm. But he also noticed another problem. One of the windows had blown open, and freezing, snowy air was tumbling in — probably had been for some time.

Henry quickly walked to the window to shut it. He didn’t know the exact temperature inside, but it certainly was cold, and Henry remembered that Cecily had made the point on her tour that the goats needed to be warm — that their milk suffered from cold temperatures, and perhaps (Henry could only imagine) their bodies might have trouble with temperature drops.

Of course, how exactly to warm up a goat was just a little beyond Henry’s expertise. And, after all, they did have long woolly coats, and they were huddling together. Surely a barn was better than the wilderness, although Henry wasn’t sure if this species of goat actually lived in the wilderness.

But the matter of the barn’s temperature was a question, and Henry decided he should think the matter over a bit, although he really wasn’t sure what his options were. He went back inside, put another log on the fire, poured another glass of armagnac, and decided tentatively that it was probably foolish to worry about animals and cold weather. Surely their natural instincts would lead them through the trouble.

About ten minutes later, however, Henry was up and pacing again, and he eventually determined that he really ought to do something. He looked at the thermometer outside the kitchen window and noticed the temperature had dropped about eight degrees in the past half-hour — it was close to zero — and it was now getting darker. He found several flashlights in a kitchen cupboard, although he didn’t quite need them yet, then put on his coat and hat and headed to the barn.

The wind was now much more powerful, and the snow was moving in a nearly horizontal direction. In fact, because of the tremendous wind gusts, the snow was also exploding in big clouds blowing up from the ground. And it really was much, much colder — Henry didn’t need the kitchen thermometer to see that. He wasn’t sure what sort of weather systems caused this kind of thing, but this really did feel like what a blizzard was supposed to be, both by formal definition and by direct experience.

It was unclear, however, whether or not the goats understood that things were getting worse. When Henry arrived in the barn, he saw that the window had stayed shut, but it was already much, much colder. The goats were still huddled together, more tightly now, and when Henry approached them, he thought he saw one or two of them shiver slightly, although the physical movements of goats were, of course, something that Henry had no familiarity with at all. Still, it seemed like he should do something. It seemed that he needed to deal with the fact that their barn was without heat and that the temperatures would soon drop below zero and stay that way for the night and probably the next day. The goats were only going to get colder, and they were, after all, the most important (the most irreplaceable) asset on the farm. The question was, what to do.

For just a moment, Henry did arrive at a somewhat interesting idea stemming from a book he’d read in college about the history of “rural dwellings” in early modern Europe. It pointed out that livestock often slept right in the house with the owner to protect it from inclement weather and bandits. And it did (for a brief moment) seem to Henry that it might be possible to bring the goats into the house and keep them warm by the various fireplaces. It was not a very serious consideration, though, mostly because it was quickly transplanted by a better and much more sensible idea. He remembered on his first tour with Cecily at Highgate Meadows that there was a large gas-powered generator — large but reasonably portable because it was on wheels — in the machine shed. He also remembered seeing two space heaters in the shed, near the long work bench where various repairs were carried out. If he wheeled the generator over and hooked it up to the space heaters, he’d be able to heat the barn relatively quickly — again, because of the goats’ skittishness regarding open spaces, the barn was enclosed, relatively small, and easily sealed off. It wouldn’t take more than twenty minutes for it to warm up.

Without thinking much more about it, Henry left the goats with an “I’ll be right back!” then headed out to the large snowy lot and across to the machine shed.

13.
Henry actually felt quite happy as he opened the door to the machine shed and turned on one of his flashlights. There was still dim light coming through the windows, but using a flashlight seemed exciting to Henry, now that he was doing something that might fall under the category of farm work. Moreover, it was, in fact, innovative and resourceful farm work, farm work to protect the farm’s most unique feature. And when he spotted the generator near the door, and then the two space heaters, he decided he was very much looking forward to telling Abby what he had come up with when she arrived the following day.

Moving the heaters and the generator would take two trips, and he decided to carry over the space heaters first. They were small, but heavy under his arms. He managed well enough, though, and by the time he was back and pushing the generator out of one of the large vehicle-sized shed doors, he was happy with how simple all this was, and even happier with the prospect that he’d soon be back in front of the fire with his armagnac and the knowledge that the goats were secure.

Because of the generator’s wheels, which were inflatable and of a high-quality, it was fairly easy to push, although Henry could tell how heavy it was because of how hard it was to steer. It had quite a bit of momentum after it got going, and there were several moments when the generator seemed to strike out on its own course. But Henry eventually arrived at the goat barn and parked the generator beneath a large overhanging roof. He found extension cords in the machine shed which were long enough to make it into the barn, although as he pulled the cords over a railing and in through the barn’s front door, he had another idea. Henry had begun to think that the two space heaters ought to be supplemented somehow, and, not having seen any other heaters in the machine shed, and deciding that the goats ought to be warmed up as quickly as possible, he arrived at a new method. He ran back outside and started pushing the generator to a small gate in the outdoor corral, and then towards the so-called barn-door, which opened between the corral and the actual goat barn. The engine itself would also generate heat, Henry concluded, and why not use that heat as well to warm the barn?

He passed through the corral’s gate, flipped the latch of the barn door, and was soon pushing the generator into the barn. The goats were still huddled at the far corner, perhaps shivering, but now, Henry imagined, looking just a little more concerned about the threatening weather. Henry quickly looked around and estimated their enclosure was about 1,500 square feet — not that large — and he figured with confidence that with the added heat of the hot engine, the goats might start to feel a bit better in ten minutes or so.

There were two cement sections of the floor — they surrounded drains that Henry assumed were used for quick cleanings with a hose. He positioned the generator over one of these, thinking that he didn’t want to risk starting any sort of fire. Next, he checked the enormous, emergency-sized gas tank — it was full — then turned a small black key that was already in the ignition. The engine turned over immediately, and after popping a few times, it smoothed out and began to hum like the engine of a car, the exhaust hitting Henry in the legs and heating up his shins. Everything was in working order, although the goats suddenly seemed to be a little more nervous with all the noise. Still, it couldn’t be helped. Surely, it was better for them to be nervous than to freeze to death.

Henry then plugged the space heaters into the generator’s panel of outlets and turned them up to high. Their coils took less than twenty seconds to start glowing, and with the fans behind them, warm air was soon drifting into the freezing barn. It was really all very satisfying for Henry, and, what’s more, within five minutes, the barn started feeling a tiny bit warmer. Henry remained with the goats for another ten minutes, monitoring the progress of his plan, and soon the goats seemed to be huddling just a bit less tightly. One even drifted away from the pack. It seemed perhaps that it was even possible that Henry could now return to his armagnac knowing he had really done something very useful. He’d check on things in another hour, but for now, everything seemed to be going smoothly.

And Henry did return in about an hour — now definitely a little drunk — and the flock of heirloom Libyan goats seemed to be in very high spirits. They weren’t huddled together anymore and several were at their feeding trough, happily munching on their strange granular feed in their warmer barn. Again, Henry felt a very deep kind of satisfaction, looking over all this — aided, of course, by his inebriation — and he couldn’t help but anticipate, once again, the pleasure he’d feel the following day when he showed all this to Abby. With that, he turned and headed back to the house, thinking that it was time to eat his dinner.

Part Four

14.
Henry’s dinner was simple — a cold plate of cheese and cured meats, and the rump of a whole-grain batard that was wrapped in plastic above the refrigerator. And pickles of various sorts — Cecily was clearly a fanatical vegetable pickler, and Henry could hardly help but conclude that she was very, very good at this craft. The pickled turnips and pickled green beans were exceptional, and they went perfectly with the local, organically-made beer Henry also decided to open.

Henry ate an enormous amount, and quickly worked through the half-loaf of bread, smearing it with mustard and fresh Vermont butter and layering it with cheese and meat, and soon he began to feel very sleepy. It was always this way with him, especially after drinking hard liquor, and before long, without cleaning his dishes or even finishing his beer, Henry wandered upstairs to his bedroom — the one that had been assigned to him and was waiting with fresh sheets and towels. It was now getting very cold in the house as well, and Henry was happy to crawl beneath a thick down comforter, and also happy that an early night would mean he’d be up early in the morning, ready to manage the farm and the goats and prepare for Abby’s arrival.

Henry slept very well, waking at seven o’clock feeling fresh and ready for the day. He was just a bit hungover in that his mind seemed a little hazy. But it was somewhat pleasant, especially since he was alone on a beautiful farm, the snow was deep (and still falling rapidly) and he really had very little to do besides sit by the fire, read, eat, and experiment with expensive alcohol.

He wandered into the kitchen (it was now freezing, so Henry was fully dressed) and turned on the gas stove to heat a kettle. Henry then put on his boots and hat, preparing to head out to check on the goats. He’d take a quick peek and then return to build a fire and make some kind of breakfast.

Now with a cup of tea, on the walk across the open quadrangle, Henry could hardly help but remark once again about how cold it was. But the unbelievable and almost unnatural temperatures only made Henry even happier when he walked into the barn and felt how warm it was. The generator was purring and the space heaters were glowing red, and the burst of hot air that met him at the door was very, very pleasant.

The scene inside, however, was initially somewhat puzzling to Henry. The goats seemed fine at first — certainly they must be warm enough — but they were all sleeping in a state of bewildering silence. It was strange — Henry had no idea what a sleeping goat was supposed to look like, but these goats looked as though they had halcyon in their feed. And they seemed to be sleeping in unexpected positions — not curled around themselves like dogs, but lying rigidly, on their sides, and one or two seemed to have legs sticking up into the air.

Henry looked everything over for a moment, and then approached the goat that was closest to him and noticed that all four of its legs were perfectly straight and raised just slightly above the ground, unsupported by anything. He bent down to stroke it, but recoiled when he realized that the goat was astonishingly hard. He touched the goat next to it, and it was just as stiff, just as immobile. And when he shook it, trying to rouse it from its sleep, he found that it shifted as though it was a single, solid piece. It moved like it was a sack of grain, not a living thing filled with fluids and organs. As Henry stood up and looked over the rest of the goats before him — not one of which was awake, moving, making noise, or doing anything else that might indicate it was alive — he realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong. And it didn’t take long for Henry to figure out what it was. He suddenly recalled a friend in prep school who had a brother who had died while working on his sports car one winter because he ran the engine in an enclosed garage, and he immediately turned and sprinted for the door. He glanced to his right at the generator, gently humming and powering the space heaters, and thought he ought to turn it off. But he had to get out before he was poisoned by the carbon monoxide fumes he now understood had filled the barn.

He managed to make it through the door, although as he stepped through the outer room and then outside, he felt very far from fortunate. Quickly, he ran around to the windows and forced them open from the outside, breaking one in the process. He waited for another few minutes, then took a deep breath and re-entered the barn, dashing to the generator and turning the key. Henry could feel the wind blowing through the open windows now, so he assumed he was mostly safe. Nevertheless, he left the barn for another five minutes to make sure, spending the whole time pacing in circles in the shockingly deep snow, thinking about what to do next and the fact that a million dollars worth of goats (irreplaceable Libyan goats) were now lying stiff and immobile before him. Henry did look several times into the open windows to see if there was any sign of life. Sadly, there was none, although Henry did tell himself several times, in instants of wild hope, that maybe the goats could somehow be revived, that maybe they all weren’t as stiff as those few he inspected. But after five minutes had passed, and Henry felt that it was safe to return, he did a careful inspection and concluded that it was unlikely that any of the goats would ever be up and walking and healthy again.

15.
All the same, despite the entirely obvious scene before him, Henry still felt he had to try to do something, and after once again inspecting the warm stiff goats, he ran into the house to look for a copy of the yellow pages. He spent some time searching the obvious places, but with no luck, and, given modern technology, there was a good chance Cecily didn’t even keep a copy around. The Internet was not an option since the power was out, but finally Henry noticed a bulletin board next to the kitchen phone that had the listing he was looking for. A card read “Strafford Valley Farming and Veterinarian Services” and, more promising, said below in bold type, “7 DAYS A WEEK / 24 HOURS A DAY / ALL MAJOR HOLIDAYS.”

Phoning was impossible, but Henry found a map and plotted a course to the Strafford Valley vet’s, and soon he was outside running to his car. It would be a rough trip with the snow, but Henry had good tires and all-wheel-drive and by this point he was thinking that it might be more dignified to crash into a tree or freeze to death than sit around the farm in the presence of an astonishingly expensive and rare flock of dead heirloom Libyan goats.

Of course, what a vet would do was a mystery to Henry, but since it was clearly such a catastrophe, he had to make some attempt to save the flock. He had to turn to some sort of expert or institution or authority. Henry was already trying to figure out what he was going to say to Cecily, and at the very least he wanted to be able to tell her something like, “I naturally charged off to the vet immediately, despite the terrible and dangerous snow storm.” It seemed better than the alternative — saying that he wandered around the farm weeping.

Although the roads were terrible, the larger of them seemed to have been ploughed within the last two or three hours, and when Henry arrived at the vet, he was happy to see that Christmas and the storm had not prevented the Strafford Valley Veterinarian Clinic from keeping the promises made on their business card. He dashed in, consciously trying to look as hysterical as possible to impress on everyone that a disaster had occurred, and after a brief explanation to a youngish woman about possibly having killed a hundred extremely rare $10,000-apiece goats, he was once again back on the snowy roads, but now followed in a pickup truck by the vet — the woman to whom he had so hastily explained himself.

It took about twenty minutes to make it back to the farm, although during this leg of the journey Henry seemed to not have any coherent thoughts. What was going on in his brain seemed to be purely physical, his mind producing a sort of buzzing and rattling that somehow extended down his neck. And this sensation didn’t leave Henry as he and the vet left their cars, ran across the quadrangle, then entered the goat barn, where he was able to see, once again, just exactly what he had done.

The vet stopped as soon as she saw the scene, not so much out of horror but out of what Henry determined was utter hopelessness. She had told Henry that she ought to take a look at the goats before he panicked too much — maybe he was mistaken — but it was now perfectly clear by the way she walked among the goats, and the almost perfunctory way she inspected several of them, that she knew that the damage was done and there was no possibility of reversing it.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she said at last as she stood up from a goat. “They’ve been dead for a while. I’m really sorry. You shouldn’t blame yourself. It was an honest mistake. But I’m so sorry. I feel so sorry for you.”

Henry couldn’t quite figure out if he appreciated this sympathy or if it was making things worse, although by the time she had said she was sorry the third time, Henry was in tears, now realizing (by way of the vet’s pity) that he really had done something very, very horrible, and that the consequences were almost too great to calculate. And this was just the beginning. Standing there, crying and shamefaced in front of the vet surely wasn’t as bad as it would be when Abby arrived and when Cecily found out.

“Was your phone working at your offices?” Henry finally asked, thinking that maybe he ought to make a phone call to Abby.

“No. It’s still down,” the vet replied, adding, “I’m assuming I’m the only one you’ve told so far?”

“Yes,” Henry said. “But I have a friend. Or a fourth cousin, really, although that’s not really a relative, who’ll be here later today. So I’ll be telling her soon enough.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” the vet said again.

16.
And Abby did finally arrive at the farm, now several hours after the vet had left — left after telling Henry that veterinarians didn’t really deal with dead animals and that they’d probably have to be incinerated on the property. Henry spent the next several hours rehearsing his story, wondering over and over if there was any reasonable way to explain how he had killed a singular and hugely expensive flock of goats. And when Abby at last arrived at Highgate Meadows, and he finally told her what had happened (slowly, in the kitchen, over a carefully prepared pot of tea that Henry insisted on making for her), she just sat there, stunned and wide eyed and staring into the space just to the right of Henry’s head. And then they walked to the barn, and together they looked over the terrible carnage that Henry had caused, and eventually, in the now, once again, freezing cold barn, she said, “Oh, Henry, what have you done?”

But it was said sweetly. A little sweetly, Henry hoped. Henry thought he could detect just a bit of kindness. But there was also apprehension (or anger perhaps) because Henry was her friend and, as blameless as she was, she was also somehow going to have answer for this. And this fact Henry found almost unbearable. Of all the things Henry didn’t want to happen, he certainly didn’t want Abby to take any of the blame.

And, in fact, Henry didn’t have to face Cecily at all. Not right away, at least. As they stood there in the goat barn, after thinking silently for a few moments, Abby told Henry that he should go back to Brooklyn. She’d get in touch with Cecily, she said. And she’d let the caretaker know when he got back the next day. She’d handle it.

“Just go back to Brooklyn,” she said.

“But this is all my fault,” he said with just a bit more desperation than he would have liked.

“Yeah, but I can deal better with what’s next,” she replied.

“I should be the one to tell Cecily.”

“Henry, I think that would be a very, very, very bad idea. You just need to go home. I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. I know it was an accident. I know you were just trying to help. But I think it’s better if I explain this to Cecily, not you. She’s going to lose it. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like. And if you’re on the phone it’s just going to be a million times worse. For me, too. I don’t think I could bear that. Anyway, I’ll still have to talk to her, even if you break the news. So do this for me? Head back to Brooklyn? Please? For me?”

Abby now looked like she was close to tears herself as she said these last few sentences, so what was there for Henry to say? And the fact was that he did vaguely believe that she might be right. Cecily would be more furious than he could really reasonably imagine, and Henry was hardly the best foil for such emotions to be properly expressed. Henry did not, however, feel any relief over the fact that he wouldn’t be the one to break the news.

Abby’s face was looking as if it was entirely drained of blood. Even her lips seemed white. And her mouth couldn’t quite close. And she kept scratching her neck in a sort of distracted and upset way that made her seem to be a very different person, a person very far from the tough and intrepid young woman that Henry normally knew.

“All right,” Henry said after a moment.

Abby stared at him for a second, almost as if she had forgotten what Henry was agreeing to. But then she said, “Go pack up. I’m going to stay here for a bit. I need to think about this.”

17.
Needless to say, the drive back to Brooklyn was excruciating — all that time alone with his thoughts. It was exactly what Henry didn’t want at that point in time, and he began conflating everything he was thinking into a single saturated emotion based on his general and recent failures with women, his shameful facial expressions during sex (probably being discussed at that moment throughout Williamsburg), and now the fact that he had killed a million-dollar herd of goats, which no amount of money (Henry’s or an insurance company’s) could replace.

He wasn’t even able to resort to his customary emotional trick of thinking about writing a short story (and thereby winning literary glory) to give himself relief. After all, on the level of great literature, he was feeling like a complete failure as well.

And, ironically, this particular failure was confirmed once again when he arrived home. There was mail — clearly the last delivery made on Christmas Eve — which contained a rejection letter from the fiction editor at Suckerhead. It was for the somewhat sentimental story he had written about the elderly man who had never been properly loved by another person, and, quite shockingly, it was a form rejection letter that politely thanked him for his submission and then said his work wasn’t needed at that time. It did, however, have a short, handwritten note at the bottom. It read, “Hi there! Found much of this interesting. Keep trying!”

It was too horrible to bear. Henry immediately took off his clothes and got into bed, hoping he’d sleep through the entire next day, and maybe even beyond that.

Part Five

18.
And the next days were, in fact, terrible, although Henry didn’t hear anything about the catastrophe in Vermont. He called Abby about it — repeatedly — but much to his dismay she didn’t return his calls. Henry made several offers to help alleviate the situation, suggesting via Abby’s voicemail that he could compensate Cecily for the loss — it seemed a not impossible thing to do given his bank account, although it was a staggering million dollars. Henry did suspect, though, that she was at least partially insured, so if he was taken up on this he’d hopefully be in for substantially less than the entire price of the flock.

Despite his calls and messages, Abby didn’t reply, and although Henry also formulated many heartfelt apologies he wanted to deliver to Cecily, he didn’t dare call her directly. A week after he returned from Vermont, however, he did get an opportunity to offer these apologies when Cecily (not Abby, quite shockingly) called him. Much to his horror, Cecily was calling about another development in the catastrophe. She was not open to clearing the air.

“Why the fuck did you go to the vet?” Cecily screamed.

Henry was extremely surprised. It was not exactly the question he expected. “What?” he finally said, not quite able to grasp what he was being asked.

“Why the fuck did you go to the vet, you stupid fucking dickwad?”

Henry was fairly astonished that a fiftysomething woman from Greenwich, Connecticut, of all places, was using this kind of language. But he didn’t dwell on this matter.

“I thought there might be something she could do,” he replied.

“The goats were dead, Henry. Goats are like humans that way. You can’t bring them back to life by calling a doctor, you stupid dickhead.”

Henry was still entirely confused, especially that this of all things would be what Cecily was angry about.

“I had to do something,” he said. “It seemed best to get the vet. But what does it matter? I can pay, Cecily. I can pay for everything. The goats. The vet bills. Whatever insurance doesn’t cover. Even if it doesn’t cover anything, I can pay. I have $15 million dollars.”

“Let me tell you why it matters, Henry, you fucking dick.” Cecily said Henry and fucking dick with a kind of contempt he had never quite heard before from anyone. “The vet has, at this point, told everyone in the entire state the story of you killing the fucking goats and now I’m on the fucking front page of every Vermont newspaper as the stupid fucking wife of the hedge fund manager who thought she knew better than local farmers and couldn’t keep control of her own fucking farm and whose gross mismanagement killed off a million dollars worth of fucking goats. A million dollars worth of fucking goats!”

“What?” Henry said.

“On the front page of every fucking newspaper in Vermont, you stupid fucking dick. And all of New England soon enough. I’m a fucking laughingstock, Henry. All because of you.”

Henry was speechless. In a voice that he would later recognize as being completely and ridiculously pathetic, he finally said: “They were just so cold, Cecily, and I wanted to keep them warm, which seemed to be the best thing to do because, really, they seemed very, very unhappy.”

“Fuck you, you stupid fucking idiot,” Cecily screamed, and before Henry processed these words (and her yet again amazingly new threshold of anger) she hung up. Henry knew that now, certainly, there would be no way to make amends.

19.
Henry spent that day and the next wandering around Brooklyn, and while he ate little, he did stop from time to time for coffee and even drank beer at various bars, hoping that alcohol might give him some relief. It did for everyone else. And it was true that more than once before, a few beers had made him feel a little better. But the feelings were temporary, and always followed with an even deeper sense of despair.

Two days after Cecily’s call, he managed to go online to read the articles. She certainly wasn’t exaggerating when she said she was the laughingstock of the Vermont press. He did notice, however, when Cecily was asked to comment, that she made it very clear that it was all entirely the fault of “a brainless idiot 25-year-old from Brooklyn” and that she was probably going to take legal action against him and maybe even encourage local police to press charges against Henry for “gross cruelty to animals.” It was quite chilling, although two separate newspapers pointed out that legal retaliation had a slim possibility of success, especially because no jury or judge was likely to sympathize with the hedge fund farmer who left her homestead for a week to vacation in the Caribbean. It was hardly the sort of Yankee work ethic most Vermonters related.

But the pain eased somewhat — or the numbness at least — about a week after Cecily phoned because Abby finally returned Henry’s calls and suggested dinner. They went to the Austrian restaurant where Henry had first brought up the matter of a romantic liaison. It seemed the best place because Henry was having trouble eating anything at all, and thick wet noodles and sausages were about the only things he thought he’d be able to choke down. When the food finally arrived though, he found it impossible to do anything more than poke at it with his fork.

“You’ve really got to eat Henry,” Abby said. (They had thus far oddly talked about the bizarre decorations in the apartment where Abby was house-sitting and Suckerhead’s extremely insulting rejection of Henry’s story, both seemingly afraid to bring up the matter of the goats.)

“I’m afraid I already ate an hour or so ago,” Henry finally replied, “and I’m not really very hungry.”

“You already ate,” Abby said sarcastically. “Sorry, Henry, not buying it. You’ve got to eat something. You really do. You’ve lost like ten fucking pounds. Come on, time for you to stop acting like an idiot all the time.” Abby forced a smile as she said this, and then leaned forward and poked Henry in the shoulder, although, despite the playful gesture, she now looked fairly angry.

Henry dutifully cut into a sausage. “Well, I don’t want to be a skinny idiot,” he said quietly.

Abby hesitated, then said at last, “Look, Henry. I know Cecily called you. I’ve seen the articles. And I know what she’s saying. I know how bad you feel. I feel bad. I feel completely terrible, in fact. But the truth is, and I guess I think I need to say this, the truth is that I’m also a little pissed off at you. Maybe at everything. Maybe mostly at you. I don’t know. I mean why do you do such stupid shit? And why do you even hang out with those asshole Suckerhead people? And, I don’t know, I look at you moping around Williamsburg with $15 million bucks in your bank account and I don’t even know why we’re friends, especially when you do things like kill a hundred completely innocent goats who, because they’re goats — Henry! — don’t have much control when some jackass poisons them with the exhaust of an emergency generator.”

Henry was more than a little surprised by this outburst, and while the content of what Abby was saying very damning, he didn’t entirely follow it because he was so focused on her tone. This was real anger, and Henry did everything he could not to start crying, although he was sure there was something of a tremor beginning to appear in his mouth.

“I mean, fuck you, Henry,” Abby yelled. “I mean, get it together. You’ve got to fucking sort your shit out. I mean, what are you doing with yourself? That’s what I want to know. What are you fucking doing with yourself?” Abby paused, then took a deep breath. “That’s what I what to know,” she continued. “That’s what I think. That’s one of the things I think.” She paused again, but continued before Henry could gather himself enough to respond — or start weeping uncontrollably. “But I guess, Henry, I think other things too,” she said. “I mean, you’re an idiot. You really are. But it’s all bullshit. Fuck Cecily for saying all that crap to the newspapers and all the crap she said to you. Cecily might have done exactly the same thing. Anyone might have. Not me. Because me, I’m not a fucking idiot. But maybe someone else. But fuck Cecily for being so hard on you. I mean, let’s face it, she is exactly that, she is the wife of a fucking hedge fund manager. Whoever heard of a $10,000 goat? I mean, really. A $10,000 fucking goat? A million-dollar goat herd? You’ve got to be some kind of freak to spend that on goats. And if you’ve got a million-dollar flock of goats, you certainly don’t jet off to St. Croix for a week. You put your bed in the barn and watch them every minute.”

Henry stared very intently at the sausage on his fork. He wasn’t sure what he ought to be doing at this particular moment.

“But you are an idiot, Henry,” Abby said. “You really are. I mean, you’re a total fucking goober. But, and I guess this is what I really want to say: Henry, I’m your friend. One of your best friends. In the world. Ever. I’m more your friend than I am my aunt’s niece. And when the chips are down, I’m with you, although I can’t believe I’m saying it. I’m with you, against whatever other problems you’re facing, even if you deserve everything that’s coming to you. I’m definitely against those Suckerhead idiots. I know you feel terrible about the goats. I’d kill myself. I mean it. So you’re probably doing better than I would be. But you and me are friends, Henry. We’re close. Really close. And that’s not going to change. I guess it took me some time to get my head around it all. But you’re one of the best friends I’ve got. I can’t believe I’m saying it. I mean, I must be out of my mind. You really are a complete dope. But I really, really think you’re a great person, despite your completely stupid fucking behavior. You’re certainly my favorite relative, although, I know, I know, like you’ve already pointed out” — Abby now cracked a small smile, a real smile — “we’re only very loosely related.”

It crossed Henry’s mind to reaffirm this last comment, but only out of some kind of habitual reaction, because, surprisingly, at that exact moment, he wasn’t really thinking, as he usually did, about his romantic prospects with Abby. Instead — and it really was surprising — he was thinking of how much she suddenly reminded him of his father. Henry thought again about the time when he had confessed that his prospects of being a Deerfield letterman were extremely slim, and how his father replied by saying that he was the “very best man he knew,” and in that exact split-second at dinner with Abby, as Henry thought about how much his father saying that had meant to him, he almost started crying, although now for entirely new reasons. For a moment, in fact, he felt extremely happy — despite all that had happened to him — although the feeling passed soon enough because Henry could hardly forget that he was still in quite a bit of trouble. Nevertheless, he suddenly managed to eat the sausage on his fork, and then he ate another piece after that, and found that it actually tasted all right, which was promising for any number of reasons, including that he had lost nearly ten pounds in the past week or so.

Henry thought for a moment about what he could only describe as a kind of general contempt he’d felt from so many people in recent months: dismissive people at Suckerhead, exploitative girls who insulted him online, angry wives of hedge fund managers. The list was long. But it seemed to Henry, just briefly, just at that moment — and he hoped the feeling would continue — that if you had a fourth cousin who liked you and was on your side, and you had the memory of a father who said you were the best man he knew, then maybe things weren’t so bad. Or, if they were bad, you could at least somehow find a way to survive. And that was what was important in the end: finding enough of a reason to keep going. This was New York City, after all, and no place for the weak of heart. Especially not for a young man trying to find his way in the world, even if you did have $15 million to fall back on. He could tough it out. And if you really thought about it, everything that had happened to him had only brought him and Abby closer, which was just the sort of thing, Henry concluded tentatively, that might lead to deeper feelings. Henry quickly decided, however, that this was not a good way to think, especially not now. After all, maybe he really should try to be less of an idiot. Imagining romantic liaisons with women who don’t like you in that way was probably a good example of his many problems, and one he ought, perhaps, to correct as soon as possible. He was very lucky to have Abby, and he shouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that. That, of all things, was very important. Maybe it meant more to him than anything in his life.

20.
Despite Abby’s final affirmation of friendship and solidarity, however, Henry knew he was still facing a few fairly serious problems. But the next day something extremely good happened that made him feel that perhaps things might eventually turn around for him.

He was pacing through his apartment thinking not about Abby or the goats but (still) about how outrageous it was that Suckerhead had sent him a form rejection letter (despite its handwritten note of tepid encouragement). He was also thinking about how it was even more outrageous that Karen called sleeping with him “taking one for the team,” and he was then wondering, as he walked between the kitchen, the bedroom, and the terrace, if he should resign his position as editor-at-large, not in protest but, because, when it really came down to it, he definitely needed to cut people like that out of his life. The $30,000 was irretrievable, but Henry was willing to chalk that up to a lesson learned, and, the truth was, he could afford it. It actually gave Henry a rare and sudden sort of pleasure that he was so rich, because, when you thought about it, people love money, and he had plenty of it, although just a second or so after this thought he felt quite guilty.

It was another development, however — one very surprising — that made Henry feel like the future might be a tiny bit better than he imagined. He checked his email and discovered that an editor at a magazine called The Broad Street Review had contacted him. The Broad Street Review was a little like Suckerhead in that it was new, mostly obscure, and had recently (a year ago) been founded in New York by people in their 20s and 30s. But one of The Broad Street Review’s founding editors had just published a novel to fairly favorable reviews, and the magazine was getting just a little press, and it was a journal where Henry very much wanted to place a story. And, in fact, that’s exactly what the email offered. It came from the fiction editor (the editor who had published the novel) and it said that he and his friends all absolutely adored Henry’s story — the one about the 90-year-old man who struggles with the pain of committing his 106-year-old mother to a nursing home — and that they’d love to publish it. Certainly, it was far from a book deal with Random House, or even publication in one of the more well-known literary magazines, but Henry could not have been happier about the news. In fact, Henry regarded it as so extraordinary that he once again found himself pacing his apartment, although now with an entirely different outlook.

Henry was somewhat nervous about how to respond — whether he ought to write back right away or wait a few hours so that the editors didn’t think that he was too needy. At last though, after ten minutes of joyously circling his apartment, he wrote that he would be honored to appear in The Broad Street Review. He actually erased and rewrote the word “honored” several times before finally thinking that it was a good word to use, because, after all, it was the truth. And after finishing the email with a friendly, “Let me know what the next steps are!” he stood up from his computer, put on his jacket, and headed out for another walk, although this time with quite a bit more to think about than his recent failures and disgraces. The Suckerhead people would be very impressed with this. Certainly most of the people at Suckerhead would be very glad to place a story with The Broad Street Review (Henry could only assume) so perhaps now spending time with him wouldn’t be so easily described as “taking one for the team.” Perhaps he wouldn’t feel quite so nervous around them all.

This did, however, make Henry think again about what he should do about his position at Suckerhead, and the depression he had just been feeling reappearede. But as Henry thought the matter over (walking through McCarren Park, passing under the BQE, and stopping in three different cafes for coffee) he decided that perhaps he’d stay in his role as editor-at-large because he now had a legitimate credential and could speak with authority (informally and at meetings) as a Broad Street Review writer.

And along these lines, Henry even decided that he might have just a bit of a better shot with Abby, although he again quickly forced this prospect from his mind. This was not the time to start scheming about how to get Abby to think of him as a romantic suitor, because the fact of the matter was that he really needed her, he really needed Abby as a friend. He still wasn’t yet out of the woods with the fact that he had killed an entire flock of extremely rare Libyan goats, and there were numerous other things that still might come back to haunt him — perhaps he would soon be known around New York as the young author who makes comical faces during sex.

But it was more than that, it was more than somehow preserving Abby as a means of support when things got tough again. Rather, it was the idea that Henry might be better off not worrying so much, not trying to push things so much. Maybe that was his whole problem all along. He was always trying to force things. Maybe in the future, in the next stretch of time, he’d experiment with being a little more relaxed about his life. After all, he now had a story coming out in a magazine, so maybe he didn’t have to worry so much about whether or not he was doing the right thing with his life. In the end, a man in his mid-20s with a story published in a literary magazine and $15 million to play around with wasn’t such a bad lot in life. Henry knew that he would find plenty of things to be depressed about soon enough. Still, he had Abby to keep him on the straight-and-narrow. And maybe he’d actually learned something in the past few weeks. It wasn’t impossible. So maybe now, at last, things really might finally get just a little bit better.