Chapter 16

It was about 5:30 when Cecelia appeared at my side. She can move so smoothly and silently that, though she rarely tries to sneak, she might as well – she just shows up where she's going. I was in the middle of trying to make sense of what a lady – apparently a grad student in the English department – was saying about Byron's poetry. I'm not a big Byron fan, and if I didn't like what I do of his poetry on its own merits she'd have turned me right off. What little I could understand made it sound like he wrote poetry the academic way – by the numbers. I suspected that was just the lady's analysis, since even the stuff that I don't like reads better than that.

Cecelia listened for a few seconds, nodded her head once, shook her head twice, and laid her hand on my arm. "I'm glad I'm asking you this," she said with a slight smile. "Do you happen to have any 'hip pocket poems' about you this evening?"

"I've got one or two I know by heart, but nothing in my pocket," I said. Her term was an adaptation of something I'd picked up from the pastor when I was a member of a black church in Dallas. He'd spoken of a "hip pocket sermon," a sermon that you can preach at the drop of a hat without prior notice.

"Jeffrey would like you to read a poem or two before the featured poet," Cecelia said. "If you wanted to write something, I could carve you out some private space."

"Now that's an impromptu invitation," I said with a grin. "Have you been promoting me? 'Cause if you have, you been doin' it for free – you ain't my agent an' ain't gettin' no 10 percent."

"I have not boasted of your accomplishments tonight; Jeffrey's desire to hear you springs, apparently, from past comments I have made, and what he has read for himself. And you know that I find your poetry quite good; it isn't the style I prefer, but I do enjoy it independently of our relationship."

"Yeah, you enjoyed that one piece to death." I smiled at the recollection of the scathing review she'd written. "Why don't you find me that private spot? I can't guarantee to come up with anything in 20 or 25 minutes, but I'll give it a whirl, and if not I'll fall back on my memory."

"Very well." She didn't have to ask me to go with her; she dropped her hand to mine and just barely tugged, and we were off through the crowd like we'd been practicing. And Cecelia can get through a crowd, when she takes a notion, like an arrow cuts through the air.

I don't know that Cecelia had been in the house before, but it didn't take her long to put me in what appeared to be a private study at the back of the place. There was a lock on the door, one of those straight edged deals in the doorknob that you turn, and I locked myself in while Cecelia went back to let the professor know I was going to do something for him. There was plenty of paper, and I always have a pen in my pocket, so materials weren't a problem.

The problem was that I don't write on demand. I turn out a poem when the idea hits me – sometimes so hard that it seems like an axe between the eyes. And if the idea's not there, I can't write. I'd never make it writing potboilers – I can't turn the words on and off the way such writers can.

I roamed the room, looking at things. It wasn't as cluttered as the stereotype tells us professors' offices are, but it did have a nice, relaxed, lived in disarrangement that reminded me of how my study had been before Cecelia moved it to the garage, and was beginning to take on again. A lot of the books on the shelf were completely foreign to me, texts on literature, scholarly stuff that I wouldn't understand if I read it. There was a lot of stuff that I knew of by reputation too – Faulkner, Capote, Mailer, Heller, all the big names of American lit. Some of it I knew favorably, especially Hemingway, though I found that Benton had consigned Papa to a hard-to-reach corner as though he didn't think much of Hemingway's writing.

Here and there on the shelves and walls were pictures – Benton with all sorts of people most of whom meant no more to me than photos of minor European nobility would have. Some of the faces I recognized – our current governor, Bill Richardson; the city's current mayor, Martin Chavez; Senator Pete Domenici; other people who were famous for whatever reason. And then the idea came. I hurried to the desk, and sat down and scribbled over the paper. I didn't have time to do it right, nor to revise it well, but I thought that what I produced was serviceable. I could introduce it with an account of how it came to be, and that would excuse a lot of problems that a less hurried genesis would have eliminated.

And then came a knock on the door, and Cecelia's voice. "Darvin, it's time."

I unlocked the door and opened it, and Cecelia took my hand. "Ready or not," I told her, "I've got something I can do."

"Then you are more ready to read poetry than I am," she said. "You know my level of expertise."

"Yeah – a couple of points below none at all."

"You're being far too kind, my husband. I can analyze any poem you care to place in front of me – but I can't write poetry, not at all. I am altogether destitute of talent in that regard."

By then we were in the living room, where Benton was standing in front of the fireplace, which had no fire in it. The central heat was doing a fine job of keeping the place warm enough, that and the body heat. Benton nodded in our direction, and raised his voice to cut across the chatter. It worked, even though there wasn't a microphone, and people began settling down – most on the furniture, but a few along the walls and a couple on the raised stone hearth behind Benton.