Woke Up Lonely (47 page)
Meantime, the salesgirl had wrapped a sheet around her body because she really liked Dave but had maybe been frugal in the expression of her feelings, and so, she, too, stared madly at the screen. The film rolled credits. An epilogue said that three of the Helix House hostages had gotten home safely but that one died with his parents in a plane crash off the California coast. A few government officials were headed to jail. Most were not. The salesgirl fumbled for the right words, not
I like you,
but maybe,
Can we talk about it?
And as she thought it through and the screen went black, Dave took off his socks, and grew his heart just enough to fathom her own. He reached for her hand. Didn’t let go.
Acknowledgments
Big thanks to the following people and organizations for helping me write this novel:
Bard College, the Corporation of Yaddo, Casa Libre, the MacDowell Colony, the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, Michael Bronner, Mary Caponegro, Martha Cooley, Steven Ehrenberg, Bill Geerhart, Myla Goldberg, Claudia Gonson, Michael Hearst, Brigid Hughes, Bill Karins, Patrick Keefe, Robert Kelly, Bradford Morrow, Nelly Reifler, Helga Siegel, Lydia Wills, John Woo.
Leigh Newman and Peter Trachtenberg, both of whom saved this novel from the trash.
Stacia Decker, a tremendous reader and agent, both.
Fiona McCrae, for her incredible guidance and unflagging engagement with this novel from the moment it fell into her hands. Also: team Graywolf, which got behind me and pushed.
Jim Shepard—again and again, with boundless gratitude, Jim Shepard—who shows me how it’s done.
And finally: My family, in particular my brother (whose work on nuclear nonproliferation was invaluable to me), my stepdad, and my mom, whose response to
Woke Up Lonely
in draft—draft after draft after draft—spurred me on to greater extremities. I could not have written this novel without her.
FIONA
MAAZEL is the author of
Last Last Chance.
She is winner of the Bard Prize for Fiction and a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree. She teaches at Brooklyn College, Columbia, New York University, and Princeton, and was appointed the Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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