The Affairs of Others: A Novel Read online

  Hope now took my hand into both of hers, as if she would drag the chill out of me, as the day faded and Mr. Coughlan talked on and Angie’s head fell on her husband’s shoulder and his head onto hers.

  Mr. Coughlan went on describing why he’d chosen ferries and would again. “Some will tell me it’s all done. I blackened the eye of one guy who said that to me only a few weeks ago. They forget I’m from a generation that wasn’t afraid to hit and get hit back and no one called the damned police or involved lawyers. I told him to tell me that again. You, Miss Cassill, you understand, I think?” He’d spoken to his daughter since he’d returned then, and he winked at me as proof. I blushed and Leo’s hand moved up my thigh. “You see, people change when they get on the boat. It’s like an old friend. Simple back and forth. Commuters—you pick out the same faces. Hello, goodbye, hello again, goodbye again. Weather changes, but that doesn’t. No one squalling at you over the loudspeaker. Birds scream. Kids scream back. Until recently out here you could stay on the boat both ways, stay on as long you’d like, keep crossing, seeing what there was to see, you could put your car right on there with you—” He leaned into the table at which we all sat, enjoying that we’d become subdued with the food and the wine and him. He didn’t have to hide where he most wanted to be, but here he was, for now, surrounded and talking with reverence not all of us knew or had occasion to know of the simple back and forth, of attachments that sustain us without apology, that drive us, no matter the years, all while asking us to cross with him—why not?—imagine it, the tides of coming and going, the distances and views and places, and the love, such love—before saying goodbye to us, goodbye for now.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Great thanks to Picador, the best house on the block, and to all the imaginative, never-say-die people who make it go: Stephen Morrison, James Meader, Anna deVries, and Devon Mazzone.

  To my own Melville: Thank you for taking on the challenge of living with this writer and editor (which means living with many writers). You always have my back. You are my balance, the song in the house.

  Thanks to Jess Walter, Ron Hansen, and Will Blythe, who loved this book and its heroine, Celia, when my own sometimes unpredictable nature (and hers) got in the way. Don’t know better writers or better friends.

  To Warren Frazier, the most sublime, capable, and forgiving literary agent and ally a woman writer could have.

  To my family, my parents, who are my heart. Pop, a man from Vermont, can do anything better than just about anyone, from percentages to parallel parking—blindfolded. He has always been my first reader, my best critic, the rousing march in my ears. He is well met in my beautiful, ingenious, and wildly generous mother, who fights the gray off every day. These two have always bent the world into wondrous shapes for all of us who know them and have given me colors and sustenance and room (after room) in which to write, hope, persist. And to my sisters, Meredith and Ellen, warriors of love and light both, and my sweet brother-in-law Tom—they never fail to cheer me on even when I resist cheer.

  And my thanks to my other family, the one I’ve found along the way: David Slocum, my brilliant best friend, who has to hear it all, even when he’d rather not. To glorious Rebecca Rotert-Shaw, so full of music and poetry and my kind of life and love, resilience and resignation. To Eli Dickson, my safe place in any storm and the sky after it goes. To Lee Froehlich, who bamboozles me every time with that line about the life of the mind, who reminds me of the joys of eccentricity. To Chris Napolitano, the best magazine editor in town, an adventurer who changes the frequency in any room, leaves us all buzzing. And to Anthony Vargas, my assistant, my teammate, and one of the finest readers of fiction or nonfiction around; to Tom Woodring, whose smarts and practical wisdom steady and inspire me; to Kate Strasburg, who can’t help but be an angel; to Gayle Pemberton, my talented teacher, fellow romantic, and co-conspirator in the resistance; and to Caroline McDaniel, who never fails to show up, who’s a real reader, a real woman, a sorceress in fact.

  Finally, there are the writers I’ve worked with over the years who’ve become friends, family too: Margaret Atwood, James Ellroy, Jonathan Ames, Carmela Ciuraru, Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Ford, Jane Smiley, Simon Winchester, and Rick Russo. Ten stories of gratitude for your example, for the heights you can’t help reaching for every day, for your faith in me as an editor, friend, and more.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AMY GRACE LOYD is an executive editor at Byliner Inc. and was the fiction and literary editor at Playboy magazine. She has been a MacDowell and Yaddo fellow and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE AFFAIRS OF OTHERS. Copyright © 2013 by Amy Grace Loyd. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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  Cover design by Henry Sene Yee

  Cover photograph © ollyy/Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Loyd, Amy Grace.

  The affairs of others / Amy Grace Loyd. — First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-250-04129-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-04130-2 (e-book)

  I. Title.

  PS3612.O94A69 2013

  813'.6—dc23

  2013012628

  eISBN 9781250041302

  First Edition: September 2013