Page 18 of Nine Lives

Ethan:

Well, you probably wouldn’t like my songs. But you critique poetry, and I like poetry.

Caroline:

Liking poetry is far rarer than liking songs. What poets do you like?

Ethan thought for a moment, trying to construct a fast list that would impress her, then asked himself why he was trying to do that. Instead, he decided to just be honest.

Off the top of my head: John Berryman, Frank O’Hara, Weldon Kees, Robert Lowell. Also, a bunch of people you probably wouldn’t consider poets: Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, James McMurtry, Willy Vlautin.

After sending that last email Ethan didn’t hear back right away, and he wondered if his poetry selections had turned her off somehow. He went and flipped through his records, pulling out Songs of Love and Hate, and dropped the needle on its first track.

8

Friday, September 16, 9:48 p.m.

Caroline was in her bed, wide awake, emailing back and forth with a stranger. Her orange cat Estrella slept, as was her custom, on the edge of the lower right corner of the mattress, curled into a tight ball. Fable, her other cat, could be anywhere.

Ethan Dart, who’d emailed her out of the blue because of that strange letter, had just given her his list of favorite poets, and she was googling Weldon Kees, looking for a poem of his that she remembered liking. After a few minutes she found it and reread it to herself. An odd poem called “For My Daughter.” It was the last line that had stuck with her: “I have no daughter. I desire none.”

She was about to write back to Ethan when she got a second email from him.

I lost you when I called Dylan a poet, didn’t I?

She smiled, and wrote:

No. You didn’t lose me, but he’s not a poet. He’s a songwriter. No, I was looking up a poem by Weldon Kees I like called “For My Daughter.” You don’t hear very much about him these days.

Ethan wrote:

Phew, you’re still there. I was missing you already. I love Kees, and sometimes I think I’m just romanticizing him because he went missing and no one ever saw him again. Do you know his poem “Crime Club”?

Caroline:

I don’t, but I’ll look it up.

Ethan:

Okay. I’ll wait patiently while you read it. I’ll try not to panic that you’re leaving me.

Caroline and Ethan Dart emailed until just before dawn. She knew that it was that late not because of the soft gray glow that was filling her curtains but because Fable had come to wake her up, asking to be let out for his predawn reconnaissance.

It’s nearly morning, she wrote and he wrote immediately back:

My least favorite time of day. Can we continue this conversation tomorrow night? Or maybe we shouldn’t push our luck.

She wrote:

Sure, I could continue, but not until I get at least a little sleep.

She folded up her laptop, then brought it to her office to charge. The window curtains were now almost ablaze with morning light. Still, she crawled back under her covers, and thought about the very strange events of the last two days. First, the letter, and then the phone call from the FBI wanting to take possession of it, and now this long email exchange with a country singer from Austin, Texas, who loved Weldon Kees. She’d looked at the picture he had up on his website, and thought he looked a little like paintings she’d seen of Edmund Spenser. Same narrow, pointed nose, same dark brown eyes.

She pulled the covers over her head, creating a pocket of darkness, and lay for a time with her eyes still open.

9

Saturday, September 17, 7:16 a.m.

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