“Hello, I am so glad you could come,” said Gwendolyn, the assistant editor of a literary magazine, greeting some of the guests at her twenty-sixth-birthday party. As she said this, she kissed each of them on the cheek. There were well over a hundred guests at the party. They all knew Gwendolyn and said how glad they were to come.
Now she stood in the middle of the room surrounded by these friends, who were momentarily and randomly grouped together. A young man joined the group.
“Do you know Tommy?” Gwendolyn asked her friends. “We grew up in Virginia together. His father and my father went to all the same schools.”
“Tommy,” said a friend standing beside her, a man named George.
“Tommy,” murmured the others.
“I am so honored that Victor came,” she said. “He does my hair. He is a wonderful man.”
“Victor,” said George.
“Victor,” murmured the others.
“That tree is too large for this room,” said a man named Maurice, pointing to a plant that if it stood in a forest would be a mere sapling.
“But isn’t this a beautiful room?” asked Gwendolyn.
“I think you are beautiful,” said a man named Chris.
“Natalia writes beautifully about food,” said Maurice.
“Food,” said Tommy.
“A drink,” said George.
“Maurice has almost finished writing his book,” said Gwendolyn.
“I am trying not to mention it,” said Maurice.
“Have you received many presents?” asked Chris.
“Yes, but I am not opening them until tomorrow,” said Gwendolyn.
“I am giving you a book,” said Chris. “I am giving you a book full of pictures.”
“Oh,” said Gwendolyn. “What kind of pictures?”
“They are the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen,” said Chris. “I have been looking at these pictures for months and months now, day after day.”
“Will I like them?” asked Gwendolyn.
“Yes, I think so,” said Chris. “I look at these pictures and I am emptied out. I have nothing left inside once I have seen these pictures. I feel so much when I am looking at them. Lots and lots of sensation, and then I am drained. It’s as if I
had been in Los Angeles. Sensation, as you know, is the tyranny of Los Angeles.”
“A book of pictures,” said Gwendolyn.
“A book of pictures,” murmured her friends.
—May 10, 1982