I don’t know why I remove the five other journals but do. Nor do I know why I take them to the second floor and bed this night, with Mr. Gray at my side. Once settled inside the room, naked and under a single sheet, listening to a fresh rain take over Fairmount, I spend the next six hours reading a recap about my life during the last four months: shower scenes, breakfast scenes, reading scenes, working scenes, m**********g scenes, dinner scenes, one scene after the next of Grady Nelson’s world, my world, examined and peeled apart, word for word and day by day, until my eyelids become heavy and I fall asleep.
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Someone wakes and startles me in the middle of the night. The first thing I think of is the machete in the writing room and needing it as a weapon to protect myself from the
