Buy Me Love
183 pages
English

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183 pages
English

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Description

Described by Publishers Weekly as Cooley's "sharp latest", "Cooley has a sure hand in probing the intersection of artistic ambition and money. This hopeful take is sure to move readers."


In Brooklyn, New York, in 2005, Ellen Portinari buys a lottery ticket on a whim; not long after, she realizes she’s won a hundred-million-dollar jackpot. With a month to redeem the ticket, she tells no one but her alcoholic brother—a talented composer whose girlfriend has died in a terrorist attack abroad—about her preposterous good luck.

As the clock ticks, Ellen caroms from incredulity to giddiness to dread as she tries to reckon with the potential consequences of her win. She becomes unexpectedly involved with a man and boy she’s met at her local gym. While she grapples with the burden of secret-keeping and the tug of a new intimacy, a Brooklyn street artist named Blair Talpa is contending with her own challenges: a missing brother, an urge to make art that will “derange orbits,” and a lack of money.

En route to redeem the lottery ticket, Ellen finds her prospects entwining by chance with Blair’s—which allows Ellen to reimagine luck’s relation to loss, and the reader to revel in surprise.


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Publié par
Date de parution 01 juin 2021
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9781597098748
Langue English
Poids de l'ouvrage 1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

BUY ME LOVE
BUY ME LOVE

Martha Cooley
Red Hen Press | Pasadena, CA
Buy Me Love
Copyright © 2021 by Martha Cooley
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Book design by Mark E. Cull
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cooley, Martha, author.
Title: Buy me love / Martha Cooley.
Description: First Edition. | Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020056795 (print) | LCCN 2020056796 (ebook) | ISBN 9781597091206 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781597098748 (epub)
Classification: LCC PS3553.O5646 B89 2021 (print) | LCC PS3553.O5646 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056795
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056796
The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation, the Adams Family Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

First Edition
Published by Red Hen Press
www.redhen.org
Acknowledgments
To my family and friends, at home and abroad, thanks for sustenance of all stripes. I have been buoyed by you in countless precious ways.
This book’s been awfully long in the making. Along the way, its maker received practical help. I am grateful to Adelphi University for sabbaticals in 2012–13 and 2019–20, and to the Siena School for Liberal Arts in Siena, Italy, for respites in the summers of 2006 and 2007. My gratitude goes as well to the Corporation of Yaddo for my stay there in 2008.
The Red Hen team has been superlative from start to finish. To all, my deepest appreciation.
To Deborah Schneider, my agent, heartfelt thanks for believing in this book, and in me.
To the Bennington Writing Seminars: thanks for past and ongoing gifts of collegiality and fellowship.
To Daniel and Oana Muntean and Raffaella Paoletti for warm company in Castiglione del Terziere.
To Mark Matousek for wise listening.
To Askold Melnyczuk for spurring me at a tricky juncture.
To Fiona Maazel for clear-eyed encouragement.
To Anne Germanacos for urging adventure.
To Sheridan Hay for generosities of spirit.
To Susie and Jim Merrell for friendship and aid in Sag Harbor.
To Lynn Whittemore for always helping me straighten up and fly right.
And to Antonio Romani, my beloved, sempre .
For Antonio
BUY ME LOVE
. . . it’s the surprise of change that makes good fortune and bad luck feel the same.
—Anne Pierson Wiese, “Discovery”
ONE
Trio, Quartet
1
Not a scrap but a square, the size of a woman’s handkerchief. A square of paper, small and white, pinned against the underside of an iron grate beneath Ellen Portinari’s feet—detained there by an updraft of cool air, its scent moldy, metallic: Eau de Subway.
All but blank, that square. Its sole markings a few numbers printed by hand. Ellen would’ve missed that little flag of white, failed altogether to notice it, were it not for a fear that halted her midstride.
Was her wallet where it ought to be, in the scuffed satchel now slung over her shoulder? Maybe not . . . still loitering, perhaps, in the green suede clutch she’d sported the evening before? (A going-out purse: elegant, impractical.) And why’d she bothered switching, anyway? As if a different bag could’ve altered the evening’s chemistry, fizzed it . . . dumb, dumb.
Standing atop the grate, she patted the side pocket of her satchel.
No familiar bulge there. Yet the wallet couldn’t still be in the green clutch—she’d emptied that bag of its contents. Unzipping her satchel’s center opening, she reached in and felt around. The evening’s chemistry? Hardly explosive. Two long-married couples (not close friends of hers, merely acquaintances), a newly divorced middle-aged male, and a fifty-two-year-old single woman—herself—had made for a practiced restraint. Potentially intriguing domestic concerns (fidelity and infidelity, erotic malaise) were not likely to arise in conversation. Her dining companions had stuck to benign topics, though when the subject of real estate cropped up, she’d had to suppress an urge to bolt. (“Do you own or rent?” was a question she dreaded like no other; even “Seeing anyone?” felt less toxic.)
Still, the whole thing could’ve been much worse. They’d eaten at a Smith Street bistro serving its own take on pot-au-feu, overly salted but good, especially when paired with a Côte du Rhône that the newly divorced man had termed “velvet-y”—prompting her own descriptor, “sateen-y,” which had led to his counter-offer (“moleskin-y”) and a flurry of what he’d termed fabricated adjectives (“damask-y,” “grosgrain-y”) from their fellow diners. Everyone at the table had been witty. There’d been sufficient laughter. And another social encounter with the newly divorced man, whose hands had been long-fingered and expressive, might prove mildly entertaining. Yet by its close the evening had felt like nothing so much as a game of musical chairs, with none of the players fully confident they’d wind up in the seat of happiness.
2
Pawing now through her bag (balanced on one uplifted knee), Ellen felt the initial stirrings of panic. Where the hell was the damn wallet?
Unpleasant to contemplate its loss. Not just because of the cash (precious little), but the hassle: credit card companies to call, a new driver’s license to procure, the organ donation ID to renew. And the irreplaceables—a dried four-leaf clover, a dog-eared photo of the nearest-and-dearest at Dale’s for his fiftieth . . . Plus that line from Merry Wives — Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on —scribbled by Anne on a matchbook cover when they were roommates at NYU. If money go before, all ways do lie open! They’d given up cigarettes and chocolate to save funds; to keep their spirits up, Anne had spouted Shakespeare quotes. As for the wallet itself, hadn’t it been a gift from one of the nearest-and-dearest? Yes—Sophie and Hank. Buttery yellow it was, and just the right size. O fuck if it were lost!
Or stolen?
She took a deep breath. Of course the wallet hadn’t been filched, not during these few minutes as she walked from home to this spot. Impossible. She’d passed only a handful of people and hadn’t bumped against a single one, had she? No, no. And even if the wallet had been lifted somehow (by an extremely skilled pickpocket), that’d hardly be a tragedy. Who steals my purse steals trash : another of Anne’s offerings. ’ Tis something, nothing; ’ twas mine, ’ tis his . . .
Underfoot, a stream of dank air began venting through the grate.
It riffled the hem of her skirt, sending spurts of itself up to her knees. On her bare calves the air was a caress, swift and clear. Not warm yet welcome; like happiness, perhaps, arriving as it ought to—cool fingertips probing, laying claim?
That stray thought arose in the air-fondled instant before her hand, still groping in her satchel, met up at last with the missing wallet.
Belowground, an F train rumbled rhythmically toward the Seventh Avenue station. It whined as it slowed, its noise fading to a hum.
Ellen glanced down. Although the draft of air pushed upward by the incoming train had ceased toying with her skirt, the white square of paper pressed against the grate held steady: the air was sustaining its loft.
She stooped, peering. The piece of paper lay flat, seemingly glued into place. It wasn’t wholly white, though. Strings of numerals were hand-printed across its middle.
She crouched closer. Most of the numerals were too messy and tightly spaced to distinguish, but one neatly rendered cluster stood out. The first five numbers—a six, a three, an eight, another six, a zero—weren’t hard to discern; the last two were smudged.
Seven numbers: 6-3-8-6-0-something-something.
She straightened, frowning. Familiar, that sequence, but from where?
As she bent over the iron cross-hatching once more, the piece of paper shimmied a little, then rocked gently downward on its cradle of air. In a few seconds it was gone.
3
Reshouldering her bag, Ellen continued uphill. She crossed Fifth Avenue, her legs and lungs registering the incline as Ninth Street steepened. Trudging—Prospect Park her goal—she waited for memory’s tumblers to click into place.
That seven-numeral sequence: her childhood phone number. How weird was that ?
She’d memorized that number with Walter’s help, when she was in, what, first grade? Tapping two pencils together, he’d sung in his lustrous baritone: Six, three , eight . . . there’s your trio. And then, after a pause: Six, oh, three, three . . . there’s your quartet . Trio, quartet. Easy. A seven-note song, each note a numeral.
Now you sing it , he’d ordered. The whole thing, so you won’t forget. His hand on her neck, cool fingers and thumb at either side of her throat. Lightly assessing her phrasing. One more time. He’d accompanied her then, an octave below: their first and only father-daughter duet. His voice magnificent, hers a wisp of aural smoke. Nola had been there too, yes?—leaning against the doorsill, sipping her drink: la ma

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