Excerpt
from The Geographer's Library: A Novel
by Jon Fasman
Driving from Wickenden to Clougham, Joe and I saw nobody. We passed no cars on the road, and there were none in the Lone Wolf's parking lot. Driving through Clougham was like driving through a painting of Clougham. Joe and I pulled up right next to the Lone Wolf's front door. The town�s eerie, deserted feeling added to my uneasiness, and even Joe, who could probably have charmed and wheedled Puhapaev�s eviscerated corpse into conversation, said almost nothing for the entire drive. I was thinking of Hannah, of course, and vacillating between anger, sadness, concern, and confusion, all underlaid with a bit of lust and a dash of regret. My usual emotional range, in other words.
All this for what could have been an obit at the back of a newspaper that a few hundred people would have run their eyes over before throwing away, a piece I could have written on the day of his death (�Distinguished �migr� Professor Dies,� a couple of grafs about his career, maybe a complimentary sentence or two from a colleague, and that sad and stark final sentence, �He has no known living relatives�).
Excerpted from The Geographer's Library, by Jon Fasman. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright � Jon Fasman, 2006.