dent's writing was
scheduled for uninterrupted discussion, led by two faculty members. The
writer was not allowed to speak until the discussion was complete.
Everyone else in the group was expected to contribute. Day after day,
Joe's group analyzed and explored stories, avoiding judgments about
their quality. Did developments in the story make sense in terms of
earlier events? Which characters were convincing? What was the story
about?

The faculty was good at this, and the new students improved as days
went by. Students who had been there a few semesters set a good
example. Joe thought hard about what to say in each session. He became
more aware of "story" as a form or structure independent of the
characters and setting. He still didn't get it; he didn't know what a
story was, but he wasn't discouraged. He had learned from designing
computer systems that there was always a period of absorbing
information before he could see the big picture.

His own story was praised for the occasional good sentence and
criticized for its lack of structure. The best part of it was a
description that Joe copied from memory, a late evening with Daisy.
"Don't hold back," she had said. He had begun to shake in her arms,
deep uncontrollable shaking that took him all the way back to some
wordless time when he was a baby. Daisy held him until he was reborn as
a man, clean as the sun, beyond fear. No one in the group mentioned
this scene, but several of the women looked at him thoughtfully.

One night Joe heard voices in the living room and stumbled out half
asleep to see what was happening. Eugenie and Jamie were close together
on the couch. He excused himself and went back to bed. Two days later,
he came back after a reading, and there was Jamie in the center of the
living room, weaving slightly, holding a tennis racquet. "You have
to--feel it," he said, flexing his wrist. "Like a friend."

"Oh, I understand," Eugenie said, her face flushed and happy. "Like my
cello." Joe slipped by, closed his bedroom door, and put his head
between two pillows.

The days blurred together. Jamie was more and more out of it. When it
came time to leave, Walter and Eva, a cheerful recovering alcoholic who
had been in Joe's workshop, helped scrape Jamie's stuff together. After
a tearful farewell from Eugenie, they assisted Jamie into the rental
car.

"Eugenie is facing major heartbreak, the stuff of literature," Eva
said.

"Eugenie thinks I'm Joseph Co