Q: A Love Story. Evan Mandery

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      Dedication

      For V, my Q

      Epigraph

      What is the point of this story?

      What information pertains?

      The thought that life could be better

      Is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.

      PAUL SIMON, “TRAIN IN THE DISTANCE”

      Contents

       Cover

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Prologue

      Fair

      Book One

      Good

      Chapter One

      In the aftermath of the publication of my novel, Time’s…

      Chapter Two

      It is no easy matter to arrange a table at…

      Chapter Three

      I order a porcini mushroom tart as a starter and…

      Chapter Four

      By this time, Q and I are far along in…

      Chapter Five

      After the ominous admonition that I must not wed Q,…

      Chapter Six

      I harbor suspicions, intensified by this conversation at the end…

      Chapter Seven

      You have been following me.” I-60 says this directly, matter-of-factly,…

      Chapter Eight

      To me this is all a dream, the worst of…

      Chapter Nine

      During the weeks following our dinner at La Grenouille and…

      Chapter Ten

      On the last Wednesday of November, Q drags herself out…

      Chapter Eleven

      Even by her lofty standards, Joan Deveril has outdone herself…

      Chapter Twelve

      Tristan Handy seems out of time. He rises as he…

      Book Two

      Better

      Chapter Thirteen

      The Monday following the fateful Thanksgiving dinner, I move out…

      Chapter Fourteen

      Getting a table at Jean-Georges is challenging. Getting a table…

      Chapter Fifteen

      Freud woke gently, the rising sun streaming in off the…

      Chapter Sixteen

      The courtship of Minnie Zuckerman begins in earnest over fondue.

      Chapter Seventeen

      I am shocked when I-50 tells me his age. He…

      Chapter Eighteen

      In Frewin Court, off Cornmarket Street, the Oxford Union was…

      Chapter Nineteen

      The morning after I finish writing the Spencer-Freud debate chapter,…

      Chapter Twenty

      In 2024, John Henry Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for…

      Chapter Twenty-One

      I-77 is quick to condemn my short story about the…

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      The decision to attend law school sits fine with me.

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Back home in New York, I begin a concerted program…

      Book Three

      Best

      Chapter Twenty-Four

      When time travel is discovered, I am not surprised. I…

      Chapter Twenty-Five

      Even after the prices come down, time travel is expensive,…

      Chapter Twenty-Six

      The bus to Rhinebeck wends its way up the Taconic…

      Acknowledgments

      Other Books by Evan Mandery

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Prologue

      FAIR

      Q’ Quentina Elizabeth Deveril, is the love of my life. We meet for the first time by chance at the movies, a double feature at the Angelika: Casablanca and Play It Again, Sam. It is ten o’clock on a Monday morning. Only three people are in the theater: Q, me, and a gentleman in the back who is noisily indulging himself. This would be disturbing but understandable if it were to Ingrid Bergman, but it is during Play It Again, Sam and he repeatedly mutters, “Oh, Grover.” I am repulsed but in larger measure confused, as is Q. This is what brings us together. She looks back at the man several times, and in so doing our eyes meet. She suppresses an infectious giggle, which gets me, and I, like she, spend the second half of the movie fending off hysterics. We are bonded. After the film, we chat in the lobby like old friends.

      “What was that?” she asks.

      I don’t know,” I say. “Did he mean Grover from Sesame Street?”

      “Are there even any other Grovers?”

      “There’s СКАЧАТЬ