(Jenny tells Victor that she and Becky want to talk to him about something, so they sit down in the study)

“All right, go ahead.”

Becky frowned, concentration roughened her forehead.  Victor could sense a sadness coming to the surface that he rarely saw.  “Do you mind if I have a cigarette?” she asked. 

“Just one or two, please.  If you would like more we can go outside.”

“Just one for now."  she took one from her purse and lit it.  Jennifer went to get an ashtray.  When Victor and Becky were alone her whole body became tense for a moment, as she prepared to hurl herself into a deep chasm of suffering, and then she leapt.

"Jennifer felt that it was important, before she dies, that you and I talk about how much I’ve hated the fact that you’re a famous author, about how draining that is for me, emotionally, and how much time I’ve spent wishing that our lives hadn’t been like this."  A tear came to the corner of her eye and she pushed it away with the heel of her hand.

Victor was slightly numb.  She’d been his best friend since they were teenagers, he didn’t feel that that was going to change, but he felt the chasm opening up beneath him.  Was there going to be some terrible upheaval?

"All right.  I love you, and I’m listening to you.”

She was breathing harder, struggling to get the words out.  “I … I never explained to you what it did to me when you got published."  Jenny came back with the ashtray and put it on the desk beside her.  "I was studying literature at college and everything I was doing, all my relationships were revolving around academia, and when you got on the bestseller list and I let it be known that my best friend was a famous writer it killed everything.”

Victor couldn’t help but interrupt.  “If you’ll recall it killed everything for me too.”

“Yes, I remember but it wasn’t the same, all right?  I’m even willing to accept the fact that it was worse for you.  People were targeting you.  But it didn’t just destroy my life, Victor, it destroyed my hope.  I had put so much of myself into the idea that writing mattered, in ways I can barely remember now.  I can barely remember all the things I thought writing was supposed to mean.  It’s too stupid to try to recall.  And I know it’s worse for you, and I know we talked about it, but what I never told you was that there were times when I blamed you for it, when I thought that if I’d just had a few more years to myself before I hit that wall, before it became impossible for me to do anything in the world of literature without getting railroaded as "the Friend of famous Victor” that I might have done something, okay?  I used to think of us as Roderick and Madeline Usher.“

Victor had to laugh at that.  "Oh, I can just see it, too.  That’s just the sort of horrible thing you would brood over.  Did you make voodoo dolls of me or anything?  Keep a portrait of me which you spit blood on?”

“It’s not that bad,” interrupted Jenny.  “But you have to talk about it.  For me.  You have to resolve it.”

“I can accept it,” said Victor.  “I take it seriously but if this is the substance of what you wanted to say I can accept it.  I mean, everything else we shared is real, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Becky, allowing herself to shed a few more tears.  “Yes, and you’re obviously not responsible for all the drugs I was doing, or the lousy lovers, or anything else I did to fuck up my life in my early twenties, but the way I remember it now was that I cared about literature more than anything, and it was dead and there wasn’t anything to do about it but

(unfinished)