Куртис Ситтенфилд «You Think It, I'll Say It»

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Автор Куртис Ситтенфилд

You Think It, I’ll Say It is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

The following stories in this collection have been previously published, sometimes in a different form: “Gender Studies” and “The Prairie Wife” in The New Yorker and “Bad Latch” in The Washington Post Magazine. In addition, “A Regular Couple” was published as a Kindle Single in partnership with The Atlantic, and “Volunteers Are Shining Stars” was published in the anthology This Is Not Chick Lit (New York: Penguin Random House LLC, 2006)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Sittenfeld, Curtis, author.

Title: You think it, I’ll say it: stories / Curtis Sittenfeld.

Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, [2018]

Identifiers: LCCN 2017020945 | ISBN 9780399592867 | ISBN 9780399592874 (ebook)

Ebook ISBN 9780399592874

Book design by Elizabeth A. D.

Eno, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich

v5. 2

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Gender Studies

The World Has Many Butterflies

Vox Clamantis in Deserto

Bad Latch

Plausible Deniability

A Regular Couple

Off the Record

The Prairie Wife

Volunteers Are Shining Stars

Do-Over

Dedication

Acknowledgments

By Curtis Sittenfeld

About the Author

Gender Studies

Nell and Henry always said that they would wait until marriage was legal for everyone in America, and now this is the case—it’s August 2015—but earlier in the week Henry eloped with his graduate student Bridget. Bridget is twenty-three, moderately but not dramatically attractive (one of the few nonstereotypical aspects of the situation, Nell thinks, is Bridget’s lack of dramatic attractiveness), and Henry and Bridget had been dating for six months. They began having an affair last winter, when Henry and Nell were still together; then in April, Henry moved out of the house he and Nell own and into Bridget’s apartment. Nell and Henry had been a couple for eleven years.

In the shuttle between the Kansas City airport and the hotel where Nell’s weekend meetings will occur—the shuttle is a van, and she is its only passenger—a radio host and a guest are discussing the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. The driver catches Nell’s eye in the rearview mirror and says, “He’s not afraid to speak his mind, huh? You gotta give him that. ”

Nell makes a nonverbal sound to acknowledge that, in the most literal sense, she heard the comment.

The driver says, “I never voted before, but, he makes it all the way, maybe I will. A tough businessman like that could go kick some butts in Washington. ”