How depressed are you?, W. asks me. Very, I tell him. W.'s in his office in the southwest of the country, and I am in mine in the northeast. W. says he's looking out of the window and thinking of his failure. How has it come to this?, he's thinking, over and over again.
Unopened parcels of review copies of books surround him, W. says. His office is thick with them. What can he do? W. says I am the only person who would be interested in such books. They sicken him W. says. They're like the ballast attached to a body to make sure it sinks, W. says. And he is sinking, he says.
It's different for you, W. acknowledges. You get some satisfaction from office work. It makes you think you've done something. W. can't bear it, though. Why does he come in, then?, I ask him. What's the point? He could take a few days leave. But W. feels something significant might happen in the office at any moment. He has to be there, W. says. What? What will happen? He doesn't know, says W. Something momentous.
We're bottom feeders, W. says as he often does. We live on scraps. Soon there will nothing for us, then what? I tell him the apocalypse will decide it all for us. It's coming, we agree. One of our intelligent friends says so. In 2014, wasn't it?, W. asks. 2012, I tell him. He's revised his estimate. Four years, says W. How will we survive until then? What will we do? Meanwhile, W.'s waiting in his office, the rain falling.
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