The deep heat has broken, and our windows have reopened to the air. Along with a breath of coolness, island weather has returned. A thick briny fog descends over the little city, draping me in sea thoughts. I sit in my couch corner, in the dim and cloudy living room. I lick a finger and expect it to taste of salt. The ocean feels very near. It could be lapping at my feet.

Outside, in the privet hedge, a hidden bird chip-chips to itself. Upstairs, in the bedroom, a box fan stirs a slow breeze. I'm living in a story, set in an endless Maine summer, wet and misty and smelling of oysters.

On the coffee table: the books I'm reading, the book I'm avoiding. I've almost finished Anna K, and that means suicide by train is imminent, and I've been unable to convince myself to face it again. Such a terrible, terrible ending. So, instead, I've distracted myself with Margaret Drabble and Louisa May Alcott novels, giving myself a week of rest before I plunge back into Tolstoyan dread.

But on page 202 of my battered 1888 copy of Eight Cousins Alcott writes: "This love of money is the curse of America, and for the sake of it men will sell honor and honesty, till we don't know whom to trust." No respite in that sentence, no respite in Drabble's novel The Seven Sisters either, where young women are murdered under London highways and aging divorcees stare forlornly out the windows of their third-floor walkups.

The air smells of brine and roses. Upstairs, Tom rattles a coffee cup. The box fan hums, but the little bird in the hedge has fallen silent. 

I'm living in a story, set in a swirl of other stories, and I might as well go ahead and finish Anna K. because  I'm not going to escape from her, even if I try.