Excerpt from Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Vladimir held out the slim book, chalkboard green with sans serif lettering. "I was going to say I was in the neighborhood but I wasn't—I came from the college—I wanted to give—John and I had spoken earlier—I wanted to bring him—and you, you—this.

"And this," he said, holding up the wine. "I wouldn't presume that bringing only my book was enough to justify a visit."

I ignored the wine and put on my act of matronly fandom that these days I used more and more with my students and the young people around me. My Big Mom Energy, as they say. "negligible generalities by Vladimir Vladinski," I read. "Your book. I'm so excited, please come in."

After some negotiation with the clunky door that involved his tie being caught, he followed me into the sitting room. As I led him though the corridor, I grabbed a pashmina to wrap around my neck. I prefer to conceal my neck.

"John is out, actually, but can I invite you to have a drink with me? Since you weren't in the neighborhood?"

He agreed after looking at his watch, a gesture to let me know his time was limited.

"Come with me to the kitchen. You can have your wine or beer or a martini."

I am naturally a busy host, and I like busy hosts, though some do not. When someone comes into my house, for a good portion of time I do not stop moving—tidying, making coffee, cleaning. My mother never sat still unless she was reading, typing, paying bills, or asleep, and I share this quality. When I go into someone's house and they are doing many chores, and their attention is divided, and they are packing a suitcase or mopping their floors while I linger about, I feel distinctly at ease. I have always liked the feeling of hanging around, and a host who gives me too much of their attention makes me feel unnerved.

When I had a little affair, back in the city, when I was an all-but-dissertation TA, it was with a very slow-moving young man who made intense and lasting eye contact. He was in my section of the Women in Literature seminar, and his gaze upon me, when he would offer a thought about Woolf or Eliot or Aphra Behn, felt so penetrating and impertinent I didn't know how to take it. I thought it was funny at the beginning, a kind of affectation. As he spent more and more time in my office I became addicted to the eye contact and would try to blink as slowly as possible when we were speaking, so that I could get a sense of leaving and coming back to that warm bath of his ocular attention. When we finally consummated our flirtation, I was devastated to find (though I shouldn't have been surprised) that he could not maintain this communication while making love and turned as screwed-eyed and internal as any other twenty-one-year-old boy. (Lest you be too horrified, I was only twenty-eight.) Once the affair dissolved, I started to find his eye contact irritating, then enraging, and finally simply cow-eyed and insipid. I had to move through all these points of perception. He is "in business" now, and Republican, I think.

"I mean, a martini, now, why not," said Vladimir, sounding titillated by the prospect.

"I make them with vodka so you know. They are suburban martinis. Dirty, and wet, with lots of olive juice and vermouth."

He assured me that was fine, lovely, how he liked them. I opened the bottom cupboard to stand on its ledge so I could reach the glasses on a higher shelf. I am a short woman. This anatomical fact feels at odds with my personality. All my adult life, people, when they find out my height, marvel that I am only five foot three inches tall. They think me to be at least five foot six or even seven. In pictures I am often surprised to see how little I am in comparison to my husband. In my mind, he and I are the same.

I pulled the glasses out of the cupboard. I felt as though Vladimir was standing very close to me, and in fact, when I turned around to hand him the glasses I almost placed them on his chest.

Excerpted from Vladimir by Julia May Jonas. Copyright © 2022 by Julia May Jonas. Excerpted by permission of Avid Reader Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.