Lauren Groff on Work and Love
This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
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When I was nineteen and a college junior, I spent what was supposed to be an exotic, sultry, educational summer semester in Madrid. But my long-term boyfriend back home and I had recently broken up, and instead of being excited by my new surroundings, I was miserable. All I wanted to do was to talk to him. If I could just hear his voice , I told anyone who’d listen. If I could tell him I loved him, and hear him say the same in return, everything would be okay. This was in 1989, before cell phones were ubiquitous, and that summer every one of the Telefónica de España’s public pay phones I tried were out of order. One night toward the end of our trip, some classmates and I found ourselves at a terraza somewhere in the central district. We dragged our chairs into a circle, drank cold beer, and talked. Night descended and the circle grew wider as more people joined us. Everyone was friendly and animated. Everyone but me, that is. I was droning to my friend Kelly about wanting to call this boy back home. “I know how you can make a phone call.” I swiveled to my right, and a man I didn’t know smiled at me. “We can go now if you want. It’s like a two-minute walk.” Kelly put a warning hand on my arm. “It’ll be fine,” I said to her, too eager to worry. I followed Michael—that was his name, he introduced himself as we threaded through the other chairs–out to the street. He was a few paces ahead; I was floating behind, lost in preparation for the call I was about to make. Then he stopped at a car parked on the street and unlocked it. “Get in,” he said. Wait . “I thought you said we could walk.” He shrugged. “I underestimated.” He sounded tired. “If you want to go, get in. It’ll be faster this way.” I remembered that it was I who was putting him out, not the other way around. I got in. As he […]
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This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
The British realist director Mike Leigh loves the term “character actor,” which he uses often and with zeal. To him,
