I am sitting on the train car at the Ronkonkoma station of the Long Island Rail Road waiting for the doors to close.I am headed to dinner with my publisher & friend and another literary type he wants me to meet.We are meeting for dinner at a hot spot in Chelsea. Or the Lower East Side.Or perhaps, but probably not, Tribeca.The restaurant is called Phoebe’s and there’s a table waiting for the nervous southern author and his friend, the enigmatic author and publisher, and the surprise literary guest.The author and his publisher began the year with an unbecoming public spat.The author felt entitled.The publisher felt ambushed, and perhaps even taken for granted, unappreciated for the work he had put into the author’s book.The author wanted more promotion for his book.The author felt his book was very good, and he wanted to be interviewed about it and he wanted to be talked about at parties he would never attend, and he wanted the publisher to spend more time and effort publicizing the book.The publisher had put out at least a dozen other books that year.They were excited to see each other and hug and stay up for the next two days talking about literature and music and film and sex and war and New York.Meanwhile, my friend Sabrina Small – the Los Angeles born, Berlin residing author, shop owner, and 1/4th of Self Exposure is in upstate New York wondering what she’s done to alienate herself.She was in Chicago last week, at the publisher’s huge reading.She’d flown from Berlin for the reading.She was excited to meet everyone.I am speaking on the phone to D’urban, my friend and spiritual advisor.I tell him the train doors won’t close.I am sweating.If I let these train doors close and follow the momentum to Phoebe’s in New York then I will shortly be at the literary dinner.The night could become almost anything. 

How will I explain this abandonment to Sabrina in the coming weeks?I have already made an ethically questionable decision to tell my publisher, a month or so ago, that she planned to read a piece in Chicago about her complex interpersonal relationship with the host of the event – a fellow author.I worry about this for Sabrina.I worry about this for the publisher.I worry, mostly, about this for the host (who seems to me, incidentally, a decent person navigating a difficult scene).I read the piece.It is not mean.It is fair and it is interesting.But it is interpersonal gossip and won’t be good for Sabrina, or the publisher, or the host.The piece is nixed.A new piece (a good one – Sabrina is a tremendous writer) is picked out.I have meddled in an event I am very much not part of.The headliner of the event is Sam Pink, a newly minted press mate that I was critical of in an article about the Fuccboi.I felt his conspiracy theories about Fuccboi being an international spy that caused the deaths of the publisher of Tyrant and his own fiancée, along with unnecessary lame jabs at women in publishing were worthy of ridicule.This complicated some things for me and made Chicago impossible.The door has not closed yet.I am still sweating.I am supposed to meet up with the playwright Matthew Gasda, an author I am incredibly fond of.This is going to be two days of literary bliss – the kind of life that happens in my fiction and never my real life.And if I let the train door close then what will I tell Sabrina?

“I am sorry I ratted you out about what you were reading and then abandoned you in New York.” All my literary dreams laid out before me as I watch the door and wait for it to close.

When the door finally closes, I am inside the station, still sweating, apologizing to Manny for not making it to New York, and waiting for my sister-in-law to come pick me up and take me back to the pool in her backyard and my nieces and nephews and my son and my daughter and my godson, my wife, my brother-in-law; my real life. From Chicago to New York, Sabrina returns to America an Expatriate, a writer, a wide-open woman of endless wonder. This is her story.