‘It’s the assignment, Mr Smith,’ the Henderson kid had said (on his forehead was a large purple bruise from his latest outing in the Meerkat blue). ‘It’s “Paul’s Case.” Look.’

The kid turned the gadget so Wesley could see it. It was a flat white panel, rectangular, less than half an inch thick. At the top was amazonkindle and the smile logo Wesley knew well; he was not entirely computer illiterate himself, and had ordered books from Amazon plenty of times (although he usually tried the bookstore in town first, partly out of pity; even the cat who spent most of its life dozing in the window looked malnourished).

The interesting thing on the kid’s gadget wasn’t the logo on top or the teeny-tiny keyboard on the bottom. It was mostly screen, and on that screen was not a video game where young men and women with buffed-out bodies were killing zombies in the ruins of New York, but a page of Willa Cather’s story about the poor boy with the destructive illusions.

Wesley had reached for it, then paused. ‘May I?’

‘Go ahead,’ the Henderson kid – Richard or Robert – told him. ‘It’s pretty neat. You can download books from thin air, and you can make the type as big as you want. Also, the books are cheaper because there’s no paper or binding.’

That sent a minor chill through Wesley. He became aware that most of his Intro to American Lit class was watching him. Wesley supposed it was hard for them to decide if he, as a thirty-five-year-old, was Old School (like the ancient Dr Wence, who looked like a crocodile in a three-piece suit) or New School (like Suzanne Montanaro, who liked to play Avril Lavigne’s ‘Girlfriend’ in her Introduction to Modern Drama class). Wesley supposed his reaction to Henderson’s Kindle would help them with that.

‘Mr Henderson,’ he said, ‘there will always be books. Which means there will always be paper and binding. Books are real objects. Books are friends.’

‘Yeah, but!’ Henderson had replied, his sweet smile now becoming slightly sly.

‘But?’

‘They’re also ideas and emotions. You said so in our first class.’

‘Well,’ Wesley had said, ‘you’ve got me there. But books aren’t solely ideas. Books have a smell, for instance. One that gets better – more nostalgic – as the years go by. Does this gadget of yours have a smell?’

‘Nope,’ Henderson replied. ‘Not really. But when you turn the pages … here, with this button … they kind of flutter, like in a real book, and I can go to any page I want, and when it sleeps, it shows pictures of famous writers, and it holds a charge, and—’

‘It’s a computer,’ Wesley had said. ‘You’re reading off the computer.’

The Henderson kid had taken his Kindle back. ‘It’s still “Paul’s Case.”’

‘You’ve never heard of a Kindle, Mr Smith?’ Josie Quinn had asked. Her tone was that of a kindly anthropologist asking a member of Papua New Guinea’s Kombai tribe if he had ever heard of electric stoves and elevator shoes.

‘No,’ he said, not because it was true – he had seen something called Shop the Kindle Store when he bought books from Amazon online – but because, on the whole, he thought he would prefer being perceived by them as Old School. New School was somehow … mediocre.

‘You ought to get one,’ the Henderson kid said, and when Wesley had replied, without even thinking, ‘Perhaps I will,’ the class had broken into spontaneous applause. For the first time since Ellen’s departure, Wesley had felt faintly cheered. Because they wanted him to get a book-reading gadget, and also because the applause suggested they did see him as Old School. Teachable Old School.

He did not seriously consider buying a Kindle (if he was Old School, then books were definitely the way to go) until a couple of weeks later. One day on his way home from school he imagined Ellen seeing him with his Kindle, just strolling across the quad and bopping his finger on the little NEXT PAGE button.

What in the world are you doing? she would ask. Speaking to him at last.

Reading off the computer, he would say. Just like the rest of you.

Spiteful!

But, as the Henderson kid might put it, was that a bad thing? It occurred to him that spite was a kind of methadone for lovers, and better than going cold turkey.

When he got home he turned on his desktop Dell (he owned no laptop and took pride in the fact) and went to the Amazon website. He had expected the gadget to go for four hundred dollars or so, maybe more if there was a Cadillac model, and was surprised to find it was considerably cheaper than that. Then he went to the Kindle Store (which he had been so successfully ignoring) and discovered that the Henderson kid was right: the book prices were ridiculously low. Hardcover novels (what cover, ha-ha) were priced below most of the trade paperbacks he’d bought recently. Considering what he spent on books, the Kindle might pay for itself. As for the reaction of his colleagues – all those hoicked eyebrows – Wesley discovered he relished the prospect. Which led to an interesting insight into human nature, or at least the human nature of the academic: one liked to be perceived by one’s students as Old School, but by one’s peers as New School.

I’m experimenting with new technology, he imagined himself saying.

He liked the sound of it. It was New School all the way.

And of course he liked thinking of Ellen’s reaction. He had stopped leaving messages on her phone, and he had begun avoiding places – The Pit Stop, Harry’s Pizza – where he might run into her, but that could change. Surely I’m reading off the computer, just like the rest of you was too good a line to waste.

Oh, that’s small, he scolded himself as he sat in front of his computer, looking at the picture of the Kindle. That is spite so small it probably wouldn’t poison a newborn kitten.

True! But if it was the only spite of which he was capable, why not indulge it?

So he had clicked on the Buy Kindle box, and the gadget had arrived a day later, in a box stamped with the smile logo and the words ONE-DAY DELIVERY. Wesley hadn’t opted for one-day, and would protest that charge if it showed up on his MasterCard bill, but he unpacked his new acquisition with real pleasure – similar to the pleasure he felt when unpacking a box of books, but sharper. Because there was that sense of heading into the unknown, he supposed. Not that he expected the Kindle to replace books, or to be much more than a novelty item, really; an attention-getter for a few weeks or months that would afterward stand forgotten and gathering dust beside the Rubik’s Cube on the knickknack shelf in his living room.

It didn’t strike him as peculiar that, whereas the Henderson kid’s Kindle had been white, his was pink.

Not at first.

II – Ur Functions

When Wesley got back to his apartment after his confessional conversation with Don Allman, the message light on his answering machine was blinking. Two messages. He pushed the playback button, expecting to hear his mother complaining about her arthritis and making trenchant observations about how some sons actually called home more often than twice a month. After that would come a robo-call from the Moore Echo, reminding him – for the dozenth time – that his subscription had lapsed. But it wasn’t his mother and it wasn’t the newspaper. When he heard Ellen’s voice, he paused in the act of reaching for a beer and listened bent over, with one hand outstretched in the fridge’s frosty glow.

‘Hi, Wes,’ she said, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of herself. There was a long pause, long enough for Wesley to wonder if that was all there was going to be. In the background he heard hollow shouts and bouncing balls. She was in the gym, or had been when she left the message. ‘I’ve been thinking about us. Thinking that maybe we should try again. I miss you.’ And then, as if she had seen him rushing for the door: ‘But not yet. I need to think a little more about … what you said.’ A pause. ‘I was wrong to throw your book like that, but I was upset.’ Another pause, almost as long as the one after she’d said hi. ‘There’s a preseason tourney in Lexington this weekend. You know, the one they call the Bluegrass. It’s a big deal. Maybe when I get back, we should talk. Please don’t call me until then, because I’ve got to concentrate on the girls. Defense is terrible, and I’ve only got one girl who can actually shoot from the perimeter, and … I don’t know, this is probably a big mistake.’