coffee & essay in bed

The winners of the 2011 National Magazine Awards were announced on 9th of May and the winner of the ESSAYS & CRITICISM section was John Jeremiah Sullivan for “Mister Lytle: An Essay”

He appeared to me only once afterward, and that was two and a half years later, in Paris. It’s not as if Paris is a city I know or have even visited more than a couple of times. He knew it well. I was coming up the stairs from the metro into the sunshine with the girl, whom I later married, on my left arm, when my senses became intensely alert to his presence about a foot and a half to my right. I couldn’t look directly at him; I had to let him hang back in my peripheral vision, else he’d slip away; it was a bargain we made in silence. I could see enough to tell that he wasn’t young but was maybe twenty years younger than when I’d known him, wearing the black-framed engineer’s glasses he’d worn at just that time in his life, looking up and very serious, climbing the steps to the light, where I lost him.