Ann Beattie’s advent in the 1970s as the voice of a generation helped create a global short story renaissance. Her explorations of the subtle cruelties and desires of the heart have continually sustained and advanced the story form, and she has been honored with the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for the Short Story. She is the author of numerous books, including the collections Onlookers (Scribner, 2023), Follies, The State We’re In, and The Accomplished Guest, as well as the novels Chilly Scenes of Winter, Another You, Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, and A Wonderful Stroke of Luck. Beattie lives in Maine and Key West.

Photograph by Sigrid Estrada.

Telepathic Message in Time of Crisis

A Story

by Ann Beattie

From his vantage point on the roof, where he likes to sit and sketch distant buildings, my husband, Dupre, observed daily a man and a woman having sex, after which the man crossed the room—headed for the bathroom, Dupre assumed—as the woman threw her legs out of bed, stood, and, still naked, began ironing clothes.

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