Ted Thompson’s first novel, The Land of Steady Habits (Little, Brown & Co., 2014), was a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and was adapted into a film for Netflix by Nicole Holofcener. His stories have appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, One Teen Story, and Best New American Voices. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Writers Omi, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Truman Capote Trust, and received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He teaches in the Brooklyn College MFA program.
When he got the e-mail, sitting behind the reception desk of a firm that hadn’t received a visitor in weeks, Johnson stood with his hands raised over his head in victory. It was a single line from the manager of his new favorite band, a band that he would sometimes listen to at work, holed up in a bathroom stall with his earbuds for a four-and-a-half-minute fix. “My boys are in,” the e-mail read. “I’ll be in touch.”
The floor was quiet, as usual. He could hear the distant warble of a phone ringing in a glassed-in office, the muted sounds of typing. It was probably safe to make a call.
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