The most prominent among them is the former Granada House, an addiction treatment center where he was a patient in , and the obvious model for Ennet House. But he did not stay long:. Living under the strict, patriarchal rules of Saudi society, the club is a rare environment where she can find a measure of freedom:.
I had intended for my own visit to the Mount Auburn Club, toward the end of the second day of my trip, to be similarly discreet. With photos obtained, I was making for the cab when a late middle-aged man exited the building and began calling to me, asking what I was doing. I had run into minor trouble with authority figures at previous locations, so I was a little worried about being considered a trespasser. But I had the shots I needed, and took a chance on meeting the proprietors and telling something new about their own place of business.
This is how I came to meet Bill and Paul Crowley, the two brothers who have operated the club since opening it Neither remembered him—no surprise, considering just how low a profile Wallace intended to keep, not to mention his hasty exit. Like the Enfield Tennis Academy , the Mount Auburn Club raises the domes seasonally, though this one had been left up over a little-used court. To enter, one must pass through a narrow, pneumatic revolving door; because they are air-supported, the PSI change is instantly noticeable.
Perhaps better to leave both a mystery. But he did not stay long: He went to work as a front desk attendant at the Mount Auburn Club, a health club in Watertown. His job was to check members in—he called himself a glorified towel boy—but one day Michael Ryan, a poet who had received a Whiting Award alongside him two years before, came to exercise.
Wallace dove below the reception desk and quit that day.
