The reporter finds himself in a lift with the author, who stands silent, staring straight ahead at the doors.
To add to the discomfort of the moment, the minder turns a solemn face to the publicist and asks: "Did you get my message?"
"No interview".
And no photographs during her reading either, which would "take as long as it takes".
But the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain was more than generous with the audience that last night packed a room at the Dunedin Public Library, an audience obviously in awe of the visitor.
For those who booked one of the prized 120 seats on offer, she was a warm expansive speaker.
While her apparent views on corporate farming and well-publicised difficulties with a lack of snowploughs on the road leading to her remote Wyoming home got a hearing, it was her innate instinct as a storyteller that shone through most strongly.
Proulx read from her latest book, Bird Cloud, an account of a two-year battle to build her dream house, her left hand cradling the spine of the book as she tapped her right thumb on the podium.
The house was built to contain books, "the stuff of life to me, my tools as well ..."
Stories of cattle-branding, dirty dealings, suicide, cowboys, colonial bad behaviour and sinking ships with loss of life lit up the room.
Then her reverent fans got the chance they had been waiting for - to ask questions:
"Do you plan to write more non-fiction?"
"No. I missed fiction while I was working on this. I'm back with fiction now."
Where did she get the information she used in her books?
Proulx responded she was trained as a historian.
"That's what I do for background of any fiction that I write."
She told of her battle with one of the producers of Brokeback Mountain, who wanted to change the "western" language of its protagonists to "television language" in case movie-goers could not understand it.
It wasn't changed, and they did understand.
Her writing schedule? -
"Catch as catch can".
"If I had one, I would get up early, write in the morning, maybe go for a walk, write some more, do some housework, have a glass of wine ..."
On Shipping News and its setting in Newfoundland , she said: "I fall in love with places sometimes; sometimes I fall hard."
Like other questions, that prompted a short story about a man who chased Proulx and a friend by boat from their fishing spot, a man who wanted to sell them a furnace and "wouldn't take `No' for an answer".
That story morphed into another about being left by her host at a bed and breakfast for two and a-half weeks, a story that also magically involved a furnace.
Perhaps it was slipping into the mode of storyteller that warmed the author up.
After the talk she was a changed woman, more than happy to take the time to pose for a photograph, thanking the photographer for her patience and even offering a hug.
Faith restored.
