Au Revoir Quotes

Au revoir, jewelled alligators and white hotels, hallucinatory forests, farewell.

For Sayonara, literally translated, 'Since it must be so,' of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado 'Till we meet again,' any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father's good-by. It is - 'Go out in the world and do well, my son.' It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by ('God be with you') and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. 'You must not go - I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God's hand will over you' and even - underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible - 'I will be with you; I will watch you - always.' It is a mother's good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, 'Sayonara.

Goodbye,” Mort said, and was surprised to find a lump in his throat. “It’s such an unpleasant word, isn’t it?” QUITE SO. Death grinned because, as has so often been remarked, he didn’t have much option. But possibly he meant it, this time. I PREFER AU REVOIR, he said.

I can't dance, remember?" I whispered. "It's just a tango. It is like sex, except with clothes on." Then, squeezing me closer: "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot, you do not know how to do that either.

How about we just go with sayonara then?” Graham laughed. “Or au revoir.” “Arrivederci.” “Hasta la vista, baby,” he said, and then he stepped forward and kissed her again, sending a shiver through her in spite of the warmth of the early-morning sun.

Well, au revoir, one and all.

Non cercate di interagire. Sono solo un cilindro musicale. Per servirvi. Au revoir.

There is a symbiotic desire to get closer and closer, to enter the self of what is being drawn, and, simultaneously, there is the foreknowledge of immanent distance. Such drawings aspire to be both a secret rendezvous and an au revoir! Alternately and ad infinitum.

Speaking of novels,’ I said, ‘you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust’s rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more, impossibly rude hostesses, please let me speak, and even ruder guests, mechanical Dostoevskian rows and Tolstoian nuances of snobbishness repeated and expanded to an unsufferable length, adorable seascapes, melting avenues, no, do not interrupt me, light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English poets, a flora of metaphors, described—by Cocteau, I think—as “a mirage of suspended gardens,” and, I have not yet finished, an absurd, rubber-and-wire romance between a blond young blackguard (the fictitious Marcel), and an improbable jeune fille who has a pasted-on bosom, Vronski’s (and Lyovin’s) thick neck, and a cupid’s buttocks for cheeks; but—and now let me finish sweetly—we were wrong, Sybil, we were wrong in denying our little beau ténébreux the capacity of evoking “human interest”: it is there, it is there—maybe a rather eighteenth-centuryish, or even seventeenth-centuryish, brand, but it is there. Please, dip or redip, spider, into this book [offering it], you will find a pretty marker in it bought in France, I want John to keep it. Au revoir, Sybil, I must go now. I think my telephone is ringing.

Elle les avait démasqués de loin, les petits ambitieux qui la trouvait banale vue de face, mais très jolie vue de dot.

La capacité au bonheur se travaille, se muscle jour après jour. Il suffit de revoir son système de valeurs, de rééduquer le regard qu’on porte sur la vie et les événements.

It is only when memory is filtered through imagination that the films we make will have real depth.

Mais Colin ne savait pas, il courait, il avait peur, pourquoi ça ne suffit pas de toujours rester ensemble, il faut encore qu’on ait peur, peut-être est-ce un accident, une auto l’a écrasée, elle serait sur son lit, je ne pourrais la voir, ils m’empêcheraient d’entrer, mais vous croyez donc peut-être que j’ai peur de ma Chloé, je la verrai malgré vous, mais non, Colin, n’entre pas. Elle est peut-être blessée, seulement, alors, il n’y aura rien du tout, demain, nous irons ensemble au Bois, pour revoir le banc, j’avais sa main dans la mienne et ses cheveux près des miens, son parfum sur l’oreiller. Je prends toujours son oreiller, nous nous battrons encore le soir, le mien, elle le trouve trop bourré, il reste tout rond sous sa tête, et moi, je le reprends après, il sent l’odeur de ses cheveux.

Human beings are like the screwed-up children of alcoholic parents in that way, picking up the pieces afterward and trying to make up reasons why.

you need to put aside your own selfish motives and consider other people for a change.

She had three seconds in which to decide whether to be rich or spend the rest of her life as a housemaid. She only needed one.

Au revoir, mages.

God may forgive you if He chooses, but not I. Au revoir.

Au revoir, mon ami,” he said, beginning to cry harder. “Je t’aime, mon petit.

Les au revoir font encore plus de mal quand l'autre est déjà parti.

Voilà, décide-t-il, à quoi devrait ressembler un « au revoir ». Pas à un point final, mais à des points de suspension, une phrase inachevée jusqu’au prochain paragraphe. Une porte laissée ouverte. Une plongée dans le sommeil.

He did not smile, he was neither grave, nor vindictive, nor sad; he was still. He was waiting, I think, for me to cross the space and take him in my arms again - waiting, as one waits at a deathbed for the miracle one dare not disbelieve, which will not happen. I had to get out of there for my face showed too much, the war in my body was dragging me down. My feet refused to carry me over to him again. The wind of my life was blowing me away. 'Au revoir, Giovanni.' 'Au revoir, mon cher.

I had to leave Paris the next morning. As always I would wonder why and start counting the days before I could go back. And then lose count and be lost again in the life that, by some strange twist of fate, I lived somewhere else. Au revoir Paris. Bonjour tristesse.

C'était donc cela mourir ? Revoir sa vie en accéléré, comme on jette un dernier coup d’œil à la pièce que l'on quitte afin de vérifier que l'on n'a rien oublié ? Vérifier que l'on n'a rien oublié. Au prix d'un effort inouï, elle redressa la tête , l’appuya contre le tronc du bouleau. Elle avait revue sa vie mais pas toute sa vie. Il lui manquait le final, les plus belles années. Les années de plénitude. La mort pouvait bien attendre quelques minutes, non ?

Human beings are like the screwed-up children of alcoholic parents in that way, picking up the pieces afterward and trying to make up reasons why. You could argue that’s what makes us interesting, and maybe it is to some alien race studying us from a million miles away. From where I sit it just seems pathetic and sad.

Il continuait à trembler, sa peur était irrationnelle, imperméable à toute raison.

Seuls les poissons morts suivent le courant' - Only dead fish follow the current

I should have been paying closer attention.” “You did the best you could ,” she said. “You are not a warrior, Perry, any more than I am a foreign exchange student.

Books and people happen to you. And when they do, let them.

They're much the same, the enemy, the war, the bureaucracy, the army, they're all things that no-one understands, and no-one can stop.

Those who thought that this war would be over quickly are all dead. Of the war, of course.

Labourdin concoctait des phrases avec des syllabes, rarement avec des idées.

C’est totalement absurde les rappels . Enfin, écoutez, dans la vie normale, dans la vie courante, quand un type a fini son boulot, qu’est-ce qu’il fait ? Il dit au revoir, et il s’en va. Voilà. Il ne revient pas : enfin, on n’imagine pas un plombier, par exemple, re-sonnant à la porte, après avoir réparé une fuite, juste pour refiler un petit coup de clé de douze.

Au moment de nous quitter, nous choisissions de ne pas dire un mot, d’être dans le silence. Il y a une étreinte, un regard. Il n’y a pas de baiser, pas d’au revoir. Il y a juste ton corps en partance et le mien qui reste. Il y a les battements de ton coeur qui s’accélèrent et les miens qui ralentissent. Il y a l’effroi. Il y a le temps derrière nous, et le temps devant nous. Il y a la tendresse qui se brise.

Why don’t you just tell him what he wants to know?” “I do not like bullies. And I have never responded well to threats of force.”She paused. “Also, I believe he will kill me anyway.” “Why?” “Because that is what he does.

Sometimes you just need people to be there and do nothing. This 'do nothing' part is hard for people to understand. They are compelled to talk, touch, pacify, hug, or soothe you. That's rather sweet per se, but that's not something someone wants at all times is all.

Un nouveau résident pour mon cimetière. Un homme de cinquante-cinq ans, mort d’avoir trop fumé. Enfin, ça, c’est qu’ont dit les médecins. Ils ne disent jamais qu’un homme de cinquante-cinq ans peut mourir de ne pas avoir été aimé, de ne pas avoir été entendu, d’avoir reçu trop de factures, d’avoir contracté trop de crédits à la consommation, d’avoir vu ses enfants grandir et puis partir, sans vraiment dire au revoir. Une vie de reproches, une vie de grimaces. Alors sa petite clope et son petit canon pour noyer la boule au ventre, il les aimait bien. On ne dit jamais qu’on peut mourir d’en avoir eu trop souvent marre.

You are never going to stop me from achieving my goal, Perry. You ought to know that by now. Do you wish to know the definition of a tragic hero?”“Not particularly.”“A tragic hero is an individual who, with every attempt to restore things to normal, only pushes himself further away from normalcy.”She nodded. “That is you, Perry.

Je les ai rejoints pour leur dire au revoir, et le visage de Gatsby reflétait de nouveau une stupeur éperdue, comme s'il mettait en doute l'essence même de ce bonheur trop neuf. Près de cinq ans! Et par moments peut-être au cours de cette après-midi Daisy s'était-elle montrée inférieure à ses rêves — mais elle n'était pas fautive. Cela tenait à la colossale vigueur de son aptitude à rêver. Il l'avait projetée au-delà de Daisy, au-delà de tout. Il s'y était voué lui-même avec une passion d'inventeur, modifiant, amplifiant, décorant ses chimères de la moindre parure scintillante qui passait à sa portée. Ni le feu ni la glace ne sauraient atteindre en intensité ce qu'enferme un homme dans les illusions de son cœur.

In the imaginative movement which prompts the impulse to draw repeats implicitly the same pattern...there is a symbiotic desire to get closer and closer, to enter the self of what is being drawn, and, simultaneously, there is the foreknowledge of immanent distance. Such drawings aspire to be both a secret rendezvous and a au-revoir! Alternately and at infinitum.

La fenêtre est ouverte et la brise de juin agite doucement l'ourlet des rideaux de dentelle. Une légère odeur de marée flotte dans l'air. Je sens le sable du rivage entre mes doigts. Je m'éloigne de la table, m'approche d'Oshima et le serre fort contre moi. Le contact de son corps mince éveille déjà en moi une terrible nostalgie. Il me caresse doucement les cheveux. - Le monde est une métaphore, Kafka Tamura, dit-il à mon oreille. Mais pour toi et moi, seule cette bibliothèque n'est pas une métaphore. Aussi loin qu'on aille ... elle reste tout simplement cette bibliothèque. - Naturellement, dis-je. - C'est une bibliothèque unique, speciale et tres solide. Rien d'autre ne peut prendre sa place. Je hoche la tête. - Au revoir, Kafka Tamura. - Au revoir, Oshima-san. Vous avez une belle cravate, vous savez. Il s'écarte de moi, me regarde bien en face en souriant. - Je me demandais si tu allais m'en faire la remarque.

—Madame, répliqua le comte en lui prenant les deux mains, tout ce que vous me diriez ne vaudra jamais ce que je lis dans vos yeux, ce que votre cœur a pensé, ce que le mien a ressenti. Comme les bienfaiteurs de roman, j'eusse dû partir sans vous revoir; mais cette vertu était au-dessus de mes forces, parce que je suis un homme faible et vaniteux, parce que le regard humide, joyeux et tendre de mes semblables me fait du bien. Maintenant je pars, et je pousse l'égoïsme jusqu'à vous dire: Ne m'oubliez pas, mes amis, car probablement vous ne me reverrez jamais.

Je me dis : si tu dois parler, parle, et viens-en immédiatement au fait, sans points de suspension. Du coup, lorsque des dialogues en réclament – car c’est surtout là qu’ils s’imposent –, je fais tout mon possible pour les éviter et, si je n’y parviens vraiment pas, je préfère les réduire de trois à un, interrompant brusquement le discours. Je privilégie « j’aimerais te revoir, mais. » plutôt que « j’aimerais te revoir, mais… ». Il faut payer le prix d’une phrase tronquée et supporter sa laideur si l’on veut apprendre à aller toujours, au moins avec les mots, droit au but.

J’ai une très grande expérience des séparations, je sais mieux que personne leur danger : quitter quelqu’un en se promettant qu’on va se revoir, cela présage les choses les plus graves. Le cas le plus fréquent, c’est qu’on ne revoit pas l’individu en question. Et ce n’est pas la pire éventualité. La pire consiste à revoir la personne et à ne pas la reconnaître, soit qu’elle ait réellement beaucoup changé, soit qu’on lui découvre alors un aspect incroyablement déplaisant qui devait exister déjà mais sur lequel on avait réussi à s’aveugler, au nom de cette étrange forme d’amour si mystérieuse, si dangereuse et dont l’enjeu échappe toujours : l’amitié.

Je m'appelle Gaëlle, j'ai trente-quatre ans, j'ai un gros cul, je suis assistante dans la com', je m'éclate dans mon boulot, je suis super-pro et je ne supporte pas les incompétents. Tous les matins, je prends mon métro à Ledru-Rollin, je lis les gratuits, je me sape chez Zadig & Voltaire, je fais des régimes au printemps, je vote à gauche ou à droite, ça dépend, j'ai les pieds bien sur terre, j'aime pas revoir mes ex, le passé c'est le passé, j'aime pas trop le théâtre, je préfère le ciné, je m'engueule souvent avec ma mère, je me pose pas trop de questions, j'aime pas les gens prise de tête, je lis les bouquins d'Amélie Nothomb et la Star Ac', ça me fait marrer.

I dreamed about you sometimes. In my dreams we were walking down Tenth Avenue together in the dark. You hadn’t been shot after all, and we were both all right. I asked you if you were done, and you said yes, it was finished. In my dreams the streetlights all went off as we walked past them, but I could still see perfectly clearly to the corner. There was heat and light pouring out of you like a lantern, shining down the sidewalk in front of us, filling the intersection with amazing white light. When I reached for your hand you let me keep it there and smiled. You kissed me one more time. In my dreams I always knew that meant that I was about to wake up. The light spilling out of your face and eyes and skin blazed up higher, and you said you had to go. You said it had to be this way. You said you were a goddess of fire. Life went on. It always did, and that summer was no exception.

I’m not helping you kill anybody else. It’s just not happening. I’m done.”“What makes you think you have a choice?”“You know why? I’ll tell you. Because we were just kissing in the street, and deep down, I don’t believe you could actually blow up my house or kill my sister. I just don’t, and she’s probably not even in the house anymore anyway, so if you want to go in there and shoot somebody, fine, but you’re on your own.”Gobi paused, seeming to consider all of this. “What is it that you want to hear from me, Perry? Do you want me to tell you that these are bad people that I am killing tonight? Because they are. They are very bad people. They deserve to die, each and every one of them.”“Nobody deserves to die.”“Oh, really?”“Okay, I mean, maybe people like Hitler and Pol Pot . . . dictators, tyrants, African warlords who starve their people into submission . . . but that guy at the bar wasn’t an evil man.”“How do you know? Because he had drinks with Hemingway?”“I just know.

JEANNE ENDORMIE. -- I LA SIESTE Elle fait au milieu du jour son petit somme; Car l'enfant a besoin du rêve plus que l'homme, Cette terre est si laide alors qu'on vient du ciel ! L'enfant cherche à revoir Chérubin, Ariel, Ses camarades, Puck, Titania, les fées, Et ses mains quand il dort sont par Dieu réchauffées. Oh ! comme nous serions surpris si nous voyions, Au fond de ce sommeil sacré, plein de rayons, Ces paradis ouverts dans l'ombre, et ces passages D'étoiles qui font signe aux enfants d'être sages, Ces apparitions, ces éblouissements ! Donc, à l'heure où les feux du soleil sont calmants, Quand toute la nature écoute et se recueille, Vers midi, quand les nids se taisent, quand la feuille La plus tremblante oublie un instant de frémir, Jeanne a cette habitude aimable de dormir; Et la mère un moment respire et se repose, Car on se lasse, même à servir une rose. Ses beaux petits pieds nus dont le pas est peu sûr Dorment; et son berceau, qu'entoure un vague azur Ainsi qu'une auréole entoure une immortelle, Semble un nuage fait avec de la dentelle; On croit, en la voyant dans ce frais berceau-là, Voir une lueur rose au fond d'un falbala; On la contemple, on rit, on sent fuir la tristesse, Et c'est un astre, ayant de plus la petitesse; L'ombre, amoureuse d'elle, a l'air de l'adorer; Le vent retient son souffle et n'ose respirer. Soudain, dans l'humble et chaste alcôve maternelle, Versant tout le matin qu'elle a dans sa prunelle, Elle ouvre la paupière, étend un bras charmant, Agite un pied, puis l'autre, et, si divinement Que des fronts dans l'azur se penchent pour l'entendre, Elle gazouille...-Alors, de sa voix la plus tendre, Couvrant des yeux l'enfant que Dieu fait rayonner, Cherchant le plus doux nom qu'elle puisse donner À sa joie, à son ange en fleur, à sa chimère: -Te voilà réveillée, horreur ! lui dit sa mère.

Exactly. Au revoir!" Whittington

Doit-on s’infliger à ce point de sortir d’une vie ? Doit on autant fuir pour chercher ailleurs un moyen de panser ses blessures, de souffler, s’introspecter ? N’y avait-il aucune autre voie possible au delà de cette absence terrible qui lui tordait le ventre de douleur, aucun autre chemin que de voir soudainement disparaître de son existence cette présence qui l’avait accompagné le temps d’une balade qu’ils avaient effectuée à deux ? Si l’absence semblait le seul remède, force lui était de constater qu’elle ne laissait dans on esprit qu’un goût amer qui lui écorchait les lèvres. Et son image dansait dans sa tête, le torturant à chaque instant, amenant des larmes dans le creux de ses yeux, ce visage vers lequel il voulait tendre les doigts, qu’il voulait caresser, alors qu’il devait s’obliger à ne pas bouger et à rester interdit. Au delà des mots, c’était bien cette absence totale qui lui était la pire des tortures. Il aurait voulu tendre les bras, enserrer ce corps tant aimé, oublier un instant cette douleur sourde qui grondait en son coeur, fermer les yeux et revenir à ces quelques moments de pur bonheur qu’il avait pu ressentir alors que leurs deux corps étaient enlacés, si proches l’un de l’autre, dans une communion qui allait au delà des mots. A ce moment même avant les mots, avant ces phrases blessantes, avant sa décision. Mais il devait se résoudre à laisser partir ce visage tant aimé, à le voir se fondre dans cet océan inconnu du temps qui, disait-on, était capable de tout soigner. Et pourtant chaque jour l’absence le mordait, plus durement que l’eau salée sur une blessure, plus cruellement que la mort. La mort c’était savoir qu’il n’y avait pas d’espoir de se revoir, aucun espoir de se croiser, l’absence au contraire était ô combien plus cruelle. L’absence c’était savoir l’autre proche, c’était savoir qu’il continuait sa vie loin de soi, que vos chemins se séparaient désormais et adoptaient une trajectoire différente. C’était savoir que l’autre deviendrait peu à peu un inconnu, une ombre du passé. C’était risquer de se recroiser et de voir ces plaies se rouvrir sans que rien jamais ne puisse les soigner. Oui, décidément l’absence était bien pire que tout.

véritable danger pour le militaire, ce n’est pas l’ennemi, mais la hiérarchie.

J'ai eu l'occasion, au Caire, de revoir Allal el Fassi, homme noble, poète délicat, que notre grande presse traite de "fou furieux" parce qu'il est le chef de l'Istiqlal marocain. Il m'avait dit qu'il était à l'hôpital à la Mubarra Muhammad Aly, au vieux Caire. J'y suis allé le voir le 20 janvier. Il avait envoyé le matin même, je ne le savais pas, un télégramme au Pape. Il faut être un musulman très éloigné de la mentalité occidentale pour espérer quelque résultat d'un télégramme pareil. [L'Occident devant l'Orient. Primauté d'une solution culturelle. In: Politique étrangère, n°2 - 1952 - 17ᵉannée. pp. 13-28]

Whatever happens, I hope you get everything that you want out of life. You deserve it.” “Well,”I said, turning away, “thanks.” “I mean it, Perry. What happened tonight was not easy, but it had to be done. I could not have done it without you.

After what happened with Valerie “Santamaria” Statham, I had expected his stress level to go through the roof, but true to his habit of surprising everybody, he tendered his resignation and just walked away “to pursue other opportunities".

I watched the scar starting to form on my knee. No matter how tan I got, it stayed white. Gradually, the dreams stopped. By late July, when I still hadn’t heard from Columbia, I assumed that I’d gone from the waitlist to the trash can. Didn’t bother me as much as I’d expected. I was in at Uconn and Trinity. I’d started to wonder if that was what I really wanted after all.

What is the matter, Perry? Do you feel exploited.?”“I liked you better when you were this geeky quiet exchange student.”“Well, perhaps I liked you better when you just shut your mouth and stared at my chest,”she said, “but we cannot always get what we want in this world.

A young man’s distractions are far more potent than an old man’s memories,’he told me. He said that in the end memory is a cheat and a lie and no substitute for what he called the real stuff, the stuff of life.

My conscious mind absorbed what my instincts had already realized: one of the girls was Gobi; the other was so similar that she could have been her twin. I couldn’t exactly say how I knew which was which; some nuance of the smile, a subtle glint of humor that the other, more earnest girl didn’t reveal. I held the photo directly up to my eyes, looking more closely. Both girls were wearing pendants around their necks. Half-hearts. I am Death.

Color had flushed back through her cheeks, and the metallic brightness in her swollen eyes wasn’t entirely rational, but it was alive, watchful.

In the end I was just a stupid rented prince in a stupid prom tuxedo and everything that had happened up until this moment had been a fairy-tale trail of bread crumbs leading through the woods of the night. That I had followed that trail blindly, reacting, responding, somehow thinking that I’d understood what was going on, only made me a bigger idiot than I thought I was before. “You must realize,”Gobi said. “Tonight was all for my sister. For her, I would have done anything.”She raised the machine pistol back in my direction. “Anything.” I swallowed. I think I nodded. “What if you’re wrong?” “I am not wrong.” “It’s a law office.” “A paragon of innocence.

This world’s a funny place and it only gets funnier the longer you live in it.

What’s your real name?” I asked. “Zusane,” she said. “Zusane Zaksauskas. But now I am Gobija, goddess of fire.

Listen to yourself,”Dad said. “You’re about to burst into tears. Stop this nonsense right now.” “Get your hands off me, I said!" When his hand reached for me again, I punched him in the mouth. Dad took a step back, blinking at me and touching his lip, staring at the blood that his only son had somehow drawn. He looked more startled than hurt or even angry. It was the expression of a man who’d just been informed that, effective immediately, up was down and black was white. Neither of us said a word. “Two things,”I said. “First, when I get back to school I’m joining the swim team again. Second, if you ever cheat on Mom again and I find out, I’m going to beat the living shit out of you.” Dad’s high forehead creased with the tiniest of frowns. “Are you still on that?” “You lied to us.” “You don’t know the details.” “I know I can’t trust you,”I said. “What else do I need to know?” “I don’t know, Perry. I don’t know who you are anymore.” “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.

For nine months I see things in your home, Mr. Stormaire, and I watch how you treat your son. I see that you want the best for him, but you have crushed his spirit with your expectations, and you have discouraged him with your restrictions. Family is important, but it is not immune to the indifference of a cold-hearted parent.”“I see,”my dad said. “And you’re an expert on this, are you, Gobi? On my family?”“I know that the man who does not put his family first places his own soul at peril. I have been watching and listening. And while that may not make me an expert, I would say that I know what I am speaking of.

Courage has been described as “grace under pressure".

She shook her head, gazing at me with a mixture of exasperation and annoyance. “I understand now why you never have a girlfriend, Perry.”“What? I’ve had a girlfriend! What’s that got to do with anything?”“You do not know how to listen to a woman

Teardrop Tattoo locked eyes with me, and I saw my own death reflected there. It was not heroic or meaningful or even particularly interesting, just bloody, painful, awkward, and agonizing.

At first I didn’t think I’d even be able to play—I had way too much going on in my mind—but to my profound surprise, my fingers didn’t seem to care. Apparently if you wanted to rock, it didn’t matter if you had explosives in the basement, or a father with a chronic problem with keeping his dick in his pants, or a crazed ex-Blackwater employee with some religious conviction for ripping your head off. Hell, it might have helped.

Damn it, talk to me. Who are you?”Now she looked back at me, her green eyes full and hard and very bright. “I am Death.”I felt an inward shudder pass over me, a reflexive tremor of dread. The first time I tried to speak, my throat was too dry and I had to swallow twice just to get enough moisture to form words. “What’s that supposed to mean?”“You are in no position to question me, Perry.”Her voice was brittle. “You must think of your family.”“Believe me, I am.”“Then for now at least, you will do as I say.”I thought about my little sister, alone in the house and frightened, and the two men with cropped military haircuts, how they had come after us downtown, and my fear crackled up into a sharp orange flame of fury. “You should never have brought my family into this. You had no right to do that.”“I did what was necessary.”“Putting Annie’s life in danger? How does that help the plan?”“It was an insurance policy, nothing more. Everything else is just a cover.”“What about when we were dancing?”I said. “Was that just part of the cover too?”She turned back to the window, the lights of the city playing across our faces as the cab cut through the night. “Gobi.”But she didn’t look over again.

I put down the stack of pages and turned around to face him directly, just as he’d always taught me to do once I realized I was in for a fight.

Her shoulders shuddered. I realized she had begun to cry. The tears ran down her face, trickling in with the blood over the bruises. “My sister was brought to this country as a slave,”she said. “She spent the final months of her life being treated like a piece of meat until finally a rich man paid to see a girl get her throat slit. The indignity of such a thing is beyond imagination.”She drew in a watery breath. “Unless I took care of it personally, I knew that I would never feel like her honor had been avenged.

She walked past the TV, the smoky blue light illuminating the sharp planes of her face, and I saw that her eyes had the dazed, insomniac glassiness of a long-term drug user or someone who’d been abused so long that she’d ceased to feel anything at all.

The faithless husband poisons his family at the roots.

My voice felt dead, even to me, like somebody talking in his sleep.

I seduced my admissions officer.”“Wonderful.”“She seemed to think so.”“She?”Gobi reached over and squeezed my thigh. “Does that excite you?”“No.”“You must learn to adapt, Perry. Improvise. Go with the flow.

It is safer with me.”“Forget it,”I said. “I’m still not going in.”“Then you are being very stupid.”“I got twenty-two hundred on my SATs,”I said. “How stupid is that?”“Stupid enough not to realize when someone cares about you.”“Meaning what, exactly?”She looked at me. “What do you think it means?

Party guests, the very rich and their friends, had broken off into special little subcommittees of twos and threes. I saw a couple kissing on a Persian rug next to a coffee table full of red plastic cups, having reached a moment of perfect invisibility. Nobody cared that they were there. The party had reached the point at which the rules weren’t in effect anymore.

You are very bold,” he said, gripping her hand. “We will see how bold you are when I rip your nails out.” “Go ahead,” she said. “I feel nothing. I am already dead.” Now Slavin’s grin became real again. Real and hungry.

If you knew it was there, why didn’t you just take it before now?” “You would have noticed. You are a smart boy.” A lie, and we both knew it.

I d-duh-don’t know wh-why you even b-buh -bother b-buh-because in s-six y-yuh-years y-you’re g-guh-going to be j-juh-just l-like—”“Don’t say that.”Something inside me went cold. “I’m never going to be like him.

You should not be afraid of a little blood,” Gobi said. “Life is full of it.

Men are swine.”“Not all of us

Keeping the gun pointed at her, I flipped the safety off. All at once I could hear the noise of the city, the traffic pulsing on the expressway, the subways roaring under the sidewalks, millions of people out talking and driving around, living their lives. I smelled coffee and cigarettes and perfume and wet trees, tasted it in the air. It was all incredibly alive, like my heart and lungs working on overload, resonating in my chest and pounding through my skull.

You should consider traveling, spending some time seeing the world. It’s best when you’re young.

I got the sense that she was wired into the night itself, aware of every fluctuation of electricity and sound, the reflections in glass and steel.

Gobi jammed something hard into my spine, an elbow or a dagger or the barrel of a gun, and I sat down heavily, still feeling the old man’s eyes on me. They were as brown as chestnuts, searching and soulful, with the depth of those of someone who’d lost something close to him and had never quite allowed himself to get over it.

Now it was brisk and didactic, like that of an obedience instructor training an obstinant dog, and I hated him for it, the hate momentarily eclipsing all fear and reason.

The face was bulbous and pink and hairless, utterly unremarkable, a Sunday school teacher’s face, and that was the most unsettling part of it. Although he was probably my dad’s age or older, the slack, anonymous complexion and dead eyes made it impossible to exactly pinpoint his age. He could have been a wax statue, a young actor made up to look old, or an amateurishly embalmed corpse.

Everyone warned me against continuing my investigation,”Gobi continued. “They said the people I was going up against were too powerful. I did not care. They said I would die. Again, I did not care. I knew that my life would mean nothing if I did not come back to avenge my sister’s honor. But by the time I was able to pinpoint who had taken her here, it was too late. She had died.” I tried to say something, but my throat was too dry. For a second I couldn’t even swallow. My chest felt so tight that it ached, and I thought if I didn’t say something, or at least try to, I was going to explode.

New York was still here, but it had changed in our absence. It was long after midnight, and vast walls of fog off the river shimmered along the sidewalks like the ghosts of tenements that had long ago been leveled to make way for the parking garages and office buildings. It was a spectral Manhattan, a double-exposed landscape where the past folded back over on itself in overlapping decades.

I thought about Gobi and her sister and the way it had all come unraveled. I thought about my dad. When you’re young, you think your father can do anything. Unless he was this severely abusive person and beat you or got drunk and smashed things, you probably worshiped him. At least most of the guys I knew were like that. They might not have used those exact words, but they all have some cherished memory of something they did with their father, even if it was just a shiny, far-off moment. I remembered being eight years old and making a Pinewood Derby car for Boy Scouts. Dad had brought out a gleaming red Craftsman toolbox that I had never seen before and helped me carve the car out of a block of wood, and we sat at the kitchen table painting it silver and blue with red flames up the side. I drank Pepsi and he sipped a beer. When we finished, the car didn’t weigh enough, so we put lead weights in the bottom and sprayed lubricant on the wheels until it rolled freely from one side of the table to the other. I won third place, and he said, “I’m proud of you.” I remembered going fishing with him up in Maine, taking a little motorboat out across the foggy lake until it was too dark to see our bobbers. I remembered him teaching me how to tie a necktie on the morning of my cousin’s wedding. I remembered seeing him in the stands at my first junior high swimming tournament, standing next to my mom and cheering. I remembered waking up very early in the morning and hearing him downstairs making coffee before slipping out to work. I remembered the first time I ever heard him swear.

You do not know me, Perry.”“No, I guess not.”“Perhaps by the end of the evening you will.”I looked at her. What was that supposed to mean? Ever since her comment about blood, I realized I’d been thinking about Sissy Spacek in Carrie, the high school loser in her homemade prom dress, drenched in pig blood, unleashing a firestorm of psychokinetic destruction on the high school gym ... The distress must have shown on my face, because for the first time ever, Gobi actually laughed. Her eyes sparkled, a bright and glinting green behind her glasses, and for an instant the light transformed her entire face—the bland, expressionless mask slipped away to reveal an actual girl underneath: feminine, uninhibited, spontaneous, and alive. It occurred to me that I might have been missing something this whole time.

I could already hear the music inside, the murmur of people, kids I’d gone to school with for the last twelve years, dressed up and pretending to be the adults we’d all eventually turn into, whether we wanted to or not.

Sartre said “Hell is other people,” while Streisand sang “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.

She wasn’t invisible anymore. She’d stepped dead-bang into the spotlight, and she’d painted a big bull’s-eye on her head.

It was impossible to tell what was going through her mind, but she seemed more weirdly here, alive and in her element, than she’d ever been while trudging the halls of Upper Thayer with her books under her arms, or sitting at our dining room table.

I need to fix my makeup.”I realized she probably just wanted a chance to compose herself. Maybe she just wanted to slip away completely. After what just happened, I couldn’t blame her. Hell, maybe I’d get lucky and we could end this whole thing now.

I would simply crush his windpipe so he could say no more offensive things to women.

She was smiling at me again, the way she had when we’d first arrived at the prom, but now more challenging, not quite playful. “I see you, the way he talks to you. He runs your life.”Her voice dropped into a cruelly accurate imitation of my dad’s stentorian tone. “Perry, you need to work harder. This is not acceptable. You will never get into Columbia with grades like these. How will you succeed in life?”I felt my internal temperature rise past my lips, cheeks, and forehead. “That’s not true.”“He tells you to do something, you do it. You spend your whole life afraid you will somehow disappoint him. And that is no way to live.”“Look,”I said, “I’m sorry, but you don’t know me that well. I mean, maybe you’ve lived in our house for a while, but you don’t know anything about how it really is with us.

Maybe not to you, but it matters to me.”“That is not what I mean.”She turned to face me. “I saw you with your father at that club. All he has to do is tell you to stop, and just like that you give up your dreams, like poof, like they were nothing.”“We were good up there.”Gobi smiled at me. She had the strangest way of doing that at odd moments. “You were better than good, Perry. You were great.”“Thanks.”“It is just a pity that you cannot stand up for what you love.”“What, like killing people for money?”Gobi stiffened. A flat, dispassionate mask clamped over her face, and her voice went flat.