Falling Down Movie Quotes

Wow,” Kylie muttered, and grinned. “Yeah, wow.” Della leaned in closer. “I think Perry just grew a pair.” Kylie bit down on her lip to keep from laughing. “If this was a movie, there would be some music playing in the background.” “I could sing,” Della chuckled. “And ruin it,” Kylie teased back. “I’ve heard you singing in the shower.” Both grinning, they looked back at the kissing couple.

I remember I once saw this old movie...; in it the main character was talking about how sad it is that the last time you have sex you don't know it's the last time. Since I've never even had a first time, I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm guessing it's like that for most things in life--the last kiss, the last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler or eat an ice-cream cone, or stick your tongue out to catch a snowflake. You just don't know. But I think that's a good thing, really, because if you did know it would be almost impossible to let go. When you do know, it's like being asked to step off the edge of a cliff: all you want to do is get down on your hands and knees and kiss the solid ground, smell it, hold on to it.

if they make me watch that movie one more time, I will fall down on my knees and beg for mercy

You know I want you. You know all this foreplay is in hope that one day I get to lay you down and love you. I think about it at least ten times a day, every day. I'm jealous as fuck of every feeling you have for Evan. I want you to tell him once and for all you're with me and never leave my arms, my life or my bed again. But for now, I'll settle for watching a movie and falling asleep with you in my arms.

People who can lay their heads down and fall asleep with ease don’t understand the struggle or how bad those of us who can’t wish we could. They don’t know what it’s like to lay awake at night and replay minutes of your life, wondering what you could or should have done differently. Or how you could be better at something or fearing what comes next. Sometimes it’s even as simple as playing a movie back in your head, anything to fill the hours.

Before I could respond, Wes took a handful of my waistband and wrapped it around his hand, pulling it higher so my belly was entirely covered. “Liz’s clothes are falling off, so it’s time for us to leave.” I froze when I felt Wes’s hand on my skin. I looked at his face as he looked down at me, and I felt… off-kilter. I wasn’t sure if it was in response to his touch or his sudden cavemannish protectiveness. I also wasn’t sure why it wasn’t pissing me off.

Make it riveting! Make every scene sizzle! When it comes time to watch the movie of your life, may tears run down your face, may you scream with laughter and cringe with embarrassment. But for Goddess’s sake, do not let your life story be one that’s so dull you fall asleep during the viewing.

Kiowa who saw it happen said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something-Just Boom-then down. Not like in the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle-not like that. Kiowa said. The bastard just flat fuck fell. Boom down. Nothing else.

Cam has done what I've been trying to do for a year. He woke you up." Cam pulled back, smirking at her. "That's a little cheesy, Joss." It was like he'd told her she'd stepped in dog poo. Her nose wrinkled and she shuddered, a look of absolute self-disgust falling over her pretty features. "I have got to stop letting Ellie choose what we watch on movie night. It's causing me to acclimatize to heartfelt emotion.

Movie directors often shoot funerals in the rain. The mourners stand in their dark suits under large black umbrellas, the kind you never have handy in real life, while the rain falls symbolically all around them, on grass and tombstones and the roods of cars, generating atmostphere. What they don't show you is how the legs of your suit caked with grass clippings, cling soaked to your shins, how even under umbrellas the rain still manages to find your scalp, running down your skull and past your collar like wet slugs, so that while you're supposed to be meditating on the deceased, instead you're mentally tracking the trickle of water as it slides down your back. The movies don't convey how the soaked, muddy ground will swallow up the dress shoes of the pallbearers like quicksand, how the water, seeping into the pine coffin, will release the smell of death and decay, how the large mound of dirt meant to fill the grave will be transformed into an oozing pile of sludge that will splater with each stab of the shovel and land on the coffin with an audible splat. And instead of a slow and dignified farewell, everyone just wants to get the deceased into the ground and get the hell back into their cars.

It was Valentine's Day and I had spent the day in bed with my life partner, Ketel One. The two of us watched a romance movie marathon on TBS Superstation that made me wonder how people who write romantic comedies can sleep at night. At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall all-the-time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer. Then, within the two hour time frame of the movie, the couple meet, fall in love, fall out of love, break up, and then just before the end of the movie, they happen to bump into each other by "coincidence" somewhere absolutely absurd, like by the river. This never happens in real life. The last time I bumped into an ex-boyfriend was at three o'clock in the morning at Rite Aid. I was ringing up Gas-X and corn removers.

It is lonely behind these boundaries. Some people-particularly those whom psychiatrists call schizoid-because of unpleasant, traumatizing experiences in childhood, perceive the world outside of themselves as unredeemably dangerous, hostile, confusing and unnurturing. Such people feel their boundaries to be protecting and comforting and find a sense of safety in their loneliness. But most of us feel our loneliness to be painful and yearn to escape from behind the walls of our individual identities to a condition in which we can be more unified with the world outside of ourselves. The experience of falling in love allows us this escapetemporarily. The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual's ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself from oneself, the explosive pouring out of oneself into the beloved, and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of ego boundaries is experienced by most of us as ecstatic. We and our beloved are one! Loneliness is no more! In some respects (but certainly not in all) the act of falling in love is an act of regression. The experience of merging with the loved one has in it echoes from the time when we were merged with our mothers in infancy. Along with the merging we also reexperience the sense of omnipotence which we had to give up in our journey out of childhood. All things seem possible! United with our beloved we feel we can conquer all obstacles. We believe that the strength of our love will cause the forces of opposition to bow down in submission and melt away into the darkness. All problems will be overcome. The future will be all light. The unreality of these feelings when we have fallen in love is essentially the same as the unreality of the two-year-old who feels itself to be king of the family and the world with power unlimited. Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old's fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living, individual will reasserts itself. He wants to have sex; she doesn't. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn't. He wants to put money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn't like his friends; he doesn't like hers. So both of them, in the privacy of their hearts, begin to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing different from the other's. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving.

Look, people go on and on about how size isn’t everything, and how the bigger they are, the harder they fall, but the people who say that probably haven’t ever faced down a charging demon-bear so big it should have been on a drive-in movie screen.

Richards remembered the day - that glorious and terrible day - watching the planes slam into the towers, the image repeated in endless loops. The fireballs, the bodies falling, the liquefaction of a billion tons of steel and concrete, the pillowing clouds of dust. The money shot of the new millennium, the ultimate reality show broadcast 24-7. Richards had been in Jakarta when it happened, he couldn't even remember why. He'd thought it right then; no, he'd felt it, right down to his bones. A pure, unflinching rightness. You had to give the military something to do of course, or they'd all just fucking shoot each other. But from that day forward, the old way of doing things was over. The war - the real war, the one that had been going on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand thousand more - the war between Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your gods, whoever you are - would be fought by men like Richards: men with faces you didn't notice and couldn't remember, dressed as busboys or cab drivers or mailmen, with silencers tucked up their sleeves. It would be fought by young mothers pushing ten pounds of C-4 in baby strollers and schoolgirls boarding subways with vials of sarin hidden in their Hello Kitty backpacks. It would be fought out of the beds of pickup trucks and blandly anonymous hotel rooms near airports and mountain caves near nothing at all; it would be waged on train platforms and cruise ships, in malls and movie theaters and mosques, in country and in city, in darkness and by day. It would be fought in the name of Allah or Kurdish nationalism or Jews for Jesus or the New York Yankees - the subjects hadn't changed, they never would, all coming down, after you'd boiled away the bullshit, to somebody's quarterly earnings report and who got to sit where - but now the war was everywhere, metastasizing like a million maniac cells run amok across the planet, and everyone was in it.

Straining to hear, I can make out something acoustic. Coming from...the backyard? I glance down from my bedroom window and feel my jaw fall open. Matt Finch is standing below my window, guitar strapped across his chest. I pull my window up, and I expect the song from that old movie - the one about a guy with a trench coat and the big radio and his heart on his sleeve. But it's not that. It's not anything I recognise, and I strain to make out the lyrics: Stop being ridiculous, stop being ridiculous, Reagan. What an asshole. The mesh screen and two floors between us don't seem like enough to protect him from my anger. "Nice apology," I call down to him. "I've apologised thirteen times," he yells back, "and so far you haven't called me back." I open my mouth to say it doesn't matter, but he's already redirecting the song. "Now I'm gonna stand here until you forgive me," he sings loudly, "or at least until you hear me out, la-la, oh-la-la. I drove seven hours overnight, and I won't leave until you come out here." (...) "This is private property!" My throat feel coarse from how loudly I'm yelling. "And that doesn't even rhyme!" The guitar chord continues as he sings, "Then call the cops, call the cops, call the cops..." I storm downstairs, my feet pounding against the staircase. When I turn the corner, my dad looks almost amused from his seat in the recliner. Noticing my expression, he stares back at his newspaper, as if I won't notice him. (...) "Dad. How did Matt know which window was mine?" "Well..." he peeks over the sports section. "I reckon I told him." "You talked to him?" My voice is no longer a voice. It's a shriek. "God, Dad!" He juts out his chin, defensive. "How was I supposed to know you had some sort of drama with him? He shows up, lookin' to serenade my daughter. Thought it seemed innocent enough. Sweet, even. Old-fashioned." "It's not any of those things! I hate him!

People who can lay their heads down and fall asleep with ease don’t understand the struggle or how bad those of us who can’t wish we could. They don’t know what it’s like to lay awake at night and replay minutes of your life, wondering what you could or should have done differently. Or how you could be better at something or fearing what comes next. Sometimes it’s even as simple as playing a movie back in your head, anything to fill the hours.

Horkman and I are on one side of the ravine, holding our guns over our heads. The Cubans are on the other side, going nuts, shouting "YI-YI-YI" ready to go kick some ass. In a movie, the next scene, we're all charging into battle. But what actually happened was, first, Horkman and I climb down our side of the ravine, which was hard because those guns are a lot heavier than they look, plus it is really steep. We both kept dropping the guns and falling down, so we ended up mostly sliding on our butts, which took awhile. The Cubans tried to keep cheering, but after a while they realized they'd better pace themselves. Like every twenty seconds or so, one of them would yell "YI-YI-YI!" But you could tell they were losing the mood.

It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool. The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens, no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators. It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It so happens I am sick of being a man. Still it would be marvelous to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily, or kill a nun with a blow on the ear. It would be great to go through the streets with a green knife letting out yells until I died of the cold. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, going on down, into the moist guts of the earth, taking in and thinking, eating every day. I don't want so much misery. I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb, alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, half frozen, dying of grief. That's why Monday, when it sees me coming with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline, and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel, and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night. And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses, into hospitals where the bones fly out the window, into shoeshops that smell like vinegar, and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin. There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines hanging over the doors of houses that I hate, and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror, there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords. I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything, I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops, and courtyards with washing hanging from the line: underwear, towels and shirts from which slow dirty tears are falling

When it comes time to watch the movie of your life, may tears run down your face, may you scream with laughter and cringe with embarrassment. But for Goddess’s sake, do not let your life story be one that’s so dull you fall asleep during the viewing.

But something about the interesting plot bothered me: one of the major rules that Wes had established on A Nightmare on Elm Street had been broken - Freddy was taken out of the dreams. In Nightmare 2, Freddy would be allowed to manifest outside of the dreamscape. It didn’t hurt the quality of the script, but it messed up the continuity. On the plus side, I thought the bisexual-slash-homoerotic subtext was edgy and contemporary, and I appreciated how the plot investigated both the social-class system and the rise of suburban malaise. This may sound pretentious and over-analytical, but I believe that Freddy represented what looked to be a bad future for the post-boomer generation. It’s possible that Wes believed the youth of America were about to fall into a pile of shit - virtually all the parents in the Nightmare movies were flawed, so how could these kids turn out safe and sane? - and he might have created Freddy to represent a less-than-bright future.

In 2012, I turned fifty-six. Hugh and his longtime girlfriend took me out to dinner. On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore—probably you’ve heard it—about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old. When I was a teenager, I looked at over-fifties with pity and unease: they walked too slow, they talked too slow, they watched TV instead of going out to movies and concerts, their idea of a great party was hotpot with the neighbors and tucked into bed after the eleven o’clock news. But—like most other fifty-, sixty-, and seventysomethings who are in relative good health—I didn’t mind it so much when my turn came. Because the brain doesn’t age, although its ideas about the world may harden and there’s a greater tendency to run off at the mouth about how things were in the good old days. (I was spared that, at least, because most of my so-called good old days had been spent as a full-bore, straight-on-for-Texas drug addict.) I think for most people, life’s deceptive deliriums begin to fall away after fifty. The days speed up, the aches multiply, and your gait slows down, but there are compensations. In calmness comes appreciation, and—in my case—a determination to be as much of a do-right-daddy as possible in the time I had left. That meant ladling out soup once a week at a homeless shelter in Boulder, and working for three or four political candidates with the radical idea that Colorado should not be paved over.

In the front seats, Eva and Petya argued over the ending of an Australian horror movie. Eva was winning, speaking with more conviction; Petya kept falling silent as he navigated around potholes in the road. The next time he downshifted, Eva turned in her seat to make her case to Marina. “The end of it is a fantasy, like a dream sequence, don’t you agree?” “I didn’t see the movie,” Marina said. Eva pursed her lips. “From what you heard us describe, though. Doesn’t it seem most likely that it’s a fantasy?” Marina shook her head. “I don’t know.” That familiar pressure began to come down on her chest. Petya, bringing the car back up to speed, glanced at his wife. “She hasn’t seen it. Leave her alone.

There was a movie theater here once. It played silent films. It was like watching the world through dark glasses on a rainy evening. One night the piano player mysteriously disappeared. We were left with the storming sea that made no sound, and a beautiful woman on a long, empty bench whose tears rolled down silently as she watched me falling asleep in my mother's arms.

Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?" The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence. "I read your letter," said Stahr. The tone of the pleasant young headmaster was gone. He spoke as to an equal, but with a faint two-edged deference. "I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been very decent, but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two hacks you've teamed me with listen to what I say, but they spoil it--they seem to have a vocabulary of about a hundred words." "Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr. "I have. I sent you some." "But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting talk but nothing more." Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold Boxley in the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which had some relation to laughter but non to amusement, and said: "I don't think you people read things. The men are duelling when the conversation takes place. At the end one of them falls into a well and has to be hauled up in a bucket." He barked again and subsided. Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?" "What? Naturally not." "You'd consider it too cheap." "Movie standards are different," said Boxley, hedging. "Do you ever go to them?" "No--almost never." "Isn't it because people are always duelling and falling down wells?" Yes--and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and unnatural dialogue." "Skip the dialogue for a minute," said Stahr. "Granted your dialogue is more graceful than what these hacks can write--that's why we brought you out here. But let's imagine something that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping down a well.

Don’t be like this, okay, Lilith? Not with me.” I don’t know what he means. I shake my head, unable to speak, to say a fucking word, the tears falling faster, hot and wet down my face, buried against his chest. “Don’t try to pretend you’re okay when you’re not,” he says, his words rumbling from his chest, vibrating through me. “Don’t try to be so brave all the time, okay, baby? You don’t have to be. We got…” He stops for a second, and when he starts again, his voice is hoarse, nearly choked, so much emotion that he can barely get the words out. “We got fucked up, okay? We got fucked up, and you didn’t deserve it. You didn’t deserve any of it. And I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you. I’m so sorry you were here, so close to me, and I had no idea…I’m so fucking sorry. But you can fall apart with me, Lilith. Okay? You can fucking fall apart and I’ll put you back together, over and over and over again, scars and all.” He pulls away from me, spins me around, pulls me back to his chest, his arms wrapped around the front of me. “We’ll figure this all out, okay? Everything. When your memories come flooding back, tell me. Talk to me. And as for the other shit, you can meet Finn if you want, or if you don’t, that’s okay, too. And we’ll, ya know, go see a movie and go on a fucking date and do nice, normal things.

Back in the time before Columbus, there were only Indians here, no skyscrapers, no automobiles, no streets. Of course, we didn't use the words Indian or Native American then; we were just people. We didn't know we were supposedly drunks or lazy or savages. I wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries. We were told in movies and books that Indians had a sacred relationship with the land, that we worshipped and nurtured it. But staring at Nathan, I didn't feel any mystical bond with the rez. I hated our shitty unpaved roads and our falling-down houses and the snarling packs of dogs that roamed freely in the streets and alleys. But most of all, I hated that kids like Nathan - good kids, decent kids - got involved with drugs and crime and gangs, because there was nothing for them to do here. No after-school jobs, no clubs, no tennis lessons. Every month in the Lakota Times newspaper there was an obituary for another teen suicide, another family in the Burned Thigh Nation who'd had their heart taken away from them. In the old days, the eyapaha was the town crier, the person who would meet incoming warriors after a battle, ask them what happened so they wouldn't have to speak of their own glories, then tell the people the news. Now the eyapaha, our local newspaper, announced losses and harms too often, victories and triumphs too rarely.

With the flashlight to illuminate my way, I climbed the steep walls of the south canyon, got up on the highway streaming with cars Frisco-bound in the night, scrambled down the other side, almost falling, and came to the bottom of a ravine where a little farmhouse stood near a creek and where every blessed night the same dog barked at me. Then it was a fast walk along a silvery, dusty road beneath inky trees of California—a road like in The Mark of Zorro and a road like all the roads you see in Western B movies. I used to take out my gun and play cowboys in the dark.

A nice lady opens the door on Peachtree Street and she’s got one of those faces that feels familiar like you’ve known her all her life. She buys a bunch of colored paper for her daughter who likes to draw. You ask how old her daughter is and she is four years younger than you. You ask what school she went to and she says that she kept her at home. You see her daughter peek at you from the hall and you think that maybe she was born wrong too. You figure she has never left this house. And you want to get her out of it. The next week you ask the woman if you can visit with her daughter. She brings you down the hall and into the sun room where her daughter is drawing. She’s quiet for a while and then she looks up and tells you she likes to sit in here and watch the birds outside. The light falls in on her hair like beach sunshine in the movies. There’s plants growing all around her. It’s like a jungle and you sit in the wicker chair across from her and wait for her to talk to you, like she’s a magical animal behind all the vines and leaves. All you can figure is that she’s just very, very shy. You think maybe you would have been this way too if you didn’t grow up in such a loud family.

I'm living in a horror movie, all right. Only the horror doesn't have anything to do with necrophilia or black masses or crosses hung upside down, or with vampires who can't swim or zombies who work in sugar cane fields and can't stop shambling off cliffs when some guy with a jawbreaker accent says so, No, this is real life. It was running out all around him. the footprints of assassins and neo-fascists and government officials with secret closets full of tutus, private armies training in ships named after the wives of oilmen, of drunken presidents in bed with the mob and the cartels that slice up the world and stick FOR SALE signs on the pieces; while the real kings of earth lie moldering in their graves, their brains stolen away in the night and their bullet wounds altered to match storybook plots that would be laughed out of any preschool classroom. And all this while the billions sweat and grow old like the living dead, their lifeblood sucked dry by the takers of souls who need our labor to feed a hunger for power without end. The undead? What a cheapjack explanation for so much misery. There is more than enough to account for it all without falling back on the unnameable. It's already here. The trick is to see it and not flinch- there's no future in denial. It's as simple, and as enormous, as that. The truth, however bleak, was almost comforting.

The typical load was 25 rounds. But Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried 34 rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear. He was dead weight. There was no twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something - just boom, then down - not like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle - not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down.

You don’t seem to shock very easily.” I’m referring to our meeting in the hallway, when the redhead was grabbing my cock. “No, I don’t. My mom does porn, so…” She shrugs nonchalantly, dragging out her sentence. “You ain’t got nothin’ I haven’t ever seen in one of her movies.” The bombshell has my eyes bugging out of my skull and I practically leap out of my chair. “What!” A burst of laughter spills from her lips and before I know it, she’s sputtering. Falling out of her seat, waving her hands around, trying to calm herself. “Sit down, sit down, I’m kidding. Oh my god, you should see your face.” “You’re an asshole.” “So you keep saying.” The smirk returns. “It’s like looking in the mirror, isn’t it?

All that day we went about stunned – we, the small town of real people behind the corporate logo of a ringed blue planet spinning through starry space. In the studio's Corner Store, in small groups that met on the company streets and in a hundred offices, we pieced our own experiences together with what was coming to light in the media. The suspect: a deranged, 43-year-old drifter who two days earlier had allegedly killed three people in Albuquerque, NM. He had fled to California where for reasons unknown he had been trying to contact actor-producer Michael Landon on the day of the shootings. The employees he had approached had repeatedly turned him away, since Landon had no particular connection with our studio. But just after dark the man had come back to the main gate again. He had walked up to a young actress waiting for her ride after an audition, said "hello" to her and then stepped over to the guardhouse. "I heard a shot and looked up," a secretary who had been passing nearby told me. "I saw Jeren fall and heard him groan. And there was this guy in a gray jacket just standing over him, pointing down at him with a gun. Then he raised the gun and pointed it at the other guard and shot again, and I saw Armando fall out the other side of the guardhouse. For a split second – just because we're at a movie studio – I thought it must be a movie they were filming. But there weren't any lights or cameras, and I realized it was real, and I thought, ‘He's gonna come after us because we saw it!' So I ran. I felt I was running for my life.

Maybe I’m not cut out for monogamy,” G. had said to me early on. “Maybe I should just live in a room by myself and have girlfriends.” Another woman might have said, “Now, where did I put my coat?” Being a madly infatuated rationalist who had read her Simone de Beauvoir, I took a deep breath and carefully and calmly explained that of course he had to make up his own mind about how he wanted to live, and that I understood fidelity wasn’t for everyone, that some people could be perfectly happy without it, but I wanted to give my whole self in love and I couldn’t do that if I was being compared to other women on a daily basis (which I was) or if our relationship was only tentative and provisional (which it was). “Sweetie!” he said when I finished. “I love it that you can say how you feel without getting angry at me.” That other woman would have slammed the door behind her before he’d finished speaking. They say philanderers are attractive to women because of the thrill of the chase—you want to be the one to capture and tame that wild quarry. But what if a deeper truth is that women fall for such men because they want to be those men? Autonomous, in charge, making their own rules. Imagine that room G. spoke of, in which the women would come and go—is there not something attractive about it? Rain tapping softly on the tin ceiling, a desk, a lamp, a bed. A woman dashes up the narrow stairs, her raincoat flaring, her wet face lifted up like a flower. And then, the next day—maybe even the same day—different footsteps, another expectant face. I had to admit, it was an exciting scenario. You wouldn’t want to be one of the women trooping up and down the staircase, but you might want to be the man who lived in the room.

Here’s the thing, people: We have some serious problems. The lights are off. And it seems like that’s affecting the water flow in part of town. So, no baths or showers, okay? But the situation is that we think Caine is short of food, which means he’s not going to be able to hold out very long at the power plant.” “How long?” someone yelled. Sam shook his head. “I don’t know.” “Why can’t you get him to leave?” “Because I can’t, that’s why,” Sam snapped, letting some of his anger show. “Because I’m not Superman, all right? Look, he’s inside the plant. The walls are thick. He has guns, he has Jack, he has Drake, and he has his own powers. I can’t get him out of there without getting some of our people killed. Anybody want to volunteer for that?" Silence. “Yeah, I thought so. I can’t get you people to show up and pick melons, let alone throw down with Drake.” “That’s your job,” Zil said. “Oh, I see,” Sam said. The resentment he’d held in now came boiling to the surface. “It’s my job to pick the fruit, and collect the trash, and ration the food, and catch Hunter, and stop Caine, and settle every stupid little fight, and make sure kids get a visit from the Tooth Fairy. What’s your job, Zil? Oh, right: you spray hateful graffiti. Thanks for taking care of that, I don’t know how we’d ever manage without you.” “Sam…,” Astrid said, just loud enough for him to hear. A warning. Too late. He was going to say what needed saying. “And the rest of you. How many of you have done a single, lousy thing in the last two weeks aside from sitting around playing Xbox or watching movies? “Let me explain something to you people. I’m not your parents. I’m a fifteen-year-old kid. I’m a kid, just like all of you. I don’t happen to have any magic ability to make food suddenly appear. I can’t just snap my fingers and make all your problems go away. I’m just a kid.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam knew he had crossed the line. He had said the fateful words so many had used as an excuse before him. How many hundreds of times had he heard, “I’m just a kid.” But now he seemed unable to stop the words from tumbling out. “Look, I have an eighth-grade education. Just because I have powers doesn’t mean I’m Dumbledore or George Washington or Martin Luther King. Until all this happened I was just a B student. All I wanted to do was surf. I wanted to grow up to be Dru Adler or Kelly Slater, just, you know, a really good surfer.” The crowd was dead quiet now. Of course they were quiet, some still-functioning part of his mind thought bitterly, it’s entertaining watching someone melt down in public. “I’m doing the best I can,” Sam said. “I lost people today…I…I screwed up. I should have figured out Caine might go after the power plant.” Silence. “I’m doing the best I can.” No one said a word. Sam refused to meet Astrid’s eyes. If he saw pity there, he would fall apart completely. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.

Music centers you,” I whispered to an empty car, staring at his front door. “You listened to your iPod between classes and while you sat on the bleachers before school every morning.” I smiled, letting more tears run down my cheeks and thinking back to him and his black hoodies, looking so dark. “You love popcorn. Almost every kind and flavor but especially with Tabasco sauce,” I said, remembering the times he would come into the theater where I worked. “You hold the door open for women—students, teachers, and even old ladies coming out of Baskin-Robbins. You love movies about natural disasters, but they have to have some comedy in them. Your favorite one is Armageddon.” I swallowed and thought about how little I’d ever seen Jax truly smile. “And while you love computers, it’s not your passion,” I concluded. “You love being outdoors. You love having space.” My whole face hurt, the last words barely audible. “And you deserve someone who makes you happy. I’m just not that person.

I’m going to tell you something, there’s country poor, and there’s city poor. As much of my life as I’d spent in front of a TV thinking Oh, man, city’s where the money trees grow, I was seeing more to the picture now. I mean yes, that is where they all grow, but plenty of people are sitting in that shade with nothing falling on them. Chartrain was always discussing “hustle,” and it took me awhile to understand he grew up hungry for money like it was food. Because for him, they’re one and the same. Not to run the man down, but he wouldn’t know a cow from a steer, or which of them gave milk. No desperate men Chartrain ever knew went out and shot venison if they were hungry. They shot liquor store cashiers. Living in the big woods made of steel and cement, without cash, is a hungrier life than I knew how to think about. I made my peace with the place, but never went a day without feeling around for things that weren’t there, the way your tongue pushes into the holes where you’ve lost teeth. I don’t just mean cows, or apple trees, it runs deeper. Weather, for instance. Air, the way it smells from having live things breathing into it, grass and trees and I don’t know what, creatures of the soil. Sounds, I missed most of all. There was noise, but nothing behind it. I couldn’t get used to the blankness where there should have been bird gossip morning and evening, crickets at night, the buzz saw of cicadas in August. A rooster always sounding off somewhere, even dead in the middle of Jonesville. It’s like the movie background music. Notice it or don’t, but if the volume goes out, the movie has no heart. I’d oftentimes have to stop and ask myself what season it was. I never realized what was holding me to my place on the planet of earth: that soundtrack. That, and leaf colors and what’s blooming in the roadside ditches this week, wild sweet peas or purple ironweed or goldenrod. And stars. A sky as dark as sleep, not this hazy pinkish business, I’m saying blind man’s black. For a lot of us, that’s medicine. Required for the daily reboot.

How about something to drink. Coffee, tea, soda, water, scotch. Never too early for scotch. Violet, some scotch. Ice. I said ice. No ice, then. Me too. Always neat for me. Look at my view. No, not at the gardener. José! José! Got to pound on the glass to get his attention. He's half deaf. José! Move! You're blocking the view. Good. See the view. I'm talking about the Hollywood sign right there. Never get tired of it. Like the Word of God just dropped down, plunked on the hills, and the Word was Hollywood. Didn't God say let the be light first. What's a movie but light. Can't have a movie without light. And then words. Seeing that sign reminds me to write every morning. What. All right, so it doesn't say Hollywood. You got me. Good eye. Thing's falling to pieces. One O's half fallen and the other O's fallen altogether. The word's gone to shit. So what. You still get the meaning. Thanks, Violet. Cheers. How do they say it in your country. I said how do they say it. Yo, yo, yo, is it. I like that. Easy to remember. Yo, yo, yo, then.

Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty whities and all. Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My eyes! They burn!” “Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.” “This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.” Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us. I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?” Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly. Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single strangled word. “Grandma?” Then he’s diving back into the limo, his face grayish, dazed, and totally sober. He stares at the floor. “No way that just happened.” Matthew and I look at each other hopefully, then we scramble to the window. Sure enough, in the driver’s seat of that big old Town Car is none other than Loretta P. Reinhart. Mom to George; Grandma to Steven. What are the fucking odds, huh? Loretta was always a cranky old bitch. No sense of humor. Even when I was a kid she hated me. Thought I was a bad influence on her precious grandchild. Don’t know where she got that idea from. She moved out to Arizona years ago. Like a lot of women her age, she still enjoys a good tug on the slot machine—hence her frequent trips to Sin City. Apparently this is one such trip. Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs. Reinhart.” She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.

Why can't we sit together? What's the point of seat reservations,anyway? The bored woman calls my section next,and I think terrible thoughts about her as she slides my ticket through her machine. At least I have a window seat. The middle and aisle are occupied with more businessmen. I'm reaching for my book again-it's going to be a long flight-when a polite English accent speaks to the man beside me. "Pardon me,but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats.You see,that's my girlfriend there,and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes,I thought she might need someone to hold back her hair when...well..." St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically. The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend? "Thank you.I was in forty-five G." He slides into the vacated chair and waits for the man to disappear before speaking again. The guy onhis other side stares at us in horror,but St. Clair doesn't care. "They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There's no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together." "That's flattering,thanks." But I laugh,and he looks pleased-until takeoff, when he claws the armrest and turns a color disturbingy similar to key lime pie. I distract him with a story about the time I broke my arm playing Peter Pan. It turned out there was more to flying than thinking happy thoughts and jumping out a window. St. Clair relaxes once we're above the clouds. Time passes quickly for an eight-hour flight. We don't talk about what waits on the other side of the ocean. Not his mother. Not Toph.Instead,we browse Skymall. We play the if-you-had-to-buy-one-thing-off-each-page game. He laughs when I choose the hot-dog toaster, and I tease him about the fogless shower mirror and the world's largest crossword puzzle. "At least they're practical," he says. "What are you gonna do with a giant crossword poster? 'Oh,I'm sorry Anna. I can't go to the movies tonight. I'm working on two thousand across, Norwegian Birdcall." "At least I'm not buying a Large Plastic Rock for hiding "unsightly utility posts.' You realize you have no lawn?" "I could hide other stuff.Like...failed French tests.Or illegal moonshining equipment." He doubles over with that wonderful boyish laughter, and I grin. "But what will you do with a motorized swimming-pool snack float?" "Use it in the bathtub." He wipes a tear from his cheek. "Ooo,look! A Mount Rushmore garden statue. Just what you need,Anna.And only forty dollars! A bargain!" We get stumped on the page of golfing accessories, so we switch to drawing rude pictures of the other people on the plane,followed by rude pictures of Euro Disney Guy. St. Clair's eyes glint as he sketches the man falling down the Pantheon's spiral staircase. There's a lot of blood. And Mickey Mouse ears. After a few hours,he grows sleepy.His head sinks against my shoulder. I don't dare move.The sun is coming up,and the sky is pink and orange and makes me think of sherbet.I siff his hair. Not out of weirdness.It's just...there. He must have woken earlier than I thought,because it smells shower-fresh. Clean. Healthy.Mmm.I doze in and out of a peaceful dream,and the next thing I know,the captain's voice is crackling over the airplane.We're here. I'm home.

I lift the lid of the chest. Inside, the air is musty and stale, held hostage for years in its three-foot-by-four-foot tomb. I lean in to survey the contents cautiously, then pull out a stack of old photos tied with twine. On top is a photo of a couple on their wedding day. She's a young bride, wearing one of those 1950's netted veils. He looks older, distinguished- sort of like Cary Grant or Gregory Peck in the old black-and-white movies I used to watch with my grandmother. I set the stack down and turn back to the chest, where I find a notebook, filled with handwritten recipes. The page for Cinnamon Rolls is labeled "Dex's Favorite." 'Dex.' I wonder if he's the man in the photo. There are two ticket stubs from 1959, one to a Frank Sinatra concert, another to the movie 'An Affair to Remember.' A single shriveled rosebud rests on a white handkerchief. A corsage? When I lift it into my hand, it disintegrates; the petals crinkle into tiny pieces that fall onto the living room carpet. At the bottom of the chest is what looks like a wedding dress. It's yellowed and moth-eaten, but I imagine it was once stark white and beautiful. As I lift it, I can hear the lace swishing as if to say, "Ahh." Whoever wore it was very petite. The waist circumference is tiny. A pair of long white gloves falls to the floor. They must have been tucked inside the dress. I refold the finery and set the ensemble back inside. Whose things are these? And why have they been left here? I thumb through the recipe book. All cookies, cakes, desserts. She must have loved to bake. I tuck the book back inside the chest, along with the photographs after I've retied the twine, which is when I notice a book tucked into the corner. It's an old paperback copy of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises.' I've read a little of Hemingway over the years- 'A Moveable Feast' and some of his later work- but not this one. I flip through the book and notice that one page is dog-eared. I open to it and see a line that has been underscored. "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." I look out to the lake, letting the words sink in. 'Is that what I'm trying to do? Get away from myself?' I stare at the line in the book again and wonder if it resonated with the woman who underlined it so many years ago. Did she have her own secret pain? 'Was she trying to escape it just like me?

I landed on my side, my hip taking the brunt of the fall. It burned and stung from the hit, but I ignored it and struggled to sit up quickly. There really was no point in hurrying so no one would see. Everyone already saw A pair of jean-clad legs appeared before me, and my suitcase and all my other stuff was dropped nearby. "Whatcha doing down there?" Romeo drawled, his hands on his hips as he stared down at me with dancing blue eyes. "Making a snow angel," I quipped. I glanced down at my hands, which were covered with wet snow and bits of salt (to keep the pavement from getting icy). Clearly, ice wasn't required for me to fall. A small group of girls just "happened by", and by that I mean they'd been staring at Romeo with puppy dog eyes and giving me the stink eye. When I fell, they took it as an opportunity to descend like buzzards stalking the dead. Their leader was the girl who approached me the very first day I'd worn Romeo's hoodie around campus and told me he'd get bored. As they stalked closer, looking like clones from the movie Mean Girls, I caught the calculating look in her eyes. This wasn't going to be good. I pushed up off the ground so I wouldn't feel so vulnerable, but the new snow was slick and my hand slid right out from under me and I fell back again. Romeo was there immediately, the teasing light in his eyes gone as he slid his hand around my back and started to pull me up. "Careful, babe." he said gently. The girls were behind him so I knew he hadn't seen them approach. They stopped as one unit, and I braced myself for whatever their leader was about to say. She was wearing painted-on skinny jeans (I mean, really, how did she sit down and still breathe?) and some designer coat with a monogrammed scarf draped fashionably around her neck. Her boots were high-heeled, made of suede and laced up the back with contrasting ribbon. "Wow," she said, opening her perfectly painted pink lips. "I saw that from way over there. That sure looked like it hurt." She said it fairly amicably, but anyone who could see the twist to her mouth as she said it would know better. Romeo paused in lifting me to my feet. I felt his eyes on me. Then his lips thinned as he turned and looked over his shoulder. "Ladies," he said like he was greeting a group of welcomed friends. Annoyance prickled my stomach like tiny needles stabbing me. It's not that I wanted him to be rude, but did he have to sound so welcoming? "Romeo," Cruella DeBarbie (I don't know her real name, but this one fit) purred. "Haven't you grown bored of this clumsy mule yet?" Unable to stop myself, I gasped and jumped up to my feet. If she wanted to call me a mule, I'd show her just how much of an ass I could be. Romeo brought his arm out and stopped me from marching past. I collided into him, and if his fingers hadn't knowingly grabbed hold to steady me, I'd have fallen again. "Actually," Romeo said, his voice calm, "I am pretty bored." Three smirks were sent my way. What a bunch of idiots. "The view from where I'm standing sure leaves a lot to be desired." One by one, their eyes rounded when they realized the view he referenced was them. Without another word, he pivoted around and looked down at me, his gaze going soft. "No need to make snow angels, baby," he said loud enough for the slack-jawed buzzards to hear. "You already look like one standing here with all that snow in your hair." Before I could say a word, he picked me up and fastened his mouth to mine. My legs wound around his waist without thought, and I kissed him back as gentle snow fell against our faces.

Everything is going to be alright" we often say to ourselves or to others - when we are faced with problems, before falling asleep, after we have been disappointed. "Things may be unpleasant and difficult at the moment, but in the end everything is going to be alright." As far as the animals are concerned, nothing is going to be alright! Everything is bad, getting worse and the end will be more terrible than all fearful anticipations: on the death transport, on the slaughterhouse floor, on the chair of torture. "Everything is going to be alright!" This pacifying phrase for human beings is not valid for animals, because we have transformed their world into a singular hell. What we invented in horror movies or psychological thrillers to send pleasant shivers down our spine, is what animals are subjected to in reality: everywhere, continuously, in our midst, at this very moment - right now. Everybody knows, everybody remains silent, nobody takes action. Can it go on like this? It must not go on like this! Anyone who feels bound in earnest by any moral principles at all has the absolute duty to stand up against these crimes, which are in utter contradiction to every kind of morality.

Quickly I find another surprise. The boys are wilder writers — less careful of convention, more willing to leap into the new. I start watching the dozens of vaguely familiar girls, who seem to have shaved off all distinguishing characteristics. They are so careful. Careful about their appearance, what they say and how they say it, how they sit, what they write. Even in the five-minute free writes, they are less willing to go out from where they are — to go out there, where you have to go, to write. They are reluctant to show me rough work, imperfect work, anything I might criticize; they are very careful to write down my instructions word by word. They’re all trying themselves on day by day, hour by hour, I know — already making choices that will last too unfairly long. I’m surprised to find, after a few days, how invigorating it all is. I pace and plead for reaction, for ideas, for words, and gradually we all relax a little and we make progress. The boys crouch in their too-small desks, giant feet sticking out, and the girls perch on the edge, alert like little groundhogs listening for the patter of coyote feet. I begin to like them a lot. Then the outlines come in. I am startled at the preoccupation with romance and family in many of these imaginary futures. But the distinction between boys and girls is perfectly, painfully stereotypical. The boys also imagine adventure, crime, inventions, drama. One expects war with China, several get rich and lose it all, one invents a time warp, another resurrects Jesus, another is shot by a robber. Their outlines are heavy on action, light on response. A freshman: “I grow populerity and for the rest of my life I’m a million air.” [sic] A sophomore boy in his middle age: “Amazingly, my first attempt at movie-making won all the year’s Oscars. So did the next two. And my band was a HUGE success. It only followed that I run the country.” Among the girls, in all the dozens and dozens of girls, the preoccupation with marriage and children is almost everything. They are entirely reaction, marked by caution. One after the other writes of falling in love, getting married, having children and giving up — giving up careers, travel, college, sports, private hopes, to save the marriage, take care of the children. The outlines seem to describe with remarkable precision the quietly desperate and disappointed lives many women live today.

All my films are about Hong Kong." Wong Kar Wai once told me, "even if they're set in Argentina." While many in the West saw Happy Together primarily as a love story, his compatriots saw it something more timely and relevant: Wong grappling with the meaning of the handover to China. They knew it wasn't coincidental that the film should open in Hong Kong one month before that historical transfer of power. Nor was it coincidental that it should begin with a shot of Hong kong passports and end with Tony Leung's Lai on a train in Taipei, not Hong Kong, heading into an indeterminate future as the soundtrack plays Danny Chung's cover of the pop song "Happy Together" --a title that could be read as predicting a successful union, or as a slash of bitter irony. Even the movie's defining image, the aerial shot of water rushing down Iguazu Falls, is layered with political intimations that cut in different directions. At once thrillingly spectacular and patently dangerous--Chris Doyle, who's terrified of heights, shot it while hanging out of a chopper--the roaring waters that combine in these falls are an expression of the inexorably rushing power of reunion that can be seen as both a symbol of great strength or the downward pull of destruction.

When it begins it is like a light in a tunnel, a rush of steel and steam across a torn up life. It is a low rumble, an earthquake in the back of the mind. My spine is a track with cold black steel racing on it, a trail of steam and dust following behind, ghost like. It feels like my whole life is holding its breath. By the time she leaves the room I am surprised that she can’t see the train. It has jumped the track of my spine and landed in my mothers’ living room. A cold dark thing, black steel and redwood paneling. It is the old type, from the western movies I loved as a kid. He throws open the doors to the outside world, to the dark ocean. I feel a breeze tugging at me, a slender finger of wind that catches at my shirt. Pulling. Grabbing. I can feel the panic build in me, the need to scream or cry rising in my throat. And then I am out the door, running, tumbling down the steps falling out into the darkened world, falling out into the lifeless ocean. Out into the blackness. Out among the stars and shadows. And underneath my skin, in the back of my head and down the back of my spine I can feel the desperation and I can feel the noise. I can feel the deep and ancient ache of loudness that litters across my bones. It’s like an old lover, comfortable and well known, but unwelcome and inappropriate with her stories of our frolicking. And then she’s gone and the Conductor is closing the door. The darkness swells around us, enveloping us in a cocoon, pressing flat against the train like a storm. I wonder, what is this place? Those had been heady days, full and intense. It’s funny. I remember the problems, the confusions and the fears of life we all dealt with. But, that all seems to fade. It all seems to be replaced by images of the days when it was all just okay. We all had plans back then, patterns in which we expected the world to fit, how it was to be deciphered. Eventually you just can’t carry yourself any longer, can’t keep your eyelids open, and can’t focus on anything but the flickering light of the stars. Hours pass, at first slowly like a river and then all in a rush, a climax and I am home in the dorm, waking up to the ringing of the telephone. When she is gone the apartment is silent, empty, almost like a person sleeping, waiting to wake up. When she is gone, and I am alone, I curl up on the bed, wait for the house to eject me from its dying corpse. Crazy thoughts cross through my head, like slants of light in an attic. The Boston 395 rocks a bit, a creaking noise spilling in from the undercarriage. I have decided that whatever this place is, all these noises, sensations - all the train-ness of this place - is a fabrication. It lulls you into a sense of security, allows you to feel as if it’s a familiar place. But whatever it is, it’s not a train, or at least not just a train. The air, heightened, tense against the glass. I can hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, I can hear the soft rattle of a dying man’s breathing. Men in white uniforms, sharp pressed lines, run past, rolling gurneys down florescent hallways.

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty whities and all. Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My eyes! They burn!” “Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.” “This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.” Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us. I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?” Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly. Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single strangled word. “Grandma?” Then he’s diving back into the limo, his face grayish, dazed, and totally sober. He stares at the floor. “No way that just happened.” Matthew and I look at each other hopefully, then we scramble to the window. Sure enough, in the driver’s seat of that big old Town Car is none other than Loretta P. Reinhart. Mom to George; Grandma to Steven. What are the fucking odds, huh? .... Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs. Reinhart.” She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.

The same song was playing the second I met my ex–best friend and the moment I realized I’d lost her. I met my best friend at a neighborhood cookout the year we would both turn twelve. It was one of those hot Brooklyn afternoons that always made me feel like I'd stepped out of my life and onto a movie set because the hydrants were open, splashing water all over the hot asphalt. There wasn't a cloud in the flawless blue sky. And pretty black and brown people were everywhere. I was crying. ‘What a Wonderful World’ was playing through a speaker someone had brought with them to the park, and it reminded me too much of my Granny Georgina. I was cupping the last snow globe she’d ever given me in my small, sweaty hands and despite the heat, I couldn’t help imagining myself inside the tiny, perfect, snow-filled world. I was telling myself a story about what it might be like to live in London, a place that was unimaginably far and sitting in the palm of my hands all at once. But it wasn't working. When Gigi had told me stories, they'd felt like miracles. But she was gone and I didn't know if I'd ever be okay again. I heard a small voice behind me, asking if I was okay. I had noticed a girl watching me, but it took her a long time to come over, and even longer to say anything. She asked the question quietly. I had never met anyone who…spoke the way that she did, and I thought that her speech might have been why she waited so long to speak to me. While I expected her to say ‘What’s wrong?’—a question I didn’t want to have to answer—she asked ‘What are you doing?’ instead, and I was glad. “I was kind of a weird kid, so when I answered, I said ‘Spinning stories,’ calling it what Gigi had always called it when I got lost in my own head, but my voice cracked on the phrase and another tear slipped down my cheek. To this day I don’t know why I picked that moment to be so honest. Usually when kids I didn't know came up to me, I clamped my mouth shut like the heavy cover of an old book falling closed. Because time and taught me that kids weren't kind to girls like me: Girls who were dreamy and moony-eyed and a little too nice. Girls who wore rose-tonted glasses. And actual, really thick glasses. Girls who thought the world was beautiful, and who read too many books, and who never saw cruelty coming. But something about this girl felt safe. Something about the way she was smiling as she stuttered out the question helped me know I needn't bother with being shy, because she was being so brave. I thought that maybe kids weren't nice to girls like her either. The cookout was crowded, and none of the other kids were talking to me because, like I said, I was the neighborhood weirdo. I carried around snow globesbecause I was in love with every place I’d never been. I often recited Shakespeare from memory because of my dad, who is a librarian. I lost myself in books because they were friends who never letme down, and I didn’t hide enough of myself the way everyone else did, so people didn’t ‘get’ me. I was lonely a lot. Unless I was with my Gigi. The girl, she asked me if it was making me feel better, spinning the stories. And I shook my head. Before I could say what I was thinking—a line from Hamlet about sorrow coming in battalions that would have surely killed any potential I had of making friends with her. The girl tossed her wavy black hair over her shoulder and grinned. She closed her eyes and said 'Music helps me. And I love this song.' When she started singing, her voice was so unexpected—so bright and clear—that I stopped crying and stared at her. She told me her name and hooked her arm through mine like we’d known each other forever, and when the next song started, she pulled me up and we spun in a slow circle together until we were both dizzy and giggling.

When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America. I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America. I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America. I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America. I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America. I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America. I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America. I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America. I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America. These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions. And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life. Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~Facebook 12/4/17

During homeroom, before first period, I start a bucket list in one of my notebooks. First on the list? 1) Eat in the cafeteria. Sit with people. TALK TO THEM. 2) And…that’s all I can come up with for now. But this is good. One task to work on. No distractions. I can do this. When my lunch period rolls around, I forgo the safety of my bag lunch and the computer lab and slip into the pizza line, wielding my very own tray of semi-edible fare for the first time in years. “A truly remarkable sight.” Jensen cuts into line beside me, sliding his tray next to mine on the ledge in front of us. He lifts his hands and frames me with his fingers, like he’s shooting a movie. “In search of food, the elusive creature emerges from her den and tries her luck at the watering hole." I shake my head, smiling, moving down the line. “Wow, Peters. I never knew you were such a huge Animal Planet fan.” “I’m a fan of all things nature. Birds. Bees. The like.” He grabs two pudding cups and drops one on my tray. “Pandas?” I say. “How did you know? The panda is my spirit animal.” “Oh, good, because Gran has this great pattern for an embroidered panda cardigan. It would look amazing on you.” “Um, yeah, I know. It was on my Christmas list, but Santa totally stiffed me." I laugh as I grab a carton of milk. So does he. He leans in closer. “Come sit with me.” “At the jock table? Are you kidding?” I hand the cashier my lunch card. Jensen squints his eyes in the direction of his friends. “We’re skinny-ass basketball players, Wayfare. We don’t really scream jock.” “Meatheads, then?” “I believe the correct term is Athletic Types.” We step out from the line and scan the room. “So where were you planning on sitting?" “I was thinking Grady and Marco were my safest bet.” “The nerd table?” I gesture to myself, especially my glasses. “I figure my natural camouflage will help me blend, yo.” He laughs, his honey-blond hair falling in front of his eyes. “And hey,” I say, nudging him with my elbow, “last I heard, Peters was cool with nerdy.” He claps me gently on the back. “Good luck, Wayfare. I’m pulling for ya.

The fact that no one made demands on her knowledge in her special field was lucky for Simochka. Not only she but many of her girlfriends had graduated from the institute without any such knowledge. There were many reasons for this. The young girls had come from high schools with very little grounding in mathematics and physics. They had learned in the upper grades that at faculty council meetings the school director had scolded the teachers for giving out failing marks, and that even if a pupil didn't study at all he received a diploma. In the institute, when they found time to sit down to study, they made their way through the mathematics and radio-technology as through a dense pine forest. But more often there was no time at all. Every fall for a month or more the students were taken to collective farms to harvest potatoes. For this reason, they had to attend lectures for eight and ten hours a day all the rest of the year, leaving no time to study their course work. On Monday evenings there was political indoctrination. Once a week a meeting of some kind was obligatory. Then one had to do socially useful work, too: issue bulletins, organize concerts, and it was also necessary to help at home, to shop, to wash, to dress. And what about the movies? And the theater? And the club? If a girl didn't have some fun and dance a bit during her student years, when would she do so afterward? For their examinations Simochka and her girlfriends wrote many cribs, which they hid in those sections of female clothing denied to males, and at the exams they pulled out the one the needed, smoothed it out, and turned it in as a work sheet. The examiners, of course, could have easily discovered the women students' ignorance, but they themselves were overburdened with committee meetings, assemblies, a variety of plans and reports to the dean's office and to the rector. It was hard on them to have to give an examination a second time. Besides, when their students failed, the examiners were reprimanded as if the failures were spoiled goods in a production process—according to the well-known theory that there are no bad pupils, only bad teachers. Therefore the examiners did not try to trip the students up but, in fact, attempted to get them through the examination with as good results as possible.

What did it look like?” “My watch? It was silver. Not expensive or anything. Just a regular watch.” “Shiny?” “I guess.” “Raccoons.” Determined not to say anything stupid for at least the next ten minutes, she considered his single-word statement. Raccoons? Okay. He probably hadn’t started a word-association game, so what did he mean? Going with the safest response, she cautiously repeated, “Raccoons?” “They like shiny things. Take off with them whenever they can.” “You’re saying a raccoon stole my watch?” “Probably.” She really wanted to point out that they couldn’t possibly tell time, but knew instinctively that was a bad idea. “Can I get it back?” “Sure. If you can find it.” Could she? She glanced around at the underbrush, the trees, the stream. “Is it safe for me to go exploring?” she asked. “You’re not likely to be attacked by raccoons, but you’ll probably get lost, fall down a ravine, break your leg and starve to death. But if the watch is that important to you, have at it.” She felt herself deflating. “You don’t like me much, do you?” she asked sadly. She half expected Zane to stalk away, but instead he exhaled and shook his head. “Sorry.” She blinked. “What?” “I said I’m sorry.” Had the earth stopped turning, or had the taciturn hunky cowboy standing in front of her just apologized? “I--you--” She paused for breath. “That’s okay. I guess it was a stupid question.” “No. It was a reasonable question under the circumstances.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I get a little sarcastic sometimes.” “Let’s call it a dry sense of humor.” He half nodded in acknowledgement. “You’ll never find them, and even if you did, your watch would probably be all broken up and rusty from them dunking it in the water. Don’t leave out anything they’ll take. Shiny jewelry, another watch.” “I don’t have another watch. Not with me.” “You need to know the time?” “Just when the meals are.” “Cookie rings a bell.” “Really? Just like in the movies?” “Yeah.” One corner of his mouth turned up as he spoke. It wasn’t exactly a smile, but it was close enough to get her breathing up to Mach 3. “Come on,” he said. “It’s nearly time for lunch.” He started back toward the camp. Phoebe followed him happily. “You think the raccoons could ever learn to tell time?” she asked. He glanced at her. “You’re kidding, right?” “Maybe I have a dry sense of humor, too.” “City girl.” He was probably insulting her, but the way he said the word made her feel almost tall and, if not blonde, then certainly highlighted. “I think Rocky likes me,” she confided. “I’m sure he does.

I started blasting my gun. Letting loose a stream of words like I'd never used before. True to form, Misty didn't stay put and stood at my side. Tears stained her cheeks. Her gun firing wildly. It was a blur. The next thing I knew, no zombies were left standing and we knelt at Kali's side. I took out a rag and wiped the feathers from his face. We could tell he was still alive. His chest rising and falling in jerks. "Kali, how bad are you hurt?" I asked with an unsteady voice. "I'm okay, guys. Did we get all of them?" he whispered. "Nate, he's been bit all over!" I looked down at his body, covered in white feathers, speckled with splotches of deep red. "Yep. You got 'em, even those freak chickens." "Nate, I'm thirsty," his voice shaky and cracking. "Okay, buddy. We've got water in the truck." "No, not water. How about a glass of lemonade?" "Kali, what are you saying?" Misty's voice was tense as a piano string. "Hurry, Nate. I'm getting weak—the lemonade." I think running into the crowd of zombies would have been easier than this. Maybe that's why Kali chucked a rock at my head—he knew he could count on me for this. I ripped off a small water gun I had taped on my suit and tore off the cap. "Oh, Nate, don't. Maybe there's something we can do. Maybe—" she stopped. I put my hand behind Kali's neck and felt a slight burn, probably zombie snot. Misty took one of his hands and held it to her chest. "You were so brave, Kali, so brave." My hands didn't shake anymore; they were numb, as if they didn't belong to me. I manipulated them the best I could—like using chopsticks. Lifting Kali's head, I poured the juice into his mouth until it was gone. He was burning up; his skin felt like it was on fire. "I never thought I'd have friends, real friends—thank you, guys." He closed his eyes and I felt the muscles in his neck go limp. Gently, I put his head down and cleaned my blistering hand with the rag. Misty wiped her tears as I put the rag over Kali's face. "No, thank you, kid." We sat there still, silent except for the small cries that we both let slip out. Misty, still holding his hand. Me, staring down at my hands, soaked in tears. I don't know how much time passed. It could have been five minutes; it might have been an hour. Suddenly, the feathers moved, flying in every direction. Looking up, I saw a helicopter coming down in front of us—one of those big black military ones. It landed and three men stepped out. They wore protective gear like you see in those alien movies. I worried a little about what they might have planned for us. I've seen enough movies to know those government types can't be trusted—especially when they're in those protective suits. "What happened here? How did you manage to negate the virus?" one of the hooded figures asked. "Zombie juice," I replied. "Zombie juice?" "Actually it was the Super Zombie Juice Mega Bomb," Misty added as she stood and took my hand.

The perfect girl what can I say; to be so close yet, feel miles away. I want to run to her, but have to walk out the door going the other way. The only words spoken to her are- ‘Have a nice day.’ I think about her and the summer, and what it could have been with her. It reminds me of- sixteen, you are on my mind all the time. I think about you. It is like a vision of the stars shining, ribbon wearing, bracelet making, and holding hands forever. All the sunflowers in the hayfields and kissing in the rain, no more brick walls, no more falling teardrops of pain, and no more jigsaw puzzle pieces would remain. True love should not be such a game; does she feel the same. She is everything that I cannot have, and everything I lack. What if every day could be like this- Diamond rings, football games, and movies on the weekends? It is easy to see she belongs to me; she is everything that reminds me of ‘sixteen’ everything that is in my dreams. Everything she does is amazing, but then again, I am just speculating, and fantasizing about Nevaeh Natalie, who just turned the age of sixteen! Nevaeh- I recall my first boy kiss was not at all, what I thought it was going to be like. I was wearing a light pink dress, and flip-flops that were also pink with white daisy flowers printed on them. I loosened my ponytail and flipped out my hair until my hair dropped down my back, and around my shoulders. That gets A guy going every time, so I have read online. He was wearing ripped-up jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. He said that- ‘My eyes sparkled in blue amazement, which was breathtaking, that he never saw before.’ Tell me another line… I was thinking, while Phil Collins ‘Take Me Home’ was playing in the background. I smiled at him, he began to slowly lean into me, until our lips locked. So, enjoy, he kissed me, and my heart was all aflutter. When it happened, I felt like I was floating, and my stomach had butterflies. My eyes fastened shut with no intentions of me doing so during the whole thing. When my eyes unfastened my feelings of touch engaged, and I realized that his hands are on my hips. His hands slowly moved up my waist, and my body. I was trembling from the exhilaration. Plus, one thing led to another. It was sort of my first time, kissing and playing with him you know a boy, oh yet not really, I had gotten to do some things with Chiaz before like, in class as he sat next to me. I would rub my hand on it under the desks- yeah, he liked that, and he would be. Oh, how could I forget this… there was this one time in the front seat of his Ford pickup truck, we snuck off… and this was my first true time gulping down on him, for a lack of a better term. As I had my head in his lap and was about to move up for him to go in me down there, I was about to get on top and let him in me. When we both heard her this odd, yet remarkably loud scream of bloody murder! Ava was saying- ‘You too were going to fuck! What the fuck is going on here? Anyways, Ava spotted us before he got to ‘Take me!

Madison’s enthralled from the very first moment. I’m sitting on the blanket, my legs stretched out, while Kennedy lays down, her head in my lap. I cringe my way through the movie, absently stroking Kennedy’s hair. I glance down at her after a while, realizing she’s not watching the screen, her attention fixed on me. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” she says. “It’s just strange.” I caress her flushed cheek. “Being here with me?” “Yes,” she says. “Just when I was starting to doubt I’d ever see you again.” “You didn’t think I’d keep popping up every so often?” “Oh, sure, but that’s not you,” she says. “I knew that guy would keep coming back. I thought I’d be dealing with him for the rest of my life. Drunk, high, out of his mind… but I never thought I’d see you again, real you, yet you’re here. I thought it would always be him.” I know what she means as she motions toward the screen. I can tell I was strung out. It’s painful. “I’m here,” I say, “and I’m not going anywhere.” “I want to believe that.” “You can.” She smiles, and I don’t know if she believes it yet, but she looks content in the moment. I brush my thumb along her lips as they part, and I want to kiss her so fucking bad right now, but I know I’ll catch hell from my daughter if I try. “Ohhhh, Daddy!” Madison says, grabbing my attention, catching me off guard as she launches herself my way. Laughing, Kennedy sits up, moving out of the line of fire as Madison damn near tackles me, leaping on my back and trying to cover my face with her hands from behind. “You’re not supposed to do that!” “What?” I laugh. “I didn’t do anything!” “You’re kissing her!” she says as I pull her hands away from my mouth when she tries to cover it. I playfully pretend to bite her, making her squeal. “Stop, Daddy!” She flings herself on me, falling into my lap, as I glance up at the screen, realizing Breezeo is kissing Maryanne. I scowl, tickling Madison. “It’s just a movie. It’s not real.” She giggles, slapping my hands away. “You didn’t really kiss her?” “Well, yeah, but it doesn’t count.” “Why not?” “Because it’s Breezeo, not me.” “It’s still yucky,” she says, making a face. “You think kissing me is yucky?” I tickle her again, and she struggles, laughing, trying to get away, but I’m not going to let it go that easy. Grabbing ahold of her, pinning her to me, I nuzzle against her cheek as she shoves my face. “Help, Mommy!” “Oh, no, you’re on your own there,” Kennedy says. “You got yourself into that one.” “Ugh, no fair!” Madison says, slapping her hands over my mouth. “No kissing ‘till the end!” “Fine.” I let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “You win.” She sticks her tongue out at me. The girl seriously sticks her tongue out, gloating, as she leaps at her mother and kisses on her—planting big, sloppy kisses right on Kennedy, making sure I see it. She’s gone again then, right back to her movie now that the love scene is over. “Unbelievable.” I shake my head. “I get no love.” Grinning, Kennedy lays back down with her head in my lap. She stares at me, reaching up, her fingertips brushing across my lips. “You be good, and I’ll make it worth it for you later.” I cock an eyebrow at her. “Is that right?

Niagara. Used to be a place honeymooners would go. Maybe you seen some movies. All this water, pouring over the cliffs, a thousand rivers falling down all at once, like somehow there was a mistake in the crust of the earth and someone had taken away half of a lakebed. And the force of it, water against water, so strong you can feel the spray on your cheeks a half a mile distant. I never seen anything like it. See, that’s the kind of thing that just keeps on going, century after century, no matter what us puny humans are doin all a-scurry over the surface of the earth.

HEROPANTI MOVIE REVIEW & RATING Movie Name: Heropanti Director: Sabbir Khan Producer: Sajid Nadiadwala Music Director: Sajid-Wajid, Manj Musik Cast: Tiger Shroff, Kirti Sanon, Sandeepa Dhar ‘Heropanti’, a love story is directed by Sabbir Khan and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala. It is the debut movie of Tiger Shroff (son of superstar Jackie Shroff) and Kirti Sanon, both starring in lead roles alongside Sandeepa Dhar featuring in a pivotal role. Overall it is a remake of Telugu movie ‘Parugu’ starring Allu Arjun. ‘Heropanti’ is all about another new gem in Bollywood industry. Big launch with hit songs. New faces- heroine as well as hero. Does it work? Let’s go through to know it… ‘Heropanti’ borrows half of its title from Sr. Shroff’s breakout film and is also having the signature tune from ‘Hero’ (1983) which is being played in the background repeatedly. The action movie is not as terrible as Salman and Akshay films. The newcomer Tiger Shroff has done amazing stunts in the film. The story is set in the land of Jattland in Harayana where Chaudhary (Prakash Raj), the Haryanvi goon is completely against love marriages. He has two daughters- Renu (Sandeepa Dhar) and Dimpi (Kirti Sanon). Chaudharyji’s elder daughter Renu’s marriage is held, but on the wedding night she elopes with her boyfriend Rakesh. Her step results in a frantic search for her across the village. Chaudharyji launches a manhunt to track them down and eliminate them. Now Haryanvi goon’s men suspects Rakesh’s friends and thinks that they may know where Renu is. So the goon decides to kidnap the buddies of his daughter’s lover. Bablu (Tiger Shroff) turns to be one of the buddies with ultra muscular head and shoulders model who falls in love with Chaudharyji’s younger daughter Dimpy (Kirti Sanon). The goons manage to trace Bablu who has actually helped Rakesh and Renu in escaping. Bablu, meanwhile in captivity, shares with his pals about his love interest. Bablu falls in love at first sight with the pretty younger daughter of Chaudharyji’s, Dimpy. He comes to know quite early that it is none other than the Harynavi goon Chaudharyji’s daughter. The movie tries to end up in a ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ style where Bablu uses his superpowers and figures out to be with his love but without offending her father. launch pad for Shroff to show his acting and dancing skills. Plan to watch it, if nothing left to do. Tiger Shoff is a great action hero. When it comes to action, he is a star but comparatively his acting skills are zero. Kirti Sanon requires a little brushing up on her acting skills she reminds us somewhere of young Deepika Padukone who is surely going to have a good run in the industry someday. Verdict: It’s the most masala-less movie of this year with more action and less drama. But the movie is a perfect

Boyfriend #10 Peter Sosa, Age Twenty-Nine What is it? You’re married, aren’t you?” “No, no, nothing like that.” He paused, leaving Jane to imagine. “I have a girlfriend. I’m sorry. I’m not cheating, she’s right over there, at the table by the window. She made me a bet that I couldn’t make the first girl I asked out fall in love with me. Some movie she saw, thought it would be romantic, then it went too far…” Jane’s language would have made Britney the longshoreman blush down to her boots.

Surely a young beauty like yourself is lonely, too. It can be a part of the game, if you like.” “Get off,” she said, thoroughly done with this. His answer was to lean in closer. So she kneed him in the groin. As hard as she could. “Aw, ow, dammit!” He doubled over and thudded onto his knees. Jane brushed off her knee, feeling like it had touched something dirty. “Aw, ow, dammit indeed! What’re you thinking?” Jane heard hurried footsteps coming down the stairs. It was Mr. Nobley. “Miss Erstwhile!” He was barefoot in his breeches, his shirt untucked. He glanced down at the groaning man. “Sir Templeton!” “Ow, she kicked me,” said Sir Templeton. “Kneed him, I kneed him,” Jane said. “I don’t kick. Not even when I’m a ninja.” Mr. Nobley stood a moment in silence, looking over the scene. “I hope you remembered to shout ‘Ya’ when taking him down. I hear that is very effective.” “I’m afraid I neglected that bit, but I’ll certainly ‘ya’ from here to London if he ever touches me again.” “Miss Erstwhile, were you perhaps employed by your president’s armed forces in America?” “What? Don’t British women know how to use their knees?” “Happily, I have never put myself in a position to find out.” He stared at the prostrate Sir Templeton. “Did he hurt you?” “Frankly, your arm-yanking earlier was worse.” “I see. Perhaps you should retire to your chambers, Miss Erstwhile. Would you like me to escort you?” “I’m fine,” she said, “as long as there aren’t any other Sir Templetons lurking upstairs.” “Well, I cannot give Colonel Andrews a glowing reference, but I believe the way is safe.” She stepped closer to Mr. Nobley and whispered, “Are you going to out me to Mrs. Wattlesbrook for the servants’ quarters lurking?” “I think,” he said, nudging the prostrate Sir Templeton with his foot, “that you have suffered enough tonight.” Mr. Nobley smiled at her, the first time she had seen his real smile. She wouldn’t go so far as to call it a grin. His lips were closed, but his eyes brightened and the corners of his mouth definitely turned up, creating pleasing little cheek wrinkles on either side as though the smile were in parentheses. It bothered her in a way she couldn’t explain, like feeling itchy but not knowing exactly where to scratch. He was not particularly amused, she saw, but smiled to reassure her. Wait, who wanted to reassure her? Mr. Nobley or the actual man, Actor X? “Thanks. Good night, Mr. Nobley.” “Good night, Miss Erstwhile.” She hesitated, then left, Sir Templeton’s groans following her up the stairs. On the second floor, Aunt Saffronia was emerging from her room, clutching a white shawl over her nightgown. “What was that noise? Is everything all right?” “Yes. It was…your husband. He was being inappropriate.” Aunt Saffronia blinked. “Inebriated?” “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Jane.” Jane wasn’t sure if Aunt Saffronia was speaking to Jane the niece or Jane the client. For the first time it didn’t matter; both Janes felt exactly the same. She acknowledged the apology with a nod, went to her room, and locked the door behind her. She thought she was angry but instead she plopped herself down on her bed, put her face in her pillow, and laughed. “What a joke,” she said, sounding to herself like the movie incarnation of Lydia Bennet. “I come for Mr. Darcy, fall for the gardener, and get propositioned by the drunk husband.” Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow she would play for real. She was going to drive full force into the game, have a staggering good time, and kick the nasty Darcy habit for good. She fell asleep with the ticklish thought of Mr. Nobley’s smile.

Neat endings are for the movies, Rob. I'd be a fool to try and predict the outcome here, but I will admit that we don't have a lot to go on.

But what actually happened was, first, Horkman and I had to climb down our side of the ravine, which was hard because those guns are a lot heavier than they look, plus it was really steep. We both kept dropping the guns and falling down, so we ended up mostly sliding on our butts, which took a while. The Cubans tried to keep cheering, but after a while they realized they’d better pace themselves. Like every twenty seconds or so, one of them would go, “YI-YI-YI!” But you could tell they were losing the mood. Plus—I’m just going to come right out and say this—I had to take a shit. I mean, bad. Which is something that never happens in the movies. You never see Rambo take a shit. You never see whatshisname, the guy in those Bourne movies, Matt Damon, when he and his co-star hot babe are fleeing through some foreign city and he’s killing enemy agents with kung fu, speaking nine languages, hot-wiring a car and driving like a stuntman, etc., you never hear him say to the babe, “Geez, I’m sorry, but even though those enemy agents are, like, twenty yards behind us shooting at us, I need to make a pit stop, because if I don’t get to a toilet right now I’m going to turn this car into a septic tank.” That’s the way I felt, when Horkman and I got to the bottom of the ravine. I had a cramp in my gut like I was about to give birth to a walrus. I had no choice but to drop my pants right then and there. “What are you doing?” Horkman said. “What does it look like I’m doing?” I said. “You can’t at least go behind something?” he said. “Go behind what, asshole?” I said, because (a) there was nothing to go behind, and (b) Horkman is an asshole. “I don’t believe this,” said Horkman. He walked about ten yards and sat down on a rock, facing away. Thanks a lot, douchenozzle. So there I was, squatting, and I don’t want to get too specific here, but it was a severe firehose situation. I was splattering the gravel big-time, plus there was a certain amount of gas noise, plus you had the natural echo in the ravine. I don’t think this was what the Cubans were expecting in the way of military leadership. I could hear them up there talking about me, and then one of them went “YI-YI-YI!” definitely sarcastically, and then they were all laughing. Assholes. Like they never had diarrhea in a ravine. I firehosed for I would say a good three

Failures as people: millions of Americans felt that this description fit them to a T. Seeking a solution, any solution, they eagerly forked over their cash to any huckster who promised release, the quicker and more effortlessly the better: therapies like “bioenergetics” (“The Revolutionary Therapy That Uses the Language of the Body to Heal the Problems of the Mind”); Primal Scream (which held that when patients shrieked in a therapist’s office, childhood trauma could be reexperienced, then released; John Lennon and James Earl Jones were fans); or Transcendental Meditation, which promised that deliverance could come if you merely closed your eyes and chanted a mantra (the “TM” organization sold personal mantras, each supposedly “unique,” to hundreds of thousands of devotees). Or “religions” like the Church Universal and Triumphant, or the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, or “Scientology”—this last one invented by a science fiction writer, reportedly on a bet. Devotees paid cash to be “audited” by practitioners who claimed the power—if, naturally, you paid for enough sessions—to remove “trauma patterns” accreted over the 75 million years that had passed since Xenu, tyrant of the Galactic Confederacy, deposited billions of people on earth next to volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs inside those volcanos, thus scattering harming “body thetans” to attach to the souls of the living, which once unlatched allowed practitioners to cross the “bridge to total freedom” and “unlimited creativity.” Another religion, the story had it, promised “perfect knowledge”—though its adherents’ public meeting was held up several hours because none of them knew how to run the movie projector. Gallup reported that six million Americans had tried TM, five million had twisted themselves into yoga poses, and two million had sampled some sort of Oriental religion. And hundreds of thousands of Americans in eleven cities had plunked down $250 for the privilege being screamed at as “assholes.” “est”—Erhard Seminars Training, named after the only-in-America hustler who invented it, Werner Erhard, originally Jack Rosenberg, a former used-car and encyclopedia salesman who had tried and failed to join the Marines (this was not incidental) at the age of seventeen, and experienced a spiritual rebirth one morning while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge (“I realized that I knew nothing. . . . In the next instant—after I realized that I knew nothing—I realized that I knew everything”)—promised “to transform one’s ability to experience living so that the situations one had been trying to change or had been putting up with, clear up just in the process of life itself,” all that in just sixty hours, courtesy of a for-profit corporation whose president had been general manager of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of California and a former member of the Harvard Business School faculty. A

Once it happened: a young boy and girl in a local college fell in love. They had really become very passionate and intense. Then, of course, coming from traditional families, the parents came in the way because of caste distinctions. They said, ‘No way. Over our dead bodies.’ Usually, this is a common proclamation the parents make. It is just a threat; they will not die. If the families do not oppose, most love affairs will fall apart. But the moment they resist it, it becomes like a cause. It is like they are fighting an injustice and people will rally behind them. So it went on and a big social scandal happened. When this happened, the lovers thought all this trouble is because of themselves, so they decided that they will end their lives. So they went up the Velliangiri Mountains. On top of these mountains, there is a place where you can leave your body. From there, you have a clear 700–800-feet drop which will give you a free fall without touching anything before you are splattered on the rocks. Some people have discarded their bodies consciously,18 others fall and do it. So the boy and girl reached the top and stood there, hand in hand. They were just about to jump, when the girl said, ‘Raju, I am so scared. You jump first.’ (Somehow the name of the idiot in all the romantic movies is always Raju!) The boy was in full form, so he said, ‘Come, hold my hand and jump.’ She said, ‘No, you do it first, then I will come. I will be right behind you.’ The boy had seen too many Hindi movies, and he jumped. The girl stood at the edge of the cliff and screamed, ‘Oh, Raju, I love you.’ Then she started thinking very pragmatically. ‘Now, Raju is gone. My love is gone. All of the problem is gone. When the problem itself is over, why waste one more life.’ So she walked down, and because she could not go back home, she came and settled down at the Isha Yoga Center.

dustpan that he emptied into a larger trash can. If I were him, picking up after people who carelessly dropped stuff on the ground, I’d be nothing but angry. They call it littering when you carelessly drop things. They call the careless folks who drop things by a cute name: litterbug. There’s nothing cute about dropping things carelessly. Dropping garbage and having puppies shouldn’t be called the same thing. “Litter.” I had a mind to write to Miss Webster about that. Puppies don’t deserve to be called a litter like they had been dropped carelessly like garbage. And people who litter shouldn’t be given a cute name for what they do. And at least the mother of a litter sticks around and nurses her pups no matter how sharp their teeth are. Merriam Webster was falling down on the job. How could she have gotten this wrong? Vonetta asked me again. Not because she was anxious to meet Cecile. Vonetta asked again so she could have her routine rehearsed in her head—her curtsy, smile, and greeting—leaving Fern and me to stand around like dumb dodos. She was practicing her role as the cute, bouncy pup in the litter and asked yet again, “Delphine, what do we call her?” A large white woman came and stood before us, clapping her hands like we were on display at the Bronx Zoo. “Oh, my. What adorable dolls you are. My, my.” She warbled like an opera singer. Her face was moon full and jelly soft, the cheeks and jaw framed by white whiskers. We said nothing. “And so well behaved.” Vonetta perked up to out-pretty and out-behave us. I did as Big Ma had told me in our many talks on how to act around white people. I said, “Thank you,” but I didn’t add the “ma’am,” for the whole “Thank you, ma’am.” I’d never heard anyone else say it in Brooklyn. Only in old movies on TV. And when we drove down to Alabama. People say “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am” in Alabama all the time. That old word was perfectly fine for Big Ma. It just wasn’t perfectly fine for me.

Because what would you rather read about: a swashbuckling starship captain? Or a being as incomprehensible to us as we are to an amoeba? To be fair, science fiction novels have been written about a future in which this transformation has occurred. And I could write one of these, as well. The problem is that for the most part, people like reading about other people. People who are like them. People who act and think like, you know . . . people. Even if we imagine a future society of omniscient beings, we wouldn’t have much of a story without conflict. Without passions and frailties and fear of death. And what kind of a story could an amoeba write about a man, anyway? I believe that after a few hundred years of riding up this hockey-stick of explosive technological growth, humanity can forge a utopian society whose citizens are nearly-omniscient and nearly-immortal. Governed by pure reason rather than petty human emotions. A society in which unrecognizable beings live in harmony, not driven by current human limitations and motivations. Wow. A novel about beings we can’t possibly relate to, residing on an intellectual plane of existence incomprehensible to us, without conflict or malice. I think I may have just described the most boring novel ever written. Despite what I believe to be true about the future, however, I have to admit something: I still can’t help myself. I love space opera. When the next Star Trek movie comes out, I’ll be the first one in line. Even though I’ll still believe that if our technology advances enough for starships, it will have advanced enough for us to have utterly transformed ourselves, as well. With apologies to Captain Kirk and his crew, Star Trek technology would never coexist with a humanity we can hope to understand, much as dinosaurs and people really didn’t roam the earth at the same time. But all of this being said, as a reader and viewer, I find it easy to suspend disbelief. Because I really, really love this stuff. As a writer, though, it is more difficult for me to turn a blind eye to what I believe will be the truth. But, hey, I’m only human. A current human. With all kinds of flaws. So maybe I can rationalize ignoring my beliefs long enough to write a rip-roaring science fiction adventure. I mean, it is fiction, right? And maybe dinosaurs and mankind did coexist. The Flintstones wouldn’t lie, would they?  So while the mind-blowing pace of scientific progress has ruined far-future science fiction for me, at least when it comes to the writing of it, I may not be able to help myself. I may love old-school science fiction too much to limit myself to near-future thrillers. One day, I may break down, fall off the wagon, and do what I vowed during my last Futurists Anonymous meeting never to do again: write far-future science fiction.  And if that day ever comes, all I ask is that you not judge me too harshly.

I don’t guess you can outrun an explosion, right?” Sam asked doubtfully. Jack rolled his eyes and sighed his condescending geek sigh. “Seriously? Brianna runs in miles per hour. Explosions happen in feet per second. Don’t believe what you see in movies.” “Yeah, Sam,” Dekka said. “In the old days I always had Astrid around to humiliate me when I asked a stupid question,” Sam said. “It’s good to have Jack to take over that job.” He’d said it lightheartedly, but the mention of Astrid left an awkward hole in the conversation. Brianna said, “I can’t outrun an explosion, but I’ll tie the string around the wire.” She zipped over to the wire and zipped back holding the loose end. “Who gets to yank the string?” “She who ties the string pulls it,” Sam said. “But first—” BOOOOM! The containers, the sand, pieces of driftwood, bushes on the bluff all erupted in a fireball. Sam felt a blast of heat on his face. His ears rang. His eyes scrunched on sand. Debris seemed to take a long time to fall back down to earth. In the eventual silence Sam said, “I was going to say first we should all lie flat so we didn’t get blown up. But I guess that was good, too, Breeze.

Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty whities and all. Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My eyes! They burn!” “Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.” “This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.” Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us. I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?” Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly. Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single strangled word. “Grandma?” .... Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs. Reinhart.” She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.

Outside the window there was snow falling, falling like movie snow, all the dreamy fluffy bits drifting around in the light of a single streetlamp . . . I watched the snow slow down, thin out. Then it was two or three pieces at a time, falling reversibly, wavering up and down and up again like they didn't know where to go.

You’re a brat,” he said affectionately, smiling as he leaned down and kissed her forehead. It was such a small gesture, one she thought a lot of people might even take for granted. But not Lily. She had never had someone kiss her on the forehead lovingly. She’d seen it in movies. She’d even witnessed it in real life. But never once had she experienced it. It was amazing.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" Lydia bounced up and down and pointed. "It's Layla Falls! She's here!" "Who?" Jane asked, looking around. "Who fell?" "No,Layla Falls, the movie star," Lydia explained, pointing Jane in the right direction. "She just released a new movie. She's so famous.

He flashed her a smile that could make panties melt, according to the reviewer who hadn't liked his movie but had started #StarringRyanKwoksAbs. And Lindsay was not immune. Her mouth opened and she released a shaky breath. He watched her breasts move up and down beneath that rather tight tank top. This was almost as bad as when she'd wrapped her lips around that thick bubble tea straw last week. An erection would be inconvenient now, but it was happening anyway.

There was a movie theater here once. It played silent films. It was like watching the world through dark glasses on a rainy evening. One night the piano player mysteriously disappeared. We were left with the storming sea that made no sound, and a beautiful woman on a long, empty bench whose tears rolled down silently as she watched me falling asleep in my mother's arms.

Across America, more and more people felt a gut-level tension—a sense that the country was coming apart. The Vietnam War was finally over, and Watergate was finished, but there hadn’t been any closure. Nixon had fled to California and was living in splendor, shielded by an executive pardon. North and South Vietnam had become a single Communist power, exactly what the US had spent fifty-eight thousand lives to prevent. The dollar was falling, jobs were scarce, and inflation was nearing double digits. Overseas companies like Honda, Sony, and Volkswagen, from nations the US had bombed into powder, were surging ahead, shaping the future and setting the rules. What did Americans do with this mounting, irresolvable anger? They turned on each other, splitting down the middle over “values,” a catchall way to judge complete strangers. Gay rights, affirmative action, school prayer, pornography—everywhere you looked, the ground was shifting, and the old customs wobbled. Was it progress or calamity? It all depended on your view, and on your vision of America. By decade’s end, a violent populism had spread to the airwaves, where it postured as the voice of God. Overwhelmingly white, male, and southern, the new evangelists harnessed a growing resentment: the sense that families were under assault. “I believe this is the last generation before Jesus comes,” said the Reverend Jerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority political-action group. “All this homosexuality, unisex, the women’s movement, pornography on movies and television . . . I see the disintegration of the home.

University, where she is an adjunct professor of education and serves on the Veterans Committee, among about a thousand other things. That’s heroism. I have taken the kernel of her story and do what I do, which is dramatize, romanticize, exaggerate, and open fire. Hence, Game of Snipers. Now, on to apologies, excuses, and evasions. Let me offer the first to Tel Aviv; Dearborn, Michigan; Greenville, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Rock Springs, Wyoming; and Anacostia, D.C. I generally go to places I write about to check the lay of streets, the fall of shadows, the color of police cars, and the taste of local beer. At seventy-three, such ordeals-by-airport are no longer fun, not even the beer part; I only go where there’s beaches. For this book, I worked from maps and Google, and any geographical mistakes emerge out of that practice. Is the cathedral three hundred yards from the courthouse in Wichita? Hmm, seems about right, and that’s good enough for me on this. On the other hand, I finally got Bob’s wife’s name correct. It’s Julie, right? I’ve called her Jen more than once, but I’m pretty sure Jen was Bud Pewtie’s wife in Dirty White Boys. For some reason, this mistake seemed to trigger certain Amazon reviewers into psychotic episodes. Folks, calm down, have a drink, hug someone soft. It’ll be all right. As for the shooting, my account of the difficulties of hitting at over a mile is more or less accurate (snipers have done it at least eight times). I have simplified, because it is so arcane it would put all but the most dedicated in a coma. I have also been quite accurate about the ballistics app FirstShot, because I made it up and can make it do anything I want. The other shot, the three hundred, benefits from the wisdom of Craig Boddington, the great hunter and writer, who looked it over and sent me a detailed email, from which I have borrowed much. Naturally, any errors are mine, not Craig’s. I met Craig when shooting something (on film!) for another boon companion, Michael Bane, and his Outdoor Channel Gun Stories crew. For some reason, he finds it amusing when I start jabbering away and likes to turn the camera on. Don’t ask me why. On the same trip, I also met the great firearms historian and all-around movie guy (he knows more than I do) Garry James, who has become

Looking into his eyes instead of where she was stepping, she put her foot too far to the edge of the step and as she shifted her weight forward to get onto the boat, her foot slid and she ended up falling into Chase. He caught her—also like some stupid romantic movie—but the bag she was holding whacked him in the leg and he winced. She looked down. It didn’t just hold strands of lights. There was also a big, hard plastic, gold-glitter covered star. With very sharp points. One of which was poking into his leg. Bailey quickly shifted to move the bag away from his leg but that only managed to press her hips into his. And the big, hard shape behind his fly. Her eyes flew to his face. He was looking down at her. His expression held pain, amusement, heat, and exasperation all at once. Impressively. “Sorry I’m poking you,” she said, her voice breathless. “I was going to say the same.” His grin registered before his words did.

What is it like, radiation? Maybe they show it in the movies? Have you seen it? Is it white, or what? Some people say it has no color and no smell, and other people say that it’s black. Like earth. But if it’s colorless, then it’s like God. God is everywhere but you can’t see Him. They scare us! The apples are hanging in the garden, the leaves are on the trees, the potatoes are in the fields. I don’t think there was any Chernobyl, they made it up. They tricked people. My sister left with her husband. Not far from here, twenty kilometers. They lived there two months, and the neighbor comes running: ‘Your cow sent radiation to my cow! She’s falling down.’ ‘How’d she send it?’ 'Through the air, that’s how, like dust. It flies.’ 'Just fairy tales! Stories and more stories.

Kim Dokja x Hansooyoung PART 1 [I shall kill you, Yoo Joonghyuk.] ~ Kim Dokja pg 4110 46. ⸢(Looks like you still don't know how it works. The heroine loses her consciousness, her hand falling away. And the male hero awakens! You see, in all the movies I've seen so far…) pg 4112 47. These idiots, I even died so that you two could talk to each other, but this…' She figured that she really needed to give these two men a harsh earful when she arrived there. But, when she pushed past the bushes and stepped forward, the ensuing spectacle freaked her out in a rather grand manner. Kwa-aaang!! Bang!!! Yoo Joonghyuk was mercilessly slamming his sword down on Kim Dokja, currently sprawled out on the ground. "Hey!! You crazy son of a bitch!!" pg 4125 48. There were plenty of things she wanted to ask, but she chose not to. Instead, she poked Kim Dokja's cheek and spoke up. "Still, this guy looks like he got completely fooled, doesn't he." "Looks that way." "How did it go?" "He went crazy and attacked me." Han Sooyoung smirked and lightly pinched Kim Dokja's cheek as if she was proud of him. pg 4127 49. the events of her dying at Yoo Joonghyuk's sword, me fighting against him, and then, passing out from his attack, and finally, sharing a conversation with Yoo Sangah inside the Library… Han Sooyoung approached the bed before I noticed it and pinched my cheek. "In any case, Kim Dokja. You can be really adorable sometimes." pg 4144 50. The moment Han Sooyoung's fist bumped into mine, she was completely enveloped in bright light. As I watched her figure disappear, I became aware once more that she had become my companion for real. pg 4165 51. ⸢And…⸥ My heart began powerfully pounding away. ⸢The woman that I used to love.⸥ pg 4189 52. Her emotionless eyes; the beauty spot just below one of them; and her lips that always mocked me for fun, now arching up in a smooth line. "Proceed with the execution pg 4191 53. "But, should you be doing something like that? She's originally your bride, isn't she?" "Correction. She was supposed to be one. The throne was usurped on the first day of the wedding, however." Oh, I see. So, it's that sort of development? I felt just a bit relieved now. Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk as a couple? hadn't allowed any dating at the workplace yet, so hell no. pg 4202 54. ⸢By the time you're reading this book, I…⸥ I steeled my heart and read the next line of the text. ⸢…I'd still be living a pretty good life, I guess. Hahah, were you scared?⸥ This idiot… pg 4212 55. The following words were eerily similar to a certain body of text that I was familiar with. ⸢The you reading this story will definitely make it out of here alive.⸥ Han Sooyoung's afterwords came to an end there. For the longest time, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the full-stop at the end of the sentencepg4216 56. "Looks like the company's internal rules need to be changed somewhat…" pg 4234 57. She spoke in a fed-up tone of voice. And then, issued an order to me. "Marry me, Ricardo Von Kaizenix." pg 4244 58. "I didn't want to extend her 50 years by even one minute if I could help it." I was being serious here. The moment I arrived in this world and realized that Han Sooyoung had to spend 50 years here, I just couldn't escape from this one overwhelming emotion. Someone was sacrificed again because of me. Han Sooyoung who had to endure the time frame of 50 years – could she still maintain a normal, functioning mind? Was she able to maintain the ego of the Han Sooyoung that I know of?pg4254 59. Her palm smacked me in the back of the head again. God damn it, this punk… "The third method, 'Romance'." "And its contents are?" "Marry Yuri di Aristel." "And just what did you choose?" "The third method?" "And are we currently married?" "Nope." "And why the hell not?!" pg 4256

for Dunaway, constantly kneeling or sprawling to take photographs, her legs, especially her thighs, are far more important to her performance than her eyes; her flesh gives off heat. Tommy Lee Jones is the police lieutenant who represents old-fashioned morality, and when the neurotically vulnerable Laura, who has become telepathic about violence, falls in love with him, they’re a very creepy pair. With the help of the editor, Michael Kahn, Kershner glides over the gaps in the very uneven script (by John Carpenter and David Z. Goodman, with an assist from Julian Barry). The cast includes Raul Julia, Rose Gregorio, Meg Mundy, and Bill Boggs (as himself). Columbia. color (See When the Lights Go Down.)

This is what she becomes because of me… what do you think of here… do you like her or heat? Are you going to hate her for this? ~*~ ‘They don't leave. They bring in their food from the outside, from quite far away sometimes. It gives their guard something to do when they're not out annihilating mavericks. Or protecting Volterra from exposure…’ ‘From situations like this one, like Marcel,’ I finished her sentence. It was amazingly easy to say his name now. I wasn't sure what the difference was. Maybe because- I wasn't planning on living much longer without seeing him. Or at all, if we were too late. It was comforting to know that I would have an easy out. ‘I doubt they've ever had a situation quite like this,’ she muttered, disgusted. ‘You don't get a lot of suicidal angels.’ The sound that escaped out of my mouth was very quiet, but Olivia seemed to understand that it was a cry of pain. She wrapped her thin, strong arm around my shoulders. ‘We'll do what we can, Bell. It's not over yet.’ ‘Not yet.’ I let her comfort me, though I knew she thought our chances were poor. ‘And the Ministry will get us if we mess up.’ Olivia stiffened. ‘You say that like it's a good thing.’ I shrugged. ‘Knock it off, Bell, or we're turning around in New York and going back to Pittsburgh.’ ‘What?’ ‘You know what. If we're too late for Marcel, I'm going to do me damnedest to get you back to Mr. Anderson, and I don't want any trouble from you. Do you understand that?’ ‘Sure, Olivia.’ She pulled back slightly so that she would glare at me. ‘No trouble.’ ‘Scout's honor,’ I muttered. She rolled her eyes. ‘Let me concentrate, now. I'm trying to see what he's planning.’ She left her arm around me, but let her head fall back against the seat and closed her eyes. She pressed her free hand to the side of her face, rubbing her fingertips against her temple. I watched her in fascination for a long time. Eventually, she became utterly motionless, her face like a stone sculpture. The minutes passed, and if I didn't know better, I would have thought she'd fallen asleep. I didn't dare interrupt her to ask what was going on. I wished there was something safe for me to think about. I couldn't allow myself to consider the horrors we were headed toward, or, more horrific yet, the chance that we might fail-not if I wanted to keep from screaming aloud. I couldn't anticipate anything, either. If I were very, very, very lucky, I would somehow be able to save Marcel. But I wasn't so stupid as to think that saving him would mean that I could stay with him. I was no different, no more special than I'd been before. There would be no new reason for him to want me now. Seeing him and losing him again… I fought back against the pain. This was the price I had to pay to save his life. I would pay for it. They showed a movie, and my neighbor got headphones. Sometimes, I watched the figures moving across the little screen, but I couldn't even tell if the movie was supposed to be a romance or a horror film. After an eternity, the plane began to descend toward New York City. Olivia remained in her trance. I dithered, reaching out to touch her, only to pull my hand back again. This happened a dozen times before the plane touched down with a jarring impact. ‘Olivia,’ I finally said. ‘Olivia, we have to go.’ I touched her arm. Her eyes came open very slowly. She shook her head from side to side for a moment.

Naturally, we even made snow angels in the backyard as we stumbled around, and passed out. No one cared what we did really, thus far that was the fun of it all. Oh, and Kenneth was just the boy that only wanted one thing from Jenny. He had no personality to speak of… he would hit on me all the time, and sometimes he would get it from me too, or I would be out of the group by her if he said I was the one that wanted it from him. We could break widows out of old buildings and homes, and who would stop us. Sure, we got chased by the cops, yet that was the fun of it too. There is nothing else for us to do. I remember Maddie leaving her handprints in the wet mud, Jenny her butt, and some of her lady-ness, when the town thought it was time for new sidewalks. Yet we all did, something that would last forever, we thought. Maddie drew a few other things too. You can get the picture! All inappropriate… all there for life. She was just crazy like that, like squatting down pissing, and doing number two in the old man Jackups yard. She has more balls than most guys… I knew. Old man Jackups called us, ‘Mindless slutty hooligans’ So that was payback. At the time- I thought like what is wrong with that, we're just having some fun here… your old windbag, like go and sit on your cane! You know what I mean… I think? I remember being so smashed at my sweet sixteen too, that I don’t even remember it. Yet that is what having a good time was all about, so they say. Bumping and grinding on all the boys with loud music. And as the twinkling lights shine on your skin, that lights the way up to your bedroom. You know that your puffy dress is going to be pushed up a couple of times on that night. I just don’t remember how many times it was, and I didn’t remember who it was with, I am not even sure if I know them at all… all of them or not. All I know is I did it all and was happy to do whatever they asked me to do. But- but I thought I was having the time of my life. I was the birthday girl that had the rosiest pink lipstick on most boys at the party. I thought it was such a horror. In my mind at the time, I thought that I high-jacked the rainbow, and crashed into a pot of gold! All the girls my age did it, yet I was the best at it! I recall the time Liv and I went trick or treating. I was dressed as Hermione from the Harry Potter movies. Liv was a sexy witch! With the pointed hat. So, original…! That is what I told her. That was the night we scared the pants off of Ray in the not-so-scary haunted house. And before you ask, he was dressed as Harry. So, I wanted to play with his wand, that's why I dressed the way I did at the time. Liv was one of those good friends… I thought, which would tell everyone what you all did the day after, to all the girls at the lunch table. She can text faster than anyone I know. Anyways… we jumped out at him, and he nearly craps his nicely pressed pants. I am sure there was a skid mark on his tighty- whities or something. Yet he did yack on Liv’s chest, and that was hilarious to me. She was dancing around, and flapping her hands doing the funky chicken while yelling, ‘Ou- ou- ou- wah!’ As I dibble over in lather, I guess it was funnier when it doesn’t happen to you too many times.

Emotions Dreams I feel like my skin is crawling with viruses when it is on my figure. It’s mid-November and I am standing in the rain, as I run out the door it is, so cold, so lonely, and so freaking loveless! As I found my way back to him, I left behind oh so long ago. Up till now this is not habitual for me, I am always naked around my house, yet this is not a home at all, I don’t know what you call this place, it’s like a school however not so. I have my reason you’ll see, not to say too much, I have someone looking down at me with the eyes and the face and crap. The rain is falling on me, eyes and ears, and boys and girls all like knives inside me, never since the moment I got off the damn bus so it could just run my ass over and get it over with. The rain is matting my long brown hair on me as it lies on down my rump, just like a movie just like the books. Just like me living it, like her. Some of this shower is cascading off my little face, and it slowly collects on my breasts, where it beads up and separates into two different watercourses down to my belly button. I eyeball it, as it goes all the way down the front of me. Yet I am okay with it… at last, I am free. To a fact! I still feel so shut in by all of them. Ten or twenty-five or three minutes have passed, I am still in a similar varied advertisement. ‘Girly portion.’ Almost like a waterfall gushing in-between my legs. It trickles down to me to where it turns and goes in my butt cheeks, falling too and thrashing my mud exposed toes. After standing so long, holding me upright, weekly my legs so not right give out. Just letting water follow me down. I'm soaked! Soft thump, sooner or later the pounding gets rains resilient. Making me fall to the ground with where I will remain until I feel that I can get up and over what has happened to me. I can feel the wetness as it lingers in my hair for a while, so unforgivably waterlogged my body even more. That’s if I can… like if I can accept it all. It’s all because of them! Counting my sanctification, I feel dissatisfied in a way when I do feel it releasing offends my hair. Like it is wiping away everything that happened to me today, away from the day of the past. I feel the dropping rain weeping for me, like hell’s tears of pain and flam it runs out of me as I yell out for his safety in a call of his name.

There comes a time in every story when the hero finally gets everything they ever wanted. And that's usually when the music swells and the credits roll or the last page turns or we just flip the channel. I believe there's a reason for that. We don't want to spend too much time with somebody once they've gotten everything they've ever wanted. They become insufferable. They become unsympathetic. They start using words like whom properly in a sentence. There's no more mountain left for them to climb, so we're out. We're underdog people. Get out of here with your all my dream already came true nonsense. Just take your football and go home, Rudy. Go live your happy life and let us be. We're already on to the next unlikely story. But what if success was where the real trouble began? What if we got everything we ever wanted, only to find out it doesn't change a thing about not liking this skin we have to do life in, this dirt still caked under our fingernails. That once we go home and tuck ourselves between the cool cotton sheets, where it's just us and the darkness settled in, it hasn't changed a thing about how easily we can lay our head down and fall asleep at night. ... The hero, it turns out, is flawed. Deeply, deeply, deeply flawed. And no amount of success is going to undo that. No relentless pursuit of more is going to erase what was missing. It's going to take digging in and doing the hard work of healing if there's any hope of changing all that. but how do e you gather up the nerve when it already feels so damaged? And is that the kind of story anybody will ever care about? ... We don't really make movies about what happened after someone got everything they ever wanted. About what happens when the hero at last has to come face-to-face with what no amount of success will ever fix. But that's the story we're living now.

The Welsh are swine,” said the one-legged man in reply to a question from his son. “Absolute swine. The English are swine, too, but not as bad as the Welsh. Though really they’re the same, but they make an effort not to seem it, and since they know how to pretend, they succeed. The Scots are bigger swine than the English and only a little better than the Welsh. The French are as bad as the Scots. The Italians are little swine. Little swine ready and willing to gobble up their own swine mother. The same can be said of the Austrians: swine, swine, swine. Never trust a Hungarian. Never trust a Bohemian. They’ll lick your hand while they devour your little finger. Never trust a Jew: he’ll eat your thumb and leave your hand covered in slobber. The Bavarians are also swine. When you talk to a Bavarian, son, make sure you keep your belt fastened tight. Better not to talk to Rhinelanders at all: before the cock crows they’ll try to saw off your leg. The Poles look like chickens, but pluck four feathers and you’ll see they’ve got the skin of swine. Same with the Russians. They look like starving dogs but they’re really starving swine, swine that’ll eat anyone, without a second thought, without the slightest remorse. The Serbs are the same as the Russians, but miniature. They’re like swine disguised as Chihuahuas. Chihuahuas are tiny dogs, the size of a sparrow, that live in the north of Mexico and are seen in some American movies. Americans are swine, of course. And Canadians are big ruthless swine, although the worst swine from Canada are the French-Canadians, just as the worst swine from America are the Irish-American swine. The Turks are no better. They’re sodomite swine, like the Saxons and the Westphalians. All I can say about the Greeks is that they’re the same as the Turks: bald, sodomitic swine. The only people who aren’t swine are the Prussians. But Prussia no longer exists. Where is Prussia? Do you see it? I don’t. Sometimes I imagine that while I was in the hospital, that filthy swine hospital, there was a mass migration of Prussians to some faraway place. Sometimes I go out to the rocks and gaze at the Baltic and try to guess where the Prussian ships sailed. Sweden? Norway? Finland? Not on your life: those are swine lands. Where, then? Iceland, Greenland? I try but I can’t make it out. Where are the Prussians, then? I climb up on the rocks and search for them on the gray horizon. A churning gray like pus. And I don’t mean once a year. Once a month! Every two weeks! But I never see them, I can never guess what point on the horizon they set sail to. All I see is you, your head in the waves as they wash back and forth, and then I have a seat on a rock and for a long time I don’t move, watching you, as if I’ve become another rock, and even though sometimes I lose sight of you, or your head comes up far away from where you went under, I’m never afraid, because I know you’ll come up again, there’s no danger in the water for you. Sometimes I actually fall asleep, sitting on a rock, and when I wake up I’m so cold I don’t so much as look up to make sure you’re still there. What do I do then? Why, I get up and come back to town, teeth chattering. And as I turn down the first streets I start to sing so that the neighbors tell themselves I’ve been out drinking down at Krebs’s.

Larry's dog's named Earl P. Jessup Bowers, if you can get ready for that. And I should mention straightaway that I do not like dogs one bit, which is why I was glad when Larry said somebody had to go. Cats are bad enough. Horses are a total drag. By the age of nine I was fed up with all that noble horse this and noble horse that. They got good PR, horses. But I really can't use em. Was a fire once when I was little and some dumb horse almost burnt my daddy up messin around, twisting, snorting, broncing, rearing up, doing everything but comin on out the barn like even the chickens had sense enough to do. I told my daddy to let that horse's ass burn. Horses be as dumb as cows. Cows just don't have good press agents is all. I used to like cows when I was real little and needed to hug me something bigger than a goldfish. But don't let it rain, the dumbbells'll fall right in a ditch and you break a plow and shout yourself hoarse trying to get them fools to come up out the ditch. Chipmunks I don't mind when I'm at the breakfast counter with my tea and they're on their side of the glass doing Disney things in the yard. Blue jays are law-and-order birds, thoroughly despicable. And there's one prize fool in my Aunt Merriam's yard I will one day surely kill. He tries to "whip whip whippoorwill" like the Indians do in the Fort This or That movies when they're signaling to each other closing in on George Montgomery but don't never get around to wiping that sucker out. But dogs are one of my favorite hatreds. All the time woofing, bolting down their food, slopping water on the newly waxed linoleum, messin with you when you trying to read, chewin on the slippers.

it screamed.  The sound filled the cold autumn air and made it even colder.  It crawled under every tiny pebble and burrowed into every knot-hole in every tree.  Even the falling snow seemed to pause as if it were chilled by such a sound.  It pounded icicles through Cliff’s ears and somehow down into the roots of his teeth. 

There is a book to be written, for instance, on small errors in subtitles. In the Fred Astaire musical Royal Wedding, for instance, the English girl he falls for, played by Sarah Churchill (daughter of Sir Winston), is engaged to an American, whom we never see but who’s called Hal—like Falstaff’s prince, like a good high Englishman. That English H, though, was completely inaudible to the French translator who did the subtitles, and so throughout the film the absent lover is referred to in the subtitles as Al—Al like a stagehand, Al like my grandfather. If you have the habit of print addiction, so that you are listening and reading at the same time, this guy Al keeps forcing his way into the movie. “But what shall I say to Hal—that I have never loved him?” Patricia says to Fred. Down below it says, “Et Al—qu’est-ce que je vais lui dire?

Thank you for bringing me out here. If I never see you again, I want to tell you that I had a really great time.” The thought of never seeing her again kills me. I take a deep breath. “What if I told you I want to see you again?” I hold that breath. She says nothing. “Guess not,” I mutter. She shoves my shoulder. “Shut up. I was thinking.” “If it requires that much thought, you’d better say no.” “No.” My heart falls. I should have seen that one coming. Rich girls don’t fall for guys like me. “I don’t want to say no,” she rushes on to say. She sits up and looks down at me. “Unless you want me to say no. Do you want me to say no?” I take her hand in mine. “I want you to say yes.” “What would we do?” she asks, her eyes narrowing. “It would be a date. I have no idea.” “Would…you…kiss me?” I cough into my fist. “Well, I hope so,” I croak. “What else would we do?” “Umm…dinner?” “Mmhmm.” “Umm…maybe a movie.” “Mmhmm.” “Maybe we could take a walk.” Girls like that shit, right? “Could we go on a picnic?” “If you want to.” “I want to. When?” I scratch my head. “When is good for you?” “I don’t have anything to do on Saturday night.” “Seriously?” She nods. Then she squints at me. “Are you just asking me to be nice?” A laugh bursts from my throat. “Sweetheart, nice is not a word that has ever been used to describe me.” “So, we’re going on a date on Saturday,” she sings out and claps her hands. “I’m so excited.” Her happiness is catching. Holy shit. I am in so much trouble. “I had better get you back home.” I’ve enjoyed my time with her and I’m really not ready to give her up yet. “Can we ride some more?” she asks, blinking those green eyes at me. I suddenly realize that I would give her just about anything she wanted. She suddenly leans over and kisses my cheek really quickly. “Thank you,” she says.

How about something to drink. Coffee, tea, soda, water, scotch. Never too early for scotch. Violet, some scotch. Ice. I said ice. No ice, then. Me too. Always neat for me. Look at my view. No, not at the gardener. José! José! Got to pound on the glass to get his attention. He's half deaf. José! Move! You're blocking the view. Good. See the view. I'm talking about the Hollywood sign right there. Never get tired of it. Like the Word of God just dropped down, plunked on the hills, and the Word was Hollywood. Didn't God say let there be light first. What's a movie but light. Can't have a movie without light. And then words. Seeing that sign reminds me to write every morning. What. All right, so it doesn't say Hollywood. You got me. Good eye. Thing's falling to pieces. One O's half fallen and the other O's fallen altogether. The word's gone to shit. So what. You still get the meaning. Thanks, Violet. Cheers. How do they say it in your country. I said how do they say it. Yo, yo, yo, is it. I like that. Easy to remember. Yo, yo, yo, then.